Community Resilience through Integrated Landscape Management

The "Upscaling Community-Based Adaptation in Ethiopia" project will work to empower communities to plan and implement adaptation interventions in a deliberate and proactive manner, reducing reliance on the Government of Ethiopia to provide already scarce resources for climate change adaptation. The five-year project will benefit from a US$8.8 million grant from the Global Environment Facility Least Developed Country Fund.

Agriculture is the mainstay of the economy, contributing over 90% towards Comoros’s exports earnings. Despite the crucial role of agriculture in the economy and for employment, the domestic agricultural sector is struggling to provide the food needs of the population. The project's objective therefore, is to strengthen the capacities of vulnerable communities to cope with the additional risks posed by climate change as well as the variability on agro-sylvo-pastoral systems through training and dissemination of information.

Climate change is projected to have profound impacts on Zimbabwe, including heightened water stress, increased incidence of drought, declines in crop and livestock productivity, change in wildlife ranges, an increase in wildfire incidents and the possible expansion of malaria zones. 

As a Least Developed Country (LDC), Yemen is highly vulnerable to climate change-related impacts such as drought, extreme flooding, and sea level rise. These are serious concerns as Yemen's economy largely depends on its natural resources. In addition to having a predominantly semi-arid to arid climate, more than half the agriculture is rain-fed. Coupled with a rise in both droughts and floods, the Yemenis face an acute challenge in adapting to climate change induced stress on water resources.

Climate change in Swaziland is expected to lead to overall warming and drying, with a greater frequency and intensity of droughts as well as floods. The negative impacts on the agricultural and water sector are likely to be considerable. Firstly, yields of staple food crops such as maize, sorghum and beans are likely to decrease, thereby threatening national food security. Secondly, surface flows in rivers and streams are likely to have greater variation, with lower base-flows in the dry season, potentially resulting in water shortages for domestic, industrial and agricultural use.

Madhya Pradesh encompasses a major part of the highlands of Central India and constitutes parts of the upper catchments of five principal river systems – the Yamuna, Ganga, Mahanadi, Godavari and Narmada. It is endowed with rich and diverse forest resources with forest types ranging from dry thorn, dry and moist deciduous to sub-tropical semi-evergreen and tropical moist evergreen forests.

Eritrea currently suffers from Africa’s highest level of food insecurity (and attendant high levels of malnutrition), a situation expected to be exacerbated by climate change via increasing temperature, drought, weather variability, and a decrease in water stores.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo’s coastal zone stretches 40 km and comprises of the towns of Muanda, Banana and Nsiamfumu. The problem of coastal erosion has intensified since 1980 with significant retreat of the coast in the Banana-Muanda segment, this retreat has been estimated as much as 2,300 meters. In the future, the DRC can expect to see its territory reduced from 50-100 m on its coastal area.

For a long time, farming communities in Benin have had to develop weather and climate hazards mitigation techniques or practices so-called "endogenous" including crop diversification, irrigation, risk management disaster, etc. However, human induced climate change that has become a reality (IPCC, 2007), is posing new risks for these communities. Agricultural modernization that does not destroy the social and ecological balances yet ensures food security for the peasant mass has remained the biggest problem in Africa since the 60s.

The project, Coping with Drought and Climate Change in Zimbabwe, worked to enhance the capacity of agricultural and pastoral communities in Zimbabwe to adapt to climate variability and change. The primary project objective was to demonstrate and promote adoption of a range of gender-sensitive approaches for adaptation to climate change among rural communities currently engaged in agriculture in vulnerable areas of the Chiredzi.

The "Scaling up Community-Based Adaptation (CBA) in Niger" project aims to strengthen the responsiveness and adaptive capacity of administrative and technical support services at the commune-level to enable generation of a critical mass of climate resilient communities and achieve more climate resilient economies in the Maradi Region of Niger. In terms of socio-economic benefits, the project, through the climate-resilient activities implemented, will build up financial, natural, physical and social capital of the selected communities.

Turkmenistan is a water stressed country with one of the harshest climates in the Central Asian region. Climate change modeling indicates significant increases in temperature and reduction in rainfall. This will lead to a decrease in total volume of water availability that is likely to have a profound impact on agricultural production systems and local farmers. The long-term solution envisaged by the Government of Turkmenistan is to mainstream climate change adaptation in order to secure climate resilient livelihoods in agricultural communities.