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Abstract:
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Malawi has experienced a number of adverse climatic hazards over the last several decades. The most serious have been dry spells, seasonal droughts, intense rainfall, riverine floods and flush floods. Some of these, especially droughts and floods, have increased in frequency, intensity and magnitude over the last two decades, and have adversely impacted on food and water security, water quality, energy and the sustainable livelihoods of rural communities. Therefore, it has developed its National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPA) by evaluating the impacts of adverse climatic conditions in eight important sectors of economic growth, and ranked the identified activities using multi-criteria analysis to arrive at a list of fifteen urgent and immediate priority needs for adaptation. The sectors that were analyzed are agriculture, water, human health, energy, fisheries, wildlife, forestry and gender.
The NAPA document has been developed to enable Malawi address her urgent and immediate adaptation needs caused by climate change and extreme weather events. Specifically, the document aims at: (i) identifying a list of priority activities, (ii) formulating priority adaptation options, (iii) building capacity for adapting to longer-term climate change and variability, and (iv) raising public awareness on the urgency to adapt to the adverse effects of extreme weather events
This document presents a minimum number of activities that must be implemented with urgency in order to enable vulnerable rural communities cope with the adverse effects of climate change. The implementation of these activities will significantly reduce the negative impacts of climatic hazards on vulnerable rural communities and areas, and will ensure sustainable livelihoods for the vulnerable Malawians. |