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FONERWA: Climate Risk Screening Tool

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Authors

Julio Araujo, SouthSouthNorth (julio@southsouthnorth.org)

FCFA
Future Climate for Africa
FONERWA
Fund for Environment and Natural Resources for Rwanda

Aim of the project

The Coordination, Capacity Development and Knowledge Exchange Unit (CCKE), under the Future Climate For Africa (FCFA) programme, developed a pilot project for Rwanda’s Green Fund (FONERWA). The project centred on developing the capacity of FONERWA’s project appraisal team to perform a rudimentary screening on all project proposals. The aim was to strengthen the review of applications for climate risks, and provide FONERWA with information they can share with applicants to better incorporate climate information into project design and implementation.

Dates

February 2016–May 2018

Countries

Rwanda

Participants engaging with the climate risk screening tool at a FONERWA workshop

Participants engaging with the climate risk screening tool at a FONERWA workshop

Participants engaging with the climate risk screening tool at a FONERWA workshop

J. Araujo, 2017)

Aim of co-production

While the process was not initially defined as co-production, the project team established that, in order for the project to develop appropriate solutions, mutually build capacity and create ownership, co-production was necessary. One of the limitations to the causal approach to co-production was around financing co-production activities. Since the project did not begin with a co-production approach in mind, there was no allocated funding for multiple co-production activities and incentives. Similarly, this meant that there was a limited budget for project activities which did not involve finance for securing partner institutions. Therefore, financial incentives were not possible for motivating work/activities between the project team and partners. The co-production approach was aimed at building capacity within the FONERWA appraisal team, creating a sense of ownership and validating the results.

Context

FONERWA funds a wide range of environment and climate change projects, from community to national scales. While FONERWA funds projects from multiple sectors, the risk screening tool only covers agriculture. However, the principles of the tool can be applied to multiple sectors. Both the FONERWA staff and the project applicants had low capacity with regards to climate risks and climate change impacts. In order to both build the capacity of the relevant people as well as develop a tool that is relevant and accessible, co-production was necessary.

Who was involved and what were their roles?

CCKE was the project team that led the co-production process. Initially, the project team expected to co-produce a climate information factsheet with the Rwanda meterological agency, Meteo Rwanda. However, the initial process, when it began, was one-sided, favouring the project team’s work, which created tension with the partners and prevented co-production taking place with Meteo Rwanda.

In order to develop contextually relevant climate-smart agriculture information, the FCFA project team worked in partnership with the International Center for Tropical Agriculture to inform the development of a risk screening tool.

In order to ensure that the risk screening tool was appropriate for FONERWA’s needs, further co-production occurred with the FONERWA team, in particular their private and public sector specialists who deal directly with the project teams applying to the fund.

What was co-produced?

How was co-production done?

The co-production process was run through a combination of formal and informal relationships with project partners. However, no co-production was done with regards to the climate data and information that was used in the initial climate factsheet that was developed for FONERWA. As the co-production process was not initiated at the start of the project, a certain level of trust and goodwill was needed before the partners were able to collaborate with the project team.

Initially, it was expected that climate information for the climate factsheet would be co-produced with Meteo Rwanda. This involved an initial desk-based draft from the project team and a workshop to discuss findings and explore options for future versions of the factsheet. However, the initial process was one-sided, favouring the project team’s work, which created tension with the partners and led to a decline in the interest to participate in the output. As a result, the factsheet was still completed but was not endorsed by Meteo Rwanda, reducing its credibility in-country. The partnerships were formalised in a Memorandum of Understanding that outlined the responsibilities of the project team and the partner. However, issues around financial incentives and/or capacity development meant that the co-production failed to take place.

Co-explore need

The co-production process with FONERWA took place at two formal workshops and training sessions, and the Project Document (PD) clinic – a workshop FONERWA runs, to help project developers build their final proposals. While the entire FONERWA team were involved in the workshops, the core co-production revolved around collaborations with their private and public sector specialists who deal directly with project teams applying to the fund. These engagements were used to explore the type of information needed to promote uptake of climate information and influence the FONERWA review process. During these workshops, FONERWA staff shared insight on how the project could improve their decision-making. Additionally, input from sector specialists gave rise to multiple revisions to the risk screening tool.

Co-develop solutions

CIAT
Center for Tropical Agriculture

Co-production occurred with the CIAT through multiple in-country engagements, and expanded on previous CIAT work. The project team defined co-production, which included the joint creation of information through a desk-based analysis and design from the project team and validating the results from the in-country partner. No formal partnership was established. However, mutual interest in the importance of strengthening FONERWA’s capacity and developing climate-smart projects within Rwanda allowed for an informal agreement between the project team and the partner on work to be co-produced.

Co-deliver solutions

Throughout the co-production process, the risk screening tool was intended to be a FONERWA product that fit with their existing processes. While the co-production process created a sense of ownership, the final tool was branded as a FONERWA product and not under the FCFA branding guidelines. This further added to the sense of ownership by FONERWA. An initial baseline survey, and subsequent surveys, tracked the perceived change in capacity among the FONERWA staff. Similarly, the training workshops were designed to build the capacity of the group, while the PD clinics and use of the tool was designed to begin the process of building the capacity of the project developers. Within all workshops, the participants were introduced to the basics of climate change and climate processes, including the methodology for the climate factsheet and the risk screening tool. Each engagement with the participants built on the progress of the last.

Benefits of the co-production approach

Lessons to learn from

The co-production approach worked well in terms of building capacity and creating a tool that is tailored and useful for the user needs. However, the approach would have been more effective were there more funds available and more regular in-country engagements. Some of the key lessons are outlined as follows:

References