01 Jul 2024

The development of a Drought Monitoring Plan underscored Botswana’s commitment to proactive drought management by ensuring that interventions are aligned with the severity of the situation as determined by the Botswana Vulnerability Assessment Committee (BVAC) findings.

This was said by Assistant Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Mr Setlhabelo Modukanele during Ntlo Ya Dikgosi meeting recently. Mr Modukanele also told Ntlo Ya Dikgosi that the involvement of Cabinet leading to the drought declaration by the President further emphasised the importance of political leadership in responding to the shock.

He said the outlined systematic approach reflected the country’s dedication to effectively monitor, manage and mitigate the impact of drought, ultimately safeguarding the well-being of citizens and the country’s food security.

“To ensure preparedness should drought be declared, a number of meetings with all affected ministries for resource and financial mobilisation are undertaken to ensure that ministries re-look their ministerial priorities with the view to allocating funds timely to the proposed drought mitigation measures,” he said.

Explaining the Rural Development Council (RDC) mandate, he said it included drought monitoring, management and cross sectoral coordination through the BVA committee.

He said the committee undertook the drought and household food security and vulnerability assessment and analysis exercise during the month of April or May annually.
Subsequently, he said verification or rapid assessment was conducted in October or November to determine changes that had occurred since the first assessment.

He said the committee drew its membership from multiple stakeholders across ministries to facilitate a well-coordinated approach in addressing challenges posed by drought.

He said the assessment took a holistic approach which was essential for identifying strategies to mitigate vulnerability and enhance food security.

In that regard, he said the use of various data sources, such as rainfall records, satellite imagery and nutritional surveys were key for the assessment.

“Rainfall data establishes deficiencies in the season’s rainfall and its extent. Cumulative rainfall amounts are therefore calculated on a monthly and seasonal basis and compared to the statistical long-term average for the area and for the period in question,” he said.

Furthermore, he indicated that temperature fluctuations and humidity levels during the season were taken into consideration as they controlled the rate of evaporation and evapo-transpiration.

“This is done to establish the impact of the rainfall amounts and distribution specifically on plant growth and water sources as well as on rural incomes and human livelihoods. Critical to all of this is the timing of ploughing/planting activities, the area ploughed, yield and harvest estimates which are compared to their previous years’ situations and also related to the rainfall patterns,” he added.

Mr Modukanele said the integration of scientific data, such as Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) maps and temperature fluctuations, with on-the-ground observations was done to determine the drought’s severity and its implications for agriculture, water sources and livelihoods.

He said assessment of water inflows into major dams and through major perennial rivers was also undertaken.

Additionally, he said the extent of veldt fires was also reviewed since high fire damages may exacerbate levels of vulnerability if left unchecked.

He explained that using nutritional status of under-fives and the primary school feeding programme as an assessment tools was a valuable approach for understanding human vulnerability and taking necessary steps to address food insecurity and community wellbeing. ENDS