The Climate Change and Development project was initiated with a nine-month pilot phase in Zambia, from January to September 2007, with financial support from the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, Unit for International Environmental Policy. The pilot phase had four components, namely:
- Identifying the vulnerability of different rural stakeholder groups to the impacts of climate change in selected pilot communities
- Conducting a preliminary situation analysis on the strength and weaknesses of Zambian institutions to respond to the impacts of climate variability on local production systems
- Organizing multi-stakeholder dialogues in order to identify and evaluate options to promote a more resilient agriculture and natural resource sector, and
- Designing a full-size project proposal on climate change and development to cover at least two countries in Africa.
The pilot phase led to a Finland-funded full-size Climate Change and Development project, which is being implemented by the Forest Conservation Programme and its partners in Zambia, Tanzania and Mozambique from December 2007 to December 2010. The full-size project aims to ensure that climate change related policies and strategies lead to adaptation activities that emphasize the role of forests and water resources in supporting people’s livelihoods and associated farming systems. This will be done by providing the knowledge, tools and capacity required to reduce vulnerability and enhance adaptive capacity to climate variability and change at the local, national and regional levels. See Climate Change and Development – Examples from Zambia (ISBN: 978-0-620-38984-6).
