Climate change adaptation and cross-sectoral policy coherence in southern Africa.

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.