NATURAL AND AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES Vulnerability and flooding: Paving the way for South Africa to deal with climate change One of the most common predictions made in earning from past flooding events relation to global warming is that, regardless of the in order to plan for the future is country in which we live, we will experience extreme Ltherefore hugely important, a point not missed by a team of researchers weather events, such as increased flooding. In a comprising Dr Saul Ngarava and Dr country such as South Africa, where large numbers Leocardia Zhou from the Risk and of people live in informal settlements and insecure Vulnerability Science Centre (RVSC) at the University of Fort Hare (UFH) and housing, floods have the potential to cause Professor Abbyssinia Mushuje from the enormous suffering. University’s Department of Economics. The team also included Dr Petronella Chaminuka from the Economic Analysis Unit at the Agricultural Research Council, testimony to the ability of Fort Hare researchers to network and collaborate with colleagues working in research councils and other entities external to the universities. A recent flooding event in Port St Johns in April 2019, when 190mm of rain fell in 24 hours, devastated local communities. Extraordinarily high rainfall coupled with high oceanic tides that pushed the Mzimvubu River water back upstream caused the river to burst its banks resulting in low lying settlements being cut off and hundreds of residents having to be evacuated. The research team therefore put their skills and knowledge to use and designed a semi-structured questionnaire that was administered to 195 residents in the area in order to determine the exposure, susceptibility and Floods in Durban 2022 resilience of communities to flooding. 15 | University of Fort Hare