Understanding vulnerability
How people are affected
Responding to human vulnerability
Conclusions
Rosita Pedro was born in a tree, high above
the raging, muddy waters of the Limpopo River in full flood. Rosita was
born vulnerable, how much more precarious a start to life could anybody
have? The reason for Rosita's plight, and that of her mother Sofia, was
a mixture of natural phenomena and human impacts. The floods that devastated
Mozambique in March 2000 were a natural occurrence but their severity
was exacerbated by poor land management, serious erosion of wetlands and
overgrazing of grasslands in the upper watersheds of the Limpopo river
in Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe. Wetlands absorb excess water like
a sponge and release it slowly into a watershed or river system, so their
shrinking removes that safety valve. Grasslands damaged by overgrazing
and burning had become compacted and hardened, allowing water to flow
off into rivers instead of seeping into the soil. In addition, meteorologists
attributed the torrential rains to exceptionally warm surface temperatures
in the Indian Ocean and Mozambique Channel, possibly associated with global
warming. In the resulting disaster, several hundred people were killed
and thousands displaced and impoverished (Guardian 2000, Stoddard 2000).
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