Malawi has experienced a number of adverse climatic hazards over the last several decades. The most serious have been dry spells, seasonal droughts, intense rainfall, riverine floods and flush floods. Some of these, especially droughts and floods, have increased in frequency, intensity and magnitude over the last two decades, and have adversely impacted on food and water security, water quality, energy and the sustainable livelihoods of rural communities.

Malawi has developed its National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPA) by evaluating the impacts of adverse climatic conditions in eight important sectors of economic growth, and ranked the identified activities using multi-criteria analysis to arrive at a list of fifteen urgent and immediate priority needs for adaptation. The sectors that were analyzed are agriculture, water, human health, energy, fisheries, wildlife, forestry and gender. What follows is a brief overview of the findings from the eight sectors.