The World Initiative for Sustainable Pastoralism (WISP) bridging fund

The World Initiative for Sustainable Pastoralism (WISP) is a project of the Global Environment Facility,implemented by UNDP and executed by IUCN, the World Conservation Union. WISP is a global initiative to promote sustainable land management through recognition of the vital role of mobile livestock production. The project is a catalytic partnership that enables pastoralists to demonstrate that their land use and production system is an efficient way of harnessing the natural resources of the world’s rangelands.Project implementation began in September 2005 and is expected to close in August 2008.

During the two years of its implementation, WISP has produced numerous knowledge products that have been widely used to raise understanding of the economic, environmental and social rationale of mobile pastoralism, thereby providing the social, economic and environmental arguments to improve perceptions of pastoralism as a viable resource management system. It has also advocated for an enabling environment for sustainable rangeland management, improved pastoral livelihoods and pastoralist empowerment. It continues to build the capacity of pastoral and other institutions to develop policies that enable pastoralists to sustainably manage their natural resources.The project has been nominated to the UNDP’s new scheme on “Best Project’s Price” for the Land Degradation Projects Category.

Justification for the bridging fund: WISP was originally conceptualised as a full size project. However, when GEF agreed the grant to WISP it advised that the project be reduced from a Full Size Project to a Medium Size Project. Unfortunately, very little was removed from the original proposal and WISP is therefore aiming to achieve the outputs of a 5 year, 3 million dollar project in three years and a budget of 1 million dollars. Nevertheless, WISP has achieved a high degree of success under the circumstances although more work is needed to move towards the overall goal of enabling sustainable rangeland management, improved pastoral livelihoods, and pastoral empowerment.

A Mid Term Evaluation was undertaken in October 2007 (report attached) and has provided a valuable insight into the ‘high-value activities’ that the project needs to prioritise in order to lay the strongest foundations for the future of the programme. This includes boosting support for training of advocacy partners, and identifying regional communications hubs – two activities that have been tackled through WISP, but which require more serious attention in the coming two years. The Mid Term Evaluation also emphasised the importance of continuing the work of WISP beyond the current planned 3 years ending in September 2008.

Many of WISP’s partners are eager for WISP to continue because of the platform of credibility that it brings to their own advocacy efforts. The project has also created a number of partnerships and collaborations on which to build on over the next four years as it moves into the second phase of implementation. It is however clear that GEF will not finance a phase II. WISP has therefore successfully secured co-financing in the region of $750,000, which has helped to meet many of WISP’s objectives. This co-finance includes $200,000 form IFAD; in addition, WISP has begun discussions with IFAD over a large grant of $1,500,000 to finance Phase II. However, this grant will be available in mid 2009 at the earliest, and possibly as late as early 2010.

For these reasons, it is important to secure a bridging fund from the GEF to enable WISP to meet its current objectives more fully, to pave the way strongly for Phase II, and to ensure continuity between the two phases. WISP is also seeking additional funding from beyond the GEF to support this period of uncertainty, specifically a concept note has been developed for inter-regional learning on commodity based trade in the high-altitude pastoral areas, and a number of other concept notes are also under consideration. However, a bridging fund from the GEF will provide important security and continuity for the project.

Proposed activities for the bridging fund

Through Outcome 1, WISP will develop a formal publication that brings together the diverse strands of WISP’s work between 2006 and 2008, making the case strongly for mobile pastoralism as a tool for sustainable land management. This publication will be designed for formal publication in English initially. This is an important step towards raising the credibility of the knowledge base on the role of pastoralism for sustainable land management.

WISP will further raise its global profile by boosting input to the online database of pastoral populations, which will give greater recognition of the global nature of mobile pastoralism. WISP will also direct resources to networking in an important but underrepresented region by translating a number of knowledge products from 2006-08 into Arabic.

Using the Arabic products, WISP will strengthen its efforts to build advocacy capacities by supporting regional networking within the Northern African and West Asia region, through consultation with IUCN members. WISP will also support the development of an inter-regional learning network on commodity-based trade, with a focus either on animal fine fibre production (learning between Asia and South America) or dairy processing and marketing (learning between West and Southern Asia and Sub Saharan Africa). The choice of regions will depend on availability of co-funding.

An important high-value activity that will position WISP well for its future development is the training of key partners in sustainable pastoralism and pastoral advocacy. WISP is already planning advocacy training during the current phase, but this additional training will have a greater emphasis on regions where acceptance of pastoralism is less wide-spread and where WISP’s partners still harbour doubts about the role of pastoralism in sustainable land management. The training will therefore also look more strongly at making the case for pastoralism to the trainees.

Advocacy will continue through partners and directly by WISP, through attendance at global fora such as the UNCCD and UNCBD meetings, as well as through direct discussions with international institutions: UN agencies, INGOs and bi-lateral donors. WISP will use the Minimum Standards developed through Ifad funding and will discuss their adoption by different international agencies.

Finally, in order to ensure that the project continues to evolve and maintain its relevance, WISP will boost support to the Partners Coordination Mechanism, will develop and implement a Peer Review process, and will continue the implementation and fine-tuning of the Monitoring and Learning system, making sure that lessons from the monitoring fully inform all planning processes.

All activities in the bridging fund will be consistent with the existing logframe, which has been strengthened (clarified rather than substantively altered) in response to the mid term evaluation of WISP:

Goal: To enable sustainable rangeland management, improved pastoral livelihoods, and pastoral empowerment

Immediate objective:Gather state of the art global knowledge on pastoralism, use the knowledge to influence planning and policy making, and build capacities to use the knowledge effectively to enable sustainable land management through pastoralism, via a catalytic partnership between pastoralists, donors, UN agencies, NGOs and the private sector.

Outcome 1: Improved accessibility of state of the art global knowledge on sustainable pastoralist land management analysed and packaged to enable planners, policy makers and their informants to develop appropriate policies and practice that promote poverty alleviation and ecosystem integrity.

Activities:

  1. Formal publication of key areas of WISP’s work during 2005-08, divided into sections on pastoral economics, pastoral environments, pastoral rights and pastoral governance
  2. Packaging and publication of all products in Outcome 1, including translation of WISP products into Arabic
  3. Database development – addition of data from 10 pastoralist populations to the global online database

Outcome 2: Develop the capacities of pastoralists, civil society organizations and public and private institutions to engage in advocacy to ensure viable and sustainable livelihoods

Activities:

  1. Development of a pastoralist network in North Africa and West Asia through consultation with IUCN members and publication of WISP materials into the local language
  2. Support for one inter-regional learning meeting and network on commodity-based trade: animal fine fibre production (learning between Asia and South America) or dairy processing and marketing (learning between West and Southern Asia and Sub Saharan Africa)
  3. Broad based training on sustainable pastoralism and pastoral advocacy for 12 WISP partners

Outcome 3: Advocacy for effective policies and laws and appropriate budget allocation that support sustainable pastoral resource management

Activities:

  1. Advocacy on pastoralism for sustainable land management by WISP partners at global events (CCD, CBD)
  2. Advocacy on pastoralism for sustainable land management by WISP to international institutions – taking the Minimum Standards to donor and multilateral institutions

Outcome 4: Participation, evaluation and adaptive management to ensure effective learning and programme development

Activities:

  1. Development of the Partners Coordinating Mechanism through support for one PCC consultative meeting
  2. Development and use of the Peer Review process
  3. Implementation and fine tuning of the Monitoring and Learning system to ensure that project decisions are informed by up-to-date understanding of how WISP is performing

Proposed budget

Consultant / 60,000
Communications / 10,000
Training / 30,000
Publishing and translating / 90,000
Coordination and management / 110,000
Total / 300,000