5. CCAFS Addendum: response to the Full proposal ISPC Commentary and other adjustments

Transcription

1 5. CCAFS Addendum: response to the Full proposal ISPC Commentary and other adjustments The CGIAR research program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security thanks the ISPC for insightful and valuable comments on the proposal, plus the endorsement of CCAFS as positioning the CGIAR to play a major role in bringing to scale the practices, technologies and institutions that enable agriculture to meet the triple goals of food security, climate change adaptation, and mitigation. CCAFS will strive to serve as a true integrating program for climate change across all CRPs and Centres. We have responded to the comments with edits to the proposal text and annexes, accompanied by some revision to the budget, including greater detail on management elements. Below we respond in turn to all of the major recommendations of the ISPC and the Consortium Office. We have paid particular attention to the four headline comments on alignment with nutrition, prioritization among AFS CRPs, strategic prioritization of partners and sites, and the elevation of MELIA in general and IA in particular. ISPC Commentary The CRP s plans are possibly weakest in defining the program s alignment with nutrition and health issues. The ISPC recommends the CRP to provide clarification in an addendum on how the nutrition and health targets jointly defined with A4NH have shaped the CCAFS research agenda CCAFS has put CCAFS Response Including section numbers and titles Recent interactions with A4NH, particularly its Flagship 1 (Food Systems for Healthier Diets) and Flagship 4 (Supporting Policies and Programs...) have shaped the CCAFS Flagship 1 research agenda in the following ways: CoA 1.1, a learning platform on ex ante evaluation and priority setting for climate-smart options, will include ex-ante modelling work with A4NH on sustainable food systems and on the environmental implications for changing diets; Participatory scenario analysis in CoA 1.2 with A4NH will generate combined climate, food and nutrition scenarios at national and subnational levels, linked to global scenarios; this CoA will be co-led by LEI WUR, who were added as a CCAFS partner to bring multi-sectoral economy-wide modelling of food system outcomes at different scales. This CoA will also build on the expertise of University of Oxford s ECI on food systems research. Joint activities in CoA 1.3 (Enabling policy environments for CSA) with A4NH Flagship 4 will explore the viability of sustainable diets in different contexts, and joint policy/ governance case studies in overlapping target countries that (for example) will synthesize lessons on good practice (with respect to engagement and implementation, for instance). The nutrition and health targets for CCAFS were defined in such a way that they can contribute to A4NH's targets in their focus countries, largely via the inclusion of nutrition considerations in national/ state adaptation and investment planning. As explained in another response below, CCAFS will work with A4NH on developing climate and food and nutrition scenarios at national and subnational levels. The aim is to use these scenarios in national-level planning and investment policy processes in selected target countries, as CCAFS has done successfully in Phase 1. A4NH has a target of 116 million people (of which 50% are women) without deficiencies of several essential micronutrients. CCAFS will make modest contributions to the attainment of this target (6 million people) via work on nutrition-sensitive agricultural programs and policies in key A4NH and CCAFS target countries (including India, Bangladesh and Burkina Faso). Over the last several months CCAFS has been engaged in joint dialogue with AFS-CRPs

2 forward a highly ambitious agenda of working across all eight AFS CRPs. The ISPC recommends that the addendum include an elaboration of the prioritization process (currently implicit) that has occurred to strengthen the proposal to define thematic priorities for collaboration, and these have been used as the basis for defining the Learning Platforms in CCAFS. AFS-CRPs then identified the priorities for CCAFS-related integration around those learning platforms. CCAFS has taken essentially a demand-driven approach to AFS CRP linkages. Under FP1 is the "Global Futures and Strategic Foresight" IMPACT-model-based prioritisation work led by IFPRI and involving most of the Centres, which has provided priority-setting for work on rice (with IRRI & RICE) and cassava (with CIAT, RTB & PIM). Another example under FP1 is informing climate-smart breeding work through a Learning Platform, including activities with RTB on potato, sweet potato and cassava. FP2 necessarily works across all AFS CRPs. FP3 has prioritized CRPs engaged in activities with high mitigation potential: FTA on the responsible finance CoA, L&F on animal nutrition for mitigation and improving gender equity, GRISP on water management and MAIZE and WHEAT on nitrogen management. FP4 and MAIZE co-identified the use of insurance to overcome risk-related obstacles to uptake of stress-tolerant germplasm and climate-smart technologies as a shared priority. This has framed plans for engagement of other AFS CRPs around insurance to target barriers to technology adoption, through a jointly develop cross-crp learning platform on insurance. The allocation of budgets among centres is also determined at the project level within FPs. All current CCAFS projects managed by all centres and other partners have been selected through a prioritisation process on the basis of formal competitive criteria and a Delphi process in which all centres appraised each other s project proposals. This process has contributed to the stratified distribution of CCAFS resources among centres noted in the ISPC commentary on the CCAFS proposal. The projects are embedded in regional impact pathways that were generated through extensive consultation with regional, national and local partners. A series of regional workshops in 2014 and 2015 that involved all projects and their partners were undertaken to refine their theories of change, impact pathways and targets, followed by extensive interaction to ensure that these are plausible and credible. The ISPC recommends the CRP provide an expanded explanation of its strategic prioritization process as it relates to partnership selection (particularly with other CRPs) and site selection in the addendum Regarding partnerships, CCAFS has undertaken strategic prioritization of (a) CRPs (b) project partners and (c) the 41 CRP-level strategic partners. The process with CRPs is at the FP level and is described above. For project partners, a full stakeholder mapping was undertaken for each project in each region at regional planning workshops during This valuable process enabled (i) identification of any new partnerships needed to achieve the theory of change and (ii) synergies among projects working with common partners. The 41 strategic partners at CRP level were selected by the CCAFS Core Team through an iterative process over one year, recorded in the Core Team meeting minutes. The intention was to include all participating Centres and the diversity of CCAFS research and development partners at supra-national (regional and global) levels, including representation from public, private, civil society and academic sectors. Regarding sites, the research sites (CSVs) were selected during Phase 1 through a formal process that prioritized opportunities to co-locate with other CRPs and existing Centre-led research. Full details and records can be found at Two additional regions were selected through an expert-driven appraisal process as described at

3 The ISPC recommends elaboration of how the CRP will use impact assessments for hypotheses testing, and validation of TOC and research results; and elevation of the role of MELIA to strengthen the proposal of_additional_ccafs_target_regions.pdf and research sites selected within these regions following the same process as for earlier regions. These sites will continue into Phase 2, with some reallocation of effort among sites in response to the useful site integration process, as described below. The CCAFS strategy for MELIA is given in Annex 3.5 of the proposal. Overall, CCAFS seeks an integrated approach to assessment of outcomes and impacts in the context of impact pathways; all program participants are required to submit theories of change and to report annually on outcomes, which are lead indicators for impacts. Outcomes are formally appraised and are the primary criterion in CCAFS results-based management. At the level of impacts, delivery of epias is a formal requirement for all centres that participate in CCAFS. We recognise that we could better link outcome and impact assessments. In light of the ISPC comment on impact assessments, CCAFS intends to improve its use of IA for hypotheses testing, and validation of TOC and research results by (a) creating a design for measurement against the CCAFS baseline surveys in 2018 so that it explicitly tests the FP and LP hypotheses, supplementing where necessary with project baselines at higher governance and spatial levels, (b) changing the requirement for epias so that the impacts assessed are explicitly linked to the outcomes reported annually, and that the IA specifically tests the theory of change at project and FP levels, and (c) ensuring that all epias address hypotheses on gender, youth and social inclusion. Specific additions to MELIA in the FPs are as follows: FP1 (1) , text added to indicate that FP1 will work on innovative MELIA for food and nutrition research. (2) , text added to indicate that CCAFS s online platform includes mechanisms to learn from epias to modify theories of change as appropriate. (3) , CoA 1.3, text added to highlight that impact work will be carried out on the effectiveness of enabling policy environments in different contexts. FP2 (1) text added to reflect the revisit of the baseline survey to climate smart villages in 2018, and subsequent analysis for ex-post impacts. Linkage of this epia to test hypothesis H1 is made. (2) text added under CoA 2.1 to reflect the epia planned for 2019 that builds off results of the baseline survey in 2018 in CSV sites FP3 (1) Annex 3.5, Table 5 - The 2022 FP3 evaluation described in Table 5 now focuses on testing the theory of change, specifically "the effectiveness of integrating LED into agricultural development to reduce GHG emissions." (2) Text was added to indicate that CoA on scaling up will contribute evidence to testing FP3's ToC. (3) Text added to indicate that projects will use improved methods of emissions and activity estimates to establish baselines and track progress towards targets. FP4 (1) Annex 3.5 Table 5: Added missing Centres to FP4 CCEE. Added a missing portfolio review activity in 2018, referred to in the narrative. (2) : Added that project-based MEL, aligned with the overarching hypotheses, will be backstopped with strategic synthesis studies and evaluations.

4 ISPC recommends the CRP to provide greater clarity on how site integration affects the impact pathway, including information on the evolution of this aspect into the prioritization process in the requested addendum (3) : Noted that the impact assessment budget is in addition to the c. 10% of FP4 project budgets devoted to MEL. The site integration process enables greater cross-cgiar coordination and synergy among CRPs at the national level, which CCAFS hypothesizes is most important for impact. Site integration operationalizes the agreed division of roles among CRPs, in which AFS CRPs lead on development and testing of technologies, while CCAFS leads on testing these technologies within portfolios of adaptation and mitigation responses to climate risks, including testing and deployment of impact pathways to achieve uptake at scale. Through partnership and capacity building, the CSVs constitute the starting place of scaling-up processes that will lead to outcomes and impacts at higher scale. This is illustrated for instance by the institutional arrangements set up with CCAFS support to allow CSVs to inform development plans at district level (through the district level science-policy platforms) and national-level decision-making (through the national science-policy dialogue platforms). Platforms at regional level such as the West Africa CSA Alliance will then benefit from countries experiences. The use of CSVs in the framework of the site integration process will therefore be key to (1) bringing AFS CRPs to conduct their research in an integrated manner and (2) to layout sound avenues for the scaling up of CSA options, depending on opportunities as prioritized by countries. Joint working with other CRPs in specific site integration countries influences both the content and the mechanisms of the CCAFS pathway from research to impact. These adjustments to the impact pathway are country-specific, not globally generic. For example, in India, the collaboration with WLE s Flagship on Managing Variability, Risk and Competing Uses for Increased Resilience positions technologies and institutions to manage floods as a primary focus for CCAFS climate risk portfolios, and links CCAFS work directly to a set of hydrological stakeholders beyond the climate and agriculture sectors. The budget issue should be addressed in the addendum on the role of MELIA in Phase 2 2. Theory of Change and Impact Pathway: CCAFS intends to dedicate US$ 19 per beneficiary to remove In terms of geographic prioritization, site integration has not changed the CCAFS regions or countries. However it has influenced Phase 2 reallocation of CCAFS resources within regions, towards ++ countries (e.g. from Cambodia to Vietnam). CCAFS has made these readjustments in recognition of the efficiencies offered by site integration: to raise effectiveness and reduce costs for policy engagement, partnerships, joint research outputs and public goods. A management budget has been added that includes investments in MELIA at the CRP level. There are requirements for MELIA within all Flagship Programs, individual projects and learning platforms. The share of the MELIA budget going to formal CCEE and IA has been doubled (see management budget in Section 1.1.4). FP1 response: See the above response to the comment The CRP s plans are possibly weakest in defining the program s alignment with nutrition and health issues. The comparative advantage here arises mostly through the development and application of climate and food and nutrition scenarios at national and subnational levels, quantified in collaboration with world-leading food systems modelling partners, and used in national-level planning and investment policy processes in selected target countries in collaboration with A4NH (Section ). Given that CCAFS and FP1 will be

5 deficiencies of one or more essential micronutrients, and as a result 6 million people (50%) women will be without deficiencies in one or more micronutrients. Evidence suggests that the impact of this type of researchbased activity on such an outcome is negligible, leaving aside issues of attribution. In addition, the CCAFS comparative advantage here is not evident. Thus, some revisiting of this target and reassessment of comparative advantage will strengthen the proposal. 5. Leadership and partnership: CCAFS may wish to consider having impact assessment and political science expertise in the core team, given the scope of its CSA testing and portfolio building activities as well as its objective contributing, via policy-related work (an arena in which CCAFS has been demonstrating considerable success during Phase 1), to A4NH s target of 116 million people for the same SLO, the CCAFS target of 6 million people seems plausible and realistic. An addition has been made to the subsection Improved diets for poor and vulnerable people in section (Objectives and targets) to reflect this. Political science is particularly relevant to FP1. One change in FP1 leadership is for CoA1.3, in the light of Dr Wiebke Förch s departure from CCAFS. The CoA will be led by the Flagship Leader, who has extensive impact assessment expertise. A change has been made accordingly in section , FP management. Political science expertise already resides in several of FP1 s strategic partnerships, in particular with LEI WUR and Future Earth, but the possibility of adding this expertise to the core team explicitly will be revisited later in 2017.

6 to influence policy. 5. Leadership and partnership: However, ISPC believes that only 15% of a MEL specialist s time in the PMU is insufficient, particularly as this person is expected to provide inputs to senior management that will underpin critical science and resource investment decisions. FP1: Given the aspirations of this FP1, greater expertise in political economy and behavioural decision-making could provide considerable advantages. FP1: There is a strong list of research partners Consideration of the need to provide partners with resources to be effective and making this explicit in the flagship budget will strengthen the proposal. FP1: The comparative We have clarified that the true figure is 75% of MEL specialists time, located in the PMU and via a dedicated long-term part-time consultancy position. Section CRP Management and Support Costs has been amended. We have clarified that several new partnerships (in particular, with LEI WUR and Future Earth) will bring more expertise in these areas to bear on FP1 s activities (second paragraph in section modified). Approximately 40% of FP1 s budget will go to partners, and section has been modified to reflect this. The last paragraph of section has been modified to reflect this.

7 advantage section in FP1 could be stronger, particularly in identifying the critical research or delivery expertise that a specific sub-set of partners bring thereby enhancing its comparative advantage. FP1 s gender component can be strengthened by explaining how the outcomes hypothesized (gender equitable control of productive assets and resources) are tracked and monitored, and whether FP1 research will then evaluate if this increases the influence of women in decision-making. Developing the narrative on how its youth strategy goes beyond simply identifying CSA options and incentives for young farmers to examining the role of youth along the CSA adoption-impact As outlined in Annex 3.3, FP1 will explore methods for formulating policies and programs that encourage equitable access to and control of productive assets, particularly examining how gender and social inclusion (GSI) research findings are taken up by decision-makers. In many of CCAFS s target countries, baselines have been undertaken that capture the current status of GSI in national policy environments, and these baselines will be updated through time. The tentative list of CCAFS reviews and evaluations (Annex 3.5, Table 5) indicates that a cross-cutting research review of GSI work will be carried out in 2021, and this will include an evaluation of CCAFS s gender impact pathways and outcomes. The last paragraph of Section has been modified accordingly. Text added to Section Youth Strategy on examining the role of youth in relation to the CSA adoption-impact pathway, AFS-CRPs priority value chains, and relevant Flagship research. The "Activities subsection has been revised as Youth Strategy.

8 pathway, particularly in the context of priority valuechains that AFS CRPs are focusing on (input delivery, output processing and value addition, etc.) would strengthen the proposal. FP3: The proposal could be strengthened by elaborating on the risks that cost-effective LED technologies/pra ctices for smallholders may not be feasible within the research time frame, including due to political risks involved in promoting LED for smallholders. FP3: The proposal would have been stronger if it had described what some of these potential on mechanisms/app roaches for incentivizing mitigation are. FP3: The FP also needs to clarify the emissions estimation plan (CoA1) Section Text added to ToC discussion on this risk and how it will be overcome by working with countries that have active interests in mitigation. Section The mechanisms are reflected in the three components of CoA 3.3: (1) integrating LED into national agricultural development programs, sustainability initiatives and private sector investment, (2) finance for supply chain governance, and (3) increased efficiency through reduction of food loss and waste. Section CoA 3.1 We have added text to clarify that low-cost methods will be used to validate emissions factors in new contexts and validation methods will be developed in the course of the program. We agree that the science quality management plan is essential to manage this. We have added text to indicate that the review of CoAs in

9 specifically, on the methods deployed to quantify GHG emissions, how those will be validated for different contexts, and why those approaches were selected. Since some of this work is understandably difficult to lay out at this early stage, the science quality management plan is particularly important. The team preparing this proposal has clearly given this some thought, but greater elaboration of the structure envisioned for validation procedures would strengthen the proposal. FP3: The CRP may want to consider the role of on-farm storage options to limit wastage since innovations along these lines are already a part of the CGIAR research portfolio and 2022 will give special attention to emissions estimates. Section CoA This suggestion is noted with thanks. A sentence has been added: "The work will build on innovations in the CGIAR such as on-farm storage options."

10 FP4: Providing information on how downscaled climate models will be validated will strengthen the proposal. FP4: Credit/liquidity constraints might influence both the uptake of insurance as well as the CSArelevant technologies/pra ctices, and it is unclear which of these pathways is more critical or of the interactions between them. There is also the possibility there may be other interventions that are better strategies for smallholders to cope with climate risks. The IP presented is almost linear in nature, and does not reflect the risks inherent in interventions and the tradeoffs involved (between different activities of FP4 or other FPs) or how these approaches fit within the larger risk management Evaluation of the quality of downscaled predictions will be the responsibility of partner regional climate centres and national meteorological agencies. The availability of quality-controlled, merged, historic gridded data sets makes feasible the empirical evaluation at the scale of the final products. Involvement of climate expertise from IRI and potentially other advanced research institutes will ensure that this is done properly, using accepted methodology. Added a brief statement about this under CoA 4.1. This comment is appreciated. CCAFS work on risk management is divided between FP4 institutional interventions and the FP2 technologies and practices, but the intended interactions between them, most notably at CSV sites, were not explicit in the proposal. We have added a statement, under How FP4 will address the science (Section ), that FP4 will use these co-located activities to assess synergies and tradeoffs. A key goal of many agricultural insurance initiatives is to make credit more available. Under the relevant CoA (4.3), we added a note that work on insurance to foster adoption of CSA technologies will test the degree to which insurance can reduce liquidity constraints to technology adoption. We agree that it is desirable to address management of climate-related risk more broadly than household-level livelihood risks. A CoA in the pre-proposal, focused on management of risk at a broader scale through e.g., humanitarian crisis response and government safety net programs, was dropped, and reduced activities were incorporated into other CoAs, in response to the reduction of expected budget.

11 field (going beyond livelihoodrelated risks at the household level). FP4: Examining the degree to which smallholders are receptive to insurance interventions is welcome, given the issues raised around basis risk and adoption. For the related activity cluster (CoA 4.3), the proposal would be stronger if it describes how CCAFS science will approach the issues. Which of the challenges related to design and implementation of weatherrelated agricultural insurance will CCAFS address? FP4: Of note is the minimal MEL/impact assessment budget (US$ 35,000 per year for FP4) this is surprising considering the effort that will be needed to build the evidence base to We revised the wording under CoA 4.3 to be more explicit about design and implementation challenges that research will target: improved index design to reduce basis risk, develop and test gender-responsive communication and participatory design methods, develop strategies to engage youth and exploit their creative influence on farming communities, and develop and test strategies for integrating insurance with climate-smart technologies. Most of the MEL budgets and activities are embedded in the project portfolio, with US$ 70,000 per year for targeted studies to backstop and synthesize project-based MEL. Under How FP4 will advance the science (Section ), we add that project-based MEL, aligned with the overarching hypotheses, will be backstopped with strategic synthesis studies and evaluations. In the budget table (Section ), noted that the impact assessment budget is in addition to the c. 10% of FP4 project budgets devoted to MEL.

12 test the key hypotheses, and should be addressed in the addendum on MELIA. Comments from the Consortium Office Staff ToRs seem appropriate and the need for resources is acknowledged--although an OA/OD budget as suggested in the guidelines would have been good. A line item budget for OA/OD as per the template provided in the CRP guidance document would have been helpful to assess the ability of the CRP to fulfil stated aims in this regard. No curators who can speak to QA/QC; High quality data is a key objective, but no specifics are provided on how this will be accomplished or by whom; Long-term preservation is alluded to, but again, no details (e.g. on formats) are included; CCAFS Response Including section numbers and titles Annex: 3.8 Open Access (OA) and Open Data (OD) Management Added a table for OA/OD estimated budget as per the template provided in the CRP guidance document (Open Access 1.13) Annex: 3.8 Open Access (OA) and Open Data (OD) Management Included a paragraph to describe CCAFS plans and how we deal with some of the issues brought forward. There is no mention of the CG Core metadata schema; and It would be good to get more repositories responsive to other protocols and APIs such as SWORD, RDF, O-data, REST etc. OA/OD narrative is rather general, and doesn t always reflect current achievements and plans as well as it probably could More could be done to identify and explain the critical/strategic issues and challenges arising from an IA management perspective which are relevant to the CRP, and to map these to specific FPs/CoAs supported by actual/anticipated examples at project level where available. The CCAFS KM manager does not appear to have Annex: 3.8 Open Access (OA) and Open Data (OD) Management Included an infographic with key results from 2015 and open access compliance check. Key dissemination pathways for maximizing global impact have been elaborated See Annex 3.9 Intellectual Asset Management (IA Management) Section E new table on Maximizing Global Accessibility and Impact Responsibility for IA oversight is now delegated to

13 the necessary expertise, training or support to undertake the following functions identified in the Proposal to ensure compliance with the IA Principles The CRP proposal could be further strengthened by providing insight into IP legal capacity across the CRP The following approaches to decision making and capacity should also be considered: (i) development of a CRP level IP policy framework to guide implementing partners; (ii) formation of an IP Management Committee to support the CRP and to coordinate IA management across CRP; (iii) detailed mapping of IP/Legal support required to support specific IA management issues related to IA management (on a CRP output/dissemination pathway basis). The responsibility of the Program Management Committee in relation to IA management issues is not explained or distinguished from that of the Lead Center The IA Management sections of the CRP could be strengthened by providing (i) insight into overall percentage of CRP budget estimated to be committed to IA Management to better facilitate comparison across CRPs; (ii) a more detailed budget narrative for specific activities related to IA management. CIAT s General Counsel (IP focal point), who has background in intellectual property and legal matters related to data and information products development and deployment See Section and Annex 3.9 Intellectual Asset Management (IA Management) Section D.i. The recommendations have been considered and included in the proposal. See and Annex 3.9 Intellectual Asset Management (IA Management) (i) see section D. iii. (ii) see section D. i. (iii) see section E table on Key dissemination pathways for maximizing global impact. The roles of the CIAT IP focal point, CCAFS Knowledge Management Staff, and CCAFS PMC are now clarified See and Annex 3.9 Intellectual Asset Management (IA Management) section D. i. This has been addressed See and Annex 3.9 Intellectual Asset Management (IA Management) section D. vi.