Elsevier

Urban Climate

Volume 44, July 2022, 101216
Urban Climate

Determinants of household flood resilience strategies in Kaduna Metropolis, Nigeria

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.uclim.2022.101216Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Increasing resilience helps achieve the possibility of Sustainable development.

  • Low level of awareness among the households on coping and adaptation strategies.

  • Raising awareness about flood resilience is as important as building flood protections.

  • Household resilience to flood risks are determined by livelihood sources, infrastructure government supports.

Abstract

Recent increase in flood disaster is challenging the resilience of societies in many countries of the world. The realisation of these consequences has heightened scholarly inquiry into the method and strategies of flood resilience in cities of global south and north. This study therefore examines determinants of household resilience to floods in Kaduna metropolis, Nigeria. To achieve this, the study examined the socio-economic and housing attributes of households, identified various flood resilience strategies and evaluated determinants of household flood resilience in the study area. This is with a view to providing information that could enhance household resilience to flood in the study area. The metropolis was stratified into three residential zones: government reservation area, transition zone, and the sub-urban zone. Across the residential zones, questionnaires were administered on 357 households in the metropolis. Findings revealed that household flood resilience strategies in the study area were similar and reactive rather than anticipatory. High level of financial constraints, inaccessibility to numerous livelihood sources, services, infrastructure and lack of government supports were identified as the major factors influencing household flood resilience strategies in the study area. The study recommended that government support, as well as improvement in income level and educational level will increase individuals' and households' resilience against flood in the study area.

Introduction

In light of the increasing population growth and rapid urbanization advances, natural disasters of different magnitude have become a major problem in many cities of the world (Burton, 2015). According to the World Bank (2017), every year, >200 million people are affected by flood, drought, cyclones, tsunamis, earthquakes, and other events associated with disasters in the countries of global south and north. While all countries may be confronted with disasters, countries of global south experienced the greatest impact and loss, and accounted for 90% of the affected countries worldwide (UNISDR (United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction), 2017).

In African countries, one of the most occurring and devastating disasters which is both natural and human-induced is flood (Douglas et al., 2008). It is a critical environmental problem or major hazard that is continuously affecting effective functioning of some of the rural and urban areas in the continent. The urban and rural areas are experiencing different forms of flood, manifesting in pluvial (surface), fluvial (river) and coastal (surge) flooding (Okunola, 2019a). Urban areas are the worst hit by flood due to several factors. These factors include inefficient drainage system; changes in ecosystem through the replacement of natural and absorptive soil cover with concrete; high intensity of rainfall, indiscriminate physical developments; illegal construction of buildings and other structures as well as unhygienic tradition of dumping wastes in open channel drainage systems (Douglas et al., 2008). It is therefore a major environmental challenge confronting many countries on the continent. This necessitates the need for long-term flood resilience and management interventions.

In a bid to manage the effects of disasters (such as flood in this study), several scholars have posited that the complimentary and viable solution to mitigate, adapt and manage disasters lies in the understanding and embracing resilience (Tierney and Bruneau, 2007; Gallopín, 2006; Adeyeye and Emmitt, 2017). The concept “resilience” in this context refers to the ability of individuals and groups to resist, absorb, accommodate and recover from the effects of a disaster in a timely and efficient manner, through the preservation and restoration of its essential basic structures and functions (Folke, 2006; Tierney and Bruneau, 2007; Da Silva et al., 2012; Roberts, 2013). In other words, disaster resilience is a shared responsibility among stakeholders such as government parastatals, non-governmental organizations, community groups and households in the affected community to understand, and along these lines fortify their capacity to manage, survive and recover from disasters (Arbon et al., 2016). The current understanding of the resilience entails three interrelated capacities which include adaptive, absorptive, and transformative (Roy et al., 2021). Resilience therefore, adds a strategic meaning to the sense of safety, security and protection from various types of disaster, including flood.

Resilience to flood disaster as considered in this study concerns the human system which involved the households. Household resilience to flood disaster was therefore viewed as the capacity of individual or group sharing a living arrangement to sustain their household during flood; including adapt to changes in the physical, social and economic environment; be self-reliant, if external resources are limited or cut off and learn from the experience to be more prepared for next time. To this end, this study aims to examine household flood resilience strategies and factors influencing their choice of resilience strategies in the study area.

Studies abound on various ways of household coping and adaptation strategies to flood in the countries of global south (Douglas et al., 2008, Adelekan, 2016; Daramola et al., 2016; Ahmad and Afzal, 2020). For instance, Shah et al. (2017), Ahmad and Afzal (2020) found that various adaptation strategies such as foundation strengthening, elevated ground floor, construction of house with reinforced material and precautionary savings were major mitigation strategies employed by household to secure their lives and property from flood risks selected provinces of Pakistan. In Nigeria, the works of Douglas et al. (2008), Odemerho (2015), Adelekan (2016) and Okunola (2019) identified bailing water out of the house with buckets, building walls or embankments to keep flood water out, building temporary plank bridges between houses across the wetlands to be able to move about during flooding as well as use of mechanical water pumps to remove water from their homes as household major coping strategies to flood. In furtherance of the household flood coping and adaptation strategies, Weldegebriel and Amphune (2017) noted that access and use of livelihood resources such as size of farmlands, availability of farm oxen, credit as well as ability to draw help from social networks were major factors influencing household resilience to flood in Dembia district of Northwest Ethiopia.

Several studies have indicated the importance of social networks and cultural practices in influencing household resilience to flood (Tawodzera, 2012; Aldrich and Meyer, 2014; Tippens, 2016). For instance, Tippens (2016) stated that social networks with friends, relatives, government and non-government organizations (NGOs) act as first responders during times of shocks and stresses. This could be attributed to the fact that social networks can help in terms of emotional support, early warnings and provision of gifts and loans which are essential for enhancing resilience (Aldrich and Meyer, 2014). Tawodzera (2012) reported that networks with relatives and friend were important in enhancing household resilience to food insecurity in Harare, Zambia. Similarly, studies such as Oriangi et al. (2020) found that social networks with relatives and NGOs had significant effects on households capacity to prepare, adapt and recover from climate change hazards. On the other hand, the importance of cultural practices in household resilience to disasters are well established in the literature (Berkes and Ross, 2013; Bankoff, 2015; Thomalla et al., 2015; Surtiari et al., 2017). Cultural practice in this context involves an interactions between people and the environment, interaction between people and themselves, self-awareness and sense of place, identity in relation, self or individual consideration (Cannon, 2015). More importantly, Surtiari et al. (2017) identified three types of culture such as practices/behaviors, beliefs, values and social structure influence the ability of induvial to cope, self-organise, recover and learn to adapt during and after disasters. As much as these studies emphasized on the coping and adaptation strategies of household to disasters, little is known about what drives households choice of resilience strategies to flood.

Quite a number of studies have also investigated the factors influencing household resilience to various types of disasters in the global south and the global north (Brouwer et al., 2007; Marshall et al., 2007; Nguyen and James, 2013; Arbon et al., 2016, Platt, 2017). For instance, Adger (1999) and Brouwer et al. (2007) indicated that access to agricultural land, diversity of income sources, and good housing quality create essential resources for households to cope with annual flood events in Bangladesh and climate change in the coastal province of Vietnam. Similarly, Nguyen and James (2013) identified three factors that determine households' capacity to cope with, adapt to, and benefit from floods in Mekong River Delta, Vietnam. These are capacity to secure food, income and health of their family members during floods; capacity to secure their homes during large floods; and the level of interest in learning and carrying out new flood-based livelihoods during the flood season to improve their livelihood security.

Akter and Mallick (2013) attributed socio-economic factors as major determinants of household resilience to changes in the environment. The study indicated that low income households suffer highly from economic, physical and structural damages which make them resilient to disaster impacts. In line with this, Lo et al. (2016) indicated that lower income and less-educated urban residents generally have lower capacity to cope with the economic consequences of extreme weather events. In furtherance of the socio-economic factors influencing household resilience to disasters, Pendall et al. (2012) established that the residents' level of income, education, age, residential location and occupation are factors that influence households' resilience to disasters. These studies concentrated on socio-economic factors influencing households to various types of disaster, due considerations were not given to other determinants of household resilience to flood disaster.

Studies by authors such as Kapucu (2008) and Levac et al. (2012) stressed that human, social, economic and demographic factors influence the ability and desire of individuals and households to prepare for disaster. Besides, people require adequate knowledge, confidence in their capabilities and motivation to prepare for emergencies (Kim and Kang, 2010). In other words, risk perception and preparedness capability depend on an individual understanding of the disaster. As much as these studies focused on factors influencing household resilience to disasters, there is a dearth of information on how these household resilience factors can help cope and adapt to the effects of persistent flooding. This study addresses these gaps by seeking to develop a household-based resilience measurement framework that can be collaboratively implemented among households and community members, and government agencies in the study area. It describes the use of a bottom-up approach in deriving key drivers of household resilience to flood through the input from households during the data collection process and in conducting an inductive analysis of their perspectives.

Over the years, decision makers involved in flood resilience in the cities of global south and north have faced several challenges as existing adaptation planning process are limited in their capacity to deliver useful and appropriate responses to floods and other climatic extreme events. One of the approaches that have been developed to respond to these challenges is the adaptation pathways approach (Rosenzweig and Solecki, 2014; Bloemen et al., 2017; Hossain et al., 2018). Adaptation pathways provide an analytical approach for exploring and sequencing a set of possible actions based on alternative drivers such as climate, land use, demographic, and socio-economic changes over time (Haasnoot et al., 2011; Haasnoot et al., 2013). In other words, they present a series of interrelated adaptation route maps or appropriate options to overcome unforeseen circumstances in the future and to make the process of adaptation as sustainable as possible. Within this context, flood resilience pathways can be defined as the ability of the system to absorb or adapt to change and continue to function as expected in the face of change; where the system comprises a technical system and its interaction with human-social systems (Ashley et al., 2013).

Various researches have been carried out on household resilience and adaptation pathways to flood (Fazey et al., 2014; Nguyen et al., 2017; Roy et al., 2021). For instance, Roy et al. (2021) assessed adaptation pathways for enhancing livelihood resilience of flood-affected households in Bangladesh by designing three adaptation pathways of short-term, mid-term and long-term options. The study concluded that the short, mid and long term adaptation pathways lead to households maintaining persistence, enhancing transition, and promoting transformative responses to flood disaster. Likewise, Nguyen et al. (2017) used adaptation pathway to examine household flood resilience in Can Tho, Vietnam. The study found that the current planning process does not consider the household coping capacity and does not take future uncertainties adequately into account. This study went further by identifying the coping and adaptation strategies of households and adopt adaptation pathways in analyzing households' resilience to flood in the study area.

Section snippets

Flood occurrence in Nigeria

In recent years, flooding has become a major hazard in Nigeria due to extreme weather events, growing population and rapid urbanization (Adelekan, 2016). Floods account for about 80% of the disaster-related damages in the country (National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), 2018, Okunola, 2019a). Nigeria experiences both fluvial and coastal flooding (Dada et al., 2019). Fluvial flooding occurs along the floodplains lying adjacent to the numerous rivers crisis-crossing the country (Okunola,

Materials and methods

In this study, multi-stage sampling technique was used during the data collection. The first stage involved the stratification of Kaduna metropolis into Government Reservation Area (GRAs), Transition Zones, and the Sub-urban zone (See Fig. 2). Using Geographic Information System (GIS) and Remote Sensing (RS). Grids were created on the image (RS data) of the metropolis covering only the built-up area. Using this procedure, 433 grid areas were created within the built-up area of the metropolis.

Socio-economic and housing attributes of respondents

This section comprises of findings on the socio-economic and housing characteristics of households in the study area. Findings on these socio-economic and housing characteristics across the three residential zones are presented in Table 2. The gender distribution of the households showed that 64% of the respondents were male while 36% were female. This pattern was consistent in the transition and suburban areas as male respondents accounted for 60% and 76% respectively, while female respondents

Conclusion and recommendations

The study examined factors influencing household resilience to flood in Kaduna metropolis, Nigeria. Based on the findings from the study, it can be concluded that household resilience strategies to flood in the studied households were similar and reactive rather than anticipatory. This could be attributed to high level of financial constraints, inaccessibility to numerous livelihood sources, services, infrastructure and lack of government supports in the study area. Specifically, household

Author statement

  • Conception and design of study: Olasunkanmi Okunola

  • acquisition of data: Okunola Olasunkanmi

  • analysis and/or interpretation of data: Peter Olawuni

  • Drafting the manuscript: Olasunkanmi Okunola

  • revising the manuscript critically for important intellectual content: Peter Olawuni

  • Supervision: Peter Olawuni

  • Conceptualisation, Data curation, formal analysis, methodology: Olasunkanmi Habeeb.

  • Project administration, editing: Peter Olawuni.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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