Country Director Elena Tischenko's remarks on mainstreaming climate change adaptation in local planning

Excellency Leng Vy Director General, Directorate General of Local Administration, Ministry of Interior.
Ms. Kristina Kuhnel, Head of Development Cooperation, Embassy of   Sweden.  
Excellencies, development partners, honourable guests, ladies and gentlemen,

I would like to warmly welcome and thank you all for participation in this National Workshop on Mainstreaming Community Based Adaptation into Sub-national Level Planning. I was told we have today here representatives from 19 provinces which is more than half of the country. This is a good evidence of growing commitment and involvement of communities and authorities into building Cambodia resilient to climate change. We hope this workshop will provide “an interactive space” among project stakeholders to facilitate learning and maximize synergies among different initiatives in supporting climate change adaptation and linking local level adaptation initiatives into sub-national and national level planning.

Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

As I shared with some of you during the launch of CCBAP on 25th January 2011, climate change is a priority that can no longer be ignored, nor denied. According to the Human Impact Report on Climate Change produced in 2009, globally two billion people are already suffering because of climate change. More than one third of the world’s population, 2.8 billion people, live in the areas that are prone to more than one of the negative effects of climate change, be it floods, storms, droughts or sea level rise. It is predicted that by the year 2030, the lives of 660 million people will be seriously affected either by natural disasters caused by climate change or through gradual environmental degradation.

Cambodia’s vulnerability stems from its characteristics as agrarian country that is laying in a low elevation of the Mekong River Basin and that is yet to develop the adequate copying capacities in the communities and resilience of the infrastructure. In recent years, natural phenomena, such as the delayed rains in 2010, underscored the extreme dependence of rural livelihoods on the regularity of seasons, controlled by the climate, and the availability of natural resources like water. The late onset of the rainy season resulted in record-low water levels in the Tonle Sap and Mekong Rivers, and stirred public dialogue about implications of climate change. Many poor farmers who already found themselves in a tenuous position, having lost their crops in the previous years to the devastating Typhoon Ketsana, have been further affected by the recent flash and Mekong floods in 2011 which resulted in at least 250 deaths, inundation of 430,000 hectares of paddy, including 280,000 ha completely destroyed, and bringing the number of affected families and people to 350,000 families and 1.5 million people respectively. 

Climate change impacts vary across different parts of the country but it is widely recognized that the effects of climate change are felt first and hardest by the poorest and most vulnerable people, those who are least able to adapt and respond to such changes. According to the Second National Communication to the UNFCCC, 43% of the communes are considered vulnerable to extreme climate events (drought and floods) . Cambodia is proportionally the most vulnerable country to floods in the Asia Pacific region, with 12.2 per cent of Cambodian population exposed . As agriculture relies heavily on rainfall (considering that less than 10 per cent of agricultural land is irrigated during the dry season), any change in the rainfall pattern could and does impact productivity as well as food and water supplies.

According to the report on Understanding Public Perceptions of Climate Change in Cambodia carried out earlier this year, three-quarters of people across Cambodia responded that climate change is a priority issue.  They have felt the impacts of climate change in terms of health issues, decline in agricultural production, occurrence of drought, increasing temperatures, and water shortages. 74 per cent of farmers say their work has been badly affected by changes in weather.

Against the backdrop of this compelling evidence, adaptation approaches to climate change need to become part of the programmes and projects within the cohesive national effort aimed at transforming Cambodia into a climate resilient society. This year marked the first year of implementation of the five-year Country Programme of UNDP and the Royal Government of Cambodia where climate change is one of the key priorities.

Since 2006, UNDP has been closely collaborating with the Government and development partners including SIDA, EU, DANIDA, GEF, FAO, AusAID and UNEP to support community-based projects aiming to improve livelihoods of thousands of local communities and strengthen institutional and policy coordination at various levels. Taken together and through pursuing synergies, these programmes have a significant potential to make Cambodia more resilient to climate change and protect country’s development gains. Among these programmes are Cambodia Community-Based Adaptation Programme, Cambodia Climate Change Alliance, Building Climate Resilience in Agriculture and Water Management; Sustainable Forest Management Programme; Cambodia UN-REDD National Programme and others. We also need to view and promote these efforts in the context of a very important state reform on decentralization and deconcentration that H.E. Leng Vy spoke in his opening remarks.

Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

The Royal Government of Cambodia has recognized climate change as a development priority by proposing the development of Cambodia Climate Change Strategic Plan as one of the key actions in the National Strategic Development Plan (NSDP) 2009-2013. In addition, 9 sectors have recognized climate change as priority in their sectoral plans and policies. For example, the National Programme for Sub-National Democratic Development (NP-NSDD) for 2010-2019 recognizes climate change as one of the cross cutting themes that requires mainstreaming of climate change through local actions.   

Much of Cambodia’s response to climate change will depend on the effective management of land, agriculture, fisheries, forestry, and water resources. These sectors will need to become part of an integrated approach through sub-national planning and development. The National Human Development Report 2011 on Building Resilience: The Future for Rural Livelihood in the Face of Climate Change, which was launched in September 2011 jointly by the Ministry of Environment, Ministry of Economy and Finance and UNDP, indicates that the sub-national level offers greatest potential for area-based planning and action, bringing different sectors together through the integrated development approach in line with the local needs and priorities. The NHDR calls for crosssectoral and multi-layered responses to climate change that could empower communities and enable the country to become more resilient in the face of climate change. There is a significant role to be played by sub-national administrations in taking to scale the effective practices of climate change adaptation and resilient local development.

We gathered here today to discuss experiences and good practices of community-based adaptation developed in the Cambodia Community Based Adaptation Programme (CCBAP) which is implemented through the Small Grants mechanism that has been operational in Cambodia since 2005 and supported 86 local non-governmental and community-based organizations in their efforts to protect local environment in a way that benefits the livelihoods of the poor.

Community Based Adaptation to climate change involves multi-stakeholder action, innovation and social learning at the community level. Usually, it involves small-scale, low-cost and simple technologies that are made possible through the resources that local communities have. Community based adaptation  is centered on building local capacities and begins with identification of adaptation practices by the affected communities themselves, and then leveraging local decisions and support from authorities.  

During this two-day workshop, we will hear from our NGO/CBO partners about their impressive work in building community based adaptation, strengthening social safety nets and improving food security for local communities. We hope this will serve as inspiration and practical guidance to many more efforts that could follow at sub-national and national levels in building effective climate change response and country resilience.

I would like to take this opportunity to express our appreciation to all the members of the National Steering Committee of the Small Grant Programme in Cambodia for their continued commitment and support.

I would like to extend deep gratitude and appreciation to the Embassy of Sweden to Cambodia, especially Ms. Kristina Kuhnel, Head of Development Cooperation, for the support to the Small Grant Programme. With the support from Swedish Government and with AusAID assistance, 45 projects have been recently awarded resources to support Community Based Adaptation actions. These projects cover more than 200 villages, 96 communes, 45 districts and 18 provinces of Cambodia.

We would like to express special thanks to the Embassy of Sweden for deciding to provide additional support in the amount of about 1 million USD to sustain and enlarge the momentum of community-based adaptation and helping to apply in practice the principles of approaches of good sub-national governance and IP3 implementation.

I would like also to thank all the NGO/CBO partners and Sub-national authorities who have been actively supporting these projects  and look forward to seeing this partnership grow even stronger in the future through the implementation of the Cambodia Community Based Adaptation Programme. 

Thank you.