Transcript Slide 1

AIDS mortality & household
characteristics in rural
South Africa: Implications
for natural resource use &
development
Wayne Twine
University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
Lori Hunter
University of Colorado at Boulder, USA
*Funded by CICRED-PRIPODE
Background: Wits research in
Bushbuckridge
• Wits Rural Facility established in 1989
– Base for sustained research in a rural formerhomeland area
• SUNRAE research programme (1992)
– Ecological basis for sustainable rural
development
• Agincourt Heath & Population Unit (1992)
– Surveillance of health and population trends in
a rural population of 12,000 households
Agincourt health &
demographic surveillance
system (HDSS)
– Southern Bushbuckridge
– 21 rural villages
– Annual census in 12,000
households (population of 70,000
people) since 1992
Introduction to this study
• Two important population and environment
trends in rural sub-Saharan Africa:
– HIV/AIDS
– Environmental change
• Have important implications for rural
livelihoods
• Relationship between impacts of HIV/AIDS
and the environment is under studied.
1) Natural resources
•
Natural resources are central to rural
livelihoods:
– Domestic provisioning
– Generating income
•
Resources include:
– Fuelwood
– Edible wild fruit, vegetables, insects &
bushmeat
– Construction materials
– Wood for utensils and implements
Table 1. Household utilisation of natural resources in Bushbuckridge*
% of households
Resources
% of households
kg / household / year
Wild edible herbs
92
18
Fuelwood
92
3,395
Wild fruit
81
328
Insects
77
-
Poles for fences & kraals
53
-
Reeds for weaving
54
-
Bushmeat
32
-
Poles for houses
20
-
Medicinal plants
49
-
Thatch grass
36
-
*Hansen (1998), Shackleton & Shackleton (2000)
Table 2. Direct-use value of natural resources Bushbuckridge region.
Resource
Annual value per household
Annual value per hectare
Rand
%
Rand
%
Edible herbs
736.80
33.3
256.32
31.7
Fuelwood
465.35
21.0
182.89
22.6
Medicinal plants
383.49
17.3
149.37
18.4
Edible fruits
213.22
9.6
93.45
11.5
Construction wood
218.37
9.8
85.29
10.5
Thatch grass
51.15
2.3
20.96
2.6
Other
21.96
1.0
8.02
1.0
0
-
4.83
0.6
11.03
0.5
3.66
0.5
112.00
5.0
2.00
0.2
4.56
0.2
1.87
0.2
0
-
1.27
0.2
2,217.93
100.0
809.93
100.0
Carving wood
Reeds
Waving reeds
Twig hand brooms
Woodroses
Total
*Shackleton & Shackleton (2000)
• Use of natural resources buffers households
against some of the effects of poverty (part
of “rural safety net” (Shackleton et al 2001))
• e.g. Bushbuckridge
– Over 80% of households have electricity
BUT
– Over 90% still use fuelwood for cooking, mainly
to save money
• Natural resources are under pressure in
former homelands
• Environmental change has implications for
rural livelihoods
2) HIV/AIDS and prime-age adult mortality
• Sub-Saharan Africa is home to 70% of all
HIV-infected people – 2 mill new infections
per year (UNAIDS 2004)
• Southern Africa is referred to as the
“epicenter” of the AIDS pandemic (UN
2004)
• 21.5% prevalence in South Africa
(UNAIDS 2004)
• AIDS = leading cause of death in 15-49 years age
group worldwide (UNAIDS 2004)
• AIDS = leading cause of death in 15-49 years age
group in Agincourt DSS site, South Africa
• Implications:
– HIV/AIDS is severely impacting on
economically productive age group
– HIV/AIDS is severely impacting on age group
most active in collection & harvesting of
natural resources
– Loss of human capital has substantial
implications for the household economy and
livelihood strategies
– Prime-age adult mortality potentially affects
livelihood strategies with regard to selection,
use, collection and consumption of natural
resources.
THIS STUDY
AIDS mortality & household
characteristics in rural South Africa:
Implications for natural resource use
& development
SUNRAE Programme, Wits University
AHPU, Wits University
IBS, University of Colorado
Funder: Committee for International Cooperation in
National Research in Demography (CICRED)
Research Questions
1)
Associations between household characteristics and
household use of natural resources?
2)
Associations between prime-age adult mortality and
household use of key natural resources?
3)
Implications for development in the context of rising
AIDS mortality among poor rural communities?
Research design
•
•
Conducted in the Agincourt HDSS site
Three data sources:
1) Agincourt Health & Population Unit HDSS:
sample selection & household population data
2) Survey (n = 248; stratified by mortality
experience: 124 prime-age adult mortality in last
2 years, 124 no adult mortality in last 2 years)
3) Interviews (n = 30; all mortality)
Survey questionnaire
• For fuelwood and water:
– Availability, proximity
– Collection strategies
– Time allocation
– Level of use, types of use
Interviews
• Impact of the loss of an adult member on
general use natural resources in coping
strategies
Results
1. Quantitative results: household
characteristics, adult mortality &
household use of fuelwood & water
2. Qualitative descriptions: impacts of
adult mortality on household resource
use
Fuelwood
Household characteristics
• Smaller households: more likely to use
electricity for cooking
• Smaller households: male head less likely
to harvest
• Higher sex ratio (males:females): use
more fuelwood
• Older age structure: use more fuelwood
• Poorer households: use less wood
(especially in summer)
Fuelwood
Death of a prime-age adult
• 84% of households which had an adult
death used large amounts of wood
(average = 750 kg) for catering at the
funeral
• Households with an adult death: more
likely to use fuelwood instead of electricity,
IF they were poor
• Households with an adult death: more
likely that male head harvested (declined
with time since the death)
Water
Household characteristics
• Smaller households: male head more
likely to collect
• Higher sex ratio (males:females): male
head more likely to collect
• Poorer households: spend much more
time collecting water
Water
Death of a prime-age adult
• Households with an adult death: likelihood
of male head collecting decreased with
time since the death
From interviews
• Shifts in household resource use
strategies varied by role of the deceased
in the household economy.
–Loss of resource collector
–Loss of wage earner
Note: Pseudonyms are
used when quoting
responses
Loss of Resource Collector
• Impacts primarily on
time allocation
• Children often bear
increased burden
….. “instead of studying the child would have
to collect fuelwood after school.”
Following death of her sister, Tintswalo* and
her younger brother spent more time
collecting resources. As a result, Tintswalo
no longer had time for “cleaning, hoeing the
field, as well as going to church”
George’s* household lost their primary
resource collector, George’s wife. As he
explains, “she used to collect fuelwood in the
bush …. She was responsible for household
duties like cleaning and other things.”
George now stays with his sister’s daughter
who “performs those duties now.”
Loss of Wage Earner
1. Affected household ability to buy food.
Tsakani’s* adult son “would remember us
every month, buying groceries and a sack
of maize meal..”. She explained that since
his passing “there is a serious gap now”.
Since the passing of Elliot’s* wife, who had
a job, his household “stopped purchasing
because you only do that when you have
money…sometimes we buy [food] but most
of the time we rely on the garden.”
2. Collection often substituted for
previously purchased goods:
Fuelwood, cultivated & wild foods
•
Opportunity cost
“I used to buy some wood, but now I must do
that with my own hands”
The death of an income earner brought “a lot of
changes” to Ntombi’s* household. “The first
being changes on the diet and the second thing
is that we are no longer able to buy fuelwood
and water, so it requires us to do that by our own
hands”.
• Livelihood benefits (especially nutrition)
“[we have] stopped purchasing [food]
because you only do that when you have
money…sometimes we buy [food] but most
of the time we rely on the garden”
“there is a big change now because we no
longer have food, we just get assisted by the
relatives… and we depend more now in the
field [for collecting wild vegetables]”
Triza explained that since the passing of her
husband who had sent remittances home, it
was “very hard because we had nothing to
keep us surviving…we relied [on guxe] on a
day-to-day basis because in the past we
used to buy chicken, wors and fish.”
“Locusts are now our beef”
To summarise:
• Death of an adult household member
impacted on household resource use
strategies in complex ways.
– Allocation of household human resources
– Reliance on the natural environment for food
and for energy for cooking, especially among
poorer households
– Short-term increase in amount of wood used
(at funeral)
– No significant effect on the long-term level of
use (mass or volume) of fuelwood or water
• Role of the deceased in the household
economy was important
– Largest impacts were when the deceased had
been the breadwinner
– Households were able to save money by
collecting wood, water, wild foods and crops,
which they had previously bought
Policy implications
1. Natural resource management
– HIV/AIDS: ↓ population growth BUT ↑in
household use of resources
– Natural resources: important “buffers” for
households impacted by AIDS, particularly for
poorer households
– Biomass energy will remain primary energy
source in an era of HIV/AIDS
– Support needed for local management of natural
resources
2. Rural development
– Rural energy: address economic barriers to
affordable electricity for cooking
– Food security: support for low-input agriculture
and use of wild foods
3. Public health
– Declining resource stocks: health consequences,
especially for immuno-compromised household
members e.g.
• Loss of nutritional benefits of wild foods
• Increased smoke inhalation from use of “green” wood
Conclusion
An integrated government response to the
HIV/AIDS pandemic in rural communities
will need to include policy and support for
rural communities to use and manage their
natural resources sustainably