international organizations, donor agencies, ministries and research institutions at international level. Expert consultations held as semi-structured interviews considered three domains: (a) climate vulnerability of development goals and sectors, (b) integration of climate adaptation into development assistance and (c) potential barriers to and opportunities for mainstreaming climate adaptation into development assistance.

# **3 The climate-poverty nexus in Mozambique**

Mozambique was one of the 189 nations that adopted the Millennium Declaration in September 2000 and committed itself to an ambitious development agenda to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015. Recent studies by bilateral and multilateral development agencies as well as NGOs have shown that climate impacts threaten to reverse human progress and make the MDGs unattainable (Chigwada, 2004; ODI, 2004; Sperling, 2003; Simms and Reid, 2005; Magrath, 2006).

A 2005 review showed that Mozambique is unlikely to attain the MDGs within the given timeframe (Table 1) and that progress has been slow in the areas of hunger eradication, extension of primary education, gender equality, HIV/AIDS reversal, and environmental sustainability (GoM, 2005a). In particular the overarching goal of reducing extreme poverty and hunger is undermined as climate impacts reduce people’s livelihood assets ( _i.e.,_ health, water, and infrastructure) and impinge on food production. Climate change is expected to exacerbate livelihood conditions, _e.g.,_ through food insecurity, increasing prevalence of vector-borne diseases, especially malaria, and deepening existing gender inequality.

|**Millennium Development Goal**|**Will target be met?**|**Supportive environment**|
|---|---|---|
|<br>**MDG 1: Extreme Poverty and Hunger**|||
|- Eradicate extreme poverty|Potentially|Strong|
|- Eradicate hunger|Unlikely|Fair|
|**MDG 2: Universal primary education**|Unlikely|Fair|
|**MDG 3: Gender Equality**|Unlikely|Weak but improving|
|**MDG 4: Child Mortality**|Potentially|Fair|
|**MDG 5: Maternal Health**|Potentially|Fair|
|**MDG 6: HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other Diseases**|||
|- Halt and begin to reverse spread of HIV/AIDS|Unlikely|Fair|
|- Halt and begin to reverse incidence of Malaria and other diseases|Potentially|Weak but improving|
|**MDG 7: Environmental Sustainability**|||
|- Integrate sustainability principles into country policies and programmes,<br>reverse loss of environmental resources|Unlikely|Weak but improving|
|- Halve proportion of people without access to safe drinking water and<br>sanitation|Unlikely|Weak but improving|
|- Significant improvement of lives of slum dwellers|No data|Weak but improving|
|**MDG 8: Global Partnership**|||
|- Develop further an open, rule based, predictable, non-discriminatory<br>trading and financial system|Potentially|n/a|
|- Address the special needs of LDCs|No data|n/a|
|- Deal comprehensively with debt problem trough national and international<br>measures in order to make debt sustainable in the long run|n/a|Fair|
|- In cooperation with developing countries develop and implement decent<br>and productive strategies for work for youth|No data|n/a|
|- In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies provide access to<br>affordable essential drugs in developing countries|No data|n/a|
|- In cooperation with private sector make available to benefits of new<br>technologies, especially information and communication|n/a|Weak but improving|

**Table 1:** Progress towards the MDGs in Mozambique (Source: GoM, 2005a).

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