Planning for droughts during the wet season: Increasing the resilience to the new norm of recurring droughts

Abstract

Drought is a natural hazard with severe socio-economic impacts in many Southern African countries. It is a threat to water management, water-dependent activities, and livelihoods in Southern Africa. Impacts of drought are usually severe in communities where the socio-economic activities of the people depend of availability of water in surface and sub-surface sources. Of particular concern are regionally extensive droughts, which produce widespread impacts that cannot be compensated by redistribution of water, food and energy production from other parts of a resource system. Drought can have transnational and multifaceted impacts. In 1991 and 1992, drought depleted ground water reservoirs, reduced fresh water availability, and forced people to use water from unprotected sources; as a result, many people suffered from cholera, diarrhoea and dysentery and more than 90 per cent of small inland dams in the eastern part of Southern Africa dried. Drought is a recurring extreme climate event that is characterized by below-normal moisture availability over a period of months to years.

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