Cartera de Crédito

The previous sections highlighted how international climate policy and scientific processes facilitated the gradual emergence of a climate and development policy architecture through a series of multilateral agreements. Multilateral and bilateral development actors have been particularly central to facilitating the development of climate policies within national and subnational contexts (Agrawala 2004; Janetos et al. 2012), aligning technical and financial support with the key pillars (e.g. capacity building, technology transfer, etc.) of the international climate policy regime.

In the UNFCCC and Paris Agreement, capacity building is emphasised as a major cross- cutting theme of climate-resilient development, since it enables developing countries to achieve the objectives of the conventions and participate in the international policy arena. According to a UNEP report (2016) on adaptation finance, funding for capacity building as a primary means to reduce vulnerability to the adverse impacts of climate change has now become a priority for donors. Total bilateral and multilateral funds for climate change adaptation in developing countries reached US$ 22.5 billion in 2014.

Richards (2001) and Biagini et al. (2014) confirm that attention to adaptation in UNFCCC negotiations has been mainly focused on financing activities with a strong emphasis on capacity building, overlooking the importance of the implementation of adaptation actions. Biagini et al. (2014) note that too much attention has been paid to helping LDCs meet their official obligations under the UNFCCC, such as developing National Communications or National Adaptation Plans of Actions (NAPAs), and only limited support has been provided for developing and implementing actual policies. A coding exercise of 158 adaptation activities from 92 projects funded by the GEF (Table 5) shows that the most frequently funded adaptation actions are those related to capacity building, management and planning, and policy (Biagini et al. 2014).

In the case of Malawi, understanding how climate change is integrated within a development planning and assistance context is particularly challenging (UNDP 2012; Kosamu 2013; GoM 2014). Kosamu (2013) observed that it is hard to distinguish how domestic and international resources are allocated to climate change adaptation, as activities and investments are often classified under a single ‘environmental’ budget code. More generally, Brautigam and Knack (2004) highlighted how, in Malawi, foreign aid has funded more than 40% of government expenditures on average for nearly 20 years. A recent “Report on Public Expenditure Review on Environment and Disaster Risk Management (DRM)” (GoM 2014) documents the public expenditure of the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Management for the 2006–2012 period. The report interestingly remarks how Official Development Assistance3 supported the environment and natural resources sector to the tune of US$ 99 million over the six-year period through direct support of 25 projects. While 86%

3 _{Malawi’s top ten development partners in the 2010-/11 financial year included: the United States Agency for} International Development (USAID), the World Bank, the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the Global Fund, the European Union, the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD), Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the African Development Bank (AfDB), Centres for Diseases Control, and German Development Cooperation (GIZ).

Table 5 – GEF adaptation activities coding

Adaptation typology Number of occurrence in Global Environment Facility project document texts

Capacity building 1310

Management and planning 474

Improve practice and behaviour 409

Policy 268

Information 219

Physical infrastructure 178

Warning and observing systems 170

Green infrastructure 99

Financing 76

Technology 49

of total environment and climate change financing by donors supported government projects, DRM financing to government institutions totalled 60%, with the remainder channelled through non-state actors. In most donor support modalities, the Malawi government directly manages all project activities and implementation, unless project implementation and financing are devolved, such as in the DRM proportion, to non- governmental organisations (NGOs) (GoM 2014).

This snapshot of Malawi’s environment4 _{financial architecture points to the key role} played by central government departments in national climate policy formulation and implementation (Kosamu 2013). By linking climate policy to development planning processes, UNFCCC international agreements assigned national governments a central role in the formulation and implementation of national climate change programmes and projects. In the case of Malawi, this pre-eminent position is reinforced by the substantial financial support provided by development partners to the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Management. As argued by Biagini et al. (2014), this could also point to a tendency towards allocating resources for capacity building (or measures enabling the necessary conditions for an adaptive response) to line ministries (Planning, Finance or Environment) or governmental structures, rather than to policy activities that address the effects of climate change and the resulting vulnerability in communities.

My empirical chapters will further argue the influence of international and national policy mechanisms (NAPAs, NAPs) in shaping the ways adaptation is translated at the central government and community levels. The prominent guidance of international and national policy and planning mechanisms in Malawi (e.g. NAPA) may also clarify why national policy directives tend to be implemented on the ground by NGOs in Kasache through government-supported institutions such as the Local Civil Protection Committees (Kosamu 2013; Chapter 7).

4 _{The report also highlights the difficulty of distinguishing between environment and climate change programmes} and expenditure, as in all ministries and departments, environment and climate change expenditures are coded under

In the attempt to provide assistance on climate change issues, however, the international community has faced a set of challenges common to development aid (section 4.3). In recent years, due to the global financial crisis and cuts in public spending, development aid has increasingly focused on concepts such as ‘value for money’ or ‘aid effectiveness’, continuing to deliver development within a neo-liberal framework (Escobar 1995; Easterly 2002; Sharp et al. 2010). This tendency has been gaining momentum in bilateral and multilateral aid, especially since the Monterrey Consensus (2002) stated that ODA can be effective only when supported by sound policies and good economic governance (Tendler 1997; Dollar and Levin 2006). This is not new. As argued by Escobar (1995), the institutionalisation of development put pressure on government officials in Latin America to transform the style and scope of their activities to meet the requirements of institutions such as the World Bank. In Chapter 5, I will explore how the international quest for good governance and accountability in climate change has shaped policymakers’ narratives in Malawi (e.g. about what constitutes usable knowledge or expertise), influencing the national capacity to formulate policies that are relevant to national or local contexts.

The necessity to focus on the issue of capacity is linked to the UNFCCC’s understanding of climate change as having physical and global features, as discussed in the previous chapter. The belief that skills and capacities can be benchmarked and transferred across regions underpins ideals of spatial homogenisation and North-South hierarchies, and a conception of the world as one interconnected space. The transfer of capacities may introduce specific development rationalities to national contexts, on the assumption that geographically, economically and socially vulnerable countries and communities cannot start implementing certain types of adaptation actions until they have created an enabling environment.

4.3 The controversy of the climate-resilient