Zambia: Climate resilience

People in Need and the World-Wide Fund for Nature are cooperating on the project "The Enhancing Livelihood Opportunities through Ecosystem Protection in the Barotse Floodplain of Western Zambia". This project aims to bolster the conservation efforts and enhance the livelihoods of communities in the Barotse Floodplain.  
The Barotse Floodplain is an ecosystem crucial for the whole region. However, the population has recently faced challenges, such as unsustainable land management practices, inadequate food consumption, and poverty. These challenges put the ecological integrity and livelihoods of local communities—which depend on the floodplain—at risk.
Therefore, People in Need and the World-Wide Fund for Nature strive to conserve biodiversity, protect endangered species, and mitigate poverty via a holistic and sustainable approach focused on cooperation with communities and using nature-friendly methods.
The project is helping the region move toward clean energy, fight deforestation, support sustainable forestry management, and foster cooperation with local communities to strengthen ecosystem management.
The project is funded by Jersey Overseas Aid.

As part of pilot projects in 2018 - 2019, People in Need introduced the potential of biofuel technology as a source of sustainable household energy and highly efficient organic fertilizer to the people of Zambia's Western Province. An alternative form of energy production in the form of biogas plants has proven to be an effective way to contribute to climate resilience and food security for smallholder farmers. The current follow-up project aims to continue raising awareness of biogas while helping to build an additional 130 biogas plants for residents in the Mongu and Kalabo districts of Zambia's Western Province.

 

Biogas plants use animal excrements and food scraps to produce gas that can serve households for cooking or lighting. The gas can replace the wood and charcoal that most people in the region rely on. In the absence of alternative energy sources, widespread deforestation and degradation of soil quality is taking place. The incidence of respiratory and eye diseases caused by charcoal use has been increasing, as well as reinforced gender inequalities. In fact, women and girls are disproportionately involved in fuelwood procurement, making it difficult for them to access education or income-generating activities. At the same time, biogas plants can produce high quality organic fertilizers. These help

increasing agricultural production and improve food security for vulnerable households affected by food insecurity related to the impact of both drought and the Covid-19 pandemic

We are launching a project called mobile health or mHealth in the Western Province of Zambia. It aims to improve the health of pregnant women and newborn babies and their mothers through easy access to quality health information and proper care. This is usually hindered by many barriers related to low literacy rates in remote rural areas.  However, as has been demonstrated in Angola, Cambodia and Nepal, this barrier can be overcome through the provision of mobile voice messages in the mother's language, which are regularly delivered to mothers during the first 6 months of their babies' lives. These inform registered users about breastfeeding, infant nutrition, vaccinations, recognition and treatment of childhood diseases, good hygiene practices, as well as maternal health. In the Western Province of Zambia (specifically Mongu and Nalolo), the project is now in the testing phase.
 

This project is a follow-up to a previous PIN project from 2018, which took place in Western Province in the Kalabo region and presented the technology of biogas plants to local people. Ten model biogas plants were built under the project.
The main objective of phase two is to help local communities transition to sustainable energy sources. Today, only 3.2 % of Zambia’s rural population has reliable access to electricity. Wood or charcoal is used as a primary energy source, which results in deforestation of the region, breathing problems, and is a drain on productivity (due to time spent collecting these raw materials).
Thanks to large-scale cattle breeding in the region, biogas plants are a natural fit for the local economic context. Farmers working predominantly on sandy soil need quality fertilizers, and biogas plants produce biogas for cooking and highly-effective organic fertilizer for field application.
Various information campaigns are being organized under the project focusing on the technology of biogas plants. These campaigns are carried out through media, as well as via trainings on  biogas plant construction and operation, and organic fertilizer demonstrations. The project also helps local communities create markets for biogas products. Future initiatives could include providing access to financial services to help small farmers.

It is mostly women (70%) who are in charge of cooking and meal preparation in Zambia. Gathering up kindling wood takes them around 8 hours per week. Regular inhaling of combustion gases which are formed during burning wood or charcoal is consequently harmful to the health of women as well as their families. In addition, this kind of thermal treatment adds to deforestation and the soil becomes arid and is of no longer use. Therefore People in Need has now been working with farmers in the poorest districts of the Western Province where the organization helps build efficient and affordable biogas plants. These biogas plants function as a certain “mechanical stomach“: They are fed with organic material (human or animal faeces). If there is no access to oxygen, the organic material decomposes and consequently biogas is produced (methane and carbon dioxide) as well as natural germ-free manure. Biogas can be used either for cooking or as organic manure which can contribute to better and higher value agricultural production. The overall positive environment-friendly impact will be also seen in reduced wood gathering and decreased deforestation.

The aim of this project is to lower the malnutrition rates in children under five, especially in households that are headed by women.  In order to provide an increased intake of nutrition for these most vulnerable groups we are working together with the communities in several neighbouring regions using an integrated multi-sector approach. We provide people with seeds of resilient plants with high nutritional value, for example legumes such as peanuts, beans or bambara nuts and vegetables such as amaranth, onion, carrot or melon. The villagers can grow these not just for their own consumption, but with the assistance of trained local businessmen and women they can sell their products at local markets. This approach helps improve health and nutrition of families and assists in their financial self-sufficiency.

Besides agriculture, the project also provides training for the communities, health centres, and volunteers in relation to usage of drinking water and correct hygiene habits that help stop the spread of disease and lower the risk or greater malnutrition. Access to health services has major impact on the nutrition of children and mothers. Our team in Zambia will support the option for local women to give birth in health centres (currently more than half of all women give birth at home) and train local health volunteers in community-based treatment of malnourished children.