reflection2_session3notes

=Session 3 notes= =NBDC Stakeholder Forum= =5–7 October 2011=


 * Group works on Rainwater Management Research -** //Testing the solutions and the evidence// – review of current evidence on each issue seeking promising results and solutions for the NBDC

5 Working groups made parallel discussions and reported back:

Group I. Poverty, gender, livelihoods – Katherine Snyder Group II. Land and Water Management and watershed management – Enyew Adgo Group III. Scaling up tools and methods – An Notenbaert Group IV. Innovation platforms – Kees Swaans Group V. Climate change and water – Simon Langan Each group reported back the discussion results – //Presentations collected from each group could be attached for complete message// = **Key points of discussions reported back:** =

=**Group 1: Poverty, gender, livelihoods**=


 * Definition of livelihoods and its relation to the NBDC
 * Features of livelihoods as part of the baseline work: Landlessness, migration, Livestock (social capital value and effects of livestock migration), Irrigation (in relation to access, land size, preference to crops than livestock), gender, and institutional factors like what prevents livelihoods to be included in policies and programs
 * The identified gaps include: capacity to monitor and evaluate, knowledge gaps of implementation, sustainability of interventions, lack of integrations of projects – overlaps of activities, low participation of community members at planning, population pressure

=**Group 2: Land and Water Management and watershed management**=

The group has handled the combined themes land, water, and watershed management. Initially, the chairperson has asked for volunteer Rapporteur. Accordingly, Dr Yeheno has agreed to note down and present the key insights for the group. By taking in to account issues presented in the morning session particularly those related to land, water and watershed management and existing experience and retrospective research and development reviews from Ethiopia; discussion is stimulated by the chair person, Dr Enyew.

The necessity to review the **//challenges//** and **//gaps//** presented in the morning session was also remarked. Further the following points were rose to incite the discussion and to enable the participants thoroughly delve the thematic issue:
 * 1) What is working and not working in land and water management?
 * 2) What are issues really needs attention to address land, water and watershed management?
 * 3) Land degradation is a major problem whereas farmers are very reluctant to conserve their soil. Then asked how it is possible to influence the farmers?
 * 4) Some participants are uncertain about **//efficiency//** of SWC practices (bunds of different kinds). Appropriateness of the existing t**//echnologies, presence of functional institutions//** and **//regulatory policy//** to manage land and water has been additionally brought to the discussion and strongly remarked to give due attention for further respective researches.
 * 5) What are the hurdles for sustainability of SWC?
 * 6) Can we have sustainable structure in free grazing areas?
 * 7) Can we sustain conservation practices in areas of land tenure insecurity? &
 * 8) The need to consider salinization in land and water management efforts included as improper irrigation could have contributed to negative consequences.

Finally the interactive discussion has ultimately identified core problems and key insights (outcome) of the discussion which are gleaned and present below.

**//Key Problems//:**
- Lack livestock and human population regulatory policy - Lack NRM, Land use and/or planning policy or law enforcement, if available - Lack water use and implementation policy
 * 1. Policy related problems:**

- Persistent top-down planning approach (continued exercising pseudo-participatory) at large scale.
 * 2. Development approaches:**

- Erosion and land degradation - Lack successive success monitoring and documentation - Failure to address farmers’ critical issues - Lack integrated watershed management
 * 3**. **Watershed management:**

- Lack institutional integration and information sharing system
 * 4. Institution:**

- Lack of SWC practices uptake and sustainability
 * 5. Sustainability:**

- Farmers remain reluctant or non adoptive to technologies - Lack of alternative technologies for mountain/steep-slope/area dwellers - Failure to view land & water management practices from socio-economic perspective and - Lack of focus to bio-diversity conservation & afforestation program
 * Other problems:**

**Key outcomes of the discussion:**

 * To have population policy since population took large value when we are evaluating degradation, however, it also needs to be viewed from labor productivity perspective and alternatives that enhance productivity
 * -Enforcing the existing law; drop down the land use policy to the plot level, and put in place land suitability analysis at plot/farm/ level.
 * Develop land use database…and information sharing and management system/mechanism/ and develop networking with important partners to access data as deemed necessary.
 * Recommend and make operational appropriate alternative technologies and cropping practices for mountain resident apart from adhering merely to structure building for land & water management. Like transforming the practices to more biological & high value crops, and employing proper agronomic practices.
 * Integrate productivity to land degradation apart from focusing merely to assessing soil loss. Otherwise, the structure by itself can occupy over 15% of the tenure so that farmers could opt for non conserved farms. Besides, linking SWC with livestock, livelihood and other attributes to contrast and value its effect from different dimension.
 * Give attention to biodiversity as biodiversity degradation is the driver for land degradation, climate change and other related consequences.
 * SWC Practices should be valued in terms of socio-economic attributes, and Land management should be integrated in to water management.
 * Decentralize woreda level planning to plot based/farmer based/to further improve community participation, and conduct land suitability analysis then empower commitment decision making.
 * Have livestock policy that regulate livestock population to the carrying capacity of the grazing land and destock the population taking in to account the traction force and other necessity like the insurance, and encourage stall feeding/cut and carry/system.
 * Secure adequate budget for projects to make farmers participation a democratic exercise (bottom-up) and ensure adoption through a gradual process than very quick and subtle one.
 * Strongly sensitize the advantage of SWC among the farmers to draw special attention for proactive adoption of SWC practices.
 * Improve public participation from consultation to participation then to negotiation. Farmers have to sit down & indicate goals. The real problem of the farmers should be revealed.
 * Participate the farmers through the entire process of Integrated Watershed Management activities: from community consultation, planning, implementation to participatory monitoring and evaluation.
 * Put in place proper monitoring and evaluation system and documentation of the outcome of IWSM enables to track and judge the progress.
 * Intensify agro-forestry system and plantation of farm trees through incentivizing and motivating farmers. Farmers who plant and grow indigenous trees should be champion and awarded like for crop and livestock farmers.
 * Land use policy needed to be operational to abate cultivating the mountainous area. Government should be in favor of planned resettlement for mountain dwellers to the lowland areas. Otherwise, there should be livelihood options other than farming for the mountain dwellers.
 * Improve land and water management practices.
 * Government has to be very serious to avoid sustainability recession of land & water management development with the phase-out of project intervention by NGOs through creating stringent awareness. The government should consider investment on land & water as a very important and serious livelihood issue.
 * Better to have working NRM policy, skilled personnel and legal implementation enforcement at local level. There should be strong institutional linkage and sharing of data and experiences to improve the appropriateness of knowledge management.

=**Group 3 Scaling up tools and methods**=


 * Definitions of scaling out and up
 * Criteria for success/adoption – specific to situations, sustainability, market fluctuations, complementarily not competition
 * Challenges of success: Match right niche techs,
 * Quality and quantity of techs: high impact, elasticity, scales of economies, livelihood impacts, etc to be considered
 * Simplify techs
 * Feasibility test
 * Demand driven techs
 * Describe the biophysical, socioeconomic, social, economical characteristics
 * Integration of stake holders
 * Interventions, practices for scaling out data to map success
 * How to frame scaling out: not only geographical dimension but social dimensions too. Fitting to existing infrastructural and institutional dimensions? – short view

=**Group 4 Innovation platforms**=

Thinking back to the morning presentation what are the **gaps** noticed and what insight can we observe that IPs can work?
 * there is low participation of the communities from the very beginning
 * there is no clear knowledge why the communities are not involved
 * there is lack of cooperation
 * lack of continuity of the activities after project phased out/sustainability is under question of different initiatives
 * there is lack of proper implementation of policies and strategies
 * lack of integrated strategy at landscape approach
 * there are different good practices and knowledge here and there but there is lack of scaling out of this o other areas practices
 * different initiatives have different approaches resulted in fragmentation of strategies
 * lack of proper post implementation follow-up
 * lack of coordination among actors
 * many initiatives focused on only the core activity (Land and Water Management) rather than addressing issues beyond like issues of value chain
 * different initiatives lack a short term impacts on the livelihood of farmers in its long term perspectives
 * missing a successful networks and platforms for sharing as a positive experiences
 * lack of proper integration of other issues as that of water in the water and land management
 * absence of process documentation and creating evidence for different initiatives that would have been shared for different actors to contribute to the coordination issues
 * networking, collaboration and working with partners is not considered as activities and not included in planning (budgeting of finance and time is not considered for collaborative activities)


 * What do we expect from NBDC’s IPs?**

The current status of the local innovation platforms were updated for the group and it was indicated that the three local IPs were established so far in the three research woredas (Diga, Jeldu and Fogera) and the national platform on LWM was established by taking the issue beyond the RWM to do more of policy and strategy issues. For the national level there is a setup of theme based task forces to deal with particular issues and there is a steering committee that will be responsible to steer all the taskforces activities and feed back to the national platform. The regional platforms are being under consideration for setting up and ARARI in Amhara region is initiating to establish.


 * Discussion points on how local IPs can work:**
 * The local IPs should solve the real problem of our communities and so that to come up with a success stories with tangible evidences for influencing policies and strategies
 * The issue of incentives was raised as it has to do with the sustainability of IPs. The experience of Agricultural Development Partner Linkage Advisory Council (ADPLAC) was shared by the participants form research institutes. This council has a structure from the top national level to down community level. This was first initiated by the World Bank through IFAD project and later on it was insured that the system was functioning under the government structure for its sustainability. Still it is supported by the rural capacity building budget. This council should be financed by the government as there is a fear that it might be not working when the financial source is phased out
 * The issue of community involvement or representation is still the issue as this IPS are established at woreda level though the idea of Participatory Video and field exchange visits were raised as a mechanism to integrate communities’ view in the IP discussions.
 * It was recommended that this NBDC’s IPs should link up with the existing network of ADPLAC and particularly the involvement of Farmers Research Extension Group (FREG) in the IPs is crucial. As this FREG are focusing more on the crop issue only it is good to network and also deal with the RWM issues. For this awareness creation and orientation on RWM should be given to bring the members of FREG to the same level of understanding with the IP members
 * There must be a clear exit strategy for the IPs if we want to see the sustainability after the project phase out. The issue of integrating IPs activities in the government planning need to be considered well too.

=GROUP 5: Climate change and water resource management:=

1. Challenges:
• Uncertainty of future climate change impacts on WR (spatial and temporal) • High sensitivity of water resources ….cc • Difficult to communicate with policy makers • Difficult to isolate climate change impacts from non-climate change impacts

2. Evidences:
• Farmers observation • Recurrence of drought e.g. Change in freq. • Change in rainfall pattern • Weak evidences

3. Gaps:
• Limitation in cc models and data • CC is not specifically included in NBDC • Lack of capacity in CC areas. • Lack of understanding on the relationship between land degradation, CC and feed back • Lack of policy and strategy on climate change • Lack of basic knowledge on GW resource

4. Recommendation:
It is beneficial to incorporate the climate change issue into NBDC program