Community Perspective on Policy Options for Resettlement Management: A Case Study of Risk Reduction in Bududa, Eastern Uganda

Abstract

Introduction: Despite existing policy actions on Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR), many community members in Bududa still continue to settle in high-risk areas re-zoned for nonsettlement. There seems to be an apparent information asymmetry on expectations between the community and Government. The challenge then is ‘how to consult communities and seek their opinion in an adequately representative unbiased way’. This paper sets out to explore policy options on resettlement management as a DRR approach and how engaging with communities in a public discourse using the Deliberative Polling (DP) approach; to obtain their opinions and insights on these policy issues, revealed underlying challenges to policy implementation. Methods: A qualitative study was conducted in Bududa in eastern Uganda with fourteen group discussions; comprising 12-15 randomly assigned participants of mixed socio-economic variables. Trained research assistants and moderators collected data. All discussions were audio taped, transcribed verbatim before analysis. Data were analyzed using latent content analysis by identifying codes from which sub-themes were generated and grouped into main themes on policy options for resettlement management. Results and Discussion: We used Deliberative Polling, an innovative approach to public policy consultation and found that although the community is in agreement with most government policy options under resettlement management, they lacked an understanding of the rationale underlying these policy options leading to challenges in implementation. The community members seemed uncertain and had mistrust in government’s ability to implement the policies especially on issues of compensation for land lost. Key Words: Policy, Deliberative Polling, Climate change, risk-reduction, landslides, Uganda

The Barriers to Landslide Responses over the Mt. Elgon in Bududa District, Uganda

“…Globally, landslides are on the rise [4][5][6]. They normally occur over hilly terrain [4,7] and over coastal areas [7,8] and are usually triggered by rainfall [2,9], earthquake [5], floods [9,10], landscape grading [5,10,11] among others. These result into failure of the layer between the debris and bedrock, hence landslides [12,13].…”

“…They have far reaching impacts including destruction of crops [7], land degradation [12], destruction of property e.g. buildings [13] and loss of lives [4,5,13] among others.…”

“…The occurrence of landslides is also known to trigger food shortage and misery especially the lives lost, and has been recognized as a problem of concerned over Uganda, especially the Mount Elgon region [5,17,22]. Neema et al [4] and Nyakaisiki et al [23], among others, attribute the occurrence Preprints (www.preprints.org) | NOT PEER-REVIEWED | Posted: 2 September 2019 doi:10.20944/preprints201909.0022.v1…”

“…The Mount Elgon region has witnessed increasing manifestation of landslides since 2000. Studies by Odlum [24], Neema et al [4] and Wanasolo [5] put the total number of lives lost due to landslides at 759 since 2000 (Table 1). Fortunately, there is presently growing capacities to improve landslide prediction over the Mount Elgon region including integrating the indigenous knowledge systems [17].…”

“…Bududa district normally receives average rainfall of about 1,500 mm [5,17] which peaks around May and October [5,14]. Due to the hilly terrain of Bududa [4,17], most areas are prone to landslides [5,6]. Such exposure with prolonged low intensity rainfall increases the risk of landslide occurrence [17,22].…”