Improving climate change resilience in Madagascar

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Spread over five years, the US$61 million project benefits from approximately US$5 million in funding from the Global Environment Facility’s Least Developed Country Fund. National financing comes from the Ministries of Agriculture, Livestock, Transport and Meteorology, and Environment, Ecology, Sea and Forests. UNICEF contributed a US$2.3 million grant.

The project aims to lift the barriers identified in the target areas, such as human pressure on natural resources, lack of financial and technical resources, limited access to credit, limited water and sanitation infrastructure, lack of agro-meteorological and climatic information, lack of awareness among decision-makers as well as lack of coordination between the most affected sectors.

In order to meet these challenges, project actions will focus on the achievement of the following three outcomes:

• The establishment of the institutional, structural and technical bases necessary for the dissemination and appropriation of adaptation measures and technologies.
• The collection and production of reliable climate and weather information to enable informed decision-making with respect  to climatic and meteorological conditions.
• The transfer of adaptation measures, options and technologies required by vulnerable communities in the selected areas.

“Overcoming disasters such as cyclones, floods or drought must not be an option but a necessity if we are to confront extreme poverty and enable the people of Madagascar to live with dignity. The response proposed by the UNDP at the request of the Government, and in partnership with the communities and the regional and local authorities, was the formulation of the project that we are launching today,” said Marie Dimond, deputy UNDP Resident Representative in Madagascar during the launching ceremony.

The launch brought together UNICEF, representatives of the Ministry of Environment, Ecology and Forestry, as well as other governmental, technical and financial partners.

The project illustrates the UNDP's strategic priorities and goals for 2017, and focuses on building financial and technical efforts on population rehabilitation and resilience in order to break the cycle of vulnerability in Madagascar.