Malawi losing K9 billion to climate change adaptation

The cost of adapting an integrated farming system due to climate change in a Malawian district has been pegged at US$55 million (an estimate of about K9 billion) per annum according to a research conducted by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) in collaboration with the Stockholm Environment Institute and the Global Climate Adaptation Partnership (GCAP).
The study was led y Dr Muyeye Chambwera from IIED who also carried similar case studies in Bangladesh, Nepal, Rwanda and Tanzania.
Malawi is rating second from Nepal which is topping the list with us$ 20 million spent per annum at village level while Bangladesh is estimated to be spending us$10 million, Rwanda us$2.4 million, Tanzania us$280 million at national levels.
The research was aimed at identifying ways to assess the cost of adapting different agricultural systems from the local level, as each will respond in a different way to climate change.
The results revealed vast differences. The cost of adapting an integrated farming system in a village in Nepal could be US$20,000 per year, that of a rain-fed maize system in a district of Malawi’s US$55 million, and protecting the entire livestock sector of Tanzania could cost up to US$280 million — with all costs likely to treble by 2030.
Dr Tom Downing of GCAP says the research shows that adaptation to climate change must be better coordinated, with local and district level input into national processes and plans, and greater alignment of funding earmarked for ‘climate change adaptation’ with budgets for agricultural development.
“To adapt agriculture to a climate change, policymakers need to follow pathways of social, economic and institutional change from the bottom up, rather than rely on isolated top-down interventions,” says Dr Downing in a paper released today.
“Policymakers must align adaptation with existing development plans that aim to address inefficiencies in the sector. It is also critical that adaptation plans can themselves respond to new information and as-yet unknown directions that climate change could take.”
Recognizing that climate change adaptation is costly and that the country is losing a lot of millions towards this cause, Centre for Environmental Policy and Advocacy (CEPA) is of the view that developed country which are responsible for release most of the greenhouse gases need to take this responsibility of making available the financial support.
CEPA is an environment organization with main focus on policy, research, analysis, and advocacy for sustainable environmental and natural resources management and among other things, advocates for micro finance intervention.
“Micro finance is one of the options for adaption. This is important because people in Malawi were totally dependent on farming and now it has come almost impossible to farm because of land degradation. So soft loans will be appropriate in order to empower farmers where they can’t produce enough from the rain-fed farming,” says CEPA communications Officer Chisimphika Mphande