A Survey of Public Participation in Planning for Climate Change Adaptation Among Selected Areas of Zambia‘s Lusaka Province

Abstract

The study aimed at investigating the stakeholders that would be relevant in planning for climate change adaptation. Uncertainties in terms of who could in planning prompted a snap shot survey research whose contextual relevance was premised on the Ahmadabad fourth conference on Environmental Education, to address climate change as a major global issue. It was also contextualized in the frameworks of article six of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC, 1992) and the Zambia National Adaptation Programme on Action (NAPA). Using a hermeneutic survey design, a sample of 165 households was captured using cluster and simple random sampling techniques. Respondents were interviewed using a semi-structured interview schedule. Overall, the study revealed that planning for climate change would require a diversity of views from multiple stakeholders such as educationists, traditional leaders, the government, affected people, government statutory bodies, clergies, NGOs, among others. Since most of the residents thought adaptation planning to be mainly (35 per cent to 90 per cent), the government’s responsibility, it was recommended that further researches be conducted in order to find out how partnership for climate change adaptation planning and learning could be strengthened. The research findings could be useful to environmental educationists and practitioners, researchers, the government and others.