Abstract
Drought impacts are increasingly shaped by the interaction between climatic variability and deep-rooted socio-economic and political processes. Explaining drought impacts requires moving beyond climate hazards alone to examine how they interact with existing vulnerabilities. This study applies a forensic approach to analyse the 2015–2020 drought in Qwaqwa, a water-rich yet chronically water-insecure area of South Africa. Combining semi-structured interviews, desk research, and quantitative data analysis, we identified the key historical and contemporary factors (e.g., apartheid inequalities, corruption and mismanagement) that aggravated the 2015-2020 drought impacts. We disentangled these factors following the Pressure-and-Release framework and highlighted their interactions reinforcing drought impacts through a Causal Loop Diagram.
Our findings show that drought impacts resulted from the interaction of severe precipitation deficits (consecutive 17 months of negative SPI6 in 2018-2019) with national electricity cuts (27 months in 2015-2020), and mismanaged short-term responses (1500 delivered tankers out of 5000 paid) resulting in compounding and cascading failures. Short-term solutions such as water tankers and boreholes also led to long-term reliance of communities on these water supply strategies. At the same time, inadequate infrastructure maintenance, corruption and mismanagement reinforced existing inequalities and amplified differential vulnerabilities, hence unequally distributing impacts across the affected population.
Overall, the study demonstrates that drought impacts in Qwaqwa are shaped by the interaction of climatic hazard with long-standing social, institutional and infrastructural vulnerabilities. The findings highlight the need for structural, long-term interventions that strengthen governance, improve data availability, and support local capacities to enhance resilience to future drought and other hazards.