Strengthening Community Led Resilience to Threats of Climate Change in Africa. Case Study Uganda

Abstract: Impacts of extreme events caused by climate change, particularly heavy rains that lead tofloods and the prolonged recurrent droughts are now a regular occurance across the entireAfrican continent, hindering the region’s ability to be able to meet the MDGs by 2015. Africais already described as the most vulnerable and least prepared continent to these impacts andwith the lowest adaptive capacity levels attributed to limited financial, technological andinstitutional resources available.Rural communities in Africa are the most affected and vulnerable because they are often thepoorest, rely heavily on rain-fed, small scale subsistence farming, are uninformed and live inunplanned settlements. The external enabling environment is ineffective too with lack of orpoor and unplanned infrastructure, limited or no industrial activities, no regular disaster riskassessments and above all, no working policy on climate change adaptation.Teso Region in Uganda is described as one of the most vulnerable regions in the countryfaced with recurrent prolonged droughts and incidents of erratic and heavy rains, the mostrecent of which were the floods of 2007. Communities describe the current state of events as‘reactionary’ in nature instead of a more proactive environment.What they need to be more resilient is timely and right information, education and awarenessprogrammes, diversifcation of rural activities, introduction of appropriate technologies forenergy and water efficiency as well as women involvement in the planning process are themain issues raised by communities necessary for their empowerement. However, these cannotbe implemented without the external enabling sectors most notably the early warning systems,regular risk assessments, rural development and CDM, financial incentives and the activemedia. The use of the Participatory RRA approach to development is highly recommended.