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PROJECT EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Request for Work Program Inclusion

FINANCING PLAN ($)
PDF / Project
GEF / A / 137,298,000
B / 700,000
C
GEF Total / 700,000 / 137,298,000
Co-financing / (provide details in Section b: co-financing)
GEF IA/ExA / 850,000 / 986,215,000
Governments / 50,000 / to be confirmed
Others / 0 / to be confirmed
Co-financing Total / 900,000 / 986,215,000 plus government and bilaterals
Total / 1,600,000 / 1,123,513,000
Financing for associated activities if any:
FOR JOINT PARTNERSHIP*
GEF Project/Component ($)
AfDB / 0 / 9,000,000
FAO / 0 / 6,364,000
IFAD / 0 / 19,000,000
UNDP / 0 / 28,028,000
UNEP / 0 / 8,406,000
World Bank / 700,000 / 66,500,000
* Projects that are jointly implemented by more than one IA or ExA

GEFSEC Project ID:2757

IA/ ExA’s Project ID:P092375

Country: Regional (Sub-Saharan Africa)

Project Title: Strategic Investment Program for Sustainable Land Management in Sub-Saharan Africa (SIP)

GEF IA/ExA: AfDB, FAO, IFAD, UNDP, UNEP,World Bank (lead)

Other project executing agency(ies):

Duration: 2007 - 2010

GEF Focal Area: SLM

GEF Strategic objectives: SLM-1, SLM-2

IA/ExA Fee:

AfDB / 909,050
FAO / 636,300
IFAD / 1,909,050
UNDP / 2,522,450
UNEP / 738,950
World Bank / 5,986,200

Approved on behalf of the World Bank. This Proposal has been prepared in accordance with GEF policies and procedures and meets the standards of the GEF Project Review Criteria for work program inclusion.

Steve GormanChristophe Crepin

WB/GEF CoordinatorProject Contact Person

Date: April 26, 2007Tel. and email: 202-473-9727

Executive Summary - GEF Strategic Investment Program for SLM in SSA (SIP) - 26 September 2006

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1.PROGRAM SUMMARY

1. Since the UNCCD signing, Sub-Saharan Africa’s call for action to support efforts to combat land degradation has been inadequately fulfilled. A significant potential for progress therefore exists by systematically upscaling sustainable land management (SLM) approaches.

2. However, a common set of key barriers, faced by nearly all sub-Saharan countries, limits SLM upscaling in a variety of landscapes, and in some cases contributes directly to land degradation. The GEF has an important role to play to catalyzeSLM upscaling by targeting the policy and institutional enabling environment, leveraging co-financing, and by developing regional and country level coalitions to align African leadership, sectors, and donors at a more substantial level than has been done in the past. A programmatic framework for collective action under a regional partnership – one that is anchored in and led by African institutions and initiatives – will reinforce country level engagement and investment. This approach will strengthen commitments by international, regional, and country institutions andgenerate greater impact with higher cost-efficiency than is now the case.

3. The Strategic Investment Program for SLM in Sub-Saharan Africa ( SIP) is the response from the GEF to support SSA countries in pursuing the multi-sector, long-term programmatic approaches needed to upscale SLM. The SIP will directly contribute to the implementation of the GEF Land Degradation Focal Area Strategy. GEF Council is asked to approvethe SIP’s programmatic framework and an accompanying portfolio of planned activities to be initiated in 2007-2010, amounting to an overall envelope of $150millionunder GEF-4. This request could be part of a sequence of follow-up four-year phases, allowing for a broad participation of countries; each phase would be keyed to future GEF replenishments and subject to achievement of clearly specified results which would serve as triggers.

4. The SIP is a program informed by GEF and other experience and supported by the TerrAfrica platform.Its development has been guided by a series of joint consultations and in-depth analysis of past experience, in particular fromthe GEF’s implementation of land degradation activities including support to the NEPAD Action Plan for the Environment Initiative, the GEF-China SLM partnership, GEF partnership programs for Central Asia, Namibia, and Burkina Faso, and the LDC-SIDS program. The TerrAfrica partnership has actively supported SIPpreparation and will ramp up support during implementation of the SIP portfolio. TerrAfrica was launched by NEPAD and a large group of partnerssimultaneously at the UNCCD COP7 in Nairobiand at the Partnership Forum of the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Program to provide an operational framework for partners to better join and align efforts to upscale SLM in Sub-Saharan Africa. TerrAfrica provides a platform for partnersto support African leadership and better target and align policy, institutional and investment dialogue at multiple levels, while the SIP, as one catalytic instrument, efficiently mobilises GEF financing to address global dimensions. See

5. Eight key features form the backbone of the SIP’s innovative approach: (1) up-front commitment to an envelope of funds by the GEF Council to signal the availability of a predictable envelope of grant financing for Sub-Saharan beneficiaries, (2)agency commitment to joint programming at country level, backstopped at theregional leveland guided by a shared vision,(3) commitments by Sub-Saharan countries to use programmatic approaches to improve enabling environments and scale up SLM,while engaging at their specific readiness levels, (4)responding to critical investment needs by a solid, agreed-upon multi-partner investment framework that will promote higher political visibility, solid advocacy, rigor, accountability and interest; (5) integration within broader country policy and institutional dialogues and large-scale financing thatinvolves strategic,complementary delivery mechanisms; (6) streamlined project processing through delegated authority for project approval to the GEF CEO; (7) commonset of approaches for M&E, reporting, and result-oriented knowledge management, and (8) a design framework that takes advantage of on-the-ground learning to replicate and transfer investment experiences throughout the region, building on what already exists, and spilling across Sub-Saharan Africa some of the benefits and lessons from the SIP. These features amplify GEF impact, and will be furtherleveraged by the support fromthe TerrAfrica platform, including NEPAD advocacy, benchmarking and peer review objectives and processes. A thematic portfolio of planned operations is presented in annex D, alongwith agency baseline co-financing and summaries of country engagements. The priorities in this portfolio have emerged from multi-partner country and regional dialogues,under the coordination of the SIP Steering Committee. An elaborated portfolio with descriptions of discrete operations is annexed to the full Program Brief(Annex 7).

6. The SIP will further allow IAs and ExAs cooperating on TerrAfrica to harmonize actions to strengthen joint work programming at all levels for increased impacts and cost-effectiveness. This is key to allow agencies, in partnership with the African Union, NEPAD, and Regional Economic Communities, to promote enhanced collective commitments to: (i) more strongly feature land degradation and SLM upscaling in poverty reduction strategies, national budget, sectoral strategies, and donor assistance strategies; (ii) more strongly promote policy, institutional, and domestic financing enhancements that address barriers and bottlenecks to upscaling; (iii) use a common tool (the Country SLM Investment Framework) to help align sectors and donors around a prioritized sequence of diagnostics and investments that reaches well beyondthe GEF; (iv) engage additional donors and partners in joint programming and in meeting diverse financing needs through complementary delivery mechanisms.

1.1PROGRAMRATIONALE

7. A common goal is advocated and shared at regional level with strong support from countries.NEPAD’s Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Program and Action Plan for the Environment, the implementation action plans of the African Regional Economic Communities, the UNCCD, and a growing number of national and sectoral strategies all aim to address land degradation and scale up the area of African cropland, rangeland, and woodland under sustainable management.

8. Ecosystem services provided by land resources are critical for global and local environment in sub-Saharan Africa, yet low productivityand unsustainable land management is common. Roughly two-thirds of the region’s estimated700 million people are rural. They depend directly on livestock, fishing, forestry, or largely rainfed agriculture, while urban residents also rely on rural production. Crop and livestock yields in sub-Saharan Africa are the lowest in the world, while deforestation proceeds at the highest rate in the world. Compounding the challenge, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has identified the region as one of the most vulnerable areas to the adverse impacts of climate change in the world.In no other region are the services provided by terrestrial ecosystems so fundamental to sustainability, while the renewable resource base is being eroded so rapidly, and where countries are under-equipped to respond in the face of both increased climate variability and the estimated 0.5% - 9% drag that land degradation places on agricultural gross domestic product in sub-Saharan Africa.

9. The UNCCD notes the obligations of the Parties to the Convention to implement approaches that respond to Africa’s particular conditions.A special effort is needed to catalyze efforts to scale up SLM. Such an effort willharness the large andgrowing momentum in the region to act, and follow up on the commitments made by the international community to respond to Africa’s repeated calls for action to sustain its natural resource base, the source of its current and future wealth, and to secure important global environment services.

10. Business as usual has delivered mixed results and a shift is required to make progress.

Joint diagnostic reviews and a comprehensive process of consultations have identified a number of key interconnected barriers and bottlenecks in the enabling environmentthat have led to the past shortcomings of investments in Africa that address land degradation. Among the many challenges, national and subnational institutions face weaknesses in coordinating across sectors, themes, donors and stakeholders; incentive structures such as land tenure or local access to credit are weak or inappropriate; knowledge needs to be unlocked and channeled to the right level of decision making, and African leadership and governance on SLM needs reinforcement at all levels. Many of these barriers, elaborated in the Program Brief, cannot be efficientlyaddressed by isolated single projects, many of which have been relatively short-term and overly reliant on technology. Nor can it be effectively supported by sectors and individual donors acting alone.

11. In response, a regionalprogrammaticapproach,underpinned by partnerships,will have a number of strategic advantagesover business-as-usual in Sub-Saharan Africa. First,a regional approach provides a vehicle for focusing individual country investments and supra-national bodies on shared objectives whether regional, subregional, or transboundary. Second, it builds a coherent body of knowledge and provides the vehicle to transfer it across borders and to decision makers, allowing for cross-country comparison, and leveragingAfrica’s increasing peer review processes and advocacy. Third, it provides a strong mechanism for much better cooperating with a wider array of potential donors and other types of partners and to help align their efforts around a common and African driven goal and vision across sectors. This signals a very well structured and special effort conducive to alignment, compared to piecemeal approachessuch as first-come first-served. Fourth, it further strengthens African leadership and advocacy on the land agenda and provides an operational linkage across the subregions that will support on-going efforts at African integration. Fifth, there are cost savings best realized through a regional approach: transaction costs are reduced for countries and donor agencies alike as expectations and goals are more transparent, and economies of scale are harnessed as replication ramps up, knowledge/experience is disseminated, and bureaucratic burdens are reduced.Sixth, a programmatic partnership approach reinforces the commitments made by donors and countries (including stakeholders at farmer and civil society levels) around a common,comprehensive agenda.

12. It is therefore proposed to amplify theimpact and cost-effectiveness of mobilising the GEFvia theinter-agency Strategic Investment Program for SLM in Sub-Saharan Africa (SIP). The SIP will contribute to dismantling the barriers to SLM upscaling in the region byfacilitatingdonor alignment and country engagement,supported by TerrAfrica,over the medium to long-term. This will help cost-effectively sustain implementation of activities and promote systemic change in Sub-Saharan Africa. It will enable the GEF to play a stronger catalytic role in harmonizing policies, aligning institutions, and building a shared regional knowledge base linked to decision making. In addition to direct social, economic, and environmental benefits gained from addressing land degradation in Sub-Saharan countries’ priority areas, additional global benefits willalso accrue in other GEF focal areas: biodiversity, international waters, and climate change, with a specific attention to adaptation. This program will benefit from the support of the TerrAfrica platform and follow the principles adopted by its members and reflected in its business plan.

13. The SIP is designed to support achievement of Africandevelopment and environment goals and will build on existing successes and processes, reinforced by gap analyses. It is founded on a shared assessment that:

i) SLM is key to development and ecosystem stability in the region, and delivers significant global environment benefits,

ii)Sub-Saharan stakeholders are ready to move at all levels -- local, country, subregional, and regional -- to address enabling environments and go beyond calls for action,

iii) GEF financing needs to be applied much more strategically and catalytically to drive the long-term engagement needed to align stakeholders and donors around the development of country-specific programmatic approaches that arelinked to specific co-financing sources.

14. The GEF SIP will add value in the region byenhancingthe regional dynamic and programmatic approaches where already in play, including theaction plansof the Desertification Convention, NEPAD’s flagship agriculture and environment programs (the latter directly supported by GEF), andexisting national programs such as the GEF-financed Country Partnership Programs in Namibia and Burkina Faso.

15. The SIP will add value to GEF corporate strategy (Table 1), to help drive the shift needed to address the key barriers in the enabling environment that affect large-scale SLM uptake. As a strategic partnership of all GEF IAs and ExAs, the SIP is reinforced by the broader context of the TerrAfrica platformbeyond the GEF family. ,The SIP aims to alleviate the barriers in the enabling environmentby using incremental GEF financing to strengthen long-term sector alignment and stakeholder participation on SLM, harmonize policy and institutional dialogues, strengthen cross-fertilization and maximize impact per dollar invested, capitalize on the comparative advantages of the agencies and their leveraging impact through a diversified set of delivery mechanisms, and promotedonor engagement over a longer timeframe while reinforcing African commitment, accountability, leadership and alliance, critical to longer term and larger scale successes.

Executive Summary: Strategic Investment Program for Sustainable Land Management in Sub-Saharan Africa (SIP)

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Table 1: Added value

Business as usual / The added value of SIP
  • Scattered use of GEF resources based on a first-come, first-serve basis
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  • Stronger strategic cooperation, enhanced prioritization and greater cost savings among partners by moving toward long-term joint programming centered on operational country led investment frameworks.
  • Accelerated and strengthened development of nationalresult-oriented SLM coalitions at lower marginal cost.

  • Lack of predictability of resources over longer time frames, which limits the ability to engage into solid and mainstreamed policy and institutional dialogues and related governance issues on SLM.
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  • Enhance the GEF’s ability to foster system-wide change in Africa on the enabling environment for upscaling SLM, coupled with partners’ mainstreamed policy and institutional assistance dialogues.

  • Lower level of financial leveraging, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness inherent in piece-meal project approaches(at a time when domestic and international financing have evolved towards programmatic financing including budget support).
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  • Better catalyze an expansion of total international and domestic financing for investment in SLM at higher cost efficiency.

  • Weak monitoring, evaluation and benchmarking among GEF and non-GEF operations facing similar challenges in the region.
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  • Better comparison, evaluation and monitoring of efforts across countries with similar conditions by aligning M&E key indicators and systems (ie, policy enhancements such as land tenure, level of good governance, trends in public expenditure, etc.).

  • Lack of implementation support for sub-Saharan Africa’s increasing leadership on sustainable rural development.
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  • Much greater support and political visibility given to Africa’s existing regional and national priorities, strategies and programs.

  • Weak support for African-driven mutual learning and peer review across borders, sectors and themes.
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  • Increase opportunities for GEF investments in the region to generate, exchange, and absorb knowledge important in the African context.
  • Increased and more solid advocacy at all levels.
  • Greater flexibility to address transboundary resources, within national policy frameworks, for example by embedding existing GEF financed Strategic Action Programs into policy dialogues along with the SLM agenda.

1.2OBJECTIVES

16. SIP goals, objectives, results, impacts, and indicators are presented in the results framework(Annex B) and summarizedbelow.For the GEF, the SIP has beendesigned to provide an operational framework for partners to collectively deliver on the objectives of the GEF-4 Land Degradation Focal Area Strategy.

17. The vision, or overall long-termgoal, of the SIP is to improve natural resource-based livelihoods by preventing and reversing land degradation. Mobilizing GEF resources to accomplish this goal directly contributes to the GEF focal area strategy on land degradation, sub-Saharan stakeholders’ achieving the Millennium Development Goals on hunger and environment, as well as to UNCCD priorities in national and subregional planning documents, and NEPAD’sagriculture and environment program goals.

18. The global environmental objective is to prevent and reduce the impact of land degradation on ecosystem services in country-defined priority SSA ecosystems. The SIP secures global environmental benefits fromSLM investments in three ways: i) by helping secure ecosystem function, and therefore the services upon which life depends at global down to locallevels, ii) by delivering benefits to other GEF focal areas through SLMinvestment, and iii) by selectively addressing the incremental cost of transboundary interventions to improve management of shared land and water resources. Additional ecosystem resilience is secured by taking measures to ensure that climate adaptation is considered in SLM investments.See box 1.