Relationships between the local environment, household resource use and human well-being in the

Agincourt Health and Demographic Surveillance site, South Africa

Dr Wayne TwineSchool of Animal, Plant & Environmental Sciences

University of the Witwatersrand

South Africa

Context

• Former Apartheid “homeland”• Resettlement villages• Communal land tenure on state land• 170-300 people/km2• Traditional authorities & local govt • Poor infrastructure• High levels of unemployment & poverty• High levels of migrant labour• High reliance on local natural resources

Wits Rural Facility

• Multi-disciplinary rural campus of the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits)

• Used by a range of university departments and units as a base for research, student training & civic engagement in nearby rural areas

• Facilities: staff accommodation, visitor accommodation, offices, lecture rooms, wireless internet etc.

• 350 ha savanna estate.

Research based at WRF

• Agincourt Health and Population Unit (School of Public Health): – Health, population and socio-economic trends and

transitions in a rural population

– Agincourt Health and Demographic Surveillance System (AHDSS)

– Annual census in 24 villages (84 000 people in 14 000 households) since 1992

– Census modules (e.g. assets; food security)

– Once-off samples

– Intervention studies (e.g. HIV; stroke; nutrition)

– Member of INDEPTH network

Worldwide INDEPTH network of DSS sites

• Sustaining Natural Resources in African Ecosystems - SUNRAE (School of Animal, Plant & Environmental Sciences):

– Natural resource use and rural livelihoods

– Community based natural resource management

– Resource ecology of heavily impacted savannas

– Post-graduate students

Some insights from collaboration between AHDSS and SUNRAE

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

Wild vegetables Wild fruit Insects Fuelwood

% o

f h

ou

se

ho

lds

HIV mortality

Non-HIV mortality

No mortality

a

a

a

a

a

a

a

a

b

bb

b

Use of natural resources specifically to save money

Resource use Worried about

food Ran out of food

Worried, ran out AND went hungry

Mortality impacted on amount of food

Use insects - 0.35 0.42 -

Use fuelwood 2.53 2.58 4.03 -

Use resources to save money

2.47 - - 3.39

Rely more on wild veg. after mortality

- - 5.45 -

Bivariate associations household experience of hunger and use of natural resources. Values are odds ratios (p<0.05).

SUCSES projectSustainability in Communal Socio-

Ecological Systems (SUCSES)

• Longitudinal study of household livelihoods & the environment nested in the AHDSS

• AIM: to investigate dynamic relationships between household livelihoods, environment and human-wellbeing in a rural socio-ecological system undergoing rapid change

• Panel study: 600 households randomly sampled from across 9 villages in the Agincourt Health and Demographic Surveillance System (AHDSS) site

• Detailed household livelihoods questionnaire (annual, starting in 2010)

• 56 Permanent vegetation monitoring plots (annual, starting 2011) and climatic data (rainfall, temperature) (continuous, starting 2010)

Study villages (light blue) with village commons boundaries

Some preliminary results

Data• 2010 baseline household livelihoods data

• Natural resource use: use (including livestock), frequency of use, buying & selling

• Household characteristics: size, sex ratio, dependency ratio, income, assets, shocks

• Village resource availability: area of commons, mean NDVI in 1 km buffer, overlap with other villages in 1 km buffer

• Human well-being: Food security

Study villages (light blue) with 1 km buffers

Resource Use Patterns

Results

Prevalence of resource use

Frequency distribution of number of local natural resources used by households (excl. livestock forage)

Prevalence of purchasing commonly used resources

Prevalence of selling local natural products

Multi-variate associations

Household drivers of resource useHousehold uses the resource (coefficient = log-odds, (^<0.10, *<0.05, **<0.01, ***<0.001)

Independent variable Own cattle Own goats Firewood Wild fruit Wild veges Edible insects Med plant

Permanent residents 0.028 0.106*** 0.235** 0.058* 0.278** -0.004** 0.074**

Total asstes 0.384*** 0.106 -0.312** -0.093* -0.140 -0.017 0.074

Total shocks -0.062 -0.086 -0.164 -0.027 -0.414 0.310^ 0.172

Model p value <0.001 <0.01 <0.001 <0.05 <0.01 <0.01 <0.01

How does village context influence resource use?

Food security and resource use

• Households experiencing crop failure in last 12 months: 31.2%

• Households experiencing food shortage in the last 12 months: 48.6%

• Number of coping strategies in last 7 days (% of households):

0 - 66.38%

1 - 10.92%

2 - 9.36%

3 - 7.11%

4 - 6.24 %

Conclusion• Dependence on local natural resources

continues to be pervasive in rural communities despite severe degradation in some areas

• Driven by poverty and lack of other resources to cope with shocks and stresses

• Food insecurity is widespread

• Importance of resources for cost-savings & household resilience

• Use of local natural resources = important buffer against hardship BUT not generally a pathway out of poverty and food insecurity

The way forward

• Linking resource use with health and child nutrition

• Temporal trends (household experience of shocks, changing rainfall, environmental degradation, changing food prices etc)

• Profiles of vulnerable households

Thank you