ALM UNDP

Summary:

One of the largest countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Namibia is also the driest. With an estimated population of about two million people, Namibia has the world’s second lowest population density. Half of Namibians rely on subsistence agriculture, making them highly vulnerable to climate change variability. In the project area, the majority of the community members are subsistence farmers who depend highly on rainfed dry land crops and livestock rearing both for subsistence and income. Climate change poses significant challenges to the poor and marginalized communities of this area. It negatively affects food and water security jeopardizing the livelihoods of these communities. Accordingly, designing and implementing relevant responses to climate change is necessary to reduce vulnerability.

Climate change projections for Namibia predict both an increase in temperatures and a decline in precipitation. By 2050, temperatures are projected to increase by 2-4˚C and rainfall is expected to decline by 10-20%, in comparison to 1961-1990 baseline. Water scarcity is expected by 2020. The country will experience severe floods and droughts that will change growing seasons. Increased soil degradation will impair the traditional crops and grazing practices, thereby reducing the potential for food and water security. Reduced natural resource availability will likely lead to the adoption of environmentally damaging practices, which will contribute to deforestation and desertification.

This CBA project’s goal is the pilot implementation of six coping strategies to climate change vulnerability that can be duplicated on a large scale in other similar communities. It has been prepared by a small NGO, Creative Entrepreneurs Solutions (CES), through a participatory process involving different sectors of the communities.

The project seeks to achieve its goal through the following activities:
• Building awareness of climate change, coping strategies and nutrition needs whilst supporting the social mobilization of community members into Self Help Groups
• Ensuring water security with flood and rain water harvesting for agricultural irrigation, livestock and fish farming
• Ensuring food security by using sustainable agricultural practices and methods that protect against land degradation such as irrigated vegetable production (supporting HIV/AIDS affected families) using harvested flood and rain water
• Improved dry land crop production through the introduction of improved soil conservation methods such as composting (rehabilitation of degraded soil by using natural fertilizer), bio char, crop rotation and conservation agriculture such as CONTILL
• Increased usage of improved drought and flood resistant crops such as pearl millet varieties (the national staple food referred to locally as ‘mahangu’), rice, mushroom and sweet stem sorghum for human nutrition and fodder security for livestock, chicken and fish to boost availability of protein nutrition and incomes
• Energy efficient stoves and agroforestry in combination with general reforestation techniques

From the above activities, the proposed project contributes to the development of adaptive strategies in response to climate change. They help sustain food security and income generation with no adverse impacts to the land or other natural resources.