Scaling up Community-Based Adaptation (CBA) in Niger

Project details

In 2009, Niger benefited from funding under the LDCF “to implement urgent and priority interventions that will promote enhanced adaptive capacity of the agricultural sector to address the additional risks posed by climate change.” This was a pilot project in nature, in which the primary purpose of the activities supported was to demonstrate how adaptation can be addressed practically in the agriculture sector across eight vulnerable communes. The intervention included the implementation of a set of adaptation practices at community level to enhance the resilience food security of agricultural production systems.

Other programmes have been also initiated over recent years aimed at building the resilience of local communities to climate stressors, notably in the agricultural sector.These initiatives have demonstrated significant learning, as well as the development of a national process for addressing community-based adaptation in Niger. However, discussions with project managers, the SGP National Coordinator and local partners, have highlighted bottlenecks to the scaling up of CBA in Niger. All existing community based adaptation programmes are limited in geographical extent, they do encompass or include enough of the communes and do not generate a critical mass of climate-resilient rural producers capable of inspiring transformative change in neighbouring communities and catalysing the scaling up of adaptation efforts in vulnerable communes in Niger.

The project aims to address these bottlenecks through strengthening the responsiveness and adaptive capacity of administrative/technical support services at the commune-level to enable generation of a critical mass of climate resilient communities and achieve more climate resilient economies in Maradi region.

Project beneficiaries will identify and implement technical practices aimed at enhancing agricultural activities with animal husbandry (agro-pastoralism), as well as supporting extra-agricultural productive activities in rural areas. These will enable poor households and those particularly vulnerable to climate change to earn sufficient income to offset the risks to their agricultural systems from climate change. In relation to financial benefits, the project will improve the provision of appropriate and sustainable financial services (micro-finance) to poor and particularly vulnerable households to climate change (which would otherwise be left on the side-lines in any conventional approach).

Gender aspects have been considered during the entire design process. A gender expert from the UNDP CO actively participated in the baseline data collection mission in the Maradi region, ensuring that consultations conducted at the local level were gender balanced and that women were involved in the design process. Furthermore, project outputs and outcomes will contribute to an understanding of how adaptation responses can be designed to strengthen gender equality. The project indicators are to be tracked with data that are disaggregated by gender. The project is designed so that adaptation measures will be implemented in a participatory approach with women duly involved (and leading some of) the project interventions

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Key results and output

Outcome 1:Effective climate risk information and management tools supplied and adopted by commune leaders, extension services and community organizations (CBOs and NGOs) to support the achievement of climate resilient economies in vulnerable communes of Maradi

• Output 1.1 Councillors and technical extension workers and CBOs, NGOs, and extension workers at the commune-level in each Maradi vulnerable communes trained to understand opportunities and threats associated with long-term climate change; and integrate this new learning into their programming
• Output 1.2 Sustainable, effective communication systems established to enable communal councillors, extension services and community organizations (CBOs and NGOs) to access and use relevant climate information and hydro-meteorological advisories, high-resolution satellite data, other climate risk management tools (e.g. maps) and information on climate change impacts to drive their local/community development plans and projects.
• Output 1.3 Communal development plans and rural/community development programmes/projects reviewed and updated to integrate effective climate risk management and enable more climate-smart investment
• Output 1.4 Rural producers, particularly women, engaged in climate-resilient income-generating activities transformed into viable local micro-entrepreneurs, trained to store/conserve their production where needed and enabled to access and link with district-level and national markets for sale of their products
• Output 1.5 Rural producers, particularly women, provided with business development support and enabled to access finance from existing micro-finance institutions to sustainably support their micro-enterprises
• Output 1.6 CBA best practices (including gender differentiated issues) captured and widely shared/disseminated and cross-community learning on adaptation across Niger advanced to support replication in other vulnerable communities

Outcome 2:  Implementation of locally-designed climate-resilient livelihoods options to build the socio-economic resilience of target communities

• Output 2.1 Rural producers, particularly women, engaged in climate-resilient income-generating activities (CR-IGAs) through the scaling-up of currently attempted CR-IGAs (small-scale garden farming activities, small animal breeding, beekeeping, artisan, seamstresses, etc.)
• Output 2.2 Rural producers, particularly women, adopted small-scale irrigation techniques and sustainably managed local water resources to support IGA

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Monitoring & evaluation

Project Start:

Project Inception Workshop: will be held within the first 2 months of project start with those with assigned roles in the project organization structure, UNDP country office and where appropriate/feasible regional technical policy and programme advisors as well as other stakeholders.  The Inception Workshop is crucial to building ownership for the project results and to plan the first year annual work plan. 

Daily:

Day to day monitoring of implementation progress: will be the responsibility of the Project Manager, based on the project's Annual Work Plan and its indicators, with overall guidance from the Project Director. The Project Team will inform the UNDP-CO of any delays or difficulties faced during implementation so that the appropriate support or corrective measures can be adopted in a timely and remedial fashion.

Quarterly:

Project Progress Reports (PPR): quarterly reports will be assembled based on the information recorded and monitored in the UNDP Enhanced Results Based Management Platform. Risk analysis will be logged and regularly updated in ATLAS.

Annually:

Annual Project Review/Project Implementation Reports (APR/PIR): This key report is prepared to monitor progress made since project start and in particular for the previous reporting period (30 June to 1 July).  The APR/PIR combines both UNDP and GEF reporting requirements.  

Periodic Monitoring through Site Visits: 

UNDP CO and the UNDP RCU will conduct visits to project sites based on the agreed schedule in the project's Inception Report/Annual Work Plan to assess first hand project progress.  Other members of the Project Board may also join these visits.  A Field Visit Report/BTOR will be prepared by the CO and UNDP RCU and will be circulated no less than one month after the visit to the project team and Project Board members.

Mid-Term of Project Cycle:

Mid-Term Evaluation: will determine progress being made toward the achievement of outcomes and will identify course correction if needed.  It will focus on the effectiveness, efficiency and timeliness of project implementation; will highlight issues requiring decisions and actions; and will present initial lessons learned about project design, implementation and management.  Findings of this review will be incorporated as recommendations for enhanced implementation during the final half of the project's term.  

End of Project:  

Final Evaluation: will take place three months prior to the final Project Board meeting and will be undertaken in accordance with UNDP and GEF guidance.  The final evaluation will focus on the delivery of the project’s results as initially planned (and as corrected after the mid-term evaluation, if any such correction took place).  The final evaluation will look at impact and sustainability of results, including the contribution to capacity development and the achievement of global environmental benefits/goals.  The Terminal Evaluation should also provide recommendations for follow-up activities.

Project Terminal Report: This comprehensive report will summarize the results achieved (objectives, outcomes, outputs), lessons learned, problems met and areas where results may not have been achieved.  It will also lie out recommendations for any further steps that may need to be taken to ensure sustainability and replicability of the project's results.

Learning and Knowledge Sharing:

Results from the project will be disseminated within and beyond the project intervention zone through existing information sharing networks and forums. 

The project will identify and participate, as relevant and appropriate, in scientific, policy-based and/or any other networks, which may be of benefit to project implementation though lessons learned. The project will identify, analyze, and share lessons learned that might be beneficial in the design and implementation of similar future projects.

Establish a two-way flow of information between this project and other projects of a similar focus. 

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