Frexus project
The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and the Water, Peace and Security (WPS) partnership collaborate in the Frexus project in Mali, Chad and Niger. The aim of this project is to improve security and climate resilience in a fragile context through the Water-Energy-Food Security Nexus.
Overview
The vicious cycle of scarcity, competition, conflict and instability can be turned into a virtuous cycle of resilience, sustainable resources management, cooperation and security. The Frexus project, based in Mali, Chad and Niger aims to support the peaceful resolution of social tensions and conflicts between population groups that are caused or exacerbated by climate change in fragile areas. The project uses an integrated approach – Water-Energy-Food (WEF) security Nexus – to create and foster new opportunities ensuring long term sustainable development and peace. A Nexus approach entails considering the totality of the available sources for food, energy and water security and planning holistically how they can most efficiently together serve humans and conservation needs. Taking a Nexus approach to resource use and project planning in a basin allows to:
- avoid undesired impacts on other sectors and conflicts between them;
- improve efficiency in use of natural resources for human livelihoods ensuring ecosystem conservation.
The involvement of the three sectors takes place on an equal footing and the intersectoral discussion of relevant issues and joint development of solutions leads to win-win solutions or, where this is not possible, at least to jointly accepted trade-offs.
Activities
Throughout the different phases of the project a number of key activities will be carried out.
The diagnostic phase includes local climate risk assessments, systemic conflict analyses and baseline studies to improve understanding of the combined effects of social and environmental factors relating to governance and management of land and natural resources on generation or prevention/attenuation of conflict in fragile areas affected by climate change.
The action plan development phase aims to develop conflict-sensitive and climate-sensitive action plans via inclusive community workshops for the integrated management of land and natural resources considering the water-energy-food security nexus approach. In this phase, GIZ and WPS collaborate on:
- The co-development of a local analytical tool, in a participatory manner with key local stakeholders, to assess the key drivers of conflict and assess local intervention options.
- The extension of the Global hotspot identification and early warning tool with increased indicators to capture food and energy security dimensions. This enables the analysis of areas of potential conflicts over water, food and energy resources, as a starting point for developing climate sensitive and nexus-based responses to resources challenges, ultimately enabling sustainable and peaceful development under climate change conditions.
The implementation phase aims to execute measures selected by the target communities’ stakeholders including awareness-raising and capacity building measures for key stakeholders to adequately address and mitigate conflicts and the effects of climate change.