Vulnerability Assessment for Rural Settings: Applicability to Developing Countries

Abstract

It is now widely accepted that climate change will lead to intensification of the global hydrological cycle and will subsequently impact on regional water resources. Variability in climate conditions in Uganda is already having major impact on food security due to prolonged drought, high temperatures, floods and landslides that have lately been prevalent, especially in the northern region. This region has recorded consecutive years of crop failure and low livestock productivity due to erratic weather conditions and inadequate rainfall, which has impacted negatively on food security in the region with records of famine and hunger in some districts during the 2000s. With the smallest number of natural water resources, northern Uganda has been over-dependent on rainfall and ground water sources for its water requirements. Prolonged temperature increase is likely to exacerbate the problems of the already difficult water balance faced in the region and rainfall patterns have already started changing with precipitation being just above the evapotranspiration during the rainy season but the trend quickly reverses at the onset of the dry seasons. This paper aims to illustrate the practical applications of vulnerability assessment frameworks for rural settings in developing countries, based on an ongoing water harvesting project for rural smallholder farming systems in northern Uganda, whose main objective is to improve farm water management systems for enhanced agricultural productivity and poverty alleviation. This paper examines the applicability of vulnerability assessment frameworks and methodologies to such poverty-ridden rural settings in Uganda, which can be classified as a developing country. Participatory methods were used to collect data using a combination of adaptation and participatory tools from climate vulnerability and capacity analysis (CVCA) and community-based risk screening tools for adaptation and livelihoods (CRiSTAL) as decision support tools to analyse the vulnerability assessment. Results obtained by qualitative analysis show that there is high vulnerability to floods, HIV/AIDS, and anthropogenic activities, notably including civil wars and cattle rustling. The paper concludes that a combination of vulnerability assessment tools can give more rational and realistic results, and that efforts should be made to take stakeholder inputs into consideration while developing and applying the vulnerability assessment tools. It is recommended that vulnerability assessment tools for developing countries be standardised for ease of replication and applicability.