Dec.+2011+Annual+platform+meeting+minutes

=**National Platform Meeting on Land and Water Management in Ethiopia**= =19 December 2011=

Minutes of the Meeting

ILRI Campus, Addis Ababa.

Technical committee etc. and SLM (strategic land management) offer great opportunities for this platform to be included. But we need to come to concrete solutions. If you don’t have horizontal and vertical integration it becomes very difficult to ‘sell’ your solutions to policy makers. So we need grassroots interventions.

__Questions__: Answers:
 * Betru’s presentation:**
 * Importance of realizing that soil conservation will improve the situation downstream too;
 * Emergence of Meret (2003) from Food for Water (FFW): integration between productivity and IGAs;
 * Attempt at associating the importance of the project with the importance of the land(Meret);
 * __Success of MERET__: effectiveness of structures (adoption of quality control system), community empowerment for decision-making, combination of right technologies, technical capacity built at all levels, Demonstration of the new technologies (//seeing is believing//), regular technical back up (close supervision), strict adoption of integrated watershed management approach (IWSM), linkages, harmonies and partnership among stakeholders.
 * __Major challenges__: resource limitation to scale up, lack of cash for promoting IGAs, absence of impact studies and documentation of MERET practices, limited exposure to innovative technologies overseas, institutional instability & frequent staff turnover.
 * Unregulated use: what will people get out of it? What kind of interventions do you have for it? à
 * How does this program differ from PRSP and how were lessons shared? à
 * How costly was this intervention in terms of cost-benefit analysis? Any research done? No backstopping? à There is a positive c/b analysis but land management cannot be solved through only cost-benefits, we have to invest in it whether benefitting or not.
 * Most questions are about ownership etc. Community ownership is guaranteed through participation in the platforms.


 * Zemede’s presentation**:

We have our CDs with a lot of information.
 * Questions**:
 * Min Agric) How do you link up with water for food sub-sector?
 * (Uni of ?) Scaling up? If that is a challenge, is there room to research on how to scale up technologies for different platforms; How are you going to assist authorities to scale up?
 * Alan: We have been learning from RiPPLE and others; Lessons about sustainability? Local ownership of those platforms?
 * Dirk: community income generation without appropriate marketing etc. is not sustainable.

Outputs have been sustained but platforms are difficult to get going;


 * Group work notes ** :


 * Technological innovation**: identify and disseminate best practices in to packages ready for dissemination
 * Outputs and outcomes: Technological package documents, training module.
 * Outcome: improved food security
 * Activities:
 * identification & compilation of landscape productivity packages
 * Identifying institutional building for land rehab and water management
 * Training workshops engaging students
 * Disseminating technologies
 * Existing support mechanisms? NARS, SNV, World Vision, NBI, IWMI.
 * Funding? Partner institutions in the platform?
 * Champions? EIAR/RARIs, unis, EEA, WaterAction, RiPPLE etc.

Include directorate for water research. Ato Abiti to join.


 * Linking research, policy and practice:** Create a sustainable CoP to share and influence action for sustainable use of land, water and ecosystems
 * Topics: Education, CD, comms, partnerships, discovering policy and implementation gaps.
 * Outputs / outcomes: Policy briefs/gaps, document best practices + create novel partnerships, etc.
 * Activities: create appropriate discussion forum to bring actors together? Assist unis to identify strengths and weaknesses in their curricula relating to land and water
 * Linkages: NBDC, RiPPLE, CRS, ground level NGOs etc. SLM ADA, REDD and FC coordination, policy-makers and DAG
 * ADB, DfID etc. Private sector
 * People?

Reactions: Include UNEP initiative on national action plan for adaptation (NAPA) and in terms of sponsors, DfID can do climate change focus.
 * Resilient ecosystems**: Platform activities contributing to climate resilient green economy (GTP of Ethiopia)
 * Outputs/outcomes: Increased farm / rangeland productivity, improved resilience capability, water availability. Outcomes: enhanced food security, biodiversity and ecosystems functions;
 * Activities: Existing initiatives: Many networks
 * Funding: private, public, climate change-oriented, donors etc.


 * Community empowerment, institutions and sustainability**: encourage honest debate and action at national level on how to ensure widespread community engagement in land and water management;
 * Topics: community participation, incentives, CD, financing mechanisms, ensuring community voice at national level, role of women in decision-making in NRM;
 * Activities: students to do case studies, workshops for best practices on community engagement, scaling out models, demo sites for community participation, creating women’s community groups, livelihood building blocks
 * Linkages: many;
 * Funding?


 * Land and water management**:
 * Enhanced learning among national, regional, woreda stakeholders on water & land issues;
 * Many topics: NRM, RWM, MUS, ICT, Learning/KM and support alliance, gender, CD (advoc, info, linking/learning);
 * Outputs: Best practices / research gaps identified;
 * Outcomes: improved service delivery / access to information for policy and practices / IC & learning systems improved;
 * Activities: identify documented best practices and approaches, alliance building and linkage for dialogue forum, identify best practices;
 * Linkages: governmental and non-governmental;
 * Funding through new proposal development;
 * People: MoA, MoWE;

EEA, Policy research institute Thematic teams: Great spring board to move on to funding and action in the next

Managing expectations: everybody is interested in contributions but this is beyond 2-3 years project. The institutionalization of the action plans etc. really needs to happen.

Concrete steps to take: consolidate these ideas and convert them into something sellable. It takes time but from our side we can develop a generic proposal idea and ask working group leaders to submit their ideas and feedback and then share it with all of you – a proposal to submit to all donors. We will come back to you all for inputs etc. We have started some informal discussions but we want to explore opportunities to find donor support for those opportunities. Some of you have the donors’ ears.
 * Final last words:**
 * Action #1:** Practically, we need to convince donors about our ideas and initiatives.


 * Action #2:** Linking this discussion with your institution – when you go back, give feedback about what’s been discussed etc.; let’s go beyond individuals.


 * Action #3:** Team building. Come back with people with similar ideas etc. and give us feedback on who you’d like to build your working group/agenda/proposal with.


 * Action #4:** Strengthening communication. We need to do a better job. With the ILRI comms team we should be able to do a better job. Let’s create that link to ensure that we complement each other e.g. on the NBDC website.

Kees:
 * Jan: meeting with the champions. We’ll come back to you to prepare sthg about it but it’d be good to sit together;
 * We will think about an M&E system to make sure that people are linking up – we’ll see how we can monitor communication.

Other participants’ feedback:
 * We can use emails to exchange information and develop thematic work online.
 * Put the info together, inform us all about how it’s working.
 * + NBDC Yammer network.


 * Summary of the event on Yammer:**

//Today, about 30 participants attended the 2nd national platform meeting on land and water management. After short presentations from the RiPPLE and MERET projects, they heard about the structure of the national platform and suggested five priority thematic groups: resilient (watershed) ecosystems, linking research/policy/practice, technological innovation, community empowerment and sustainability, land and (rain)water management.// //In the afternoon, they developed an action plan for each of these themes, identifying activities, existing support initiatives, possible funding etc.// //In January, there will be a crucial follow-up meeting to come to a more realistic level of details and to come to action.// //But the spark is out and about in the national land & water management platform.//

//Find more updates on the Nile Basin Development Challenge network under the tag #AP1211.//