Interdisciplinary drought risk assessment for agriculture: The case of communal farmers in the Northern Cape Province, South Africa.

Abstract

Interdisciplinary drought risk assessment provides the true reflection of drought risk by integrating hazard data with adaptation, vulnerability and coping capacity. Traditional methods for drought risk calculation based purely on meteorological extremes do not provide an accurate reflection of disaster drought. Communal farmers in the Northern Cape Province, South Africa, experience disaster droughts regularly; even normal dry periods are experienced as disaster droughts.
This research rejects the hypothesis of climate change as the reason for increased drought in the Northern Cape but rather highlight vulnerability and lack of coping capacity as the main sources of disaster droughts, especially amongst communal farmers in the Northern Cape.