Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Climate Risk Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/crm Developing and applying a five step process for mainstreaming climate change into local development plans: A case study from Zambia Katharine Vincent a,b, ⁎ , Willem Colenbrander c a Kulima Integrated Development Solutions (Pty) Ltd, Postnet Suite H79, Private Bag x9118, Pietermaritzburg 3200, South Africa b School of Architecture and Planning, University of the Witwatersrand, Private Bag 3, WITS 2050, South Africa c Independent Consultant, PO Box 60804, Livingstone, Zambia ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Climate risk assessment Adaptation Gender Climate-resilient development ABSTRACT Climate change is a cross-cutting issue and, as such, is most effectively addressed when main- streamed in development planning. Assessing climate risk and mainstreaming adaptation into development plans ensures that hard-won development gains are not undermined, and that fu- ture development interventions are resilient in the face of a changing climate. We outline a five step process to mainstream climate change into development plans. The five steps are: pre- paration; current and future gender-sensitive climate risk assessment; climate risk screening to see how proposed activities are affected by climate risk; options to adapt and enable climate- resilient development; and implementation, monitoring and evaluation. The process is under- pinned by theory on climate risk assessment and robust decision making, and informed by participatory methodologies and expert elicitation. It was applied to District and/or Integrated Development Plans in 6 districts in Western and Southern province of Zambia under the Pilot Program for Climate Resilience. Findings show that it is a useful methodology that can be applied in data-constrained environments with minimally-trained expertise to assess climate risk and enable adaptation and climate-resilient development. 1. Introduction Climate change is a cross-cutting issue that has implications across development sectors. As a result, mainstreaming climate change into development plans is likely to be more successful than addressing it in isolation through sectoral climate change policies or plans. Ensuring that climate change is taken into account in integrated development planning has two benefits. First, it ensures that development gains will not be undermined by climate risk. Second, it offers the opportunity to build adaptive capacity and resilience in the face of climate change, so that the risk of future adverse impacts is minimised. Whilst there are many reasons for mainstreaming climate change into local development plans in sub-Saharan Africa, there are a number of barriers to the process (Benson et al, 2014). Global climate models are the mechanism through which we are able to project future climate conditions. Although they can be downscaled, the various approaches still have limitations in their ability to plausibly and accurately represent the multitude of micro-level influences on climate (Hewitson et al, 2014). Although there are development planners and sectoral planners at local level, there is unlikely to be the technical expertise that can discern between various climate projections (Pasquini et al, 2015, 2013; Shemdoe et al, 2015). Combined with insufficient technical expertise, lack of https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crm.2018.04.005 Received 13 January 2018; Received in revised form 8 April 2018; Accepted 30 April 2018 ⁎ Corresponding author at: Kulima Integrated Development Solutions (Pty) Ltd, Postnet Suite H79, Private Bag x9118, Pietermaritzburg 3200, South Africa. E-mail addresses: katharine@kulima.com (K. Vincent), willem.colenbrander@gmail.com (W. Colenbrander). Climate Risk Management xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx 2212-0963/ © 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/BY/4.0/). Please cite this article as: Vincent, K., Climate Risk Management (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crm.2018.04.005