Urban Households' Vulnerability and Adaptation to Climate Change in Mopani District, Limpopo Province, South Africa

Abstract

The surreptitious impact of climate change on human society is a recurrent issue among scholars and policy makers in the 21st century. While the literature is replete with theoretical discussion and empirical analysis, particularly studies focusing on the major cities of developed economies, there is dearth of empirical studies on the cities of developing economies generally, and South Africa in particular where current dimension of human vulnerability, adaptation and response pattern are very abnormal and pathetically problematic. This thesis therefore examines Urban Households' Vulnerability, adaptation and response to Climate Change in Mopani District, Limpopo Province, South Africa. It assesses the households', communities‘ and spatial planning coping strategies in response to extreme climate change events in both spatial planning policies and households' practices. Purposive method was used to select six towns (Giyani, Hoedspruit, ModjadjisKloof, Nkowankowa, Phalaborwa, and Tzaneen) in the Mopani District as case studies. Using Multistage sampling techniques, 500 respondents, proportionally distributed among the selected towns were randomly chosen for the purpose of questionnaire administration to elicit information on socioeconomic characteristics and adaptation strategies. 60 years records (1958 to 2017) of rainfall and Temperature were obtained from monthly gridded and high-resolution satellite dataset from the global data to detect climatic trends and cycles in annual and monthly Temperatures and Rainfall during the period. Google earth pro and ‗gps visualizer‘ are used to conduct topographical analysis to assess the influence of terrain on the occurrence of climate related disasters. The use of geospatial analysis of available LandSat imageries was adopted for the examination of Land use and Land Cover Changes to monitor the trend in land and land resources consumption as an influencer of exposure to rainfall and temperature. Household Vulnerability Index (HVI) developed by United Nations (UN) Habitat was used to examine Households‘ and communities‘ degrees of exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity. Ordered Logit Regression Model was used to examine the contributions of factors to HVI and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was employed in weight assignments. Pearson‘s Correlation Coefficient was used to measure the strength of association that exists between the Households vulnerability Index and some selected socioeconomic attributes (such as age, gender, income, highest qualification) in the selected towns. Livelihood Diversification Index (LDI) was calculated, using the Herfindahl index of diversification to scrutinise the influence of diversification of households‘ Livelihood on their overall vulnerability level in Mopani. A mobile x application and web-based technology and tools are employed to design and develop the Disaster Hotspot Reporting and Monitoring System, for timely reporting and record keeping of climate related incidences. The results reveal that the selected towns across the Mopani District have exhibited increasing warm Temperature (with varying heat waves) throughout the period under examination. Upward correlations that imply increase in the variations in both mean minimum and mean maximum Temperatures are observed over the period, with seasonal variations recorded from year to year. However, the trend in rainfall shows a reducing trend during the same period with yearly seasonal variations in precipitation. Most towns are characterised by gentle slopes, thus flash floods occur in varying intensities and frequencies across the selected towns. Developments (buildings, roads, asphalts, floor tiles etc) consistently invade vegetation, water bodies and bare land. Household exposure and adaptive capacity are observed to be high in the district with about 92% households in exposed category; Nkowankowa town claims the highest proportion (96.58%), while ModjadjisKloof town accounted for 60%, being the least. The HVI is equally high in these towns with Tzaneen being the town with the highest (over 78%) Community Vulnerability Index (CVI), while Hoedspruit town is the most resilient, with the least CVI of 55.56%. The high vulnerability levels observed in these towns were attributed to poor housing conditions, lack of access to essential services, and lack of insurance cover (of any form) among the households, among other factors. However, a point increase in LDI instigates a reduction of HVI by 0.729 points. A point increase in household age has increased HVI by 0.333, while that of educational qualifications significantly decreases the impacts on HVI by -0.0706. Other factors such as physical, statutory, and system failures contributed to high HVI in the study area. The result further reveals that tree planting and fans/air conditioners were the most popular with adoption by 100% respondents as coping strategies to deal with increasing Temperature in the District. In contrast, water treatment and storage tanks in homes were the most commonly embraced adaptation strategies for changes in water levels by 100% and 81% respondents respectively. The findings further show that, local municipalities' plans and policies recognised the impacts of climate change on urban households and the roles urban planning plays a central role in responding to climate change impacts. However, there is little evidence to indicate substantial efforts to pragmatically and coherently address the problems; the municipalities still rely on the national government for urban-related and climate change disaster response policies and strategies. While emphasising greening (in homes and at the city centres) to reduce heat waves and curtail surface runoff, the study led to the development of a framework with an incorporated disaster hotspot reporting and monitoring system for sustainable adaptation planning in the district.