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Timor-Leste is highly vulnerable to climate changes, particularly increasing variability of rainfall and extreme weather events. Lives and livelihoods in the remote interior of the country and coastal regions are both highly exposed. Impacts of intensified extreme events include damage and degradation of decentralized small-scale critical infrastructure, particularly water supply and drainage structures, embankments, and feeder roads and bridges. Damages leave rural populations isolated, lacking basic services. In response to this challenge, in 2019, the government of Timor-Leste with the support of UNDP received funding from the Green Climate Fund (GCF) to undertake the project.
The objective of the project is to safeguard vulnerable communities and their physical assets from climate change-induced disasters. It aims to address existing institutional, financial and legislative barriers, increasing the climate resilience of vulnerable small-scale rural infrastructure. The project targets 175,840 direct beneficiaries, an estimated 15% of the total population. Benefits include increased climate resilience for small-scale infrastructure as well as 300 ha of reforested and rehabilitated land to buffer against climate-induced disasters.
This will be achieved by delivering the following results:
- Strengthening the capacity of mandated institutions to assess and manage climate risks in order to maintain local infrastructure services. GCF-funded activities will embed new skills, technologies, and innovative methods in climate risk identification and mitigation processes. Monitoring and recording of climate risk information will be enhanced, and these data will be integrated into policies, standards, guidelines, and long-term investment planning for small-scale rural infrastructure.
- Implementing climate resilient building measures to improve small-scale rural infrastructure in vulnerable areas. GCF funds will assist in the development and implementation of catchment management strategies, supporting long-term resilience and climate risk reduction via landscape restoration and enhanced land stability, particularly in vulnerable catchments where small-scale infrastructure is present.
The project is supporting the ongoing decentralized investment frameworks which is administered through the Municipality Development Investment Program (PDIM) and National Suco Development Plan (PNDS) processes, by embedding the knowledge of climate risks and skills of climate proofing design, construction, operation and maintenance of rural infrastructure. Through the project, local authorities’ capacity for climate-risk informed development of long-term investment plans will be enhanced, thereby strengthening de-centralized decision-making.
The project will support the development of the spatial data infrastructure (SDI)/ establishment of the GIS laboratory in collaboration with the Secretary of State for Civil Protection (SSCP). The project will collaborate closely with the SSCP and relevant partners to provide the technical assistance and support related to the establishment of the SDI and its key components. This will be complemented with the relevant training to selected participants at both the national and municipality levels that will be conducted on data management and analysis and data management standards and protocols will be introduced. Data sharing protocols are expected to be established among relevant Directorates and Ministries holding relevant data resources.
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