Community Vulnerability in Climate Disaster and Environmental Sustainability: A Botswana Perspective

Community vulnerability to climate related disasters and environmental degradation is a concern for social workers. This concern accentuates when the physical environment from which communities derive livelihoods cannot sustain their subsistence. Social work is a profession that is committed to the development of communities adhering to social justice, human rights, and respect for diversity amongst people and cultures. It advocates for sustainable community development and protection of people from environmental hazards and risks. While serving the person in the social environment, it seeks to reduce their vulnerability to disasters that could jeopardize sustainable developments in their locality. Globally, the changing weather patterns, environmental pollution, and natural hazards with grave consequences for communities have become burdensome. Climate change has brought about increased flooding, frequent drought episodes, and new health hazards that require researched corporate actions and interventions in communities. The researcher moved by the devastating impacts of disasters in Botswana carried out an empirical study in three localities of the South East Administrative District. The study adopted the mixed methods research design to assess the community preparedness, disaster risk reduction strategies, the role of social workers in enhancing community resilience to disasters, and efforts to promote sustainable environmental, cultural practices. Data were collected through face-to-face interviews, questionnaires, focus group discussions, and review of government policies and reports. A total sample population of 3567 respondents were randomly selected for the quantitative phase and 90 participants were conveniently selected for the qualitative phase. It was found that local communities are vulnerable to floods, windstorms, drought, torrential rains, and wild-fires which negatively impact their livelihoods and degrade the environment. The community vulnerability resonated with their lack of knowledge on climate change, hazards and risks, lack of hazard zone map. The article recommends a community-based disaster strategy for building disaster resilience and risk management capacity. The main concepts in this paper are: climate change, vulnerability, disaster, hazard and risks, and resilience.