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Narratives of adaptation signatures

National land use and development planning

The actors:

National government: previous exercises in national planning on climate change included the First National Communication, largely compiled by a small group with the aid of consultants. There are many ministries and agencies that deal with climate and resource data, manage land and water, concern poverty and vulnerability, and contribute to economic and social planning in various ways. However, there are relatively few units with experience in climate change issues.

National climate centre: the national meteorological agency has established a national climate centre that includes a special section on providing relevant climate information to users throughout the country. The government does not have a global climate modelling capability, but has broadband access to global archives.

District offices: Most ministries have district level staff, and in some cases community-based projects. District officers are fully occupied with implementing the ambitious development vision and generally do not have much time to spend on long-range planning issues; even concern for deforestation and soil erosion is constrained by urgent actions on economic growth.

Civil society: A wide range of community, national and international nongovernmental organisations support development policy, strategy and action. They cover the full range from special-issue campaigns (such as greening the countryside) to champions for vulnerable populations (Concern). Quite a few NGOs work on disaster relief, although they find it a challenge to reduce long-term vulnerability. Only a couple of groups have expertise in climate change, generally only at the national or even regional level.

Regional government: most of the international agencies have offices in the country or nearby, and regional centres of excellence are being developed. So far, most are only beginning to get to grips with climate change adaptation, although programmes on mitigation have been operational for a few years.

Planning horizon

Raising awareness

Using information to plan adaptation

A peak at the future

Community based adaptation

This narrative is based (loosely) on the Sakai community project led by Maggie Opondo (a GEF project with the National Academy of Sciences, Centre fo Science and Technology Innovations, with the Arid Lands Resource Management Project; UNEP, ACTS and IISD are additional partners). Vulnerability is exacerbated by heavy reliance on drought sensitive crops, especially maize. Community based drought management project by the World Bank provides the baseline project development, now working in ten districts.

Actors: National experts in academic, NGO and ministry units contributed to the overall design. Community leaders organised the campaign in the village, working closely with the target group, smallholder farmers in the rainfed agriculture sector.

Aims: to integrated climate and drought risk management with community development, food security and livelihood support.

Activities: Downscaling climate forecasts to guide choice of crops planed and the timing of agricultural activities. A cropping calendar is produced for each season, based on the global c

Work with 120 demonstration farmers, providing initial seeds, improved agronomic practices for drought resistant crops, working with national agricultural advisers. Enhance the effect by working with neighboring farmers. Community came up with selection criteria for selecting the original 40 farms to work with.

Support sand dams to enhance water supply and access in the area, being taken up by the Arid Lands project.

Increasing local self-help groups’ access to income-0diversification activities. Community came up with priorities for locally based support projects, based on a micro-credit scheme model. Groups trained in how to climate proof their business plans. Hopefully, the groups will pay back the early credit, and extend the funding to some 70+ community self-help groups.

The project reports in a policy context. Recognition of government and other stakeholders inability to manage and reduce vulnerability to disasters caused by hazards led to a national drought management planning process (NDM). The project provided an input at later stages to refine the priorities, on practical actions to include climate variability and climate change issues into the policy. The project team was effective in getting national policy to take on board these issues across all of its remit. The participatory, bottom up approach is responsive to institutional structures that help local people determine their own development. A district steering group for development planning endorsed the project, supported through national agencies.

Tom Downing 09:32, 19 January 2009 (CET)

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