Resilience to Climate-Induced Disasters and Its Overall Relationship to Well-Being in Southern Africa: A Mixed-Methods Systematic Review

Abstract

The available literature suggests that natural disasters, especially droughts and floods, were occurring in southern Africa in the early 1900s. However, their frequency and intensity increased during the 1980s. The aim of this systematic review was to assess the relationship between resilience to droughts and people’s well-being in southern Africa. A combination of keywords was used to search the following 13 electronic bibliographic databases: Africa Journal Online (AJOL), MEDLINE, Academic Search Complete, Environment Complete, Humanities International Complete, Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection, PsycINFO, Embase, Scopus, Web of Science, Applied Social Science Index and Abstracts, ProQuest Central, and CINAHL. Relevant websites were also searched and potential studies for inclusion were downloaded in an EndNote database and screened for eligibility using pre-determined criteria. Quality assessment of the studies was undertaken using the Joana Briggs Qualitative Assessment and Review Instrument, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) checklist, and the Authority, Accuracy, Coverage, Objectivity, Date, Significance (AACODS) checklist. Resilience and well-being scales used in the studies for inclusion were also assessed using pre-defined criteria. Nineteen studies met the inclusion criteria. Poverty alleviation policies were important in strengthening resilience and well-being outcomes. Resilience and well-being were connected by old age, gender, race, adaptive farming and livelihoods diversification, security, and knowledgeability. Resilience and well-being outcomes were advanced by the synergistic effect of household, community and governance level capacities encapsulated in knowledgeability. This systematic review is critical to improving southern Africa context-specific resilience, and well-being policies and interventions.

Understanding disaster resilience in communities affected by recurrent drought in Lesotho and Swaziland—A qualitative study

“…Regionally, there has been limited success in efforts to benchmark resilience. A recent systematic review of resilience in southern Africa noted the lack of a contextually and culturally appropriate resilience framework [58]. The review further observed that most of the relevant studies did not exhibit the rigour necessary to qualify as resilience research.…”

Governments’ Policy Response to Drought in Eswatini and Lesotho: A Systematic Review of the Characteristics, Comprehensiveness, and Quality of Existing Policies to Improve Community Resilience to Drought Hazards

“…Based on our definition of policy, we included a broad range of policy documents (see Table 2). e included policy documents were published after 1 January 1980, when drought frequency and intensity increased alongside emergency drought appeals for 4 Discrete Dynamics in Nature and Society international assistance [6,25]. Table 2 presents our broad inclusion and exclusion criteria.…”

“…Climate-induced hazards have continuously eroded development gains and livelihoods, disrupted societal routines, and affected human health and wellbeing [2,3]. e last three decades have seen significant increases in climate-induced hazards such as drought occurrences which have become longer and severely exacerbated poor agricultural outputs, livestock losses, and poor health and wellbeing [3][4][5][6]. e governments in the region have responded with various policy instruments to address the threat of recurrent drought.…”

A case study of disaster decision‐making in the presence of anomalies and absence of recognition

“…In the context of emergency management, hazard‐specific expertise is exceptional knowledge and understanding of the behavioural characteristics and associated risks that a specific agent has the potential to cause (EMPS, 2019; Scheer et al, 2014). Multi‐agency responses requiring increased inter‐operability, the greater frequency of climate‐induced disasters (Kamara, Akombi, Agho, & Renzaho, 2018), inter‐jurisdictional deployments both nationally and internationally (Amat Camacho, Karki, Subedi, & Von Schreeb, 2019; Bartolucci, Walter, & Redmond, 2019) and the expectation that commanders manage non‐hazard‐specific incidents (EMPS, 2019) all point towards this issue becoming more, rather than less of a challenge.…”