Learning From Climate Action and Valuing Practitioners’ Views in Cambodia

The  Cambodia Climate Change Alliance (CCCA) operated a grant facility funding climate change adaptation and mitigation projects in the field. One of the funding windows provided support to demonstration projects implemented by Government agencies in line with their Climate Change Action Plans (CCAP), while innovative projects from both civil society and the private sector were funded through an additional window. A total of USD 4.5 million have been allocated to 22 projects between 2015 and 2019. Projects covered a wide range of activities and sectors. Some project examples are as follows:

• Increasing Resilience to Climate Change for Farmers in Rural Cambodia through Climate-Smart Agriculture Practices;
• Initiating basic climate change mitigation and adaptation practices in the education sector through the establishment of climate-smart Eco-Schools (ES);
• Strengthening Country Capacity to Deal Effectively with Climate-Sensitive Vector-Borne and Water-Related Diseases and Reducing the Health Impacts;
• Mainstreaming of Gender Impacts of Climate Change and Disasters in the Education Sector;
• Reducing climate change impacts on rural communities by building capacities on water management for CC adaptation and strengthening the Provincial Department of Water Resource and Meteorology (PDoWRaM) in Oddar Meanchey province.

PlanAdapt, in collaboration with UNDP, supported the process of lesson learning from the CCCA project portfolio, as well as the collection of individual beneficiary stories, for communication purposes and advocacy with decision-makers. Lessons were identified and documented to reflect success factors but also common constraints and limiting factors faced by the projects. Furthermore, PlanAdapt has supported CCCA in identifying specific innovative approaches or technologies with the potential for replication and document them through case studies and beneficiary stories. The work included several field visits to the concerned projects. The findings have been presented in the final report ‘Moving Forward Cambodia’s Response to Climate Change – Learning from the CCCA Grant Projects to Improve Climate Change Programming in Cambodia‘ and four case studies:

• Engaging Communities Effectively in Community-Based Disaster Risk Management;
• Boosting the Adoption of Low-Carbon Technologies;
• Putting the Pieces Together – the Advantages of Integrated Rural Development Programming;
• Process Matters – Soft Components of Programming Strongly Affect the Likelihood of Sustained Change and Replication.

This project followed up on a previous involvement of PlanAdapt in Cambodia that supported the identification and prioritisation of climate change adaptation measures and their integration into portfolio activities of 14 line ministries.