| Overview : Climate change continues to be a big challenge in developing sustainable livelihoods. In the recent past, Malawi has suffered from climate change related impacts and risks such as prolonged dry spells, droughts, floods and post-harvest losses. While healthy ecosystems can provide a cost effective means of adaptation to climate change, the country’s natural ecosystems continue to be threatened by over-exploitation and inappropriate management; weak technical capacity, limited knowledge and inadequate financing thereby reducing the effectiveness of resource users and government’s efforts of climate proofing the development programs, at the local, district and national levels. With funds from the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), the Government of Malawi through the Environmental Affairs Department (EAD) in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is implementing a climate resilience project namely ‘Climate Proofing Local Development Gains in Rural and Urban Areas of Machinga and Mangochi Districts.’ In Mangochi, the project will target three Traditional Authorities (TA) (Nankumba, Chimwala, and Mponda). In Machinga, the project will target the following TAs; Chikweo, Nyambi, and Nsanama. The project seeks to strengthen community resilience and adaptation to climate change through rights based approaches, participatory and inclusive approaches and utilization to water resources and forest based products. The project will provide knowledge, tools, capacities and methodologies for the adoption of an ecosystem and community based approach to adaptation, which is more effective in enabling climate vulnerable people to plan for, cope with, and adapt to the impacts of climate change. Knoweldge will be generated and used to formulate comprehensive community based adaptation plans. Ecological and physical infrastructure measures for water management will be adopted to regulate baseflow and reduce risk of climate change driven floods while mitigating against droughts. The project has five outcomes being: - Increased knowledge in the impact of ecosystem degradation in aggravating vulnerability to climate change risks and reducing resilience of development gains understood and integrated into key decision-making processes at local, sub-national and national levels.
- Improved skills and operational capacity in the districts, EPAs, and TA level technical officers to support implementation, maintenance and monitoring of project activities and to mainstream climate risks into all local development processes (skills, legislation, information)
- Increased public and domestic water harvesting, storage and distribution technologies that reduces climate change driven flooding and regulates availability of water throughout the year in flood and drought hotspots
- Improved habits and practices in rehabilitation and protection of forests, river banks, lake shores and urban infrastructure
- Increased agricultural production through improved adoption of climate smart systems and measures
In order to measure the contribution of the project towards achieving its objectives, a project baseline has been planned to establish benchmarks against which the project performance will be measured, reported and verified. The baseline study will measure key output indicators relevant to the project. The data collected through the baseline survey will be used in designing of key messages for the various targeted groups. The baseline will specifically provide information on core indicators agreed on the project design/log frame; general awareness and perceptions on food security, water and climate change; and establish levels of community participation in District Assembly structures and vice versa. This therefore calls for applications from consultancy firms s to conduct the baseline study. Further details about the project activities and components would be provided to the institution selected to conduct the study. |
