One of the key requirements to improve livelihoods resilience to climate change in the long-run is to improve the management and use of locally available water resources for agriculture. The project “Reducing the Vulnerability of Cambodian Rural Livelihoods through Enhanced Sub-National Climate Change Planning and Execution of Priority Actions”, also known as the SRL project, is doing just that, targeting especially land-poor, landless and/or women-headed households.

The project is being implemented by the Department of Climate Change, General Secretariat of the National Council for Sustainable Development (GSSD), in coordination with the National Committee for Sub-National Democratic Development Secretariat (NCDDS). Over the next few years, until December 2019, the project will cover 89 communes and 10 districts of Siem Reap and Kampong Thom Provinces, working to improve sub-national administration systems affecting investments in rural livelihoods through climate sensitive planning, budgeting and execution.

SRL’s aims to achieve three main outcomes:

- Strengthened climate sensitive planning, budgeting and execution at sub-national level by providing support to mainstreaming of climate change adaptation (CCA) into existing plans and investment programs of ten districts and their constituent communes and by developing technical capacity for climate sensitive agriculture extension and for planning and implementation of climate resilient infrastructure investments.

- Improved resilience of livelihoods of the most vulnerable against erratic rainfall, floods and droughts through investments in small scale water management infrastructure which will help farmers to better cope with the unpredictability of rainfall during the wet season, making agricultural production more resilient. Groups of poor and vulnerable women will receive support to develop livelihood activities requiring only limited amounts of land and will receive complementary support for social capital building activities.

- Enhanced enabling environment at sub-national level to attract and manage a greater volume of climate change adaptation finance for building resilience of rural livelihoods by improving sub-national government performance assessment systems for CCA, using Performance Based Climate Resilience Grant (to provide co-financing for infrastructure investments), and strengthening capacity of sub-national administrations to monitor, evaluate and plan improvements in capacity and performance for CCA.

SRL’s inception workshop, held in Siem Reap on 27 March 2017, officially launched the project, bringing together 80 relevant national and sub-national stakeholders from government institutions, development partners, non-governmental organizations, and local authorities.