Namibia Drought (Emerging Country Case Study)

Introduction hello and welcome to this video on the namibia drought okay and this is one of our case studies as part of the weather hazards and climate change topic that we've been studying and it um is one of the case studies we use in the physical geography paper as part of the gcse lxla geography syllabus now drought okay definition that we might be asked to define during our exam so one minute write down Definition of Drought the definition for drought off you go pause the video three two one okay you should have your definition down let's see what you've got so drought is a prolonged period of abnormally low water supply leading to a shortage of water remember prolonged just means a very long time longer than usual abnormally it means unusually it does not fit the pattern okay so that is our definition for drought we should be getting that spot on now all right so the namibia drought we study it because it falls under this part of the gcse specification and it's a good example and a good comparison to the california drought okay so we're thinking about how the impacts of drought and people in the ecosystems can vary for we're looking at a developing country this time and how those responses to drought from individuals organizations and governments what they are in a developing country okay so table a we've got three Country A development indicators there you should be familiar with them from the global development topic gdp per capita life expectancy means of scoring country a b and c take 30 seconds i want you to decide from table a using evidence that you can see which country do you think namibia is okay have 30 seconds have i think pause the video note down some evidence for why you think that's the case off you go okay so everyone hopefully has country a yeah it has the lowest gdp per capita significantly lower than the other two countries country b is the usa country c is the uk also has a slightly lower life expectancy and the mean years of schooling is over is around half than it is in the other two countries okay so all this evidence suggests that nabibia namibia is country a because we know it's a developing country all right so thinking back to those areas that are more vulnerable and higher risk from zhao okay there's average climate weather where it's normally drier they experience less than 250 millimeters of precipitation every year okay and we've got we've got a map of the world here and we can see that most of those arid climates are distributed between 30 degrees north and south of the equator now we know using the gla global atmospheric model that 30 degrees north and south of the equator we get this area really high pressure where the air air is sinking down between the hadley and the feral cell if you need to revisit that concept then go on to our youtube video which we have that looks in depth at the global atmospheric circulation now here we have that map of the global distribution of arid climates and namibia is actually in this purple circle here so you can actually see how it has an extremely arid to semi-arid an arid climate it's dry for most of the year round so that's going to mean that all those people who live near or within that arid region are actually finding water sources quite limited already so any drought is actually going to make the impacts on them and the ecosystem quite severe okay so here's our map of the continent of africa namibia is this country here just north of south africa and within namibia where the tropic of capricorn is go straight through it here we can actually see some key cities within namibia here okay so Timeline let's look at the timeline and some of the reasons for the namibia drought first of all i'd like is to pay attention to this map that i have here again it's shaded okay the from white to red it actually is less than the percentage of normal so if it was 100 that means that the amount of rainfall is this is matches the normal amount of rainfall every year however if it goes from yellow to red this means they're having below the normal amount of rainfall if it's green or to blue that means that you're actually having more than normal amounts of rainfall okay and here's namibia you can actually see most of that country is having less than 65 of the normal amount of rainfall okay significantly low amount of rainfall between october 2015 and february 2016. okay so drought has been affecting the southern african country of namibia since 2011 so it's still ongoing a lack of rainfall leading to the drying up of rivers resulted in the government declaring a state of emergency two out of the three years between 2016 and 2019. the lack of water available has led to water scarcity across the country with around 20 of the population employed in agriculture this led to severe impacts on people farming methods that make profit more quickly have over time replace some of the more sustainable farming methods practices intense farming methods and overgrazing have had very visible impacts on the landscape okay so these are all causes for the drought that has occurred in ambience of 2011. Impacts so what are some of the impacts on the people there well school days were reduced to only three hours eight to eleven okay so this is to try and reduce the amount of water that you're using remember your school you're going to have you're going to often be fed people using the bathroom but also this is to allow people to to try and reduce their own water use the price of livestock fell to its lowest in three years and around 60 000 farm animals have died at the start of 2019 this was made worse by a 70 loss in crop production so prices are falling because farmer farmers are trying to get rid of their animals okay so they're gonna that's gonna drive the prices down they're gonna sell them for the people are going to be asking for cheaper prices because they know those farmers want to get rid of their animals because they can no longer afford to keep them all right the lack of rain has left around 500 000 people with access to enough food leading to high levels of malnutrition malnutrition just means not having enough nutrients and food to survive and stay healthy in 2013 around 14 of the population required urgent food assistance okay so that's showing you how this is impacting on people's ability to stay healthy what were the impacts on ecosystems well 14.4 million acres of bush vegetation died to it died due to a lack of water those animals that depend on this for food or shelter either die fall ill with disease or they just decide they're going to migrate and actually look for that water and food elsewhere soil erosion increased due to increased exposure of soil to the wind and any rainfall that occurs so any vegetation that was in that ground has died and withered away and this exposes the soil to the wind which then rose that top surf top layer of soil away and also that loss of vegetation stores nutrients in the soil meaning that soil quality is also declined and that means that soil becomes less fertile okay vegetation is less likely to grow where there's not enough water and enough nutrients for it to do so Response okay so there's some of the key impacts now we're going to look at some of the responses from individuals organizations and government remember malnourished just means you don't have the right type of nutrients to maintain healthy you don't have access to that food to be able to do so okay and the government might introduce new laws to try and limit that amount of water being used okay the individual response so farmers lay black plastic bags around their crops to reduce evaporation and prevent soil erosion in one village around 350 people left in search of water and grazing land for their cattle water stores have decreased meaning those are not enough water to grow crops or feed livestock many are even finding it difficult to grow subsistence crops remember subsistence crops are those crops that they grow just to feed yourself so you're not growing crops to sell them on you're just growing crops to feed themselves yourself and that's called subsistence farming now it most people couldn't afford to move on but they're in such desperate needs that they had to root up where they were living and try and find the suitable place where they could find water sources for themselves and their farm animals okay organizations responses well the red cross we've heard about them before when we looked at tropical cyclones and provided drought resistance to 4 000 farmers so drought resistant seeds are just those seeds that require less water to actually grow they require very little water to actually grow into a plant that you're able to harvest this will allow farmers to continue earning income even when periods of drought worsen unicef raised 5.4 million dollars to reach 109 000 children who were suffering from malnutrition an ambient non-governmental organization supported a drip irrigation system at a school in northern namibia they also offered to educate farmers about conservation agriculture teaching methods that make collecting rainbows easier they're actually trying to teach farmers about how they could farm their crops with less water okay so if there's less water available how could they continue to do that the government response after declaring a statewide emergency the president of namibia requested 313 million dollar million million dollars of international support algeria donated 10 million billion dollars in food aid and south africa pledged a hundred million namibian dollars however because namibia is quite a has quite a small population it wasn't seen as such a massive issue across the rest of the world the namibia government provided around 14 million dollars for relief efforts eg food and medical supplies meanwhile state ministers urge farmers to reduce livestock numbers okay so thinking about those responses i Diagram want you to draw out this diagram thinking about what was the most effective short term and the least effective short term the same for long term and then also thinking about the scale how is this impact and how the country as a whole or how would it only impact small place small local areas within the country okay so i want you to draw that diagram out here i've actually thought that the non-governmental organization teaching children and farmers about alternative and more sustainable methods now this is going to be effective because it's going to allow people to continue to grow crops feed themselves and then sell those crops to make an income and that's going to help them on in the long term okay so have a go at doing that diagram three minutes on your own pause the video off you go okay welcome back so you should have tried and filled out some of the categories on there thinking about some of the responses we've just looked at his sentence started i want you to have a go again at thinking what you think the most effective response was and i want you to tell me why so explain your thinking take two minutes to do that and pause the video if you go okay so i've just done a little model answer here with my thoughts i think the most effective response is the red cross providing four thousand farmers with drought resistant seeds okay so this is because the seeds are less likely to fail during periods of severe drought and have allowed farmers to continue with crop productions they're able to continue to make a living meaning they can feed their families and make an income from the sale of their crops okay so that's we've looked at the namibia drought in a little bit of detail there now what type of exam question might you be asked relating to drought for this part of the course well Exam Question here's an example of a format question you've studied a drought in a developing country explained two impacts on the ecosystems so i want you to copy that um question out and i want you to highlight or underline any keywords that you think you need to understand to be able to answer this question successfully take one minute to do that pause the video off you go okay so here's some of the keywords i've highlighted we'll go through them in a minute but first i want us to think about what some of the impacts have been on ecosystems in the two cases that we've studied for this part of the topic so california drought and namibia drought now remember we're looking at development countries so we need to specifically talk about the impacts in namibia drought but we need to know the differences between california and namibia first so california and namibia 14.4 million acres of bush vegetation dried to a lack of water have an answer in your head three two one that one is namibia the number of wads fires increasingly during the drought period more than 12 wildfires in may 2014 alone three two one that one's california sixty thousand farm animals died at the start of 2019 due to a lack of water and food then maybe a california three two one that was namibia soil erosion increased due to the increased exposure of soil to the wind is that namibia or california well that probably happened in both but we've got that impact for namibia where it's been happened and that's lead to further extension of our plants finally rivers were closed to fishing because young salmon were unable to survive in the warmer waters california and namibia three two one that one is california okay so the quake the words i've highlighted in this question drought developing country explain an ecosystem so let's just define those key words quickly Key Words drought remember is a prolonged period of a normally low water supply leading to a shortage of water we went through that at the start of this lesson we can so went through that in the california drought case study developing country well our example here is the namibia drought explain remember we need to provide a reason for why something happened so here we're providing a reason for why that impact occurs find the ecosystem so an ecosystem is a system that includes all living organisms in an area as well as its physical environment so anything that supports those living organisms to survive okay so how do we achieve four marks well first we've got a state one impact that nibia namibia drought had on ecosystems we can use numbers to show the size of this impact there's one mark we'll get another mark for explaining how this impact was caused by the nimby drought then we've got to explain two so this is state in a second impact that nibiru namibia drought had on ecosystems and then finally we're explaining how this second impact was caused by the namibia drought and in total that would give us four marks Model Answer okay so you have studied drought and development country explained two impacts on ecosystems using the success criteria here that i've used to help you out i want you to spend four minutes trying to answer that question on your own pause the video now and have a go off you're going three two and one okay welcome back you should have had a go at that question now using some of the case study knowledge that we've learned by looking at the namibia drought and here i'm going to put up a model answer for us so the ongoing drought in namibia has caused the death of livestock there in the first part of 2019 alone around 000 fo farm animals died low levels of water and rivers and the drying up around 14.4 million acres of vegetation meant that these animals did not have any access to food and water sources to survive second part second impact this drought has also caused soil erosion the top layer of soil becomes more exposed to wind and any rainfall that occurs during a drought due to the lack of vegetation this top layer is full of nutrients and therefore soil quality and fertility declines making it more difficult for plants and vegetation to grow so there's my first mark i've stated my first impact there's my second mark i've explained what caused that impact how the namibia drought caused that impact in green is my second impact okay so that's where i get my third mark and then finally i've explained how soil erosion is caused by drought in namibia and then that being black is just a little bit of extra information you'd probably get your four marks from the um from the blue and the green that i've highlighted there okay so that is a kind of roundup of the namibia drought and then how we can actually answer and achieve full marks for a format question that we might face in the exam