Lessons learned for improving policies affecting forest conservation and climate change adaptation in Uganda ’ s water tower communities

• Biodiversity conservation and livelihood policies are poorly integrated, undermining the implementation of both. • National strategies for CC adaptation and mitigation follow traditional ministerial silos, risking the replication of problems associated with isolated portfolio approaches. • Successful ecosystem-based adaptation on Mount Elgon requires greater cooperation between ministries, decentralized (local) governments, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and local communities to: Integrate conservation (CC mitigation) and development (CC adaptation) objectives and activities. Build coherence in spatial planning to achieve biodiversity conservation, watershed protection, disaster mitigation and agricultural intensification across landscapes. • Decentralized governments have the potential to serve as coordinating bodies for jurisdictional EbA strategies and lead development of subnational CC initiatives.

• Biodiversity conservation and livelihood policies are poorly integrated, undermining the implementation of both.
• National strategies for CC adaptation and mitigation follow traditional ministerial silos, risking the replication of problems associated with isolated portfolio approaches.• Successful ecosystem-based adaptation on Mount Elgon requires greater cooperation between ministries, decentralized (local) governments, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and local communities to: -Integrate conservation (CC mitigation) and development (CC adaptation) objectives and activities.
-Build coherence in spatial planning to achieve biodiversity conservation, watershed protection, disaster mitigation, and agricultural intensification across landscapes.
• Decentralized governments have the potential to serve as coordinating bodies for jurisdictional EbA strategies and lead development of subnational CC initiatives.
How will climate change (CC) affect the forest-based ecosystem services that East Africa's mountain communities and regional watersheds rely upon?How will Kenya's highland agricultural communities meet the challenges of increasing population pressure and extreme climate events?How effective will national policies and forest governance practices be in protecting fragile mountain forest biodiversity in the face of long-term climate change and increasing demand for forest products and agricultural land?What solutions could improve stakeholder support for forest conservation policies, enable the pursuit of prosperous livelihood strategies and reduce vulnerability to climate-associated disasters?

Transdisciplinary knowledge creation through active research/policy dialogues
This project reflects a transdisciplinary research approach, engaging extensively with national, subnational and village stakeholders at the project's inception, mid point and ending in order to tailor the project design, ground-truth analyses, and co-produce interpretations of lessons learned.This helps to make the findings more relevant to, and improve uptake by local stakeholders and subnational practitioners (both governmental and NGO).The project aims to inform the current CC adaptation policy gaps and to promote crosssectoral engagement.
1 IFRI is presently coordinated by the University of Michigan.

Impacts of exclusion and capacity building in communities on reversing deforestation
The research team analyzed trends in forest structure, biodiversity and management approaches using IFRI data collection protocols over the period 1997-2013.In Kenya, the forests were heavily impacted by industrial deforestation, small farm encroachment and livestock grazing in the 1980s and 1990s.This research indicates that the forest area under strict protection status (Chorlem) has been successful in stabilizing forest conditions.However, this success cannot be taken for granted given the limited investments in local livelihoods and continued evidence of some elicit logging activities.In contrast, due to what appears to be limited investment in community capacity building or sensitization for monitoring and enforcement in the participatory forest management area (Kimothon), deforestation, encroachment and livestock browsing continue to worsen forest cover and biodiversity trends.This is of particular importance given that climate change-induced temperature increase on Mount Elgon will have severe impacts on the resilience of certain endemic or characteristic flora and fauna.

Uncertainty over future crop production due to change climate
Climate analogue analysis indicates that the effects of climate change around Mount Elgon are highly variable, impacted by local socioeconomic variables and microclimates defined by slope, aspect and tree cover.Overall, Mount Elgon is likely to become warmer, but it is uncertain how total rainfall will change.Although CC models suggest that cash-crop production for maize and coffee could improve under future conditions, these do not account for the negative impacts of increased frequencies of climate extreme events (such as hailstorms, wind gusts or floods) and pests and diseases.
There is a possibility that delays in seasonal rainfall and stream flow may shorten the months available for agricultural production.A strategy of crop diversification, use of climatetolerant crops and encouragement of on-farm tree resource development is likely to benefit smallholder farmers.

Policy constraints for effective CC adaptation and mitigation
The CC policy context Improving the resilience of local populations and the forests that support them requires integrated CC adaptation strategies.In analyzing national climate-and livelihoodrelevant policies, as well as projects specific to Mount Elgon, AdaptEA scientists have found that the capacity of forest-dependent communities to adapt to climate change is constrained by overlapping, even contradictory, sectoral policies.The same is true for the district, regional and national institutional capacities to improve forest/treecover conservation and biodiversity.This further impacts on hydrology, soil conservation and energy self-sufficiency at the watershed level (and indeed Lake Victoria basin-wide), as well as national carbon sequestration objectives.
While there are some efforts to coordinate the setting of objectives at national levels (i.e. through Vision 2030, the National Development Plan, the Climate Change Policy), the implementation of policies by individual ministries and associated agriculture-or forestry-related extension and enforcement agents tends to take place in isolation from those enacted by other ministries.This approach undermines their own and each other's achievement of national targets with regard to a range of SDGs (including poverty reduction, forest cover, etc.) and UNFCCC commitments.As a result of this lack of consideration for each other's mandates, forest conservation and rural development/poverty alleviation activities are seen as inevitably opposed.The perception of subnational stakeholders that forest policies, but not conservation policies, impact on conservation outcomes is difficult to explain.Agricultural and forest policies are recognized as impacting on both livelihood and conservation outcomes to a certain degree, while the Environment Policy is seen as particularly relevant to CC outcomes.
As CC adaptation and mitigation strategies are built upon these existing ministerial portfolios, the legacy of isolated portfolio approaches to project design and implementation is being replicated with regard to all CC initiatives.It must also be noted that while the new Kenyan Constitution (2010) requires that gender issues be mainstreamed across the government, a significant number of national policies still lack any acknowledgment of how individual ministries are expected to interact with women or fail to demonstrate how their activities specifically impact women versus men.
Similarly, the very poor perception of the constitutional mandate for governmental decentralization and the local governments contributing to either developmental or conservation outcomes suggests a gap in terms of capacitybuilding, empowerment and mandate that needs to be addressed.
Kenya's Climate Change Secretariat within the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources has engaged in an extensive identification and prioritization of national CC flagship projects and is mandating that all relevant departments within the government establish CC coordination units.As indicated, however, programs of particular relevance to the forestry sector and CC adaptation around Mount Elgon appear to reflect a distinct tendency toward sector-based approaches with relatively limited evidence of the integration of rural development (read "CC adaptation") needs with those of natural resource protection (read "CC mitigation").

Recommendations for improving climate change policy coherence
Sustained attention to intersectoral policy coherence paired with government decentralization could prove beneficial in meeting the challenges of CC adaptation and mitigation.On the Kenyan side of Mount Elgon, this also has significant implications for a range of economic sectors due to the hydrological services provided by this "water tower" to a large watershed in western Kenya.
The relatively nascent process of governmental decentralization initiated though the promulgation of Kenya's new Constitution (2010) gives hope for the greater integration of ministerial mandates and services and enhanced livelihood and environmental outcomes across subnational jurisdictional landscapes.However, while empowered by statute, it is noted that continued agenda setting and control over budgetary allocations by central ministries undermines county assembly planning units.
In addition to greater integration among ministerial agencies, it is noted that the need for additional resources and staff to fulfill these mandates at more local levels, as called for under decentralization, has not been fully addressed.Therefore, the ability of local governments to engage with communities in setting priorities addressing local concerns may be limited.As a final conclusion, this analysis underscores that whether forest or land resources are managed by communities or government agencies, they are unlikely to succeed without strong institutional support in terms of sensitization, extension, conflict mediation, monitoring and enforcement.
Further hope is derived from the emergence of financial support and knowledge transfers being provided to counties, municipalities and larger subnational jurisdictions for CC adaptation planning through international government networks.
For further information about this project and project publications, please contact the project leader at (russell.ajm@gmail.com).CIFOR advances human well-being, environmental conservation and equity by conducting research to help shape policies and practices that affect forests in developing countries.CIFOR is a member of the CGIAR Consortium.Our headquarters are in Bogor, Indonesia, with offices in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

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Figure 2. Projected climate-induced shift in hydrology from unimodal to bimodal seasonal cycle.

Figure 3 .
Figure 3. Practitioner perceptions of Kenyan policies on livelihoods and biodiversity.

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Figure 4. Inform(ation)al linkages for rural development and conservation across institutional boundaries in Kenya.

Project essentials EbA approaches to enhance resilience of Mount Elgon's forest ecosystem services
Using an ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA) approach, this project promotes the resilience of smallholder agriculture production by integrating a review of CC adaptation policy with local-level analyses of stakeholder vulnerability, assessments of forest cover and biodiversity, and the modeling of climate impacts on forest and tree-based ecosystem services.AdaptEA:

Study design: Impacts of different forest governance approaches on local forests and livelihoods
contributions of forests to livelihood strategies.The research sites in each country include one that permits community access and use of forest resources and one that prohibits community access.This selection provides scientists with natural experiments that compare the long-term impacts of: (i) participatory versus exclusionary forest policy approaches on forests, livelihoods and CC vulnerability outcomes within each country; (ii) participatory and exclusionary national forest policy approaches on forests, livelihoods and CC vulnerability outcomes between countries; and (iii) the national CC policy contexts for climate change adaptation and mitigation between countries.