Title: My Summer Internship: Improving the Programming of UN Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience Projects for Smallholder Farmers

Since arriving in Viet Nam in mid-May, I have been in El Salvador one day and Kyrgyzstan the next, Nepal for a couple of days and then on to Niger. I have not physically visited these places, but I could rattle off from memory an array of socioeconomic statistics about them: GDP per capita, child stunting rate, etc. I could succinctly summarize their recent political histories, current economic conditions, and specifics about their agriculture sectors. I know which regions and populations of the given country are falling behind, how climate change is currently affecting them, and how it is predicted to do so in the future. No, I have not visited these countries, but my mind has spent a lot of time immersed in each of their unique contexts. This summer I have been working at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture’s (CIAT) Climate Policy Hub, which is based in their Asia regional office in Hanoi. The team I am assisting has been contracted to analyze World Food Programme (WFP) and International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) projects to determine how the two agencies can promote adaptation and ultimately resilience to climate change for rural communities and poor smallholder farmers. These projects are global, which is why my mind has been all over the map. It is still difficult for me to wrap my head around the fact that I came all the way to Viet Nam to be working on projects in Latin America, Africa, Central Asia, and Eastern Europe—but so it is.

Our team has two main projects: an analysis of how WFP and IFAD can better collaborate their operations at the country level to achieve climate change resilience for rural communities; and a qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) of IFAD’s Adaptation for Smallholder Agriculture Programme (ASAP) portfolio. To quickly summarize ASAP, it began in 2012 and is a multi-year and multi-donor financing window that seeks to scale up and build climate change adaptation and ultimately resilience for the beneficiaries across the projects to which grants are provided. There are currently 42 ASAP projects being conducted in Latin America, Eastern Europe, Africa, MENA, and Asia. Depending on the needs of the beneficiaries and the context of the project country, ASAP interventions can include capacity development of local institutions, policy development, dissemination of climate-resilient agricultural practices, access to climate and weather information, and weatherization of infrastructure, among others. For example, in Bangladesh ASAP funding is being used to complement a project to construct flood-protection works and flood-resistant roads to protect rural communities from flash floods during the monsoon season. In Mali ASAP funds are being used to facilitate access to climate change trends and weather information for farmers and to develop the capacity of civil society organizations (CSOs) and government institutions to use this information for planning purposes. The objective of the QCA is to analyze ASAP’s projects’ achievements and compare them against their ultimate goal which is to strengthen the resilience capacities of poor smallholder farmers. This information will enable IFAD to make necessary changes and additions to ASAP projects, so they are more effective.

The qualitative comparative analysis of the ASAP projects that we are conducting is an assessment of the causality between ASAP interventions and selected outcomes and impacts. QCA is a case-based method that identifies different combinations of factors that are necessary or sufficient to achieve a given outcome. This allows for a more nuanced understanding of how different combinations of factors can lead to success, and the influence context can have on that success. For our purpose, the desired outcome is “increased resilience of smallholder farmers to climate change”.

There are only three of us conducting the QCA—myself, a visiting researcher to CIAT, and a QCA specialist who has been contracted to consult with us remotely from Budapest. The three of us will be testing which types of programmatic features and external conditions are critical to meet this outcome. Because the ASAP projects have different interventions depending on the country conditions, we are testing the enabling factors that may support smallholder resilience. For example, some of our conditions are climate projections, risk, and weather data disseminated at the community level; presence of community-level development and adaptation plans; and decentralization of project responsibility to local communities and CSOs. We are also analyzing how external factors specific to each country context (i.e., conflict, unexpected natural disasters, low capacity of local institutions, etc.) may affect the project’s ability to succeed. The analysis will help inform IFAD how projects should be changed in order to drive greater impact.

Going into this project, I wasn’t sure how I would like to work from what felt like a very top-down approach and at a level that felt very far from beneficiaries. However, this work has allowed my team and me an opportunity to advise IFAD and WFP that stakeholder input and feedback mechanisms and community-based approaches are mainstreamed across project design, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation. It has so far been an exciting challenge for me to work at this level and one where I believe I have added value, having worked directly with beneficiaries on community development projects through the Peace Corps. Because the QCA has recently begun and there is still a lot of work to be done before it is due at the end of September, I will continue working with CIAT from DC to see it through. I look forward to continuing to learn from and contribute to this project and to see how ASAP evolves given our analysis.