Climate adaptation in Tanzania’s national budgeting process: embedding flood and drought preparedness

BASIN Insight Brief 3

Authors: Kate Gannon, Katarzyna, Mikolajczak, Abel Dugange, Herbert Kashililah, V. Tondelo Gungulundi, Katharine Vincent, Will Ingram, Jessica Leech, Charles Wight and Declan Conway

Tanzania has spent over two decades developing climate policy frameworks that identify floods and droughts as priority hazards. The National Adaptation Plan (2025–2035) and the National Climate Change Response Strategy (NCCRS) (2021–2026) recognise that adaptation and resilience building require proactive investment in preparedness before disasters occur, as well as effective cross-sectoral coordination. Yet, as in many countries, this ambition has not been translated into funded action.

This insight brief from the BASIN project – Behavioural Adaptation for Water Security and Inclusion – applies multi-actor behaviour journey (MABEJ) methodology to examine where and why flood and drought preparedness is displaced from ministry, department and agency budgets across Tanzania’s annual budget cycle, and to identify the actors and interventions that could secure its inclusion at specific points in the national budget cycle. The analysis draws on 43 interviews conducted in 2025 with respondents from government and non-government organisations in Tanzania who are involved in, or have oversight of, preparedness and budgeting processes.

Key messages

• Tanzania has mature climate policies and clear mandates for flood and drought preparedness, yet national budgets chronically underfund the proactive adaptation needed to reduce risks before climate impacts occur.
• This implementation gap leaves people vulnerable to climate impacts and forgoes the development and resilience gains of preparedness, despite evidence that every shilling invested in adaptation generates around four in economic benefits.
• A new multi-actor behaviour journey (MABEJ) methodology enables a mapping of where in the annual budget cycle preparedness is displaced, which actors drive this, and where practical leverage points exist to close the gap.
• Severe resource constraints compound behavioural and institutional drivers that deprioritise preparedness. These include a culture of reactive response; limited willingness to invest in preparedness when faced with competing priorities; limited shared understanding of preparedness requirements; institutional silos; coordinating bodies that have mandates but insufficient authority; and monitoring systems too generic, or altogether lacking, to reveal under-provision.
• Under-prioritisation is cumulative and self-reproducing. No single actor can break this cycle alone, but leverage points exist at every stage of the budget process.
• A high-leverage intervention is to embed explicit preparedness requirements within the National Planning and Budget Guidelines issued by the Ministry of Finance and the President’s Office–Planning and Investment, requiring ministries, departments and agencies to mainstream preparedness in their budget planning and allocation.
• Preparedness spending and delivery must also be made visible through enhanced budget tagging and tracking, monitoring and evaluation frameworks that distinguish preparedness from broader environmental reporting, and the public release of draft budgets to enable real-time scrutiny.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21953/researchonline.lse.ac.uk.00140689