PROJECT INFORMATION DOCUMENT (PID) CONCEPT STAGE Report No.: AB2622 Kenya Adaptation to Climate Change in Arid Lands (KACCAL) Project Region

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1 PROJECT INFORMATION DOCUMENT (PID) CONCEPT STAGE Report No.: AB2622 Project Name Kenya Adaptation to Climate Change in Arid Lands (KACCAL) Project Region AFRICA Sector Environment/Climate Change Project ID P Global Supplemental ID P GEF Focal Area C-Climate change Borrower(s) Government of Kenya Implementing Agency Office of the President, Special Programs Environment Category [ ] A [X] B [ ] C [ ] FI [ ] TBD (to be determined) Date PID Prepared September 26, 2007 Estimated Date of November 1, 2007 Appraisal Authorization Estimated Date of Board December 20, 2007 Approval 1. Key development issues and rationale for Bank involvement Livelihoods and economic activities in Kenya s are highly vulnerable to climatic fluctuations in space and time. The country s inland areas are largely arid with two thirds of the country receiving less than 500 mm of rainfall per year, limiting the potential for agriculture. In general inter-annual climate variability is high. Rainy seasons can be extremely wet and associated with floods and landslides, but can also arrive late or fail, introducing considerable uncertainty in agricultural practices. The rural poor are the most vulnerable to the impacts of Kenya s current climate variability. Climate change introduces an additional uncertainty into managing natural resources and promoting sustainable land-use management. An increased variability between extremely dry and wet conditions, shifts in seasonal climate characteristics as well as associated effects on extreme events and vector borne diseases place an additional strain on human health and food security; threaten water resources, and the viability of rural livelihoods in already marginal lands. The increasing risks due to climate change severely affect Kenya, particularly through rising risks of droughts and floods, with implications for the broad strategies for poverty alleviation and economic development. The best way to address these risks is to enhance climate risk management into ongoing government plans, programs and activities that are affected by the rising risks of climate change. Kenya has identified the Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASALs) as the most vulnerable areas to climate related risk, and livestock and small-holder agriculture sectors as important sectors that provide the dominant livelihood source in these areas. Livestock accounts for 26 percent of total national agricultural production and therefore potential impacts of climate risk have considerable economic significance. The Government s key document on

2 climate risk 1 prioritizes the need for appropriate agricultural and livestock policies and action programs that will reduce vulnerability in the ASALs, specifically laying out adaptation options in agriculture, water and rangeland management towards mitigating the potential adverse impacts of climate change. The Government acknowledges in its Economic Recovery Plan the special attention the ASALs areas need in order to achieve poverty reduction noting that in relation to the smallholder livestock sector there was a need to address problems of insecurity, degradation of rangelands and poor access to water. Both the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) and the Kenya Rural Development Strategy discuss the importance of reducing risk and vulnerability for those Kenyans who rely on the natural resource base for their livelihood. Priorities aiming to reduce the risks to development include effective service delivery, drought early warning systems, an improved natural resource and land use management system, assistance in the creation of more effective conflict resolution mechanisms as well as effective management of climate risks. The Kenya Arid Lands and Resource Management Project (ALRMP), which is currently in its second phase, represents a long-term operation to enhance food-security and reduce livelihood vulnerability in drought-prone and marginalized communities. This baseline project supports community driven development, drought mitigation and decentralized planning in 28 ASAL districts, as well as policy support advocacy and improvement in the delivery of essential services. The ALRMP has focused on the reduction of the acute vulnerabilities. It has not included a systematic treatment of the medium to long-term implications of climate change. In recognition of this situation, the proposed SCCF 2 project Kenya-Adaptation to Climate Change in Arid Lands (KACCAL), which is embedded in the ALRMP, is focused on strengthening Kenya s capacity to comprehensively reduce the vulnerability of rural livelihoods in arid areas to climate variability and change. The proposed project also fits with the concerns of the First National Communication to the UNFCCC. Reducing the risk of climate variability and change on the impacts of these programs, while at the same time strengthening national capacity for the coordination and planning of climate risk management provides the most cost-effective way to minimize the negative impacts of climate change on sustainable poverty alleviation. The ALRMP is highly successful, and well embedded institutionally, with a home in the Office of the President and effective coordination mechanisms to the district and community level. Hence, this baseline project is on the one hand clearly affected by the rising risks of climate change, and on the other hand provides a very effective delivery mechanism for the adaptation enhancements, which will not only help better achieve the baseline project s objectives under a changing climate, but also have a positive impact well beyond the baseline project. Incremental resources will help embed a longer-term perspective in planning and interventions at the local level while improving the information chain between scientific climate related knowledge at one end anticipatory responses at the local level at the other end, translating into a strategic adaptive response to climate change risk. 1 National Communications to the COP of the UNFCCC 2 The GEF managed Special Climate Change Fund alternative aims to strengthen the capacity across scales to address climate risks.

3 This mainstreaming approach, which is a key cornerstone of the proposed project, fits into both the Bank s strategy on these issues and its global commitment to scale up its efforts to address risks to development being posed by climate change. 2. Proposed objective(s) The objective of the KACCAL project is to assist Kenya in adapting to expected changes in climatic conditions that otherwise threaten the sustainability of rural livelihoods in its arid and semi-arid lands. Based on an evaluation of the sustainability of livelihood activities, the project will focus on i) reducing the near-term vulnerability to current climate variability and trends in conjunction with the Arid Lands Resource Management Project (ALRMP), and on ii) strengthening the medium to long-term ability to address climate change impacts related to increased climatic variability and higher temperature, associated with changes of magnitude and frequency of extremes. 3. Preliminary description The GEF supported project will focus on at least five districts under the ALRMP and will have the following four components. The components focus on building a comprehensive climate risk management approach by connecting activities at the local, sub-national and national level and engaging a broad range of stakeholder groups. Component 1: Improve national coordination of information and action for management of climatic risk Institutional efforts focused on disaster risk management and climate change are still largely fragmented. This component will strengthen the ability of the institutions jointly to understand and respond to current and future climate risks. Component 2: Integrate a long-term climate-risk perspective into local/district planning and investments and support to engage private sector for climate risk reduction This component focuses on incorporating a long-term perspective into local/district level planning processes, identifying implications for public and private sector investments, and assessing opportunities for economic diversification to reduce vulnerabilities to climate risks over time. The goal is to provide local and district level governments with the tools and knowledge to facilitate a shift from unsustainable activities towards those that are less vulnerable to climate risks. Component 3: Support Community Driven initiatives to enhance long-term livelihoods strategies KACCAL will enhance the ALRMPs CDD approach to foster appropriate climate risk management strategies and investments at the community level. These will focus on activities that address impacts related to expected higher temperature and increased frequency and intensity of droughts and precipitation. The component activities will be concentrated in the 4-5 pilot districts. Component 4: Program management, technical assistance, project and impact monitoring and evaluation, and regional knowledge sharing This component will provide support to enhance the ALRMP secretariat to support the implementation of the additional KACCAL mandate and activities. It will involve building

4 capacity at the secretariat level on climate risk related issues enabling it to develop project management processes that capture the information flows and allow targeted responses. Given, the weaknesses in capacity in climate change related technical issues; the secretariat will act as a hub through which technical assistance can be channeled appropriately. It will also be responsible for the monitoring of KACCAL project processes and performance (i.e. both project outputs and impact monitoring) and evaluation of implementation. The ARLMP-KACCAL secretariat will be responsible for ensuring appropriate documentation and reporting of lessons learned to facilitate replicability and scaling-up, within the ASALs as well as in other climateaffected areas in the region and beyond. It will also contribute to regional knowledge learning and sharing activities that build on a base of adaptation related experiences. The project will achieve this by strengthening institutional and technical capacity to manage current and future climate risks across scales, by specifically including the risks of climate change into the local and national strategies and activities that affect sustainable livelihood in ASALs and by supporting innovative initiatives to diversify and improve long-term livelihoods by engaging local communities and the private sector. The project will take the following approach: 1. At the local level, emphasis is placed on reducing the existing adaptation deficit revealed by current climate hazards that frequently translate into disasters. This is to be achieved by strengthening efforts to make early warning and seasonal climate forecasts accessible to vulnerable stakeholders in ASALs, while also strengthening their capacity to act upon information through improvement of agricultural extension services and training in natural resource management. 2. At the governance and institutional level, the project focuses on strengthening the link between disaster risk management and climate change to ensure that development and operational planning, policy processes, and incentive systems address existing vulnerabilities, but also account for important climatic changes to avoid processes, which are maladaptive in medium to long-term. In this context, efforts will focus on supporting emerging development of partnerships and information sharing mechanisms, which bring together technical, development and policy perspectives and are essential for establishing a continuous economic framework for disaster and climate risk reduction. 3. While public sector support is important for strengthening climate risk management within development processes, the project recognizes that long-term sustainability can only be achieved through the inclusion of the private sector. It is also noted that the additional burden of climate change will make some livelihoods unsustainable. Hence, the project also focuses on opportunities for economic diversification to initiate a process of providing Kenya s rural population with alternative livelihood perspectives. The CDD component will help strengthen the long-term perspective towards reducing climate related risk in investment choices at the community level, and facilitate and support micro-projects oriented towards mitigating that risk. The projects will also examine the viability of insurance and micro-credit schemes for buffering rural livelihoods against climatic shocks, while also linking such schemes to incentives for vulnerability reduction in the near to medium term.

5 4. Safeguard policies that might apply It is expected that that this project will be rated Category B and trigger the Environmental Assessment Policy. Project appraisal will determine if any other environmental safeguard policies are triggered by project activities. An environmental assessment and management framework that was prepared for the Arid Lands Resource Management Project (ALRMP) will be revised as appropriate and disclosed. 5. Tentative financing Source: ($m.) BORROWER/RECIPIENT 0.5 GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT FACILITY 6.0 Total Contact point Contact: Christine E. Cornelius Title: Lead Operations Officer Tel: (202) Ccornelius@worldbank.org