CIF is hosting a workshop with stakeholders from the eight riparian countries of the Zambezi River Basin to develop a shared vision for climate resilience and mitigation to guide a Nature, People and Climate (NPC) investment plan. Five of these countries (Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania and Zambia) are partnering on this innovative NPC regional program.
The Zambezi River rises out of a marshy bog in northwestern Zambia, grows wide and powerful as it flows into Angola and back into Zambia, snakes down to the spectacular Victoria Falls – a UNESCO World Heritage Site – then flows through two major dams and reservoirs before crossing through Mozambique and into the delta before flowing out to the Indian Ocean.
Over its 2,700 km journey, the Zambezi draws water from eight countries and provides, drinking water, livelihoods, support to agriculture and tourism, and power generation to tens of millions of people. It is vital to the riparian countries’ economies and their natural ecosystems, but it is also severely affected by climate change and existing land management practices.
Water levels at the Kariba Dam, which supplies power to both Zambia and Zimbabwe, have dropped so much that the plant could barely generate electricity. Yet torrential rains and storms have also swelled the Zambezi and caused destructive floods that threaten the basin’s people and the ecosystems they rely on for goods and services like clean water, food, medicine, fodder and non-timber forest products.
Nature-based solutions (NbS) have a key role to play in building climate resilience across the region, while reducing its carbon footprint. This is why CIF is working with the Government of Zambia, as the country designated to lead the development of the program, along with the Zambezi Watercourse Commission (ZAMCOM) to develop an investment plan under the Nature, People and Climate program.
“The program aims to promote, protect and restore natural environments through landscape approaches by investing in agriculture, food production, forest and land use, and coastal system management,” Evans Kaseke, Zamcom’s program manager for the Zambezi Strategic Plan, explained at a regional workshop last October.
Building on a successful scoping forum in November, CIF is hosting a three-day stakeholder engagement workshop this week with ZAMCOM and the African Development Bank (AfDB). Representatives from Angola, Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe will gather in Livingstone, Zambia, to learn together, develop a shared vision, and explore opportunities for transformative change that will feed into the development of a Zambezi regional Investment Plan.
The workshop is designed to deepen participants’ understanding of NbS; invite them to consider how to achieve just transitions and enhance development impacts; promote gender and social inclusion; and raise their ambition, striving for a joint vision to tackle the underlying drivers of climate vulnerability.
“This is a key milestone in creating the Zambezi Region Investment Plan, and we want to encourage participants to envision a future that truly excites and inspires them all,” said Michael Ward, Senior Evaluation Officer with CIF’s Evaluation & Learning (E&L) team, lead organizer of the workshop. “We will then use a process called ‘backcasting’ to identify the actions needed to achieve that future, so we have a robust theory of change to guide our investments.”
The overall objective of the Zambezi program is to preserve the environmental integrity of the larger Zambezi Basin; maintain valuable ecosystem services that support regional food security and drive economic development; and build local communities’ resilience to climate change. Key targets include creating 25,000 hectares of community irrigation schemes; supporting and training 20,000 farmers in conservation agriculture; and halting the degradation of 30,000 hectares of wetlands.
Along with advancing Zambezi program plan, this week’s workshop is expected to familiarize the AfDB and country partners on the use of backcasting in planning processes, and how to better integrate climate and development impacts into future projects.