Building community resilience to the impacts of climate change

Phnom Penh – To reduce the costs of negative impacts of climate change, Cambodia needs to focus on community-based adaptation and linking adaptation initiatives with local governance planning, said United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Country Director Elena Tischenko.

The UNDP country director was speaking at the national workshop on mainstreaming community based adaptation into sub-national level planning, organised by UNDP, with support from Swedish International Development Agency (Sida) and AusAID, and attended by nearly 200 participants including representatives of local administration from 19 provinces.

The event was held on 22-23 December to raise awareness of climate change issues and its impacts on community livelihood and development investment. A number of local non-governmental organisations and community-based organisations shared their experiences and lessons learned about local adaptation practices to better link knowledge to adaptation actions. Participants also had the opportunity to comment on a draft proposal to mainstream climate change adaption measures into Commune Development Plans/Commune Investment Plans.

“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,” Ms. Tischenko said.

“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,” she added.

H.E. Leng Vy, Director General for the Local Administration, Ministry of Interior, acknowledged that mainstreaming climate change adaptation into the sub-national planning needs to be given more focus.

“Previously, we took into account mainly the impacts on infrastructure and capacity building. But the new thinking is that linking participation to practice as we are doing now is equally important to sustainable development,” he said.

Cambodia is deemed vulnerable to climate change because of its low adaptive capacity. The poor who are living in the rural areas are most vulnerable to climate change impacts as witnessed during the 2011 floods. The natural disaster highlighted the extreme dependence of rural livelihoods on the regularity of seasons, controlled by the climate, and the availability of natural resources like water. The floods caused at least 250 deaths and inundated approximately 430,000 hectares of rice paddies, of which 280,000 hectares were completely destroyed. Some 350,000 families, or 1.5 million people, were adversely affected by the floods which were considered the worst in a decade. 

UNDP has been working closely with the Royal Government of Cambodia and development partners to support community-based projects aiming to improve livelihoods of villagers and strengthen institutional and policy coordination at various levels. Of such projects is the  Cambodia Community-Based Adaptation Programme, a two-year programme funded by Sida, with co-funding from AusAID, and implemented by UNDP. To date the project has provided funding to 45 projects, which are implemented in 96 communes, 49 districts and 18 provinces, to demonstrate climate-resilient techniques at both community and household levels in the priority geographical areas.

In her remarks, Ms. Tischenko added that 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.”