Republic of The Gambia (hereafter The Gambia) is a Least Developed Country (LDC) and among the most vulnerable countries to the effects of climate change. Studies indicate that The Gambia is vulnerable to climate change impacts and has a low adaptative capacity. Therefore, increasing the resilience of the country to climate change is a national priority. This can only be achieved effectively through medium- and long-term adaptation planning.

While the Government of The Gambia (GoTG), supported by bilateral and multilateral development partners, has made progress towards the establishment of institutional (Climate Change Secretariat and Climate Change Ministry) and policy (National Climate Change Policy, Low Emissions Climate Resilience Development Strategy and Special Climate Resilient Strategy) frameworks for climate change in the country, proper planning and implementation are still lacking. Challenges include: i) constrained institutional, technical and financial capacities in the country to effectively plan, implement, monitor and maintain adaptation interventions; ii) ineffective climate and climate change strategic documents; and iii) limited, ad-hoc and project-focused adaptation planning and implementation.

A transition from project-based adaptation planning and implementation to an integrated approach to adaptation across all vulnerable economic sectors is urgently required to address climate change adaptation in a more coherent and efficient way. This is what the National Adaptation Planning (NAP) process intends to achieve in The Gambia. The main objective of this project is to reduce vulnerability to climate change impacts in The Gambia by supporting the country’s capacity building efforts in planning and implementing an integrated approach to adaptation at all levels and across sectors. This project will conduct a NAP process that will produce a costed adaptation strategy for the country. In addition, the NAP process will provide the tools, mechanisms, systems and information with which to replicate the NAP process at regular intervals and mainstream adaptation into existing and future policies, programmes and activities across levels and sectors.

The proposed formulation and implementation of a NAP document will facilitate the alignment of existing and planned adaptation actions to the implementation of the national, sub-national and sectoral development plans. The NAP process will enhance the collection of information on needs and priorities for adaptation planning nationally. It will further facilitate the integration and mainstreaming of climate change into policies and strategies at the national, sub-national and sectoral levels, enhance the medium- and long-term adaptation planning and increase resilience.