National level organisational responses to climate change adaptation: a case study of Malawi

Abstract

Climate change is presenting new and, to a large extent, unpredictable challenges to communities in Malawi and effective adaptation requires a well-coordinated organisational framework. This study looked at the success of organisations and the processes they employed for implementing policies that have implications for climate change adaptation in Malawi. This was done by assessing the linkages between different interest groups, as well as potential conflicts of interest between actors from the national to the local level. One of the major findings was that although national organisational and policy interventions seem to be well linked among various actors, community needs are mostly compromised. There is no effective communication between adaptation strategies which are proposed and the livelihood strategies in communities within the country. Local knowledge is given very little attention in formulating, communicating and implementing policies that have implications for adaptation to climate change.  The study highlights inadequate human and financial resources to support climate change adaptation in Malawi. It also exposes the weak links between different stakeholders and the subsequent lack of collective commitment. Results suggest that there is a lot of talk about climate change adaptation strategies but the actual implementation needs improvement.

Keywords:

• climate change
• adaptation
• organisations
• Malawi
• strategies