Gender Marker 1

The Cape coastline faces into a turbulent ocean. Climate change will make this naturally stormy sea all the more formidable. Cape Town has inherited a complex space to manage: land reclaimed from the sea for forts and harbour walls; towering residential flats lined with cemented promenades; economically critical ports and railway lines; ecologically sensitive beaches, dunes and river mouths; and a legacy of dispossession of black South Africans, and privileged access for wealthy whites.

Increasingly stormy seas and higher sea levels are beginning to show up the existing fault lines in the engineered, social and institutional strata of this complex coastline. People working within the City of Cape Town (CoCT) today are making decisions about how to manage these vulnerable spaces – decisions that future generations will have to live and work with.

Short-term, piece-meal, opportunistic responses to the threat of stormier seas will only increase how vulnerable the built city, its inhabitants, economic activities, and the natural environment are. The City, lead by its Environmental Resource Management Department, is developing a rigorous coastal policy and management framework that will enable politicians, managers and residents to respond consistently and appropriately as they are confronted with an uncertain, dynamic, climate-altered future.

This booklet presents research done by the University of Cape Town’s African Centre for Cities, the Stockholm Environment Institute and partner institutions, working closely with the City of Cape Town, to explore ways to manage changing coastal risks

This document is a National Climate Change Policy (NCCP) for Namibia. It presents information about the main expected impacts of climate change and, those most vulnerable to climate change. The document also proposes objectives that the Government of Namibia will aim to achieve through an effective and efficient response to climate change. This policy was developed based on information obtained from prior climate change related studies that were undertaken for the First Namibia National Communication (FNC) to UNFCCC as well as that used to prepare the Namibia’s Second National Communication (SNC) and the assessment of financial and economic flows. Lastly but not least, input from various stakeholders have been incorporated.

Namibia, being a semi-arid country could potentially increase food security at a household level through conservation agriculture. Hence, there is a need for mind shifting among subsistence farmers from conventional farming to Climate Smart Agricultural (CSA) practices such as CA. Climate Smart Agriculture entails technologies aiming at transforming and reorienting agricultural systems into a sustainable agricultural efficiency in support of food security under climate change mitigating interventions. CSA is not only about new farming technologies, but a combination of traditional indigenous knowledge with common agricultural practices and appropriate agricultural technological developments. In addition, CA tend to be successful when combined with other climate smart strategies such as the use of drought tolerant and short maturing crops varieties. The Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Forestry (MAWF) of the Republic of Namibia strives towards attaining food security at both household and national levels through the deployment of efficient and sustainable food production practices. For this reason, MAWF had launched a Comprehensive Conservation Agriculture Programme for Namibia (2015-2019) in an attempt to educate and support subsistence crop farmers on new farming interventions aiming at addressing problems of food insecurity and mitigating the effects of climate change.

In Lesotho, FAO is distributing a series of illustrated guides, in English and Sesotho, to encourage and facilitate the construction of homestead gardens. The gardens are easily built using locally available material and are specially designed to improve soil fertility and capture moisture. With minimum maintenance, they can provide vegetables all year round.

This article is a success story in the production of groundnut seed in Zambia. When groundnut seed production was introduced in Minga area in Petauke district, it relieved farmers of the pressure of having to rely on cotton as the only valuable cash crop.
Unit Seed Company in partnership with small-scale farmers in Minga area engaged in seed production of groundnut. The farmers were provided with groundnut basic seed by Unit Seed Company and produced certified seed, which the company buys and then sells to prospective markets

This resource is an APPSA success story of introducing high yielding rice varieties in Malawi.  As part of efforts to improve rice production and increase export volumes, the Agricultural Productivity Programme for Southern Africa (APPSA) introduced
three high yielding rice varieties with a yield potential of up to 6.5 T ha-1. These are Kayanjamalo (6.5 T ha-1), Katete (6.0 T ha-1) and Mpatsa (5.8 T ha-1). These varieties were released in 2014 under the Department of Agricultural Research Services (DARS) in the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Water Development. Since the release of the varieties, APPSA has been promoting these three varieties in Nkhotakota, Salima and Zomba districts targeting smallholder rice farmers. With desirable traits such as high yields and short height, the varieties gained popularity among the farming communities and within three years the number of adopters increased by more than 80%.

This is a success story produced by the Zambia Agricultural Research Institute (ZARI) under APPSA. Through partnerships with the Department of Agriculture and other players, the World Bank funded Agricultural Productivity Programme for Southern Africa (APPSA) supported smallholder farmers with necessary information and technologies to transform
the way they grow their soybean in order to increase farm yields and income. In collaboration with the Department of Agriculture under Extension Services the project mobilised lead farmers to host demonstration plots showcasing improved soybean production technologies.

This presentation contains information on the institution CCARDESA and its famework. It covers:

• realities of climate change in SADC
• CCARDESA mandate and ICKM actions
• the ACCRA project and the ICKM component
• the SAAIKS platform (conception and development)
• Lessons learnt
• Way forward

Implementing adaptation under the Paris Agreement: how can comprehensive climate risk management (CRM) support National Adaptation Planning (NAP) processes and NDC implementation

How can we transfer natural risks out of rural livelihooods to empower and protect people?