Globally, meaningful youth participation in planning processes aimed at dealing with climate change impacts has been advocated for sustainability purposes. Article 6 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change requires parties to ensure there is public participation in addressing climate change, its effects, and the development of responses. In the city of Mzuzu, Malawi, local community members have been involved in planning processes at different planning levels but more intensively at the community level. Despite this approach receiving much attention, minimal consideration has been put on which societal groups are to be engaged directly, with youths being excluded to a large extent, even though about 49% of the population in Malawi is aged between 10 and 34 years. This article, therefore, seeks to foreground how current stakeholder engagement strategies in climate change planning marginalise the youth. To do this, this article critically reviews current stakeholder engagement strategies and assesses the extent to which youth are involved in the planning processes in Mzuzu City. It further assesses the factors affecting youth involvement in the planning process and subsequently recommends how stakeholder engagement strategies can be designed and implemented to ensure effective youth engagement in climate change planning processes in the city.

Cities across the world are increasingly at risk of environmental challenges, including extreme weather events. The experiences and therefore the responses to such challenges are highly varied. Through the lens of the southern urban critique, such differences are also evident between cities in the global south and global north since "southern cities are socially, materially, culturally, politically and/or historically different from northern cities". Although this is the case, scholars and practitioners have often ignored such apparent differences when theorising, planning and implementing responses to climate impacts. Oftentimes, such obfuscating of the differences risks maladaptation. This is particularly critical since climate impacts are fundamentally shaped through the processes that create the city. Hence, the differences in the processes across cities vitally entails differences in the impacts experienced and observed, and therefore differences in the responses. This paper aims to demonstrate how adaptation to climate change is governed and implemented in Malawi's cities. Using a postcolonial approach, it firstly discusses the historical and contemporary production of risk to floods in "informal" settlements. Further, it draws attention to how citizen participation is operationalised in policy planning and implementation processes in addressing urban flood risks. Taking a qualitative approach, the research employed document analysis, focus group discussions and interviews with community leaders, officials from both government agencies and departments and non-governmental organisations working on flood risk management in "informal" settlements in Lilongwe city. The findings foreground how responses to climate change and extreme weather events are at once informed and thwarted by historical and contemporary governance processes across spatial scale. This paper, therefore, affirms the need to adopt the southern urban critique approach in theorising, planning and implementing responses to climate change

No abstract

Conservation agriculture (CA) has been highly promoted due to its potential to ensure high crop yields even in the face of changes in climatic factors. However, the actual benefits associated with CA are not only focused on food security but are also site specific. This study sought to understand the benefits of CA in improving livelihoods in a changing climate in Hanjahanja and Sawali sections of Bazale Extension Planning Area in Balaka District. Specifically, it analysed CA's contribution to farmers' livelihoods and also the challenges and opportunities of CA in climate change adaptation. Data was collected through household surveys (n = 153), key informant interviews (n = 9), focus group discussions and field observations. The study found that due to CA adoption, the majority of the farmers in both Hanjahanja and Sawali sections had realized positive livelihood outcomes, mainly through improved food security and increased incomes. Despite the similarity, Hanjahanja farmers reported decrease in yields in seasons marred by floods. However, farmers faced several challenges due to CA adoption, which included high labour demands, rainfall variability and lack of inputs. Even so, improvement in soil moisture, soil erosion control, improved food security, presence of several institutions and enabling environment offered more opportunities of CA in adapting to climate change. CA, therefore, improves the livelihoods of the farmers except in times of floods. Hence, deliberate policies by the government to promote adoption of CA are required to take advantage of the benefits of CA. Research should also be done on how best to reduce the negative effects of CA on farmers' livelihoods.