OneWorld

Location Lesotho

Client Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in partnership with the Lesotho Ministry of Forestry and Land Reclamation

Timeline September 2009—March 2010

Description Among the world’s least developed countries (LDCs), Lesotho ranks as one of the most vulnerable to climatic and other hazards and shocks. Agriculture is the most important contributor to the national economy and provides livelihoods to a high proportion of the population. Agro-ecologically, the country is characterised by a low proportion of arable land and high elevations, steep slopes and a thin topsoil layer over much of the area, resulting in high vulnerability to soil erosion and degradation.

Extreme weather conditions occur periodically (drought, frost, heavy rainfall). The lowland is the most populated and intensively cultivated zone, whereas the highlands are less suited to growing crops and support a livestock industry providing valuable exports (wool, mohair) as well as meat, milk and hides. Most farmers (90 percent) are smallholder (subsistence and small-scale), with some medium-scale commercial farms. Less than one percent of arable land is irrigated. Climate change—manifested as general warming, changes in precipitation patterns, and increasing climate variability and occurrence of extremes—would place increasing pressure on the socially and economically vulnerable peoples of Lesotho, who depend on the land and vagaries of the weather for their livelihoods.

The government of Lesotho has completed the Lesotho National Report on Climate Change (its First National Communication to the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2000, and the National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) on climate change under the UNFCCC in 2007. The NAPA process identified eleven adaptation options, most of which address land and water management and agricultural production, following the finding that chronic food insecurity is likely to be further deepened through climate change.

The challenge now is to build on this work and develop implementable and effective adaptation programmes for the agricultural and forestry sector, accompanied by strengthened financial and institutional capacity to support such actions.

This project formed part of a larger technical cooperation programme (TCP) between the government and the FAO, which “promotes an integrated and community-based approach in addressing climate change risks through strengthening of technical and institutional capacity of key stakeholders at national and local levels and evaluating and prioritising best practices focusing on selected areas of crops, livestock, forest-based livelihood system to reduce the vulnerability of farming and rural communities to climate change-related risks”.

OneWorld’s role OneWorld Sustainable Investments was tasked with the first of three outputs within the broader TCP, namely the assessment of climate change-related impacts and vulnerabilities on crop,  livestock and forest-based livelihood systems in selected watershed/catchments, and a baseline study on climate-related vulnerabilities and adaptation practices. The project was implemented in two southern lowland districts (Mohale’s Hoek, Mafeteng) and a mountain district (Thaba Tseka) that were identified as being the most vulnerable by Lesotho’s National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA, 2007).