Institutional Responses to Drought in a High HIV Prevalence Setting in Rural South Africa.

Collins C Iwuji,Kingsley S Orievulu

doi:10.3390/ijerph19010434

Abstract

In 2015, South Africa experienced one of the worst (El Niño-induced) droughts in 35 years. This affected economic activities, individual and community livelihoods and wellbeing especially in rural communities in northern KwaZulu-Natal. Drought’s direct and indirect impacts on public health require urgent institutional responses, especially in South Africa’s stride to eliminate HIV as a public health threat by 2030 in line with the UNAIDS goals. This paper draws on qualitative data from interviews and policy documents to discuss how the devastating effect of the 2015 drought experience in the rural Hlabisa sub-district of uMkhanyakude, a high HIV prevalence area, imposes an imperative for more proactive institutional responses to drought and other climate-related events capable of derailing progress made in South Africa’s HIV/AIDS response. We found that drought had a negative impact on individual and community livelihoods and made it more difficult for people living with HIV to consistently engage with care due to economic losses from deaths of livestock, crop failure, food insecurity, time spent in search of appropriate water sources and forced relocations. It also affected government institutions and their interventions. Interviewed participants’ reflections on drought-related challenges, especially those related to institutional and coordination challenges, showed that although current policy frameworks are robust, their implementation has been stalled due to complex reporting systems, and inadequate interdepartmental collaboration and information sharing. We thus argue that to address the gaps in the institutional responses, there is a need for more inclusive systems of drought-relief implementation, in which government departments, especially at the provincial and district levels, work with national institutions to better share data/information about drought-risks in order to improve preparedness and implementation of effective mitigation measures.

Highlights

Drought recurrence in South Africa has prompted several institutional responses including government’s enactment of the Disaster Management Act 57 of 2002 (DMA) in 2003 to radically handle the effects of climate change, including drought, on the economy and people
For the purposes of this paper, we focused on the Key Informant Interviews (KIIs) conducted among Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (DARD) officials as it relates to drought policies and interventions
Remember the most about the drought is that cows were dying, especially when walking on the road you see that a cow has collapsed, it has lost energy

Summary

Introduction

Drought recurrence in South Africa has prompted several institutional responses including government’s enactment of the Disaster Management Act 57 of 2002 (DMA) in 2003 to radically handle the effects of climate change, including drought, on the economy and people. Emergent policies like the National Drought Management Plan (DMP) (2005), National Disaster Risk Management Policy Framework (DRMPF) (2005)—including the amended Disaster Management Act in 2015—focus on robustly managing climate-related challenges. Specific to the DMA and DMP, emphases on institutional arrangements, integrated institutional capacity, disaster risk assessment and reduction planning, and response and recovery [1,2] portray the intention by government to proactively tackle drought threats through drought risk management, information management and communication, education, training, public awareness and research, as well as funding [3,4,5].

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Discussion

Conclusion