Masters Degrees (Disaster Management Training and Education Centre for Africa (DiMTEC))

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Browsing Masters Degrees (Disaster Management Training and Education Centre for Africa (DiMTEC)) by Subject "Community resilience"

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    An analysis of agricultural development projects as a tool to increase community resilience: a case of Monze district in Zambia
    (University of the Free State, 2013-02) Banda, Bowen; Jordaan, Andries J.
    The aim of this study was to analyse why social vulnerability was on the increase in Monze District, Southern Province of Zambia despite the many agricultural development projects that were implemented. To understand this phenomenon, the study evaluated the design and implementation of current agricultural development projects in Monze District from two perspectives. The first perspective focused on the user and the second focused on the planners. This evaluation was done to understand how these developmental projects were designed and implemented, and how the projects contributed to enhancing community resilience to reduce social vulnerability among people at risk in two sampled communities in Monze. The two communities had the same weighted magnitude of risk and social vulnerability but different number of agricultural development projects being implemented. From a user perspective, one of the two communities assessed with less project interventions was treated as a control whilst the second with more project interventions was treated as the intervention study area. Thus, the study utilised a mixed design method to undertake field community resilience analysis. It further utilised the sample survey and focused group discussions. The study randomly sampled 74 households to solicit views on their inherent community resilience and how they perceived it to have been increased by agricultural development projects. Views from the community members were collected and analysed using a modified sustainable livelihoods framework. From a planner’s perspective, the projects were analysed using content analysis and personal contacts with some planners, monitoring and evaluation officers including projects officers. Results show three main outcomes. The first outcome is that Keemba Community with seven developmental projects out of twelve being implemented in Monze exhibited less resilience when analysed using the modified sustainable livelihoods model. Nalutanda with three developmental projects exhibited more resilience. The third outcome was that the communities did not attribute their current resilience capacity levels to the effects of the current developmental projects except for hazard early warning awareness. The study expectations were that Keemba should have had more resilience since it had more developmental projects being implemented. In this way the increased and enhanced resilience in Keemba would have been attributed to appropriateness, effectiveness, efficiency, relevancy and sustainability of the many agricultural developmental projects that were being implemented. Since the findings were contrary, the study concluded that the agricultural development projects being implemented were not effective at increasing community resilience in terms of their design, planning and implementation. As such, the projects did not contribute effectively to the reduction of social vulnerability and needed to be redesigned to mainstream disaster risk reduction. The study further discovered that poverty levels were still high in both communities studied despite the interventions. The high poverty levels contributed to the prevailing low resilience and thus to increased social vulnerability in Monze, as well.
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    An optimised model for the regulatory management of human-induced health and safety risks associated with hazardous facilities in South Africa
    (University of the Free State, 2016-11) Niemand, Alfonso; Jordaan, A. J.; Minnaar, H. F. B.
    The society we live in is becoming more complex by the day as a result of a multitude of factors, such as economic development, wars, terrorist attacks, technological innovation and societal demands for wealth creation. Human populations are rapidly growing to extremes, where the sustainable utilisation of natural and man-made resources is stretched to the limit. The regulation of major hazard installations near densely populated areas in South Africa and worldwide has consequently become critical. South African legislation on the health and safety of people in and around hazardous facilities does not cover an exogenous, outward-focused approach by which communities around the hazardous installation are assessed to determine their vulnerability to a major disastrous incident. This legislation is largely based on legislation developed in the United Kingdom under the guidance of their Health and Safety Executive (HSE), and is fragmented and spread across several government departments. An optimised model was developed in this study for the regulatory management of human-induced health and safety risks associated with hazardous facilities in South Africa. The model is based on a systems approach, with three open and interactive domains or spheres where the hazardous facility has an influence: environment, community and the hazardous facility itself. The model further contains the concept of disaster vulnerability, not only as regards the employees at the hazardous facility and the communities around the facility, but also the organisation that houses the hazardous facility. The concepts of the social and economic sustainability of communities at and around the hazardous facility are also introduced in the model, as well as the sustainability of the organisation and business continuity, as critical parts of the regulatory management process. The model has been verified against 21 critical success factors for effective legislation in health and safety, three relevant case studies from South Africa, India and England, the South African disaster regulatory framework as well as 14 local Acts and Regulations relevant to the governance of the health and safety of people.