The programme created space for learning within climate change adaptation and is categorized as a success due to cooperation and positive impact evaluation. Nonetheless, reading between the lines of the programme reveals some dilemmas.

Reliance on external funding

The BRACC programme has been brought to an end two years early as a result of reductions in UK funding to overseas development assistance – which will inevitably lessen the potential impact in resilience building and adaptation. The team is trying to glean the major lessons that have been learned from two years of programming to inform future resilience and adaptation progammes in Malawi.

Integrated Approach

BRACC integrated various interventions targeting different levels: policy making and evidence, social protection, financial systems, inclusive markets, extension services, improved ecosystems, and disaster risk reduction. BRACC demonstrated a holistic approach by integrating these various aspects of resilience building. This had two benefits. Firstly, it targets the multifaceted layers of vulnerability, surpassing the little effect of single interventions. Secondly, it enables efficiency by gathering several small projects implemented by different parties in one programme, which was also appealing to operate more effectively. With donors embracing the efficiency aspect of gathering many projects under one consortium, this holistic approach has the potential to strengthen effective climate change adaptation.

Though discussion amongst adaptation practitioners supported this holistic approach, the programme´s innovative approach was hindered by previous development conceptualizations and coordination friction between various development actors. The programme was built on previous projects with their own methods, interfering with the more transformative approach of BRACC. In addition, BRACC´s ambitions to work with diverse development actors and policy layers were particularly challenging. Even development partners with a common goal operate differently, restraining efficient collaboration. Moreover, policy integration, though deemed especially important, added even more friction to the holistic approach. Policy makers were included in the programme due to the lack of governmental funding and the risk of a parallel development structure. However, there was an incoherence between the policy makers´ and the programme´s motivations and willingness to learn or transform. Policy makers within Malawi tend to be preoccupied with reelection. In addition, the policies of Malawi interfere with the programme´s effort to build resilience, demanding some structures to bypass governmental structures and institutional blockages.

Poverty reduction and/vs Resilience

The programme was implicitly built on the notion that poverty reduction would generate resilience. But does it always? Poverty is a considerable determinant of vulnerability in the Malawi context. Malawi is an agricultural country, making development in the past decennia typically focused on poverty reduction through the efficiency of agriculture. Efficiency has often been pushed by subsidized use of fertilizers and irrigation without thinking of water resources, neither in the present nor in the future.

These measures often do not consider sustainability, highlighting that current attempts to address poverty will only build resilience if they consider the current and future risk context.

The contradiction between poverty and resilience became very apparent when resilience-building measures negated a prominent source of wealth in Malawi, namely burning of charcoal. Resilience interventions try to address deforestation to reduce flood risk, by promoting landscape rehabilitation. However, deforestation is driven by the demand for fuelwood and charcoal for energy, and government attempts to enforce the forestry strategy have been met with resistance by some local populations due to the lack of income sources. This demonstrates that poverty reduction and resilience are not necessarily parallel lines, as first assumed in the BRACC programme.