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April 2007 |
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Preventing Casualties and Livelihood Loss in Flood Prone Areas in Southern Africa Children in southern Africa are playing the Limpopo board game, literally for their lives. Piloted in such places as Zimbabwe’s Matabeleland and Mozambique’s Gaza Province, the game uses the power of play to teach ways of reducing vulnerability to flooding. If a counter lands on a square showing a well-designed floodproof village, or one advising children to move themselves and livestock to higher ground, the player advances several spaces. But if the counter alights on one depicting a decimated forest, land degradation, or other factors that increase vulnerability, the player must go back six spaces. The game—part of a larger GEF project launched after the devastating Limpopo floods in 2000—underlines the challenges developing countries face as they try to adapt to the extreme weather events linked to climate change. The GEF-UNEP project seeks to develop and implement participatory sustainable land management plans and tools to reduce the impact of floods on land, ecosystems, and human settlements, and reduce the vulnerability of communities living in flood-prone areas. The project came from an initial request from the government of Mozambique following the floods induced by “El Niño.” Given repeated flooding in the Limpopo River Basin, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Botswana decided to join Mozambique to address the issue. Through the project, countries are assessing their capacity to manage flood-related disasters, leading to the design of appropriate capacity building measures. The tools developed through the project will help countries to improve local, national, and regional participatory decision-making for flood mitigation. They include the following:
The project is demonstrating the usefulness of integrating capacity building activities at the community level (for sustainable land use planning and management) with training at the subregional level (for flood forecasting and early warning systems) to facilitate a dialogue between government institutions and local populations on this transboundary issues. Community involvement is stimulating local initiatives and self-organization. However, these local activities need to be replicated in many other rural settlements around the basin to increase disaster preparedness and improve community response
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