They have innocent sounding names – Kenneth, Idai, Eloise. But they leave death, misery and destruction in their wake. Cyclone Idai came first, wreaking havoc in the coastal swamps and river delta of central Mozambique – one of the countries in the world most susceptible to the dramatic effects of climatic change.
At least 600 people were killed. Houses, school, clinics and crops were destroyed. Barely six weeks later Cyclone Kenneth barrelled across the Indian Ocean and stormed ashore -- the strongest cyclone ever to make landfall in Africa.
At least two million people were made homeless by the back-to-back storms. The death toll could have been higher, but Cyclone Kenneth largely ran aground in thinly populated areas between Mozambique and Tanzania.
In response, the Ministry of Land and Environment (MITA) and Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) have launched the “Building Local Climate Resilience” programme in Mozambique (MERCIM) in a strategic partnership with the European Union, the Catalan Agency for Development Cooperation (ACCD), with technical assistance by the UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF). MERCIM launched a participatory, bottom-up approach to the challenges through the creation of consultative councils so as to ensure essential buy-in at the grassroots level. First local communities are engaged as to what they consider to be their greatest needs, proposals are forwarded to local and then provincial administrations.
“The participation of the community is extremely important because it is this community that suffers the effects of these climatic changes. To engage the community in the process of decision-making and prioritization of the several situations that occur, in my opinion, is extremely important,” says Alcides Celestino, Land and Environment Services Director in the Zambezia Province.
LoCal is supported by the European Union though the Global Climate Change Alliance Plus (GCCA+) initiative.