The Kirundo Province, once the breadbasket of Burundi and now the theater of climate change, is currently active, with the support of partners, to reduce the risks of natural disasters and to build community resilience.

According to the governor of Kirundo Province Albert Hatungimana, climate change has a lot of consequences, such as water shortage, while 99% of the population of this province depends on agriculture, the most vulnerable municipalities being Kirundo, Busoni and Bugabira.
This problem, which is recognized by the government and disaster partners, is currently supporting the province in dealing with it.

Since 2014, the LIVEMPII project has supported the delimitation of the buffer zone along the entire coastline of Lake Rweru of 50 m from the lake to hill crops in accordance with Law No. 1/02 of 26 March 2012 on the Water Code, which states that the limit must be drawn with trees planted along the lake.
As for the head of the OBPE branch in Kirundo Dieudonné Nizigiyimana, the buffer zone of Lake Rweru is one of the protected areas in the north because it is among the eight lakes in northern Burundi and the Murehe nature reserve in Busoni commune.

To support the population who cultivated to the shore of the lake, the LIVEMPII project raised the awareness of groups in associations in order to teach them how to practice hill irrigation and by providing them with motor pumps. The sustainability of the achievements of this project is visible with the current production of onions, said the governor of Kirundo.

He mentioned that the buffer zone has been valued by planting fodder grasses and aquatic plants that the population benefits from in the implementation of the law on permanent housing. The protected buffer zone also serves as a suitable place for fish to reproduce, he added. The governor of Kirundo said that this production has allowed residents to have a balanced diet but also to increase community development at a time when the Busoni municipality receives more than 2 million Burundian francs per week from the tax on the marketing of fish.

The investor Léonard Mitego, head of the fishermen's cooperative “Tugwanye Ubusuma”, for his part, indicated that the idea of smoking fish came after the observation that fish production has increased to allow their conservation in order to be marketed but faces the problem of firewood.
The investor grouped the fishermen into the Tugwanye Ubusuma cooperative, it is in this perspective that they benefited from an improved fish smoking oven financed by the Climate Change Adaptation Project in the Lake Victoria Basin (ACC_BLV).

With regard to the improved smoking oven, the Governor of Kirundo Albert Hatungimana asked donors to provide fishermen with a solar-powered oven to preserve the forests, which are few in number in the region.
As for the fishermen encountered at the exit of Lake Rweru on the Kumugongo fishing beach on the Nyagisozi hill in Busoni commune, they lament the lack of fish due to the use of rudimentary fishing methods.

The governor of Kirundo Albert Hatungimana has called on the government to relocate the 48 Batwa households that live on the island of Kukiyoka who, at the rising waters of Lake Rweru, may be submerged. These Batwa households on Kukiyoka island have no school or health clinic, not to mention clean water. In the water far from the land, these inhabitants are far from the administration, security forces and justice, they are very isolated, continued the Governor of Kirundo.
As part of resilience in the face of climate change, the Kirundo administration, supported by partners, carried out actions such as drawing level curves, planting fixing plants and agroforestry plants on the hills overlooking Lake Rweru.

In the same framework of community resilience, the 478-ha irrigation project financed under Secure LIVELIHOOD by UNDP is 60% of the work done with water that will be pumped from Lake Rweru using solar energy to the heights of Murehe with a 600m³ reservoir that will irrigate by gravity.
In the same perspective and in order to reduce the risk of disasters, the Murehe nature reserve in Busoni commune was restored after delimitation and expulsion of illegal occupants from its protected areas, in order to attract rain to this almost desert place.

Despite all the progress made, the governor of the province Kirundo Albert Hatungimana raised the challenge of delineating the buffer zone of the 7 remaining lakes because only 20km on Lake Kanzigiri and 20km on Lake Cohoha have been established. He calls on partners to lend a helping hand because there is still a long way to go.

The governor of the Kirundo province Albert Hatungimana welcomed the installation of weather stations funded by UNDP through the IGEBU as part of climate change resilience and early warning to adapt. However, the early warning system is not yet functional and he calls for this project to be made effective.