Southern African Development Community (Sadc) member States are meeting in Lilongwe to build consensus on accessing climate disaster money from the Loss and Damage Fund.
Chief Secretary to the Government Justin Saidi, speaking during the opening of the Sadc Regional Dialogue on Loss and Damage yesterday, said the region can no longer afford to treat disasters as isolated humanitarian events.
“These crises have collectively eroded development gains, weakened resilience, strained national budgets and deepened community vulnerabilities,” he said.
The five day dialogue brings together policymakers, disaster management experts and technical officials from across the 16 nation Sadc. It builds on a May meeting of Sadc ministers responsible for disaster risk reduction held in Harare, Zimbabwe, which called for a shift in thinking.
The Harare meeting concluded that money spent on reducing disaster risk and building resilience is not just a social duty, but a high value economic choice for the region, according to officials.
South Africa’s project coordinator for disaster risk management and multilateral engagement Pumeza Tyali told journalists on the sidelines of the opening ceremony that better data would help countries produce accurate information for funders.
Malawi has suffered a series of punishing climate disasters in recent years, including Cyclone Idai in 2019, Cyclone Gombe in February 2022 and Cyclone Freddy in March 2023, alongside recurring floods and droughts.
Official post disaster assessments put losses from major climate related disasters in the past eight years at $1.427 billion (around K2.5 trillion), with total reconstruction needs exceeding $2.04 billion (roughly K3.5 trillion), according to aggregated Post Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA) data from the Department of Disaster Management Affairs (Dodma) and development partners.
Dodma reported in January that storms and floods affecting more than 163 000 people had claimed 40 lives and left 209 injured in the 2025/26 rainy season alone. Of the 40 deaths, lightning accounted for 57.5 percent.
The dialogue is expected to produce a common regional position on loss and damage that Sadc member States can take to future United Nations climate conferences.
