Landslide resilience in Equatorial Africa: Moving beyond problem identification!

Landslides (LS) impacts are acute in Equatorial Africa, which is characterized by mountainous topography, intense rains, deep weathering profiles, high population density and high vulnerability. This study aims to move beyond the recognition of landslide occurrence and investigate effective risk reduction strategies. Based on 5 workshops with local stakeholders, we illustrate the widespread occurrence of LS on 4 representative study areas known for being severely affected by rainfall-triggered LS in Uganda (Mount Elgon, Mount Rwenzori) and Cameroon (Limbe and Bamenda urban regions). The findings highlight the good knowledge of local stakeholders on factors controlling the timing and spatial distribution of these events. Stakeholders identify a wide range of direct, but also far-reaching indirect and intangible cumulative impacts of LS. Finally, the project inventoried and categorized risk reduction strategies currently implemented in the targeted regions, as well as the factors identified by stakeholders as bottlenecks in the implementation of potential alternative strategies. The experience underlines the usefulness of involving stakeholders at an early stage in selecting study areas and defining specific research objectives.En Afrique Équatoriale les glissements de terrain ont des conséquences très lourdes en raison de la topographie montagneuse, des pluies intenses et d'épais profils d'altération, ainsi que d'une densité de population élevée et d'une grande vulnérabilité. Cette étude a pour objet de dépasser la simple identification des occurrences des glissements de terrain et de rechercher des stratégies efficaces de réduction des risques. En nous basant sur 5 workshops organisés avec des acteurs locaux, nous montrons la fréquence générale des glissements de terrain sur 4 zones d'étude sévèrement impactées par les précipitations en Ouganda (Mount Elgon, Mount Rwenzori) et au Cameroun (zones urbaines de Limbe et Bamenda). Il ressort de nos résultats que les acteurs locaux ont une bonne connaissance des facteurs qui déterminent la distribution de ces évènements dans le temps et l'espace. Ils identifient toute une série d'impacts directs mais aussi d'impacts indirects intangibles d'une grande portée.Enfin, le projet a inventorié et catégorisé les stratégies de réduction des risques habituellement mises en œuvre dans les régions touchées, ainsi que les facteurs identifiés par les acteurs comme des obstacles à la mise au point de stratégies alternatives. Cette expérience souligne l'utilité d'engager des acteurs locaux à un stade très précoce de la sélection des zones d'étude et de la définition d'objectifs de recherche spécifiques

Governing multicultural Brussels: paradoxes of a multi-level, multi-cultural, multi-national urban anomaly

Updating our earlier work on Brussels as the paradigm of a multi-level, multi-cultural, multi-national city, and in the context of Brussels’s recent troubled emergence as the epicentre of violent conflict between radical political Islam and the West, this paper sets out the paradoxical intersection of national (i.e. Flemish and Francophone), non-national and ethnic minority politics in a city placed as a multi-cultural and multi-national ‘urban anomaly’ at the heart of linguistic struggle of the two dominant Belgian communities. Brussels is one of the three Regions of the Belgian federal model alongside Flanders and Wallonia. It is also an extraordinarily diverse and cosmopolitan city, in which a mixed language Belgian population lives alongside very high numbers of resident non-nationals, including European elites, other European immigrant workers, and immigrants from Africa and Asia. After laying out the complex distribution of power and competences within the Belgian federal structure, we explore whether these structures have worked over the years to include or exclude disadvantaged ethnic groups. To better understand these processes, we introduce our view of the multi-level governance perspective

Disaster risk reduction among households exposed to landslide hazard: a crucial role for coping appraisal?

Natural hazards have a large impact on household livelihoods worldwide, especially in the Global South. Yet, literature on the adoption of risk reduction measures at household level remains scattered and inconclusive. This study combines geographical data with an original cross-sectional household survey to investigate the relation between individual land use plans and both exposure to and experience with a natural hazard. Regressions are used to test the protection motivation theory (PMT) and to investigate the link between intentions to plant trees to reduce landslide risk and past experiences, actual exposure, perceived threat and perceived capacity to prevent the occurrence of landslides. The results show that respondents in our study area in Uganda are well aware of landslide risk and believe trees are effective in landslide susceptibility reduction. Yet, those farmers that would benefit most from reducing landslide susceptibility by planting trees have the lowest intention to do so. A low self-efficacy among exposed farmers is proposed to explain this result. This finding has important implications for disaster risk reduction and land use policies and leads to recommendations on how governments and development agents should communicate about landslide risk

Lower risk reduction intentions among households exposed to landslide risk: a tentative explanation

Natural hazards have a large impact on household livelihoods worldwide, especially in the Global South. Yet, literature on the adoption of risk reduction measures at individual level remains scattered and inconclusive. This study combines geographical data with an original cross-sectional household survey to investigate the effects of both exposure to and experience with landslides on the intention to plant trees to reduce landslide susceptibility. Logit regressions are used to test the protection motivation theory (PMT) and to investigate the link between intentions to plant trees against landslides and past experience, actual exposure, perceived threat and perceived capacity to prevent landslides. The results show that respondents in our study area are well aware of landslide risk and believe trees are effective in landslide susceptibility reduction. Yet, those farmers that would benefit most from reducing landslide susceptibility by planting trees have the lowest intention to do so. A strong, negative correlation is found between exposure and intention to plant trees. A low self-efficacy among these respondents and the presence of a non-protective response trap is proposed to explain this result. This finding has implications for policies for poverty reduction and public communication about landslides

Disaster risk reduction among households exposed to landslide hazard: A crucial role for self-efficacy?

Natural hazards have a large impact on household livelihoods worldwide, especially in the Global South. Yet, literature on the adoption of risk reduction measures at household level remains scattered and inconclusive. This study combines geographical data with an original cross-sectional household survey to investigate the relation between individual land use plans and both exposure to and experience with a natural hazard. Regressions are used to test the protection motivation theory (PMT) and to investigate the link between intentions to plant trees to reduce landslide risk and past experiences, actual exposure, perceived threat and perceived capacity to prevent the occurrence of landslides. The results show that respondents in our study area in Uganda are well aware of landslide risk and believe trees are effective in landslide susceptibility reduction. Yet, those farmers that would benefit most from reducing landslide susceptibility by planting trees have the lowest intention to do so. A low self-efficacy among exposed farmers is proposed to explain this result. This finding has important implications for disaster risk reduction and land use policies and leads to recommendations on how governments and development agents should communicate about landslide risk.status: publishe

Press releases online: The effectiveness of Calliope as an online writing center for business communication

Online writing centers, Press releases, Writing processes, Learning styles, Self-efficacy, Peer feedback

Landslide inventory approach for regional-scale hazard assessment in a data-poor context in tropical Africa

peer reviewe

The direct impact of landslides on household income in tropical regions: A case study from the Rwenzori Mountains in Uganda

Landslides affect millions of people worldwide, but theoretical and empirical studies on the impact of landslides remain scarce, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. This study proposes and applies a method to estimate the direct impact of landslides on household income and to investigate the presence of specific risk sharing and mitigation strategies towards landslides in a tropical and rural environment. An original cross-sectional household survey is used in combination with geographical data to acquire detailed information on livelihoods and on hazards in the Rwenzori mountains, Uganda. Ordinary least squares regressions and probit estimations with village fixed effects are used to estimate the impact of landslides and the presence of mitigation strategies. Geographical information at household level allows to disentangle the direct impact from the indirect effects of landslides. We show that the income of affected households is substantially reduced during the first years after a landslide has occurred. We find that members of recently affected households participate more in wage-employment or in self-employed activities, presumably to address income losses following a landslide. Yet, we see that these jobs do not provide sufficient revenue to compensate for the loss of income from agriculture. Given that landslides cause localized shocks, finding a significant direct impact in our study indicates that no adequate risk sharing mechanisms are in place in the Rwenzori sub-region. These insights are used to derive policy recommendations for alleviating the impact of landslides in the region. By quantifying the direct impact of landslides on household income in an agricultural context in Africa this study draws the attention towards a problem that has been broadly underestimated so far and provides a sound scientific base for disaster risk reduction in the region. Both the methodology and the findings of this research are applicable to other tropical regions with high landslide densities.publisher: Elsevier articletitle: The direct impact of landslides on household income in tropical regions: A case study from the Rwenzori Mountains in Uganda journaltitle: Science of The Total Environment articlelink: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2016.01.171 content_type: article copyright: Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.status: publishe