Institutional Barriers to Climate Change Adaptation in Burkina Faso: How could We Go around Them?

Abstract

Despite the existence of a National Adaptation Plan to climate change (NAP) in Burkina Faso, operationalizing adaptation still face a number of challenges. The current study focused on identifying institutional barriers to the strategic objectives of climate change adaptation (CCA) using a literature review and semi-structured interviews conducted with key stakeholders / resource persons involved in the implementation of the NAP. The results revealed a weak collaboration between the NAP steering institution and the ministerial departments covered by the NAP. This situation, first, hampers the implementation of adaptation actions and secondly, the monitoring reporting and verification of adaptation initiatives. Further, the analysis revealed that lack of financial resources poses constraints to many actions that were to be taken by the steering institution and therefore creates poor ownership of the NAP by the main stakeholders that should be actively involved in the NAP process. To cope with the various constraints, it is necessary to have strong political support in many aspects. For instance, it was judged that institutionalizing the role of climate change (CC) focal point within the ministries and embedding NAP monitoring and evaluation (M&E) objectives and indicators with existing functional M&E systems in the sectorial ministries will ease CCA actions integration in operational plans, their implementation and documentation. Moreover, it is relevant to have a continuous capacity building plan to keep stakeholders updated on climate change issues as this will support them in their mandate of mainstreaming CC into ministerial operational plans and lead to optimal CCA implementation and monitoring.