Author(s)

A. I. Mondlane

Abstract

Mozambique, a country under economic recovering efforts after long civil conflicts has been hit several times by natural disasters such as floods, droughts and tropical depressions. The historical floods of 2000 are not the only event that is still surprising the world about the uncertainty within the country, but also paradoxically the 2003 and 2004´s droughts that affected the whole Southern African region together with tropical depressions. Looking at the recent events it is quite clear that Mozambique, like other countries in the region, is urgently required to take strategic mitigation measures in order to prevent losses from natural disasters. This paper discusses the impact of both floods and droughts on the development of the country. Disregarding the limitation of data, computer based simulation is applied over the national GDP projections by incorporating a natural disaster component in order to create an awareness in the policies and decision makers for the urgent need of the establishment of strategic measures for both coping and mitigating floods and droughts. The paradox of living together with floods and droughts has been identified as part of the strategic mechanism that has to been taken in mind as part of the new paradigm for the ex-ant process in dealing with natural disaster risk management. Different frameworks are identified and discussed in this paper, but still there is a need to develop a local and/or a regional mechanism that can help both involved and affected stakeholders to deal with these kinds of risks. Regional efforts under the SADC coordination toward risk management have been taking place, nevertheless some kind of local mitigating and coping mechanisms to deal with both floods and droughts are still needed. Keywords: floods, droughts, mitigation, uncertainty, risk, disaster, coping, decision- making.

Keywords

floods, droughts, mitigation, uncertainty, risk, disaster, coping, decision- making.