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policy reform
Lessons Learned 2009 - Promoting climate resilient water management and agricultural practices in rural Cambodia
Submitted by andrea on Mon, 2010-04-26 05:12
Summary:
The proposed project will increase adaptive capacity of key stakeholders in water resource management to address the impacts of climate change. The project has a particular focus on water resource needs of the agriculture sector. The project will identify, prioritize and drive needed policy reforms necessary to overcome constraints to the design, planning and implementation of technically and economically feasible measures on adaptation to climate change in the agricultural sector. Interventions supported by this project will focus on the needs of the poor agricultural communities that are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. The proposed project, which is based on the NAPA priority interventions, will build the capacity of selected local communities to adapt to changes in water and land resources resulting from climate change.
Adaptation Experience:
The proposed project is based on priority interventions outlined in the NAPA and focuses on climate change-resilient agricultural water management. The impacts of climate change on Cambodian agriculture, particularly on rice cultivation, are predicted to adversely affect food production and – security in rural areas. Various climate models depict different trends in annual precipitation, with some predicting substantial increases in total precipitation and some predicting a rise, followed by a fall.
Results and Learning:
The key stakeholders are people involved in water resource management in Cambodia and two contrasting agricultural districts: 1. Chi Kreng District in Siem Reap, which consists of 12 communes, 154 villages. The Chi Kreng District consists of 22,994 families with 127,032 people (64,807 women) of which 21,832 families are farmers. 2. The Bavel District in Battambang Province, which consists of 6 communes with a total of 18,842 families (95,847 people, of which 48,731 are women). The project objective is to enhance adaptive capacity, at the national, institutional and local levels, to climate change–induced changes in water resources availability for the agricultural sector in Cambodia. As a contribution to this objective, the project goal is to enhance food security and food production in the face of changed climate conditions. Part of this process will include improved capacity to conserve and manage fish stocks as an element of integrated rural livelihood development through integrated packages of small rural livelihood interventions. Complementing this capacity development process, which will apply at the national level, the project will also build capacity of selected local communities to adapt to changes in water and land resources resulting from climate change to promote sustainable agricultural development.
Sustainability:
The project has strong government support at both central and local levels. The current Medium Term Strategy for Agriculture and Water (2006-2010)has identified five priority programs to implement: (i) Institutional capacity building and management support program for agriculture and water sector, (ii) Food security support program, (iii) Agriculture and agri-business (value-chain) support program, (iv) Water resource, irrigation and land management program, and (v) agricultural and water resources research, education and extension program. The project will contribute to the current programme 1 and 4 of the Medium Term Strategy for Agriculture and Water in amending the proposed activities of the programmes so as to incorporate measures to address the impacts of climate change and climate variaiblity. This will effectively mainstream climate change adaptation into national polcies and programmes for agriculture and water resources, thus ensuring sustainability. The Medium Term Strategy for Agriculture and Water recognises the impacts of climate change and variability in agriculture and water resource management and suggests to design measures to mitigate adverse impacts and gain benefit from positive ones (paragraph 40). Under programme 4, the Medium Term Strategy for Agriculture and Water suggests that country take appropriate steps to respond to climate change and variability.
Replication:
Outcome 3 of the project is entirely concerned with promoting in-country learning, up-scaling and replication. The project will establish conditions to facilitate learning of climate change adaptation measures, for example, by developing learning networks in association with several national NGOs, developing and delivering training modules for the new FWUC Service Centre, and awareness raising campaigns through various forms of media. The project also incorporates international replication measures through Outcome 3, which links to the GEF-supported Adaptation Learning Mechanism (ALM).
