Climate Risks and Development Projects Assessment Report for a Community-Level Project in Guidan Ider, Tahoua, Niger

Bread for all is the Swiss Protestant Churches' development agency. It supports 400 development projects and programmes in 57 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. It also participates in development policy activities aimed at achieving more equitable international socioeconomic structures, protecting "Creation" and building peace. i I. Executive Summary Climate change affects poor people in particular, because of their weak adaptive capacities. Development projects of all kinds can strengthen or weaken those capacities. At the same time, they can influence greenhouse gas emissions, the main cause of climate change, positively or negatively. It is therefore important to evaluate the impacts of development projects on adaptive capacities and climate change mitigation, in order to find measures to improve projects in the face of climate change. This Assessment Report presents the results and the lessons learned from the climate change analysis of a community-level rural development project in the area of Tahoua, Niger. The analysis was conducted with the Climate Proofing Tool from HEKS and Bread for All. The analysed project is run by the local NGO GADR-RA, and financed by HEKS. The evaluation shows that the beneficiaries of both projects suffer from a lack of rainfall, rising temperatures, floods, parasite attacks and bush fires. Rising temperatures can be associated with climate change with certainty, whereas the lack of rainfall and floods might be related. It is clear that climate change aggravates the threats from natural hazards. Since people's livelihoods heavily rely on subsistence agriculture and natural resources, particularly scarce water resources, they are highly vulnerable to climatic risks. The analysed project mainly focuses on strengthening natural resources, and has a beneficial impact on adaptive capacities. In fact, various activities directly try to reduce the impacts of climatic hazards. Still, much more should and could be done. This report suggests that natural resources be strengthened further, particularly regarding ongoing climatic changes, that the incomes be diversified, and that housing , health services and early warning systems be improved. The analysed activities probably also have a beneficial impact on greenhouse gas emissions, mainly through soil recovery and tree plantations. Larger mitigation actions could benefit from carbon credits or other mitigation payments, which could be take advantage of to finance for measures with high synergies in adaptation. It has to be noted, however, that carbon markets are virtually inexistent in Niger today. This second test application of the Climate Proofing Tool allowed some …