SNV interventions in Climate Smart Agriculture, Livestock and Energy sectors PAYING OFF

By DOMINIC NALI

“Unlocking sustainability through sharing learnings for a climate smart future” is the theme coined for the SNV conference that took place in Lusaka at Sarovar Premiere Hotel.

The conference was meant for SNV, Government ministries, the private sector, farmers, processors and energy experts among others to share lessons learnt from the INCREASE project that has been implemented in the country in past 4years.

The INCREASE project has been implemented in Lusaka, Eastern, Central, Southern, North-Western and copperbelt provinces with over 25,000 farmers benefiting directly and indirectly.

The project is aimed at creating resilience among the small scale farmers in Agriculture, Livestock and the energy sectors among other.

Speaking during the official opening of the SNV conference at Sarovar Hotel today, Makabaniso Ndhlovu an SNV Consultant on Climate Smart Agriculture and Energy said Climate change is no longer a story but a reality that we have to live with.

Mr. Makabaniso said the objectives of the conference are to share knowledge, lessons learnt, strengthen industry networking for impact and actionable insights.

“There a son why key stakeholders have been invited for the conference is to share knowledge gotten over the years during which the INCREASE project was implemented”, said Mr. Makabaniso.

The SNV called for concerted efforts from different organizations, stakeholders and the government in order to win the fight against the effects of climate change and ensure production and productivity.

He said that no one individual can deal with anything associated with climate change alone because it needs concerted efforts from different players comingfrom different background of expertise and different learnings or experiences from the past.

“Winning against climate change requires a lot of collaborations and partnering from both the private and public sectors just to ensure farmers realize high productionand productivity”, noted Makabaniso.

Climate change greatly impacts ecosystems with land-use changes. Therefore, the high degree of interdependence requires critical consideration of the interlink ages between climate and biodiversity in policy-making.

Without synergies, it would be difficult most climate change interest institutions and organisations to attain the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on climate change.

Therefore, addressing climate change and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals SDGs are inextricably intertwined regardless.

Therefore maximizing synergies between climate change interest organisations in line with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on climate change has never been more critical than it is today hence the need for integrated approach that seeks to strengthen synergies between organizations.

Kondwani Mumba a Data Quality and Learning Consultant said SNV has achieved a lot under the INCREASE project.

He said that considering the INCREASE project target of 11,000 farmers in the five provinces, the project exceeded the target to about 12,000 and 25,000 farmers through other activities.

Mr. Mumba said farmers under the SNV INCREASE Project have progressively and consistently outperformed other farmers in terms of yields, incomes and adoption of climate smart practices in all the five provinces where the project has its present.

He said that to a large extent, the achievements have been attributed to the efficacy of strategies such as demonstration fields, exposure visits and peer to peer strategies.

“We have in the course of implementing the INCREASE project discovered that the peer to peer learning strategy spoke to the minds of transformation within the communities where farmers are working”, observed Kondwani Mumba.

He said SNV is not only end at training farmers, but farmers also passing on theknowledge gained from the project to their families, neighbours, friends and relatives.

“It is such kind of spillover effects that is important for building climate resilient communities in Zambia and scale up innovations in terms of climate smart agriculture that are very important in the face of the changing climatic situation that the globe is grappling with today”, said Mr. Mumba.

He intimated that SNV is aware that there is still a long way to go before income, food and nutrition security goals could be attained in the country especially in the face of the changing climate.

And Chasefu District Agricultural Coordinator Alphonse Kahalawe said the conference was very interactive and educative because it brought out a lot of issues that could contribute to the development of the agriculture sector in the country.

He said that the Ministry of Agriculture is the mother of all Agricultural related activities’ hence working with organisations like SNV makes it easy to achieve government’s objectives of improving income, food and nutrition security at individual, community and national levels.

“Basically, these synergies are supplementing the efforts of the Ministry of Agriculture so that they meet the objectives since the objective of the stakeholders tend to buy into the Ministry’s”, Mr. Kahalawe said.

He said synergies with SNV have given an opportunity to farmers to implement innovations the Ministry has on its table for the improvement of farmer’s lives, food and nutrition security.

Strengthening the synergies between effective climate change adaptation and biodiversity actions provides many opportunities to increase integration and coherence, reduce duplication, and make the best use of limited resources for planning, implementation, monitoring, and finance purposes.

‍NAIS

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