Climate Adaptation Governance and National Security in Zambia: Evaluating Policy Implementation Gaps and Strategic Opportunities

Climate change is a growing threat to environmental security, socio-economic development, and National security in Sub-Saharan Africa. Recurrent droughts, floods, irregular rainfall and water scarcity are causing ongoing impacts on livelihoods, food security and the resilience of communities, especially in the Southern Province of Zambia. This study analysed climate change adaptation governance and its implications for national security, to assess the programme implementation and the level of institutional coordination among the Ministry of Green Economy and Environment, the Disaster Management and Mitigation Unit (DMMU), the sector ministries, and the local authorities, especially the effectiveness of coordination itself. The study focused on climate adaptation governance in the context of national security in Zambia in order to assess implementation gaps in climate adaptation policies and propose strategies for enhancing climate resilience and socio-economic stability. The study adopted a mixed-methods research approach with a convergent parallel design. Both quantitative and qualitative data were gathered from 350 respondents using structured questionnaires and 20 key informants through semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions. Data were analysed quantitatively using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS), and data were analysed qualitatively thematically. The results showed that ineffective institutional coordination, poor governance, poor financing of climate adaptation, limited technical and institutional capacity, insufficient infrastructure, and low-level participation of communities are challenges to the effective implementation of climate adaptation in Zambia. The availability of climate information, activities of informality, lack of consultation with local communities, weak communication mechanisms and gaps in the integration of local knowledge were also identified as factors that made local communities less resilient and less able to adapt. In Southern Province, water tensions, land and pasture conflicts, farm-pastoralist clashes, food insecurity, livelihood vulnerabilities and socio-economic instability were related to climate-related scarcity of resources. The regression model showed a strong relationship between climate adaptation governance variables and national security outcomes (R2=0.721), explaining 52.0% of the variation in national security outcomes (R2=0.520, adjusted R2=0.514). The overall model was statistically significant (F (4,345) =93.54, p<0.001). Institutional coordination was the strongest predictor ((β=0.301, p<0.001)), followed by climate adaptation financing ((β=0.238, p<0.001)), institutional capacity ((β=0.205, p<0.001)), and community participation ((β=0.184, p<0.001)). The study concludes that coordination, funding, institutional capacity, participatory governance, climate information dissemination and incorporating indigenous knowledge can add resilience to climate and socio-economic stability, sustainable resource management and national security in Zambia.