Consultancy Services - Baseline Survey at SNV Netherlands Development Organisation

Project Background

The Laikipia, Isiolo, Samburu Transforming the Environment through Nexus (LISTEN) is a 3.6 million Euro project funded by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and implemented by a consortium of partners comprising Frontier Counties Development Council (FCDC), Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) and SNV Netherlands Development Organisation with SNV as the lead agency. The 3.5-year project seeks to contribute to enhance resilience by increasing food, nutrition and water security in the three selected Arid and Semi‐Arid Lands (ASAL) counties of Laikipia, Isiolo and Samburu in Kenya.

The project is anchored on the centrality of county governments for ownership and scale and will work at the county, landscape, community and farmer levels. It is designed to support the three selected county governments in identifying initiatives and increasing the adoption and upscaling of climate resilient practices and innovations leading to an improved resilience through improving food, nutrition and water security in the counties in spite of climate change. The project will use a Nexus approach[1] to development, recognising and leveraging on ongoing and complementary activities and agencies across the different sectors, drawing in community and ward level initiatives with implementation and service delivery carried out through the private sector where possible. Specifically, the project will:

1. Capacity build on existing skills and roles in county, including in coordination, and bring in lessons learned and best practices from consortium members and other sources.
2. Use the Nexus approach to provide a platform and environment for a landscape and ecosystem approach between ministries and counties based on the Ewaso Nyiro watershed, and to advocate for and catalyze action and funding within and between ministries at national and county level, and between counties. The Nexus approach will improve inter‐ministerial collaboration and strengthen coordination.
3. Support the establishment and management of Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) Funds, plans and strategies at national and county level, which are climate‐proofed and protected from emergency spending. Involvement of local community and private sector in implementation CCAF projects will be encouraged and written into the conditions.
4. Provide technical support to county governments on water efficiency and balanced plant nutrition; on sustainable rangeland and natural resource management, ensuring private sector involvement in provision of innovative technology, business planning, linking farmers to finance and input and service suppliers, aggregation for offtake and market events.

Project target groups

a.    The county government of Laikipia, Isiolo and Samburu who will be engaged and benefit from activities geared towards improved institutional capacities and programming frameworks. The project will facilitate the review of existing Climate Change Action Policies and support the domestication of other relevant policies, frameworks and plans. The governments will also benefit from an enhanced knowledge and adoption of the nexus approach in their planning and implementation of activities during and beyond the project timeframe.

b.    The irrigators, pastoralists and water users within the Ewaso Ngiro basin who will benefit from increased knowledge on sustainable and integrated water management and use, knowledge, access and adoption of good agricultural practices and better planning and inventory of resources both at the individual and community levels. This is intended to result in improved livelihoods for people living in the Ewaso Nyiro basin and better water management and planning by the Water Resource Users Associations.

c.     The private sector within the project focus counties will also benefit from the linkages created between them and the farmers, pastoralists and other water users in the Ewaso Nyiro basin. This way, they will get an opportunity for them to provide products and services to beneficiaries in (ii) above and further develop their businesses.

Project Outcomes

Each consortium partner brings their own specialty to the table and will combine their capacity to achieve four key outcomes:

Outcome 1: Improved institutional capacities and programming frameworks for inclusive climate resilience at the county level.

Outcome 2: Improved water and livelihood resource management at landscape level in the Ewaso Nyiro River Basin Ecosystem.

Outcome 3: Increased production and income through adoption of Good Agricultural Practice (GAP), good management and efficient water practices, technologies and innovations in selected crop and livestock value chains, including fodder and forage.

Outcome 4: Use of Knowledge and Innovation management increased in ASALs.

Expected Key results of the program

• More than 180,000 project beneficiaries with at least 20,000 being benefitting households, 66% of whom are targeted to be women and youth.
• Involvement of 1,000 participating actors from government agencies and the private sector including women/women‐owned companies.
• The capacity of county government personnel and actors built in order to allow for the operationalization of the NCCAP within counties and improve coordination both vertically and horizontally. This will be supported by the domestication of the nexus approach within counties.
• Enhanced multi-stakeholder coordination within the focus basin to address resource use and management.
• Good agricultural practices and climate smart irrigation technologies and innovations introduced, made accessible and adopted by the irrigators in the
• 6 feasible business cases developed and implemented

[1] Nexus approach in this context recognises that food, water and energy systems are inextricably linked and are dynamic. Thus, the water–energy–food (WEF) nexus, actions in one system, or sector, affect the other two. The production of food requires water and energy. The supply and distribution of clean water requires energy and land-based ecosystems. The production of energy requires water and land, choices about food production affect the use of energy and water, while choices about water and energy supplies affect land us. The project intends to ensure that interactions between/among systems and sectors are strengthened and included in project implementation and decision making

Job Description

The Assignment: Baseline Survey

Objective: To undertake a review, survey and verification of LISTEN project goals, objectives, target groups and expected result areas to establish the baseline indicator profile against which project targets shall be set for implementation, performance monitoring and evaluation. The survey will establish the baseline for the project´s key indicators and will provide the benchmarks to measure the project performance.

Scope of Work:

The assignment will build on the results of the assessments done in the three counties during the project proposal development. The assessments obtained further insight into the level of understanding of the nexus approach by the county government staff and actors, the level of knowledge and adaptation to climate change by communities, the challenges faced in resource management, functions of selected stakeholders within the region and the challenges faced by smallholder farmers within the Ewaso Nyiro basin.

The assignment will also build on the existing literature and baseline survey reports in the counties for relevant project outcome indicators. This calls for an understanding of ongoing and previous projects implemented in the focus counties by the county government and other development partners.

The proposed baseline survey / situational analysis purposes to establish the current level/baseline of:

• Number of people within the three counties who are likely to benefit from the project. These include herders, pastoralists, farmers and other water resources users (to validate the proposal’s set target of more than 180,000 project beneficiaries). The survey will also verify the feasibility of 66% of these beneficiaries being women and youth.
• Number of participating government actors involved in policy formulation and private sector involved in the region. The survey will identify existing actors and identify opportunities for new private sector engagement in the project. 
• The extent of gaps in data collection, coordination and reporting among ministries in counties and across counties for formulation of policies and frameworks and the understanding of the nexus approach, climate change strategies, action plan and evidence. (The survey will detail how county government operate while formulating policies and identify gaps which the project can work on including strengthening monitoring, evaluation and learning).
• The extent of multi-stakeholder coordination within and across counties. The survey will detail existing multi-stakeholder platforms in the three focus counties and suggest opportunities for new platforms and/or strengthening of the existing ones.
• The number of farmers involved in irrigation in the area and their current irrigation technologies, practices and solutions (disaggregated in male, women and youth). The assignment will also assess policy gaps, the level of knowledge, access and adoption to climate smart irrigation technologies by farmers.
• Number of key Climate smart irrigation technologies providers and suppliers (which the project shall strengthen for improved service delivery to farmers in the Ewaso Nyiro basin).
• The area of land under irrigated agriculture per county and the average production and income per farmer
• A detailed list of counties based and national-level private sector companies which may need to be supported to invest into the sectors addressed by the project (agriculture, water management, environmental management, etc) for further development of business cases.
• Frequency of resource-based conflicts and the understanding of the manifestations and drivers of the conflicts along the Ewaso Nyiro river basin
• Extent on how violent extremism is identified and prioritized as a problem by communities in each county.
• The capacity of extension staff to domesticate the Nexus approach and their level of understanding and knowledge of resilience and resilience practices.
• Estimate water productivity (number of litres per metric tonne/number of litres per income) of four selected value chains within the Ewaso Nyiro basin

Methodology

The final assignment methodology will be developed and specified by the consultant(s). Developed survey methodology shall cover the following:

1. An understanding of the LISTEN project
2. Literature review of recent and relevant climate change policies, and governance, agriculture and irrigation, related technology research, reports, plans, existing studies, in the project area.
3. Stakeholders’ consultations: National and county governments, development partners, conservancies, ranchers, large scale farms, resource use multi-stakeholder platforms, irrigation technology suppliers, Water Resources Users and related key players including farmers, herders, pastoralists, conservancies among others identified fit for consultation.
4. With reference to the LISTEN reporting indicator profile, develop data collection tools, pilot the tools, tool coding including other works related to baseline surveys.
5. Data collection through field surveys/assessment in selected counties
6. Data cleaning and analysis: the data collected from desk review, stakeholder consultation and field survey will be analyzed per variables (a - l) on the scope of work including related indicators. It is important that specific indicators are aligned to the above variables.
7. Validation workshop: with stakeholders and, target groups and other players as the project team may find necessary
8. Report: based on the data collected and analyzed the current situation, provide baseline values and probable targets to be achieved by the program and a list of probable indicators at output and outcome levels.
9. Assignment debriefing with SNV, LISTEN team

Expected Deliverables

1. A detailed baseline survey report for the project covering the three counties addressing the project scope outlined above. Clear baseline figures and related indicators must be well outlined and justified.
2. At least 2 PowerPoint presentations: one for use in debriefing meeting(s) and for use during stakeholder/public workshop(s). The presentations will be made to the LISTEN project team and shared in editable and legible format with the team

Assignment duration

This assignment is expected to take no more than 20 days to complete.

The final report is to be delivered latest by 10 March 2021.

Qualifications

A group of consultants, including a Team Leader/ Policy and Governance/ Agricultural/Climate Change/ Environmental Management expert/Water Resources Management Expert and a gender/social specialist and local resource person(s).

Team leader profile:

• A post graduate degree in policy and governance, agriculture, agriculture economics, development science, statistics, irrigation, agricultural engineering or related.
• Extensive training in an understanding of the nexus approach and gender and development issues
• Extensive experience in research and analytical work in policy and governance, Water Resources Management and Agriculture.
• Experience in undertaking similar work.
• Proven track record and ability to liaise with different groups at different levels including policy makers, field workers and technical experts, amongst others.
• Knowledge of participatory approaches and tools