Mainstreaming climate change resilience into development planning in Kenya
International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED)
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Abstract: Climate change impacts are likely to undermine planned development outcomes in a number of countries, and pose significant challenges for the resilience of many livelihoods and ecosystems. Development planning responses play an important role in addressing these challenges, and integrating climate change resilience into these responses is fast emerging as a major policy agenda item. Between November 2011 and October 2012, government staff from diverse backgrounds came together at a course facilitated by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) at the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD) to share and reflect on their countries’ experience and needs around integrating climate change into development planning. Based on these discussions, they identified three building blocks for successful mainstreaming: an enabling environment, policies and planning, and projects and programmes. The enabling environment for mainstreaming includes the political will to make climate policy and the information services that guide it. The second block — planning and policy — includes policy frameworks together with institutional arrangements and finance mechanisms. The projects and programmes block takes mainstreaming to the project level. The three blocks are non-hierarchical and non-sequential; in some cases, strategic planning led by technocrats may come before high-level political will, or a country may be pursuing important development goals mainly through individual projects. This country report reflects experience in Kenya against the building blocks framework.