Food, water, rain, risk: the uphill struggle to adapt

This report shows the results of an evaluation of the project “Climate Change in a Secure Environment/ Mudansa Klimatika iha Ambiente Seguru (MAKA’AS)”, set out to facilitate community-based adaptation to climate change amongst 33 villages in Timor-Leste’s Liquica district. This included promoting of climate-resilient livelihoods (e.g. through crop diversification and conservation farming), enhancing the access to safe drinking water and improved sanitation, reducing the risk from erosion and landslides, and enabling broader village plans for climate change adaptation.

This report is arranged in three sections: Section A (Background) reviews the background of the project and of this evaluation. Section B (Findings) include the key findings, relating to relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, impact and sustainability. Section C (Learning) presents the lessons that can be drawn from the project experience fur future implementation.

This evaluation finds that the project led to better yields and reduced crop losses amongst farmer group members. It also generated significant improvements in water and sanitation, and raised climate change awareness amongst villagers and government partners. Yet, the project’s broader effect towards greater climate resilience and adaptive planning was constrained by multiple factors - these include i) insufficient overall funding for national-level policies and plans in adaptation, ii) the fact that the focus on farmer and water management groups did not provide a village-wide basis for adaptive planning, and iii) the observation that weather patterns have been conducive over the past two years, and did thus not provide any sense of urgency for adaptation. A slightly amended focus and a longer breath, this report argues, are therefore required for even more effective community-based adaptation.