Drought Mitigation and Sustainable Development in South Africa: Making a case for Public-Private Partnership

Abiodun Omotayo Oladejo and Chinyere Iheoma Erondu

Page No. 1-9

South Africa falls within one of the regions of the world - Southern Africa - prone to the vagaries of the phenomenon of drought. The panoply of its impacts cuts across households and water-dependent farming, pastoralist and industrial activities. Although there is evidence in extant literature about the roles of national and provincial governments in South Africa at mitigating drought in terms of provision of relief scheme, there is lacking any evidence of the co-opting of organized private sector in drought mitigation in the country.

Thus, relying on stakeholder theory and participatory resource governance model as theoretical contexts and using content analysis as the method of inquiry, the study argues the need to de-bureaucratize drought mitigation scheme and integrate relevant sections of the private sector because drought is an ever-present emergency that cannot be tied to government bureaucracy and appropriations. This is an imperative if there is going to be a sustainable mechanism through which drought problem will be managed in South Africa.

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Flood disaster simulation and predicting using HEC-RAS and GIS tools: a case of the Rdat River's downstream

Ait Mlouk Mohamed, Algouti Abdellah, Algouti Ahmed, Elbadaoui Kamal, Ourhzif Zouhair and Farah Abdelouhed

Page No. 10-17

This study describes the hydrological regime variability in Rdat basin and the application of the HEC-RAS model to simulate flood risk of the Rdat River downstream. In the purpose to help decision-makers and planners in developing flood mitigation measures, downstream of the Rdat river has recently experienced several flooding, exposing the vulnerability of the region to this natural disaster. The digital elevation model from the ALOS PALSAR radar topography mission was chosen for the extraction of geometric data from the river because of its reasonable accuracy (12 m in resolution) and free availability. The peak floods of the frequency analysis were fed into the HEC-RAS model to find the corresponding flood extensions predicted along the downstream of the Rdat River.

The results obtained with the HEC-RAS model were used in combination with ArcGIS to prepare floodplain maps for different return periods. The simulation provides good insights on water depth, flow velocity and a temporal variation of the flood. Specific locations where water begins to overflow were identified. The floodplain maps identified areas vulnerable to flood risk. Analysis of the floodplain maps indicated that the majority of the area is susceptible to flooding relative to the normal river flow. Thus, local residents currently use most of the area identified as vulnerable to flooding as agricultural lands.

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Effect of Coast Spatial Management Planning towards Tsunami Disaster

Kurniadi Anwar and Herawan Tutut

Page No. 18-21

Currently, the incidence of disasters, the biggest catastrophes that caused 426 people’s death in West Java was tsunami in coast of Sunda Strait. One of the causes is coast spatial management that is not exact. There are several laws like no.32 of 2009 and no. 26 of 2007 and no.22 of 1999. Those laws make it possible for every leader of local government to conduct the spatial management that benefits his community and also avoid it from disaster especially from tsunami. The purpose of this study is to review the role of local government leaders in making of coast spatial management that is able to avoid tsunami disaster.

Results were: 1) Most of local government leaders did not find formula exactly to combine all of the laws that are relevant to make a master plan of coast spatial management was suitable to their area; 2) Most of local government leaders prefer to think how to gain economic benefit than how to avoid disaster; 3) Most of local government leaders did not involve communities in planning and executing of coast spatial management; 4) The planning of coast spatial management made in local disaster management board (BPBD) did not still get much attention from local government leaders. Role of local government leaders in frame of avoiding tsunami disaster still was not optimal as desired by all the laws. The local board of disaster management (BPBD) should be more proactive to make persuasion.

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Natural Calamity, its impact and level of Preparations: Significance and Implications to the Community

Asio John Mark R.

Page No. 20-30

The purpose of the study is to analyze the knowledge of natural calamity, its impact and level of preparations of respondents in Central Luzon, Philippines. This study employed a descriptive-correlation design. 125 respondents participated in the survey with the use of convenience sampling technique. We drafted a questionnaire and subjected it to validity and reliability test which yielded an overall Cronbach alpha score of .969. After the survey, We analyzed the data using SPSS 20 and the following statistical tools: frequency, percentage, means, t-test, ANOVA, Pearson-r and Regression Analysis.

The study found that the respondents are knowledgeable on natural calamities and its impacts. They are also prepared when a calamity occurs. There are significant differences on the knowledge of natural calamity and impact of natural calamity in terms of community and family members. There is also a significant relationship observed between community, knowledge of natural calamity and impact of natural calamity. The same is observed between knowledge of natural calamity, impact of natural calamity and level of preparations of respondents. The community is a significant determinant of knowledge on natural calamity and impact of natural calamity and age is a significant determinant of knowledge on natural calamity.

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Climate Variability and Wheat Crop Yield: Forecasting Indian Scenario till 2100 AD

Rani Amita and Mor Surender

Page No. 31-41

The impact of climate changes on wheat production in India is investigated using crop model on a balanced panel of crop level data pertaining to the period 1998-2014 on 118 districts across India for forecasting the yield of wheat crop till 2100AD. The verdicts of the study reveal that the future wheat production in India, in the wake of climate change, will decline by 2.35 per cent (0.22 quintals per hectare) when compared to the base year (2013-14). Further, North India-the breadbasket of India may suffer a loss of 2.03 per cent, Northeast region 3.43 per cent and least in the Peninsular region (1.78 per cent) when compared to the year 2013-14. The conclusions reveal that the maximum decrease in wheat yield is estimated during the first decade (2020-2040) across Peninsular region of India and Northeast India (0.66 and 1.32 per cent) respectively.

The findings further indicate a hidden disaster because India is the second-highest wheat supplier in the world (with 12.87 per cent of wheat supply). The three states of North India, Punjab, Haryana and Utter Pradesh contribute more than 68 per cent of gross wheat production predicted to be severely affecting, thereby leaving more than one billion population at the brink of hunger or food security. The findings suggest that various crop production enhancing measures like short duration high-yielding varieties, temperature-responsive varieties for maintaining the wheat production at the same level should be adopted if not able to enhance at least to cope with the adverse impacts of the climate change. Furth more, the provision of more assured irrigation faculties, fertilizers for maintaining the health of the soil and for enhancing the production, the reduction in farm fragmentation and lucrative farm harvest prices will cumulatively be handy in coping with the dangerous impacts of increasing means temperature and rainfall variations in the country.

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Fuzzy based hydro-lithological zonation of Stormwater regime in Thanjavur City of Southern India

Stalin Subbiah T., Parthiban P., Mahesh R. and Das A.

Page No. 42-52

Stormwater zone is any framework that includes techniques for gathering, focusing and putting away different types of overflow for different purposes. Without uncertainty, the best climatic hazard to continued rural generation in these regions including deltaic city of Thanjavur, is precipitation changeability. Stormwater can possibly relieve spatial and fleeting inconstancy of precipitation. Numerous strategies for assessing reasonableness for stormwater zone, be that as it may, have constraints or potentially disadvantages. The present study is meant for development of a Fuzzy Inference System output augmented geospatial storm-water modeling.

For the study, soil map was obtained from the office of regional soil and water management research institute, Digital Elevation Model (DEM) from the NRSC Bhuvan, Hyderabad and rainfall data from Indian Meteorological Department. For Multi Criteria Evaluation (MCE), standardization of the criteria was done according to expert knowledge and literature assessing the relative weights with consistency validation and moderation followed by suitable fuzzification, rule-based modelling followed by defuzzification to obtain suitability scores. These scores formed the basis for suitability contouring for storm-water for well-distributed locations. The territory under study, dispersed between exceptionally reasonable extremely high (41.50 %) to high (18.89 %) to medium (8.76 %) to low(16.98 %) to exceptionally low(13.87%). The method presented herein provides a framework of fuzzy-based expert system that can be (with suitable calibration) utilized for stormwater modelling in other places as well.

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COVID-19; Current Scenario in India and Convalescent Plasma Therapy as Combating Approach

Walhe Rajan, Chandorkar Swaroopa, Lad Kashmira, Mulye Madhura and Sutar Parvati

Page No. 53-59

The outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), originated in Wuhan, China, in December 2019 has become a major concern all over the world and is named as Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) by the WHO. The virus has spread rapidly in the world creating a pandemic. In India the foremost case was reported on January 30, 2020 in Kerala state and now the number has reached up to more than 90000 cases as of May 17, 2020, out of which more than 2800 patients died and more than 34000 patients have recovered. Owing to this, India has implemented several precautionary measures to avoid the spread of disease in the beginning stage. On March 24, 2020, the Indian government authorities announced nationwide lockdown to be implemented from March 25, 2020 to break the chain of transmission of the disease.

To date there is no specific treatment proven to be effective for COVID-19. To manage patients, the symptomatic treatment is generally given. Supportive care systems like oxygenation and ventilation are provided along with some anti-viral drugs, anti-malarial drugs like hydroxychloroquine etc. These kinds of measures are not effective and sufficient in treating the disease. The severe impact of pandemic is increasing day by day. Hence there is a need to switch to such treatment option which will reduce and recover the number of patients in shorter time. In this review, we try to uncover the current scenario of COVID-19 in India with respect to the factors viz. transmission, diagnosis, management protocols, lockdown effects and convalescent plasma therapy which might be an immediate potential strategy against COVID-19 combat.

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Review of historic literature and traditional indigenous knowledge as a decision making tool for disaster risk reduction from two Indian States

Ganapathy Ganapathy Pattukandan and Nath Aditi

Page No. 60-69

Indigenous knowledge has been used by several communities around the world as a tool to survive natural disasters in a long time period. There are several stories related to how communities used indigenous ways to protect life and property after major disasters. Local knowledge, practices and contexts can help organizations implement better disaster preparedness planning. It can help build project acceptance, ownership and sustainability in the regional area probably because it is the most visible / concrete aspect of local knowledge that is often associated with local technical knowledge. For example, local technical knowledge includes local methods of building, using and combining specific local house materials, retaining walls, terraces etc. Such knowledge informs decision making on fundamental aspects of daily life for rural and indigenous people. Traditional communities have resilient mechanisms for countering the risks posed by nature using their immediate environment knowledge.

Disaster risk reduction is one of the development areas where indigenous knowledge has too often been downplayed on the assumption that external, especially recent, knowledge is superior to communities’ own tradition and approaches. Indigenous knowledge is important in reducing disaster risk as it represents autonomy and sustainability. India is the country where people rich in indigenous and traditional knowledge used effectively in disaster risk reduction. The present study focuses on how traditional and indigenous knowledge was effectively used for disaster risk reduction in India. A comparison has been made between the two states of India Tamil Nadu and Assam where two different climatic conditions prevail.

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Healthcare capacity building to facilitate pandemic preparedness

John Sakhi, Aqeel Ubada, Singh Prerna, Kukreja Akshita and John Shibu

Page No. 70-75

As the world faces the COVID-19 pandemic, it has become imperative to undertake the evaluation of the capacity of our health systems and analyse where we stand in terms of the availability of healthcare services. Considering the varying demography of the country and the continuously growing population, the resources available for healthcare face a huge demand-supply gap. The outbreak of coronavirus has highlighted various disparities in the healthcare sector. India lags in terms of the availability of the required healthcare infrastructure and also the frontline workers.

Apart from hospital beds and intensive care facilities, the doctor to population ratio is abysmally low. The focus on healthcare policymaking and healthcare education is increasingly essential in order to prepare for healthcare emergencies effectively. The facilities for population aged above 60 are also subpar and are mostly concentrated in the urban areas wherein southern and eastern states show better figures than central and northern states. This dysfunction of the economy and the inability of our healthcare and legal systems to deal effectively with the virus, brings into question the country's healthcare, legal and financial frameworks and emphasizes the need to work on them.

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Reasons for increasing corona cases during lockdown-case study of India

Vajja Varalakshmi, Sarvanan M. and Sunil Kumar K.

Page No. 76-78

The present study focuses on reasons of spreading for COVID-19 cases and its increasing rate. From the case studies it is observed that for first 40-50 days, the spreading of coronavirus was very low and conformed cases had travel history. After that the local transmission took place which led to the sudden rise in conformed cases. it is also observed that the genetic nature of corona made slight change from country to country and location to location for survival of virus in different climatic conditions in first 40-50 days.

The coronavirus took all over the globe irrespective of climatic conditions. The replicated corona virus in a particular host may become more virulent by adapting certain modifications in its structure and genes, thereby enhancing its pathogenicity. This may be the plausible explanation behind the sudden spike in corona cases globally.

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The vulnerability of older adults and natural disaster

Guddo and Ramesh B.

Page No. 79-83

The natural disaster has a deeper impact on the physical and mental health of older adults. This makes them highly vulnerable due to their unique physical, psychological and social requirements. The vulnerability of older people can be addressed effectively if preventive measures can be initiated at the early phase of the disaster. Further, disaster preparedness can reduce the older adult’s disaster risk through the incorporation of the elderly's concerns in disaster strategies. However, it requires the attention from government agencies at the policy and planning level, relief distribution agencies and local partners working on age-specific issues etc. The integration of older adult’s preparedness measures in each phase of disaster planning (pre-disaster phase, during disaster phase and post-disaster phase) collectively decides the better outcomes of the disaster. In short, disaster preparedness can reduce the impact of a disaster through prediction, probability and mitigation strategies.

Furthermore, the collaboration and networking of the age-specific agencies and strengthening the local self-governance can ensure the social connectivity of older adults through various programs and services. Finally, the change at the policy level in favor of older adults can make a huge difference at disaster risk reduction.

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