CNAS

 

Drought is a normal, recurrent feature of the South African climate. Droughts have resulted in significant economic, environmental, and social impacts and highlight the country’s continuing vulnerability to this natural phenomenon. In January 2004, the president of the Republic of South Africa declared six provinces disaster zones with as many as four million South Africans at risk of food shortages. On 23 November 2005, the Department of Agriculture issued a report indicating that eight of South Africa’s nine provinces were being severely affected by drought; a number of districts in Limpopo Province were flagged as disaster areas since 2003 and 2004, with 27 of its 37 municipalities affected. The dams of the province were at their lowest levels holding an average of 36% of capacity. The severity of the situation was clearly reflected in the different timescales of the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) maps on the SA Weather Services (SAWS) Drought Monitoring Page, updated at the beginning of December 2005. The SPI calculation is based on the distribution of rainfall over long time periods, preferably more than 50 years. According to this index, the eight most severe droughts at the 6-month time scale for the summer rainfall region of South Africa happened in 1926, 1933, 1945, 1949, 1952, 1970, 1983 and 1992. There is considerable decadal variability and the total number of wet and dry districts per decade seems to have increased since the 1960s. Drought lasting three years is not uncommon for each of the eight South African rainfall regions defined by the South African Weather Service.

Sources: WMO (2005), Drought monitoring and early warning: Concepts, progress, and future challenges (WMO-No. 1006); M. Roualt & Y. Richard (2003), Intensity and spatial extension of drought in South Africa at different time scales, Water SA , 29, 4, pp. 489-500.

Team Members

Agronomy

Wiltrud Durand, ARC-Grain Crops Institute, Potchefstroom

Wiltrud Durand is a Researcher at the ARC-Grain Crops Institute, Potchefstroom. Her present work focuses is on the development and operational running of yield forecasting system for maize in South Africa. Long-term research objectives include the development of better input data by adapting the land-type data base for soils inputs, looking into different manners used for weather forecasting such as analogues based on different statistics and climate patterns. (See abstracts)

Ecological Economics

Rashid Hassan, Centre for Environmental Economics and Policy for Africa, University of Pretoria

Rashid Hassan is Professor and Director of the Centre for Environmental Economics and Policy in Africa (CEEPA), Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences, University of Pretoria. He has wide international experience through his past and present involvement in international research organizations such as CIMMYT, Rockefeller Foundation, CGIAR Climate Change Challenge Program (CCCP), External Academic Advisory Panel for the World Development Report 2009 On Climate Change, World Bank, Steering Committee of the African Centre For Climate and Earth Stewardship Science - ACCESS, Stockholm Resilience Centre Board of Directors, GEF Science and Technical Advisory Panel-STAP IV, Science Panel of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment; and Leader of the Africa-Wide GEF/World Bank Funded Project On Impacts of climate change on agriculture, water, and ecosystems. He has published over 130 refereed publication on agricultural economics, environmental economics, and development, and is the founding Chief Editor of the African Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics. (See abstracts)

Economics

To be announced at a later date.

Hydrology

To be announced at a later date.

(See abstracts)

Policy

Rachalet Cronjé, Director,  Water Resource Management Support, Department of Water Affairs and Forestry, Pretoria

Rachalet Cronjé is the Director of Water Resource Management Support (WRMS) in the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry, Government of South Africa, in Pretoria. She provides leadership in water economic regulation in SA; compliance, monitoring, and enforcement of water use; water planning and operational support; water resource management (WRM); the National Register of Water Users; revenue management, legislation and policy in the water sector; regulation and governance of the water sector; and several other activities. Ms Cronjé has been one of the driving forces behind a trans-boundary water management initiative, the Institute for Water Economics and Governance in Africa (IWEGA), which will be based in Maputu, Mozambique. She represents the Department of Water and Environmental Affairs on the board of this Institute and is a member of the steering committee. (See abstracts)

Technology–Irrigation

Hannes Rautenbach, University of Pretoria, South Africa

Professor Rautenbach, who is a mteorologist by training, is currently also Head of the Department of Geography, Geoinformatics and Meteorology at the University of Pretoria. He is also Acting Director of the University of Pretoria's Water Institute (UPWI). His group is the only one in southern Africa that presents degrees in meteorology, and he therefore has an excellent relationship with the South African Weather Service. This group focuses in particular on the dynamical mathematics and physics (modeling) of atmospheric processes. Prof Rautenbach is also currently President of the South African Society for Atmospheric Sciences (SASAS) and serves on the Board of the National Association of Clean Air (NACA). In 2009 Prof. Rautenbach was invited to serve as a co-lead author for a theme plan report that forms a core part of the National Science Plan on Global Change of the South African Department of Science and Technology (DST), and he is also a co-lead author of the South African Second National Communication (SNC) report to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) under the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) in partnership with the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism (DEAT). Prof. Rautenbach serves on various bodies that evaluate research and is leader of a number of research projects at, among others, the Water Research Commission and the National Research Foundation. He has published widely and had presented more than 100 talks at national and international conferences. (See abstracts)

 John Annandale

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