81269730-Climate-Sensitive Innovations in Land Management (CLM)

With almost 50 % of agricultural land eroded and at least 30 000 hectares of fertile land lost every year, land degradation is a major threat to the crop and livestock production in the rural highlands of Ethiopia. Agriculture is rapidly encroaching into marginal lands including lake catchments such as Chamo and Tana lakes to produce food and animal feed. Reversing land degradation has been a high priority agenda for the Ethiopian government since 2010. The government has developed a strategic investment framework (ESIF) aiming at improving the economic well-being of farmers, pastoralists and forest users by combining practices for large-scale sustainable land management with the potential to restore, maintain and increase the productivity of land resources. The national investment flagship Sustainable Land Management Program (SLMP) is part of the ESIF being implemented in the six highland regional states (Amhara, Benishangul Gumez, Gambella, Oromia, Southern Nations and Nationality Peoples and Tigray). BMZ, through GIZ, has been providing technical and managerial support to the implementing partners at national, regional, woreda and community level. The program has so far reached 3 100 community watersheds in the six regions and has restored around 1 500 000 ha degraded land, of which 0.9 is arable land. The ‘Climate-Sensitive Innovations in Land Management’ (CLM) project is a technical cooperation (TC) module of the programme ‘Sustainable Land Management and Food Security in Ethiopia’ within the sectoral focal area of ‘Sustainable Use of Natural Resources, Agriculture and Food Security’ of the German-Ethiopian Development Cooperation. GIZ is commissioned by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) with costs of German contribution EUR 18 000 000 to implement the project. The project, within the 3 years implementation period (July 2021 to June 2024), aims at improving effectiveness of the extension system at federal, regional states and woredas and regional level in planning and implementing sustainable, climate sensitive land management. The CLM project support measures are organised under three major outputs. Output 1: Project support measures focus on advises the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) on the development of guidelines for the operationalisation of SLM strategies and policies and offers tailor-made training courses. The guidelines will enable the national and regional state institutions to further develop and implement innovative, climate-sensitive approaches to sustainable land management (SLM), so that they can effectively and efficiently implement the funds provided by various donors, which amount to several hundred million dollars. Output 2: The measures under this output directly strengthen the capacities of community leaders who act as multipliers in their communities. Furthermore, the measures strengthen the system of development agents, who work at the interface between WSUAs and agricultural extension services. Their capacities are promoted through targeted training events on climate-sensitive land management or intersectoral cooperation. To exploit the potential of digitisation for more efficient service provision, the topic of digital literacy is integrated into training measures. Output 3: The measure under this output focuses on the development of integrated approaches comprising biophysical, social, economic and institutional solutions in addressing lake catchment challenges in lake chamo. The Ethiopian ministry of Agriculture (MoA) and its structure from federal to community level is the lead executing agency of the project. Implementation of the project will be oversighted by a team of technical and steering committee composed of representatives from different directorates in MoA and development partners. The contractor under this tender is expected to contribute to Output 3 of the project.