Sally Rangecroft, from the University of Birmingham University, and Niko Wanders, from Princeton and Utrecht University, explore the interconnected relationship between drought and water scarcity. Droughts have been very much in the news recently, notably the lengthy drought in California and the impacts of El Niño on Southern Africa and the Horn and Eastern Africa. An extended drought is currently …
A harvest of dysfunction: Causes and impacts of drought in South Africa
John Magrath introduces the report, A Harvest of Dysfunction: rethinking the approach to drought, its causes and impacts in South Africa. “Interventions to assist poor people affected by drought must start with how drought itself is defined and understood” – so says Sipho Mthathi, Executive Director of Oxfam South Africa in her introduction to a new report that challenges the …
Why must climate change be de-naturalised and re-politicised?
Food insecurity, conflict and climate change are among many stresses often originated in or made worse by bad, unrepresentative governance. Daniel Morchain, Global Adviser on Climate Change Adaptation, examines the biased nature in which climate change is often approached and calls for a more complex framing in order to avoid missing its manifold dimensions. he reason why taking photographs has …
Rising to the challenge: Measuring an expanding concept of resilience in Oxfam’s impact evaluations
Resilience has become central to the development sector in recent years, but conceptually it is still in a state of flux. In this blog post, we explore some of the new challenges associated with measuring the expanding concept of resilience in Oxfam’s impact evaluations or ‘Effectiveness Reviews’. esilience keeps getting bigger. What started off as an ambitious attempt to meld …