The Political Economy of Adaptation through Crop Diversification in Malawi

This article demonstrates the politics of the policy processes of adaptation using the case of crop diversification. Competing narratives among different actors illustrate the complexity of practically translating crop diversification in practice. The context in which policy processes take place matter a great deal since adaptation policies' chance of success cannot be judged abstractly in their theoretical or technical attributes without considering the institutional, political and cultural context in which they are applied. This draws attention to the fact that policy processes are less of a linear sequence but more of a political process, underpinned by a complex mesh of interactions and ramifications between a wide range of stakeholders who are driven and constrained by the competing interests and contexts in which they operate

A partnership-based model for embedding employability in urban planning education

This paper proposes a partnership-based model for embedding employability in urban planning education. The model is based on the author’s experiences of implementing an international project which supported the development of employability skills in urban and regional planning education in Malawi. Since independence, urban planners have typically trained outside the country, attending university in the UK and other Commonwealth countries. More recently, the paradigm has shifted towards in-country education delivered by academic staff cognisant with the opportunities and challenges of development in Malawi. There remains, though, a gap between graduate knowledge of the subject and the skills necessary to pursue a professional career in the sector. Although there is no consensus yet on the meaning of employability in the literature, lessons from the project indicate that academic–public–private collaboration helps incorporate in curriculum skills that employers anticipate. Applicability of these principles is however context dependent, particularly in the emerging economy context where institutional capacity may be less developed compared to elsewhere

the adoption of climate smart agriculture the role of information and insurance under climate change

Climate change adds to the existing challenges in improving crop productivity and welfare for smallholder agricultural households by affecting the mean and variability of weather conditions and the frequency of extreme weather events. In the face of such growing uncertainty, agricultural practices of small landholders need to be adapted to better manage the changing risk structures. Since government risk management programs may complement or substitute for farmer adaptation, this chapter examines how a range of institutional interventions might assist, obstruct, channel, or change smallholder agricultural adaptation to climate change. Taken together, our results underscore the importance of the informational role of the agriculture extension, suggest that insurance can lead to significant changes in farmer planting and land management decisions, and show how information about changing conditions and insurance can be complimentary in driving changes in farmer behavior