Climate change adaptation, mitigation (CCA-M), and climate related disaster risk reduction (DRR) have more synergies than discords that needs harnessing. Municipalities are considered best equipped arms of governments globally to harmonize and mainstream these two parallel interventions into development practice but equally requires, harmonized legal, policy and other enablers to effectively achieve this goal. Using summative content analysis and the exclusive use of secondary data, this paper reviews the extent to which the Zambian government in the global south has tried to undertake three major changes. a). to harmonise newly formulated legislation, policy frameworks and strategies post year 2015, that relate to CCA-M, DRR and decentralised municipality Integrated Development Plans (IDPs). b). to help streamline CCA-M and climate related DRR conceptually, and in practice. c). further promote the mainstreaming of these two harmonized concepts and practices into municipality development planning through the revised legal, policy frameworks and enablers. There is little activity: to harmonise legislation at national level and policy frameworks that relate to CCA-M, DRR and municipality IDP; to encourage conceptual harmonization of CCA-M and DRR at practice level; to further encourage the mainstreaming of these two concepts in unison or as individual themes into municipality IDPs. There is however good political will and international donor support for the mainstreaming agenda in general for CCA-M as singular themes into the public sectors but not so much about harmonisation with DRR. There is need to scale up the legal, policy framework and enabler revision in Zambia and global south, in line with the global agenda 2030 and other related international / regional developmental frameworks.
Dr. Bowen Banda is an environmental scientist based in Zambia, Southern Africa. He has a doctorate degree in environmental science with disaster risk science combination. His research interest are in the interface between conservation, sustainable development, climate change science, disaster risk science and urban & regional planning. He currently works in climate justice with the World Wide Fund for Nature in Zambia as Climate Adaptation Specialist and Advisor. Prior to this, he worked in a quasi government organization in conservation and livelihoods security, and then with United Nations World Food Programme and other internationally donor, supported projects by OCHA, UNHCR, World Bank, USAID, EU, Sida, Norad, Grand Challenges Canada, DFID, WVI Australia Support Office. He noticed that it was easier to work at provincial, national and international level but difficult at district level. Hence his new research interests in climate change and disaster risk reduction at local government level.
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