National Resilience Strategy (2018-2030).

This National Resilience Strategy of Malawi is a cross-sectoral document aiming at creating a country (i) resilient to economic and environmental shocks; (ii) able to sustain inclusive growth, food and nutrition security; (iii) able to achieve an improved well-being for all Malawians; and (iv) transitioned from recurrent humanitarian appeals to protective and productive investments in complementary interventions targeting food insecure and poor households. It is composed of 4 pillars as follows (1) Resilient Agricultural Growth, including smallholder farming interventions; access to inputs, training, and asset creation; diversification in the production and marketing of crops, forestry, livestock, and fisheries, and reduce dependence on maize; (2) Risk Reduction, Flood Control, and Early Warning and Response Systems; (3) Human Capacity, Livelihoods, and Social Protection; and (4) Catchment Protection and Management to develop and adopt integrated watershed management (IWM) approaches, other land management approaches to restore and expand Malawi's natural resource assets, and manage ecosystems.
To help eliminate hunger and food insecurity, the NRS suggests to (i) reduce negative effects of climate change related disasters (floods, drought/dry spells) through improvement of irrigation systems to increase the agriculture production; (ii) build demand and support systems for nutritious foods, tree-crops and other forest-based products; (iii) promote knowledge, services, and behaviors change activities that promote both nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive practices; (iv) ensure that households with malnourished children benefit from food, and case-specific livelihoods programs during food-security crisis; (v) link nutrition education and services to agriculture to promote diversified production and mainstreaming nutrient dense value chains, including bio-fortified crops, and integrated homestead food production; (vi) improve nutritional status of children under five through breast feeding; (vi) scale up the School Meals Programme; and (vii) improve food safety and hygiene practices, including rural production environments and in value chains, and adopting policies and governance to ensure food safety standards.
In order to make agriculture, fisheries and forestry more productive and sustainable, main actions will (i) support smallholder farmers in crop and livestock diversification to enhance resilience to environmental and economic shocks; (ii) expand the commercial fisheries sub-sector; (iii) develop sustainable irrigation systems to increase crop production; (iv) develop drought resistant seed varieties, climate-smart agriculture approaches (conservation agriculture and agro-forestry); (v) increasing an integrated soil fertility management, complementing mineral with organic fertilizer, crop rotation and other land and water management practices; (vi) promote small and large infrastructure investments to improve water supply to areas with less access, and other areas where water diversion is needed, as well as improved water lifting and storage technologies; (vii) encourage forest and landscape restoration to improve their resilience benefits; and (viii) develop Forest Based Enterprises (FBE) that increase income and community livelihoods by investing in small forest and farm enterprises that restore bio-capacity while meeting domestic needs for food, fuel, and construction materials (including bee keeping, flying ants, fruit production and processing, commercial seedling production, agro-forestry).
Rural poverty shall be reduced through (i) expanding micro and small enterprises and developing the micro-finance sector, digital payments, and mobile money services; (ii) developing Micro-finance Programmes (MFP) to help access to the rural poor; and (iii) reducing reliance on fuel-wood and charcoal, and increasing access to electricity and renewable energy sources in these areas.
To enable more inclusive and efficient agricultural and food systems, the document envisages (i) reduction of women’s workload, such as improved transport, storage, more efficient lifting, and closer access to water points for women at household and farms levels; (ii) market-oriented and private sector driven economic development; (iii) cash transfer to provide the boost highly vulnerable individuals, mainly women, need to join the Village Savings and Lending (VSL) groups to reduce household vulnerability to shocks, increase income generation, and contribute to financial education through management of micro-loans and small investments; (iv) building demand and markets for forest-based enterprises and nutrition-related products; (v) integrated watershed management (IWM) to enhance existing catchment protection assessments and new assessments for community level public awareness building and participation; and (vi) creating value addition from non-timber forest products.
Resilience of livelihoods to disasters will be increased by (i) integration of climate science and natural resource management into planning for other sectors; (ii) expansion of data collection and analysis on risk information to guide development planning, as well as improvement of community access to risk information that affects their lives; (iii) construction of flood control infrastructure and enhanced rainwater harvesting; (iv) installation of river gauges in targeted rivers to monitor water levels, and strengthened communications and protocols to enable timely early warning information dissemination; (v) communication and dissemination of climate and other early warning information to decision makers to increase their capacity to act on this information; (vi) promotion of timely access by shock affected households to essential services (health, nutrition, education, water and sanitation, finances, and primary infrastructure), while also restoring and protecting agricultural and other productive assets such as seeds and tools, and natural resources; (vii) a shock-sensitive system that links a highly coordinated emergency preparedness and early warning systems to reduce vulnerability and exposure, and provide a more effectively respond to predictable cyclical and seasonal shocks, and sudden onset emergencies; (viii) forest restoration as a protective layer against recurrent floods and drought; (ix) payment of ecosystem services through introduction of scholarships for tree planting and maintenance by schools; and (x) access to clean energy in rural areas to contribute to improved resilience from shocks and reduce over-exploitation of natural resources.
As for the Governance, the NRS calls for (i) integration across government technical sectors, coordination through geographic targeting to ensure the same beneficiaries benefit from the range of services promoted; (ii) increased coordination among development partners and NGOs; and (iii) a significant role in the management of multi-sectoral programs, monitoring and evaluation, learning, information systems, and knowledge management.