Developing Sustainable Capacity for Disaster Risk Reduction in Southern Africa

Summary, in English

Southern Africa suffers from an acute lack in skilled capacities for disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. The region, with its unique disaster risk profile, is mostly bound by its inability to effect change and transformation for sustainable development and resilience building. Reasons for these limitations are largely due to the lack of capacities in disaster risk reduction with the public, semiprivate, as well as private sectors. However, since the 1990s, some significant work in disaster risk governance in the region has led to some of the most forward thinking policies and acts in the world. Therefore, the disaster risk reduction communities in the various Southern African states have not been idle. The major constraint now faced is the translation of these policies and plans into action, and this is where the need for more capacities becomes strikingly obvious. Research and academic institutions in the region have outlived all of the regimes and regime changes. These institutions are ideally suited to address the policy/practice gap that exists within the disaster risk reduction domain. In this chapter, we argue for a focus shift in developing sustainable capacities for disaster risk reduction in Southern Africa by first acknowledging and second harnessing the existing skills base in the region. We believe that contemporary capacity development for disaster risk reduction is predominantly ad hoc, short term, project focused, and microsized, and should be changed from within the region, by building on existing institutions and networks that are driven by Southern African institutions.

• Author: Per Becker; Dewald van Niekerk
• Editor: Andrew Collins
• Department/s: Lund University Centre for Risk Assessment and Management (LUCRAM); Centre for Societal Resilience; Division of Risk Management and Societal Safety
• Publishing year: 2014
• Language: English
• Publication/Series: Hazards, Risks and Disasters in Society
• Document type: Book chapter
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Topic: Social Sciences Interdisciplinary
• Status: Published