Economic and livelihood impacts and coping mechanisms to landslides that previously occurred in Nametesi parish, Bukalasi sub-county, Bududa district, eastern of Uganda.

Abstract

Landslides are the most frequent and diffuse' natural hazards and as a result of earth quakes causing the highest number of fatalities and damage to both rural and urban areas. Nametsi parish having experienced major landslides in previous years which caused many losses and injuries affecting the livelihood activities like the destruction of farm lands and infrastructure such roads and bridges, this study therefore is set to assess the socio economic impacts of landslides on livelihood of the people in Nametsi parish, Bukalasi sub county, Bududa district. A sample of 7 villages; Kubewo., Nametsi, Mabale, Monyi, Ukha, and Namansaya was considered as the sample area using the simple random sampling method. Open and closed ended questionnaire and interview approaches were used to obtain primary data and economic models were used to test the significance of the relationships between different variables. Rain fall (100%) was found to be the major triggering factor of landslides. Besides rainfall, the other factors were deforestation, nature of and soil type. Among the house hold losses, loss of lives and the displacement of the people with the children with a mean of 143.17 being the majority was a major loss faced though it was difficult to estimate since could be valued in monetary terms as also expressed by Kitutu at el. 2010. Loss of farm land agricultural fields with a mean of 7.69 hectares was another impact suffered. In monetary terms, the loss value of bananas was 301 and 633 USD and coffee was 978 and 175 USD crops was the highest in Kubewo and Ukha villages respectively. The loss of the community hospital (Nametsi health centre II) was the major community loss suffered. The people didn't individually identify the damage to environment and infrastructure such as roads as a problem. Using the Gaussian linear models, the Gaussian identical model and Gaussian log model were used to test for the significance of the a person's knowledge about the causes and the mitigation measures of the landslides and it was found that independent as village of stay, time of stay in that village, distance a person stays to the landslides event and house hold loss suffered to be significant (.P<0.05). Correlations between livelihood activities with demographic, environmental and health variables of communities living near by the landslides events were tested and it was found that Number of people in the house hold was negatively correlated to estimated losses (%) of properties due to landslides (r = 0.245, P <0.05) and land owned is positively correlated to the number of people in the house hold (r=0.444, P<0.001). Therefore, I recommend planting of trees and resettlement schemes in the flatter areas within the vicinity of Bududa district which permits easy access of the affected to their agricultural land. Additionally, the people should be acutely sensitized about the causes of landslides and how effectively they can adapt to them so that they can have additional to the local ideas scientific familiarity to the event. Key words: Causes of landslides, Landslide losses, Estimation of Losses, Namesti Parish.