|
|
E-discussions: Human Vulnerability
The vulnerability theme is concerned with the factors that
help to explain why the populations of southern African countries
turned out to be so prone to an acute fall in access to food,
even though the immediate trigger events of the crisis were
not as severe or prolonged as is usually the case in famines.
Vulnerability is defined as exposure and sensitivity to shocks,
a definition that is 'unpacked' in detail in the theme paper.
People can become more vulnerable either due to rising risks
or due to less ability to manage risk or due to deterioration
in their coping capabilities, or, indeed, a combination of
all of these adverse circumstances. At the level of family
or household, asset levels are the main determinant of declining
capability to manage risk and to cope with shocks.
The paper makes a distinction between vulnerable groups and
vulnerable populations. Vulnerable groups usually have specific
factors implicated in their vulnerability (e.g. elderly, disabled,
ill, widowed, divorced, female headed households), while vulnerable
populations require a broader explanatory canvas. A distinction
is also made between chronic vulnerability (those who are
persistently vulnerable to food crisis) and transitory vulnerable
(those who are seasonally, or in other ways intermittently
vulnerable).
Factors causing rising vulnerability in southern African
countries are explored, under four main headings:
- growth failures, rising poverty and declining migration
options
- market failures in the context of market liberalisation
- the high incidence and continuing spread of HIV/AIDS
- politics and governance factors, at regional, national
and local levels
While special attention is given to the third of these, due
to the proposition that this was a 'New Variant Famine' caused
by the erosive impact of HIV/AIDS on people's livelihoods
(de Waal, 2003), it is concluded that all these strands (and
sub-strands within them) are relevant for explaining rising
vulnerability in the region. It would be a mistake to privilege
one reason especially above the others, although clearly HIV/AIDS
merits substantive policy attention in terms of efforts to
slow down its spread and social support to those whose livelihoods
are devastated by the disease.
The emerging over-arching policy framework comprising PRSPs
and decentralisation are considered from the viewpoint of
their likely impact in tackling these causative factors in
rising vulnerability. The view is put forward that this framework
may prove rather disappointing, mainly because it fails to
tackle the second and fourth of the categories of reasons
given above. PRSPs seem to be mainly oriented to shifting
large volume donor funds into education, infrastructure and
health (the latter may, however, bring benefits to the HIV/AIDS
strand). They also incorporate budgetary provisions for social
support. Enabling environments that would 'create the conditions
whereby the poor can reduce their own poverty' are weakly
specified, or neglected entirely, in PRSPs. In relation to
decentralised local government, these are an act of faith,
predicated on a narrative about electorates being able to
hold elected local representatives to account in the raising
of revenues and the delivery of services. Evidence from countries
that are further down the decentralisation road than the southern
African countries suggest that this narrative may be flawed.
Key questions for discussion arising from the paper include:
- how do you reverse declining per capita income in those
southern African countries featuring negative trends?; without
some level of forward momentum in national economies, vulnerability
will continue to grow
- what role for reviving, in new forms, interventionist
agricultural policies e.g. starter pack type schemes?; how
to achieve this without reverting to discredited past state
policies?
- what are the essential elements of an improved enabling
environment that could actively encourage, rather than hamper
and discourage, energy, vitality and diversity in constructing
livelihoods?
- what policy processes could prioritise the latter in
terms of the politics of decision making?; does democratic
decentralisation represent an opportunity or a threat for
achieving enabling environments at local levels?
- do community vulnerability assessments (CVAs) and vulnerability
assessment mapping (VAM) have a broader role to play in
informing development policy priorities, than the already
mainly successful role they play in anticipating food gaps
when a crisis is unfolding?
- should, as some external observers have suggested, agricultural
growth be privileged above other objectives in setting sectoral
priorities?; alternatively, is the main way forward to stimulate
economic activity wherever this may arise? (connects to
enabling environment points above)
Back to summary
or full list of themes
|
(349kb) 
