Theses defended

Risco de cheias e inundações: Estratégias comunitárias para a gestão e redução da vulnerabilidade em Moçambique

Ricardo Acácio Xavier

Public Defence date
May 31, 2022
Doctoral Programme
Territory, Risk and Public Policies
Supervision
José Manuel Mendes
Abstract
Mozambique is a country highly vulnerable to the occurrence of extreme natural processes of meteorological and hydrological origin, the most frequent being floods, droughts and storms. Currently and similarly to what is occurring worldwide, they are also becoming more frequent and intense, affecting in various ways the lives of people, communities and their livelihoods, destroying public and private infrastructure and residences, including the environment itself and affecting national economic growth.

Although most of the national literature argues that the country's vulnerability to natural disastrous events results from natural processes and geographic dynamics, these phenomena are also influenced by human factors such as social inequalities, poverty, wars, infrastructure weaknesses, as well as the increasing impact of climate change that is harnessing disaster risk locally, regionally, and globally.

Thus, despite these and other challenges the country is facing, based on the qualitative method, and supported by bibliographic consultations, document analysis and interviews, it was possible to verify that despite these limitations, the public policy has managed to reduce vulnerability and disaster risk either by preparing and anticipating the occurrence of natural phenomena or by (re)building and modernizing early warning and alert systems that are developed through a set of action plans, strategies, programs and sectoral policies in coordination with international guidelines for disaster risk management and reduction.

Based on the fieldwork, it was possible to prove that preparing and training communities to deal with various climate threats is contributing not only to the reduction of communities' exposure and vulnerability to disaster risks, but also to poverty reduction by enabling the development of community-based disaster risk adaptation and mitigation strategies and thus protecting their livelihoods, their economic resources and assets from extreme climatic threats either by accepting resettlement programs, fixing residences and their assets in safe locations, adopting drought, flood and flood resilient crops as part of disaster risk vulnerability reduction strategies.

Keywords: Vulnerability; disaster risk reduction; resilience; floods; local communities; Mozambique.