Download Workshop Material - Global Climate Change Alliance

Resilience Framework to support Climate Adaptation in the
Mt Elgon Region
Simon Thuo; GCCA consultant
Introduction : GCCA & ACCESS
GCCA- Global Climate Change Alliance
• Launched in 2007 between EU and
developing countries for exchange of
experience and practical approaches to
integrate climate change into development
policies and budgets.
• provides technical and financial support to
integrate climate change into policies,
budgets, and implementation projects that
address climate change on the ground
• promotes climate-resilient, low-emission
development.
ACCESS- Africa Collaborative Centre for Earth
System Sciences
• Non-profit organisation for regional
collaboration in multi-disciplinary scientific
research
• Examines global environmental changes
(GEC), including climate; desertification,
lakes, marine ecosystems, geomorphic
and impacts of combinations
• Platform for scientists and practitioners in
Africa to coordinate efforts, set research
agenda; collate findings and approaches
Background to Mt Elgon project
 Challenges
 Floods, landslides
 Rapid population growth
 Land use changes
 Critical environmental degradation from deforestation and poor agricultural practice
 Results
 Adverse impacts on the health, food security and economic development potential of
the population
 Loss of flora, fauna, destruction of catchments, soil erosion, siltation, rapid run-off
 Poor access to food, water, energy and forest resources
 Increasing poverty and vulnerability, higher exposure to hazards
Resilience Framework for Climate
Adaptation in Mt Elgon
 Purpose: strengthen societal and ecological resilience to adverse climate impacts
 Expected outputs
 Enhanced coordination and adaptive action between stakeholders
 Improved collaboration between government, civil society and research institutions.
 Timely, accurate and comprehensive information for Mt Elgon water tower
 Actions
 Improve scientific knowledge of Climate Change information;
 Demonstrate increased social and ecological resilience in hot spots of climate vulnerability using adaptation
strategies like ecosystem based adaptation (EBA);
 Integrating evidence from adaptation approaches into policies across sectors and;
 Enhancing learning on CC adaptation strategies at local to regional levels.
 Lead partners: IUCN (implementation) ACCESS (Scientific Research/climate modeling)
 GCCA (technical support to ACCESS); GWP (policy aspects)
 Key stakeholders: Lake Victoria Basin Commission, Mt Elgon Local Governments, NGOs
Examples of promising climate adaptation
initiatives
 Mt Kenya: Sagana Women Fish and Beekieepng with $50,000 grant. 50% income
ploughed back to environment and community projects. In 10 years they have:
 Established tree nurseries and planted over 1,000,000 indigenous trees in the degraded
Hombe Forest and to rehabilitate riparian areas
 Invested $70,000 in ponds
 increased fish stock from 600 to 33,000;
 Constructed cold storage facilities; market and other assets worth over $200,000
 Regional Integrated Silvopastoral Ecosystem Management Project (RISEMP) in
Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Colombia (GEF World Bank) using Payment for Ecosystem
Services to rehabilitate degraded pastures. Result:
 66% improve in pasture,
 33% more forest,
 67% more connectivity of forest fragment via live fences
Process for Development of
Mt Elgon Resilience Framework
 Collect and analyse relevant information:
 Demographic (population & growth, livelihoods and income)
 Environmental (Geologic, Hydrological, forest, land cover)
 Land use, crops, households
 Climate: Temperature, rainfall, wind patterns
 Governance, Institutions, key developmental activities
 Existing hazards, challenges, driving forces
 Model climate change effects to the next 70 years
 Identify likely climate impacts on determinant factors on the
landscape eg forest, hydrology, rainfall, soils
 Field visits to compare ground situation with models
(groundtruthing)
 Prepare criteria for hotspots, identify characteristics and likely
impacts of climate, environment and demographic changes
Science & Research findings
• ACCESS, with GCCA support has analysed
geology, climate, hydrology, land cover/land use,
human settlement & administrative boundaries
• Multi-disciplinary team has developed predictions
on changes to temperature, rainfall and land cover
• These are interposed with existing problems to
come up with proposals on enhancing
environmental and human wellbeing in Mt Elgon
region on a growing population.
• Developed maps showing hotspots- regions of Mt
Elgon where the human population is highly
vulnerable due to geologic, environmental and land
cover changes for the coming 70 years.
Groundtruthing
ACCESS-IUCN-GCCA team, political
leaders , technical officers from
Govt agencies & districts on field
visit of Mt Elgon; established where significant
impacts from landslides have
already occurred.
 Identified places where change in
landuse from forest reserve to
maize farms was creating and
accelerating soil erosion.
 provided local leaders with
technical explanations of why
these adverse outcomes were
being experienced and the
implications of additional stress in
the particular areas.
Selecting pilot project location
Manafua and Sabwani catchments
Site criteria
Actions criteria
• Suffer from biodiversity , climate change risks and
disasters—landslides, flooding, drought, reduced
water availability, increased temperature
• Heavy reliance on natural resources base for the
wellbeing of the local communities
• Promote equity between and within Uganda and
Kenya
• Cost below USD 375,000
• Populations are at risk
• Good institutional /community support ,
participatory and demonstrate sustainability
• Can build on Ecosystem Based Adaptation in Mt
Elgon and MERECEP project work or vice versa
• Clearly focus on climate adaptation
• Ecosystem-based and improve social resilience,
e.g. alternative livelihoods and ecological
resilience, e.g. use of energy conservation
reducing reliance on wood fuel
• Can produce measurable results in 2 years and
longer term
• Opportunities for continous improvement,
lesson learning, enhance adaptation, up-scaling
and/or influence policy
• Incorporate gender aspects
• Utilise best practices e.g. collaborative
management, shamba system, conservation
agriculture; soil and water conservation
measures; and agro-forestry.
Next steps
 Repeat process for Resilience Framework to the selected
catchments of Sabwani (Kenya) and Manafu (Uganda) to
identify specific characteristics
 Repeat administration of site and action criteria to
narrow down to well defined hotspots
 Stakeholder meeting to agree on priority intervention
hotspots
 Development of feasibility and project profile for
selected hotspots
 Formulation of project implementation plan
 Iteration of same process for other areas of concern by
district teams…. Which is why you are here!