Statement of the problem
Despite the myriad climate change related activities taking place at both the regional and national levels, a number of challenges and needs remain in regard to understanding the climate change impacts, vulnerabilities, and adaptation options in the sectors such as water, resources, forests, and energy. Additional needs include improving seasonal forecasts, developing approaches and tools for vulnerabilities and adaptation assessment, and devising methodologies and tools for climate change monitoring, detection and attribution. It will also be necessary to strengthen planners and policy makers’ awareness and understanding of climate change impacts and vulnerabilities to facilitate mainstreaming of vulnerability and adaptation considerations into general development and sectoral plans, policies and processes. Addressing these needs at both regional and national levels will be essential for enabling successful regional response to climate change impacts in support of both regional and national climate-resilient development. (climate change adaptation in East Africa
In Tanzania, there are numerous impediments to enhancing climate change policies, limited private sector involvement, inadequate, inadequate integration of climate change issues into existing sector policies, a dearth of linkages between national and sub-national institutions, poor policy implementation and poor collaboration on climate change resilience efforts.
For these reasons, many international organizations and researchers have turned their attention to issues of climate change in Africa. Adaptation efforts have tended to focus on rural areas, where the majority of Africa’s population currently live, and where livelihoods are heavily dependent on the climate-vulnerable agricultural sector. However, recent rural to urban migration and rapid urbanization has drawn increasing attention from governments and policy communities to the need for building adaptive capacity in urban areas. Local governments in cities can play a key role in addressing vulnerabilities through provision of local infrastructure and public services, regulation of land use and delivery of local services that are crucial for effective adaptation to climate change.
While national governments, non-governmental and other sectors are currently developing strategies and policies to address climate change impacts, local governments are not being effectively empowered and utilized to develop the adaptive capacity that will need to respond to climate challenge in future.
Extreme weather events and climate related impacts are already affecting agricultural production in Tanzania and East Africa. Numerous institutional gaps are evident, including the lack of a clearly articulated national climate change policy and region specific climate change strategies.
In addition, most institutions are constrained by inadequate financial budgeting, limited technical expertise and lack of access to climate information and knowledge.
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