DESIGNING PROJECTS IN A RAPIDLY CHANGING WORLD

We provide examples of tools used by some organizations
involved in the GEF Food Security IAP to
assess resilience: The United Nations Development
Program provided a contribution describing its resilience
tool (COBRA), focused at the household and
community level, and how the RAPTA complements it
through a systems analysis. The Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations (FAO) provided a
description of its Self evaluation and Holistic Assessment
of climate Resilience of farmers and Pastoralists
(SHARP) tool, which assesses the resilience needs of
farmers and pastoralists at the household and community
level. SwedBio, at the Stockholm Resilience
Centre, provided an example demonstrating the value
of multi-stakeholder dialogues in defining comprehensive
solutions that are inclusive of the opportunities
and challenges defined by the multiple actors.
If you are not actually designing a project, we suggest
you focus mainly on Part I of this report.
3.1 SCOPING
RAPTA PROCESS
1. Scoping
4. System
Description
2. Engagement &
Governance
3. Theory of
Change
6. Options &
Pathways
5. System
Assessment
SCOPING
Step 1 Explore context, problems, and
aspirations of the stakeholders
and define project goal
Step 2 Define provisional scope, scale
and location of the project
Step 3 Review relevant past work and
consider how the project will
build from this
Step 4 Identify stakeholders and
governance structures relevant
to the phase of the project cycle
Step 5 Review how resources are to be
allocated to the different RAPTA
components in the current
phase of the project cycle
Step 6 Revisit and revise Scoping to
reflect learning from other
RAPTA components
7. Learning
Figure 6 Steps of the Scoping component
3.1.1 Purpose of Scoping
The purpose of Scoping is primarily for the proponents
of a project to understand more about the
problem and opportunities to address it, and to
secure political support and/or funding to conduct a
project or program in the targeted countries/regions.
A project is usually initiated by a subset of the stakeholders
– such as governments, donors, NGOs and
other key agencies. The project initiators/owners
generally have a broadly defined purpose or goal
related to the source of the funding, or to the missions
and goals of the agencies involved. In the case
of the Food Security IAP, it is the country governments
and GEF agencies who identify a challenge or
opportunity that needs GEF funding. They already
have a strong baseline (existing investments in this
issue) but they need incremental funding to build
resilience into their existing food security programs.
RAPTA guidelines for project design 39