By Dean Chisambo
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has launched the Green Climate Fund (GCF) Ecosystems- based Adaptation for Resilient Watershed and Communities in Malawi (EbaM) project which seeks to build resilience and respond to the impact of climate change.
FAO country representative, Zhijun Chen said Malawi is highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and the GCF funded project seeks to address these impacts.
“The project will build resilient communities, able to adapt and restore local ecosystems and watersheds and improve local livelihoods in a sustainable way”, said Chen.
He further said the project will also strength institution capacity in the country towards addressing the impact of climate change to reach the objective of food security, livelihoods improvement and climate change adaptation and mitigation.
In his remarks Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Finance, Ted Sitimawina, said this country has gone through a lot of natural disasters caused by climate change, citing recent floods, droughts and cyclones, hence a need for resilient building.
He explained, “Natural disasters have destroyed the country’s economy especially in the past two years when cyclone Freddy hit. There was a lot of destruction, damage to infrastructure, crops and agriculture land.”
The EbAM project will run for six years and will be implemented in eleven districts namely: Neno, Nkhatabay, Rumphi, Dedza, Zomba, Mangochi Mwanza, Thyolo, Chitipa, Karonga and Nsanje.
