ALM UNDP

Summary:

Rainfall decline, mean annual temperature and climatic hazard frequency are expected as climate change unfolds in the Comoro archipelago. As a result of these impacts, climate change will negatively impact water supply and water quality, both of which are already affected by inadequate management of water resources and deforestation. Comorian communities, autonomous islands’ governments, and the national government presently lack the technical capacity, management capacity, physical resources and financial resources to overcome or cope with the anticipated changes in climatic conditions.

In direct response to these current and projected needs, this UNDP-supported and GEF-LDCF funded project, Adapting Water Resource Management in the Comoros to Expected Climate Change, will reduce climate change risks in the water sector. Through investments in water supply and storage technologies, coupled with a work programme on institutional development and capacity development, this project will increase resilience for the island communities against the expected climate change impacts on water resources.

The goal of the project is to help vulnerable communities adapt to climate change. The project objective is to reduce the risk of climate change on lives and livelihoods from impacts on water resources in Comoros.

The project will work on the three islands comprising Comoros.

1. Assessment of the long term availability of water resources given climate change projections to avoid maladaptive measures and ensure safe technology deployment. This will build on the rapid assessment carried out in the PPG phase to

• a) assess how climate change is likely to affect these water resources to complement the NAPA,
• b) pin point the most vulnerable communities, and
• c) identify specific water interventions to help vulnerable communities.

The assessment will be complementary to the work being undertaken under the Second National Communications, begun in early 2008. However, while the National Communications undertakes broad brush approach to assessing the country’s vulnerability, similar to the NAPA process itself, this project will focus on the project site and on capacity building. This latter point is particularly important as institutionalizing the ability to monitor climate change assures greater sustainability by creating the ability to continue to understand on-going and continuing changes to the climate. Synergies between this project, the SIDS IWRM project and WIOLAB - an on-going International Waters project in the Western Indian Ocean led by UNEP -will be identified during the preparatory phase.

2. Support institutional development to integrate climate change into water resource management. Capacity development (knowledge development, training, equipment) will be needed among the following sets of stakeholders:

• institutions in charge of water management: the newly created Department of Energy and Water, the Department of Environment, the Department of Agriculture, and its correspondents at islands level, the Meteorology Department; the National Institute for Research on Agriculture, Fishery and Environment, the University of Comoros, the National Commission on sustainable Development;
• community structures such as Union of Water Committees of Anjouan and Union of Water Committee of Moheli that are in charge of water supply management at community level
• the national water supply company.

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