Building climate resilience in eastern Zambia
From Christian Aid Zambia
In the last few decades, Zambia has experienced a series of extreme weather events. From droughts and flash floods to sweltering temperatures and dry spells. The impact on communities has been immense.
Training communities
In the face of so much uncertainty, building climate resilience in Zambia has become a major priority for the Zambia Joint Country Programme (JCP) — a venture of three organisations — Christian Aid Zambia, Norwegian Church Aid and DanChurch Aid. Together, we are seeking to empower communities in Zambia to achieve economic, social and environmental stability.
As part of this response, the JCP delivered training in emergency preparedness and disaster management to three communities in the Eastern Province Districts of Nyimba, Petauke and Lundazi.
Developing resilient infrastructure
Mr. Spear Mwanza, from the Kasansamula community in Nyimba District, took part in the training.
He spoke about the importance of building resilient infrastructure:
‘The first toilet we had fell down because it did not go deep enough in its foundation. But the new one has been reinforced following the building standards taught to us by Caritas Chipata [through JCP].
‘The lessons also included aspects of proper sanitation by urging us to include water points at each pit latrine so that people always wash their hands after using the toilet.’
The Kasansamula community is on the banks of the Luangwa River and is generally difficult to access by road, especially in the rainy season. Despite living next to a river, there are challenges accessing clean water with the closest clean water facility in the area being a local school borehole.
Meeting local need
In a different community of Mwanjawanthu, in the Petauke District of Eastern Zambia, the local people decided that the best support they could receive was a dam across their stream.
‘As women, we suffer a lot especially during the dry season because we are the ones who must go searching for water for our households. The boreholes in this area are far apart so we suffer a lot accessing water for ourselves and our animals.’
Agnes Sakala, a community member
The dam will be able to impound and store water for more than 250 households in the surrounding villages around the Mwanjawanthu area. Currently being built on the Nkhanya stream, it will store over 14, 000 cubic metres of water when it is completed.
Mr. Malitino Banda, the Village Headman for the Mwanjawanthu area, described the challenges of not having sufficient water in the dry season and how the dam will help them:
‘We suffer a lot especially when it comes to rearing animals such as cattle and goats due to shortage of water. This dam will also help us improve our gardening and start fish farming.
‘We feel lucky that this dam will be built here because there are a lot of other communities that are also in need of the same facility but we have been chosen.’
Mobilising people
Following on from the training, a community in the Mwase area of Lundazi District constructed a 100-metre long embankment to create water harvesting basins to store water.
Equipped with the knowledge of how to build resilient infrastructure, they developed a local solution in the form of a simple embankment. Serving the dual purpose of storing water and acting as a bridge for children when going to school.
The work continues
Great progress has been made in addressing issues of emergency preparedness in Zambia, but there is more work to be done.
Many more communities face an uncertain future without the essential training and support they need to build climate resilience. For this to happen strong advocacy is needed to ensure the Zambian government continue to allocate resources to disaster risk reduction (DRR).
