Impacts of climate hazards on households along the Drakensberg Mountains in the Free State Province of South Africa

Abstract

AbstractMountains are climate change hotspots and their ecosystems are key components in the supply of ecosystem goods and services to local communities. Low-income communities that directly depend on mountain resources are highly vulnerable to the harsh impacts of climate change. Using rainfall and temperature trends, and data collected from a household questionnaire survey, the objective of this study is to assess the impact of climate change on low-income households living in the Maluti-a-Phofung Municipality part of the Drakensberg Mountains. Climatic data were obtained from Climate Explorer while the household data were collected from a sample of 383 households in the villages of Qwaqwa. The results show that temperature and rainfall changes have significantly increased over a period of 120 years. About 51 percent of the respondents experienced extreme weather events which has the greatest impact on their households followed by drought (25.5%). Employment status was found to be significantly associated with the perception that hazards negatively impact natural resource availability, with 54% of those who had this perception being unemployed. In addition, income was found to have a significant relationship with extreme weather impacts on households and 60% of those households had a low monthly income of ZAR 2000 or less. Based on these findings, mountain households along the Drakensberg Mountains in Qwaqwa villages are already experiencing the negative impacts of climate change and their socio-economic characteristics indicate very low levels of adaptation capacity.