CEPA Climate Change Project : Highlights from 2007 work
Implementation of the project “Understanding and Implementing Climate
Change Policy for Rural Livelihoods in Malawi” commenced in May 2007.
The objective of the project is to facilitate local level awareness and
empowerment in climate change and disaster risk reduction policy and the
requisite adaptation measures to enable local communities cope with
impacts of climate change. The project basically follows a two pronged
approach, namely a) identify and analyze community
experiences with the effects of climate change, and b) use those
experiences to design capacity building interventions and inform policy
development processes.
CEPA identified two districts which are the most vulnerable to climate
change for piloting the project activities. These were Nsanje, in the
Lower Shire and Salima, along the lakeshore. A series of consultative
meetings were held with affected communities and relevant stakeholders
at village, area and district level. The main observations included the
following:
• There has been changing trends in climatic conditions which include
irregular rainfall pattern and flooding;
• Most of the climate change related events are being blamed on poor
environmental and natural resources management;
• Climatic conditions are still the predominant factors affecting
agricultural productivity and changes in these conditions have different
severe effects on small scale farmers; and
• There is need to critically analyze the way communities adapt to
floods and droughts and then develop policy options so as to strengthen
adaptation to climate change.
CEPA also commissioned policy research on climate change. The research
came up with four position papers. The main conclusions from the
position papers included:
• During the last two decades there has been an increase in rainfall,
temperature and frequency of extreme events such as floods and droughts;
• Most climate change policy related documents and strategies are not
well disseminated to the intended beneficiaries and implementing agents;
• Climate change presents a number of challenges on agro-biodiversity in
Malawi given that the country is a predominantly agricultural economy;
• Understanding livelihoods approaches in climate change and disaster
risk reduction is very important as these are the very approaches the
communities need to use in order to cope with and recover from stresses
and shocks; and
• Droughts and floods are exposing the crisis in livelihoods of
smallholder farmers and these include limited income opportunities in
the face of increased floods and droughts which have forced women to
engage in unsafe sex practices, exposing them to greater risk of HIV.
The case study results, policy briefs and leaflets on climate change
were disseminated to different stakeholders ranging from the affected
communities to policy makers.
Furthermore, capacity building programmes were implemented at community
level. These covered areas such as trends in climate change, effects of
climate change on smallholder farmers, policy response to climate change
and adaptation and coping mechanisms to climate change. These were aimed
at improving community’s resilience to climate change and preparing them
to effectively contribute to national policy debate. A national workshop
was successfully organized for government departments, civil society and
affected communities to discuss findings from the case studies and
initiate policy dialogue.
Working towards facilitating local level awareness and empowerment in
climate change and disaster risk reduction policy issues, the project
has accomplished milestones in a number of areas. These include:
improving the individual performance of the local institutional
framework responsible for disaster risk reduction (civil protection
committees) in the pilot areas and policy makers have been made aware of
the need to develop specific climate change policy for Malawi based on
the dialogue they have had with local communities who are directly
experiencing the effects of climate change.
Despite the progress made a number of challenges have been encountered
in the course of project implementation. These included: delays in
commencing implementation due to late signing of the agreement and
inaccessibility of some of the case study areas due to poor road status.
As the project moves into the second year of implementation, it will be
imperative to consider improving coordination amongst civil society
organizations involved in climate change and disaster risk reduction,
extending the scope of case studies both in existing sites and covering
the northern Malawi district of Karonga and increasing the range of
activities to include television and radio documentary. This will
strengthen the dissemination of information to a wider range of
stakeholders and consequently assist in influencing policy makers.
