Malawi has significant volumes of water in its lakes and rivers, its per capita water availability is low and is expected to halve by 2025. In addition, the annual distribution of rainfall matters in ensuring water availability for user needs. Water resources are vulnerable to climate change, over-abstraction, catchment degradation caused by deforestation, pollution from agricultural activities, mining and industry, proliferation of invasive aquatic weeds and other species, and waste due to poor maintenance of infrastructure. Water catchments and buffer zones have been cleared for irrigated farming land, and there are competing demands for land along rivers and around water bodies.
The economic growth rate was being negatively affected by the cyclical nature of floods and droughts. The growth was reversed from 5.1 to 3.1 due to two recent major natural disasters: flooding in 2015 and drought in 2016. Crop yields are reported as reduced from 2.3 to 1.7 due to disaster (PDNA drought 2016). The 2015 floods caused severe damage and great loss. They affected 15 districts, and the whole country suffered interruption of water and electricity and damage to roads and bridges, which disrupted business.
An estimated 1,101,364 people were affected 230,000 were displaced, 106 were killed and 172 were reported missing. Economic losses were experienced at many levels: damage to infrastructure, crops and livestock, reduced production caused by water and electricity shortage, disruption of the economic system in communities where people were displaced; and by fiscal transfer to disaster response, crowding out other functions due to concentration of manpower more on disaster response for weeks than on other activities.
The 2015 Flood PDNA (an exercise supported jointly by UNDP, EU and WB) has shown that total damage and loss is USD 365.9 million, while total cost of recovery and reconstruction is USD 494 million. Of the $494 million required for recovery in the PDNA, agriculture makes up $78 million, 16% of the total (Stan Kita). Central to recovery and response are the institutional arrangements for managing disasters. The President of Malawi declared a state of disaster on April 11, 2016, for drought assistance. The Malawi Vulnerability Assessment Committee predicted that a minimum of 6.5 million Malawians, 39 percent of the population, would not have enough food in the 2016 to 2017 consumption period because of the ongoing drought provoked by an unusually strong El Niño effect.
An added and growing complication are the occurrence of climate shocks. Malawi is vulnerable to a number of climatic hazards, the critical ones being floods, droughts and dry spells, strong winds, hailstorms, pest infestations and disease epidemics. These impacts interact with degraded landscapes to produce poverty, food security and high levels of vulnerability. Nearly all droughts in Malawi have been associated with the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon. Flood disasters in Malawi result from three key synoptic systems: The Inter Tropical Convergence Zone, the Zaire Air Boundary/Congo Air Mass, or tropical cyclones. Thus, Malawi has both high exposure and high sensitivity to climate change.
Analysis of recent climate trends shows that mean annual temperature has increased by 0.9°C between 1960 and 2006, an average rate of 0.21°C per decade. There has also been an increase in the number of hot days and nights in all seasons; and a decrease in the frequency of cold days and nights. Recent times have seen a drying trend since the early 2000s with a small wetting trend in Central Malawi
The main framework of addressing adaptation has been the National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) which dates to 2006. This addresses the urgent and short-term adaptation needs for the country. The NAP provides a medium to long-term option for Malawi to addressing adaptation needs in a long run. The National Adaptation Plan (NAP) process will contribute to the government’s commitment to prioritizing climate change adaptation in its long-term development strategies including the National Development Strategy.
With support from the LDCF-funded UNDP-UNEP National Adaptation Plan Global Support Programme, the Government of Malawi launched its NAP process in 2014 which was followed by national stakeholder consultation and NAP trainings. The Government of Malawi has also developed its road map for the NAP process and produced a NAP stocktaking report. The Road map has identified key steps Malawi needs to take to formulate its NAP, and the Stocktaking report has highlighted key issues regarding strength and gaps that Malawi needs to build on as it progresses with its NAP process.
Under the National Climate Change Programme, two coordinating committees were established: The National Climate Change Technical Committee (NCCTC) and the Project Steering Committee (PSC) which provides oversight on climate change activity implementation. The NCCTC provides a platform for the implementation of national, regional, and global partnerships on climate change. This provides an institutional framework for national and international co-operation, embracing a holistic approach to climate change interventions towards development of adaptation and mitigation initiatives through partnerships between Government agencies, the private sector, NGOs, CBOs, academia, and local communities.
The PSC provides a forum for effective policy dialogue on frameworks, priority setting, and ways and means of facilitating investment and transfer of technology on climate change initiatives in the country. The NTCCC has established expert working groups including one on adaptation to provide technical advice on specific thematic areas.
The Problem NAP Project Will Address
The problem that this project will address is weak integration of planning efforts between sectors and different levels of government which hamper adaptation planning. The result is that the national response to climate change and variability in Malawi currently has a short-term focus, restricted to localized interventions and to responding reactively. Consequently, the vulnerability of Malawi’s population and socio-economic development to the negative effects of climate change will increase in the future.
The Solution NAP Project Will Provide
The preferred solution is to strengthen both the coordination between District government and Central government and horizontal integration between the sectors in planning and budgeting processes which factor in climate change and in so doing increase the coherence of public sector policies, regulation and spending in building climate resilience across the economy. This should include the leveraging of public sector finance and private sector financing in adaptation technologies, services and climate resilient investments. Integral to this will investments in data and information and professional training programmes to increase the technical capacity and empowerment of national and District governments in Malawi to comprehensively develop and implement adaptation programmes
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