First National Adaptation Plan for Climate Change.

This first National Adaptation Plan (NAP) is a nationwide multi-sectoral document adopting a cross-cutting approach aiming at establishing a coordinated approach to building adaptive capacity and resilience to better manage the challenges the country faces, including changing environmental conditions associated with climate change and global warming. The vision of the NAP is to mainstream adaptation planning within South Sudan’s development planning across different ministries and climate-resilient communities. The NAP consists of three priority pillars (1) building climate-resilient communities; (2) building a climate-resilient economy and development trajectory; and (3) building a climate-resilient environment and ecosystems. These pillars will be operationalized through programmes of action implemented by ministries in the national government as well as subnational governments. Plan NAP prioritizes the following 9 sectors: (1) agriculture, livestock and fisheries; (2) disaster risk reduction; (3) energy; (4) environment, ecosystems, and biodiversity conservation; (5) health; (6) human settlements; (7) tourism and recreation; (8) industry, infrastructure, and transportation; and (9) water resources. For each of these sectors, the NAP includes sectoral programmes to address priority vulnerabilities. These sectoral programs contain priorities and recommended actions to be implemented in 5 years. The Plan provides also several short-term priorities that should be addressed by the Government of South Sudan and its partners over the 2020-2023 time frame. These actions have been identified to address gaps that currently exist concerning human awareness and capacity, and governance and institutional mechanisms. Gender considerations are also highlighted, as there is a tight link between gender inequality and climate-change vulnerability.
The main actions to be implemented in the aforementioned 9 sectors are (1) an agriculture infrastructure that supports climate resilience, climate adaptive land and resource management, supporting climate resilient agriculture practices, and promote climate resilient fisheries management; (2) promotion of climate-smart disaster risk reduction practices, improvement of early warning systems and capabilities, enhancement of community awareness and preparedness for climate shocks and disasters, and strengthening of national level disaster preparedness and response capabilities; (3) incorporate climate resilience into energy sector planning; (4) incorporate climate change adaptation into environment and biodiversity conservation sector policy and planning frameworks, improve sectoral capacity to mainstream and implement climate change adaptation, and implement community led Ecosystem-Based Adaptation measures; (5) improve health sector capacities to address climate change related health threats, establish early warning capabilities for climate change related health threats, improve public awareness of health threats and adaptive capacity to address threats, and establish partnerships to address health threats from climate change; (6) improve urban and regional planning for climate change adaptation, empower local Development Committees to lead local adaptation efforts, and incorporate climate change considerations into WASH system investments; (7) establishing enabling conditions for climate-smart tourism development, and supporting ecotourism development for increasing rural resilience; (8) improve institutional capacities for climate resilient infrastructure planning, and construct new and retrofit existing critical infrastructure for climate resilience; (9) integrate climate change adaptation into water resources management, improve management and climate resilience of the community and household water resources, and strengthen data, information, and knowledge management capabilities to inform climate-smart water resources management.
As for Governance, the NAP envisages an internal transformation to mainstream climate change considerations in government policies, plans, and programmes. It also paves the way for scaled-up international support. The NAP process will be led by the MoEF. Horizontal coordination among national level lines and coordinating ministries will include roles and responsibilities for a range of agencies and a permanent coordination mechanism including a national Climate Change Working Group.