England, MI, Dougill, AJ orcid.org/0000-0002-3422-8228, Stringer, LC orcid.org/0000-0003-0017-1654 et al. (6 more authors) (2018) Climate change adaptation and cross-sectoral policy coherence in southern Africa. Regional Environmental Change, 18 (7). pp. 2059-2071. ISSN 1436-3798
Abstract
To be effective, climate change adaptation needs to be mainstreamed across multiple sectors and greater policy coherence is essential. Using the cases of Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia, this paper investigates the extent of coherence in national policies across the water and agriculture sectors and to climate change adaptation goals outlined in national development plans. A two-pronged qualitative approach is applied using Qualitative Document Analysis of relevant policies and plans, combined with expert interviews from non-government actors in each country. Findings show that sector policies have differing degrees of coherence on climate change adaptation, currently being strongest in Zambia and weakest in Tanzania. We also identify that sectoral policies remain more coherent in addressing immediate-term disaster management issues of floods and droughts rather than longer-term strategies for climate adaptation. Coherence between sector and climate policies and strategies is strongest when the latter has been more recently developed. However to date, this has largely been achieved by repackaging of existing sectoral policy statements into climate policies drafted by external consultants to meet international reporting needs and not by the establishment of new connections between national sectoral planning processes. For more effective mainstreaming of climate change adaptation, governments need to actively embrace longer-term cross-sectoral planning through cross-Ministerial structures, such as initiated through Zambia’s Interim Climate Change Secretariat, to foster greater policy coherence and integrated adaptation planning.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2018, The Author(s). This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. |
Keywords: | Mainstreaming; Water; Agriculture; Malawi; Zambia; Tanzania |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Sustainability Research Institute (SRI) (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number Department for International Development No External Ref |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 12 Apr 2018 11:41 |
Last Modified: | 25 Jun 2023 21:18 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer Verlag |
Identification Number: | 10.1007/s10113-018-1283-0 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:129530 |
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