Landslide Risk Management in Uganda: A Multi-level Policy Approach

Abstract

While landslides constitute a major risk in Uganda, this geomorphological hazard has been largely neglected by national and local authorities in West Uganda. Nowadays, disaster risk management is emerging in Uganda. Monitoring the on-going efforts is therefore crucial in this region. We identify the actors involved in landslide risk management in West Uganda and examine their roles and interactions by investigating both policy and practice. This paper describes a qualitative multi-policy level approach, based on extensive field work and literature on systems analysis and scalar politics. The results show that in theory, landslide risk management in this region consists of a well-structured National Policy (2010), including the establishment of horizontally structured platforms at different administrative levels and a focus on pre-disaster mitigation activities. In practice, however, the implementation is insufficient, as most platforms at local level remain dysfunctional or only meet after a disaster occurred. The dominant arena for landslide risk management remains at national level, despite the promotion of decentralisation, and the focus remains on post-disaster emergency measures, such as providing relief. At local level, bottom-up landslide risk reduction efforts are made that are disconnected from the national policy, scattered and done haphazardly. Thus, discrepancies exist between policy and practice regarding landslide risk management in West Uganda but efforts are moving gradually towards disaster risk reduction.