Paper short abstract:

Flooding induced resettlement has a significant impact on the affected people’s place attachment especially their livelihoods needs. However, the vulnerable group of people are significantly affected due to politics of power and non-inclusiveness during planning and implementation of resettlement.

Paper long abstract:

The impact of environmentally induced resettlement has been widely documented with the vulnerable groups of people being impacted most in the community. Globally, environmentally induced disasters such as floods and drought threaten human habitats, especially those of people living in fragile and susceptible areas. This increases the vulnerability of poor households in affected areas who do not have the capacity to adapt to the environmental change. Even though these disasters pose threats to human life, people continue to stay put because they have an attachment and bond to those areas (Anton and Lawrence, 2014). These issues of environmental change impacts and non-movement are of increasing concern to both policy makers and other stakeholders hence the implementation of resettlement as a resilience measure (Artur and Hilhorst, 2014). Therefore, this study used participatory approaches to establish the significance of the combined impact created by loss of both tangible and non-tangible resources. One significant result was the impact of people’s livelihoods whereby people with special needs like the elderly and people with disabilities were highly affected than the rest. Therefore, the study recommended inclusion of this group of people in planning and implementation of resettlement programmes to ensure that everyone’s needs are addressed during resettlement.