- Environmental management and Climate Change
This project was implemented through the Ministry of Environment and Tourism (MET) and the Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Forestry (MAWF). The project started in March 2015 and was in its final year of implementation in 2019. SCORE Project aimed to strengthen the adaptive capacity, reduce the vulnerability to droughts and floods, and increase the resilience of productive systems and livelihoods in the Northern part of Namibia. The project targeted 4,000 households as direct beneficiaries, with 80% of the households being women or orphan‐led, and children from 75 schools. The project objective was to reduce the vulnerability of rural communities in responding to drought and floods in Northern Namibia, with a special focus on women and children. The objective was achieved through three inter-related outcomes: (1) Small-holder adaptive capacity for climate-resilient agricultural practices strengthened; (2) Reduce vulnerability to droughts and floods; and (3) Mainstreaming climate change into national agricultural strategy/sectoral policy, including budgetary adjustments for replication and scaling up. The project was initially implemented in seven northern regions of Namibia namely: Oshana, Omusati, Ohangwena, Oshikoto, Kunene, Kavango West and Kavango East but at the recommendation of the mid-term evaluation, the two Kavango regions were excluded. In addition to inherent climate variability, these regions are regularly, and increasingly threatened by extreme weather events such as floods and droughts, which disrupt livelihoods, affect agriculture productivity and cause damage to infrastructure.
According to the evaluation results, The Agriculture sector in Namibia realized that increased actions and investments into climate-smart agricultural development are needed to assist Namibia’s small holder farmers to build more sustainable agricultural futures. In March 2018, the PMU commissioned an appropriate assessment of project impacts to support knowledge, learning and adaptive management. Based on the findings and recommendations of the mid-term evaluation, the SCORE project designed a participatory M&E plan in order to assess project impacts, support knowledge management, learning and adaptive management. The monitoring system tracked three levels of benefits as well as the climate baseline to attribute the benefits identified to the project.