The recent tragic KwaZulu-Natal floods exposed the country’s vulnerability and lack of capacity to deal with national disasters, even when scientific warnings were so evident. We commiserate with families as they rebuild their lives. We should reimagine more plausible, effective and sustainable risk management strategies informed by scientific intelligence to circumvent recurrences.
There are concerns about the country’s capacity and capabilities to leverage on existing state advisory commissions like the Presidential Commission on Climate and other statutory bodies tasked with national advisory responsibilities. Responses to these concerns are nuanced and need further interrogation to confluence the discourse towards institutionalising efficacious and sustainable disaster management policies and strategies.
Experts in spatial planning and civil engineering decry poor planning and optimal utilisation of the South African Risk and Vulnerability Atlas platform to guide decision making on environmental and climatic changes. There is a need to strengthen our national system of innovation intersectionality functions to integrate policy directives and implementation for better disaster management.
SA has invested substantially in science and research as evidenced through the Conservation South Africa, Water Research Commission, Agricultural Research Council, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, South African Research Chairs, Centres of Excellence and other national platforms and infrastructure.
The extent to which cumulative capital and capabilities gleaned from scientific research to optimally plan for disasters and management thereof remains nuanced and contested. There is a need to strengthen science policy interface across all national and regional intersectionality structures to enhance the confluence of obligation and coalescence of action. This would minimise dissonance in the applications of scientific research intelligence to mitigate national disasters and management thereof.
The country’s strong policy presence evidenced by the National Development Plan 2030, Ten Year Innovation Plan, National Research and Development, to mention a few, have shaped the discourse around science and society and concomitant investments.
Various programmes and interventions were developed based on policy advisory and projected social beneficiations. Another intervention was the development of a South African Risk and Vulnerability Atlas to enhance policy and decision-making on risks and vulnerabilities resulting from environmental and climatic changes.
The intervention was given a social context by its rollout to rural-based universities (Fort Hare, Walter Sisulu, Zululand, Venda and Limpopo). The raison d’etre for piloting the Community and University Partnership Programme was to augment and diversify knowledge creation and information brokering that empower communities understand and apply Atlas capabilities for social development and enhance risk management strategies to circumvent environmental and climatic changes.
The extent to which cumulative expertise gained through this intervention has been deployed on policy formulation and applicability to circumvent climatic disasters remains nuanced, given our poor response to disasters.
Government has not demonstrated efficacy and effectiveness in managing mushrooming of informal human settlements even on river banks and low lands that become dangerous during floods. Failure to adhere to basic spatial and city planning regimes and practices complicates responsive deployment of risk management strategies.
Eradicating poverty and creating sustainable employment opportunities could alleviate land invasions as people would have reasonable resources to find decent human settlements. Our Ten Year Innovation Plan states that: “As science is essentially forward-looking, the Plan provides strategic leadership and direction for modern science and technology in pursuit of SAs economic goals, while remaining at the cutting edge of both human and scientific endeavour, as well as technological advancement.”
Changing environmental and climatic changes require a rethink of existing risk and vulnerability management plans and strategies to circumvent recurrences similar to the KwaZulu-Natal floods tragedies.
Let us use scientific and research-based evidence to plan, monitor, manage and respond efficaciously to natural disasters and save lives and infrastructure needed for socio-economic livelihoods.
• Monyooe is a Sowetan reader
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