Presented by IWMI's Liza Debevec at a Roundtable on Building Resilience to Climate Change through Community Dialogues held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, September 20, 2016

1. Introducing the “Protocol/Workshop for facilitating
community dialogue for creation of watershed action
plan for building resilience by sustaining ecosystems
service”
Roundtable on Building Resilience to Climate Change through
Community Dialogues
September 20, 2016, Addis Ababa

2. Application of the Protocol to Ethiopian Case Studies
Components, categories and indicators of a resilience
measurement framework
Components Categories Quantitative Data Qualitative Data
Ex-ante Initial state and
capacities
Assets
Use of Assets
Capacities
Land use and change maps,
rainfall analysis, yield data
Census data
Module 1: Watershed ESS
Module 2: Landscape mapping
Module 3: ESS and Livelihoods
Module 5: Coping strategies
Disturbance Shocks and Stresses Stability/Shocks Climate analysis of droughts, dry-
spells, floods
Module 4: Shocks/Disturbance Timeline
and Effects
Local Contextual Factors Social
Ecological
Systemic
See above See above
Ex-post Subsequent states
and trajectories
Assets
Use of Assets
Capacities
Climate change data and analysis Module 6: Trajectory/Action Plan

3. The guiding principles of the protocol
- Participatory through transformative participation that ensures work
responds to needs of farmers while taking into account the plans and
strategies of the government
- Culturally sensitive by paying attention to local customs, respecting the
role of religious actors in community NRM
- Equitable in that all, including marginalized groups (women, youth,
religious and ethnic minorities) in the community are given equal
opportunities to participate
- Empowering through capacity building at a local level; simple tools that can
be used by the community for the community
- Promoting well-being for the communities and the ecosystem

4. Pre-workshop elements of the protocol
should include (if possible):
• Socio-economic baseline study of the watershed including:
- Socio-economic survey of sample population living in the watershed
- Focus group discussions (men, women, youth, elders) on issues of
perceived environmental change, understanding of ecosystem services
etc.
• Bio-physical baseline study of the watershed including:
- Land use change data
- Rainfall trend data

5. Protocol/Workshop outline
• Day 1:
• Module 1: Identifying ecosystem
services within the watershed
• Module 2: Mapping landscape
components affecting ecosystem
services
• Module 3: Describing relationship of
ecosystems services to livelihoods
• Day 2:
• Module 4: Creating timeline of major
events and their effects on ecosystem
services
• Module 5: Describing
coping/adaptive strategies for
sustaining ecosystem services
• Module 6: Developing a watershed
action plan for sustaining ecosystem
services

6. Module 1
Identifying ecosystem
services within the
watershed
Description: Participants identify
actions necessary to sustaining
ecosystem services within the
watershed and community
Objective: Creation of
baseline/Awareness raising
Output: Matrix listing examples of
the four types of ecosystem services
within the watershed (on different
sheets for each of the
administrative units)

7. Comparison with MoARD Community Based
Participatory Watershed Development Guideline
(2005)
• As part of the village mapping exercise the natural resources,
mentioned under the different ecosystem services, are mapped.
• However, the added value of our approach is that the resources are
classified into four categories of ecosystem services (provisioning,
supporting, regulating, cultural) and the discussion addresses
essential part that the ecosystem services play in communities well-
being.

8. Module 2
Mapping landscape
components affecting
ecosystem services
Description: Participants personalize a
map of their landscape, locating resources
within the landscape including both on-
and off-farm, and on ecosystem services.
Objective: The participants are reminded
of the space in which they live and work
and that has impact on their livelihoods to
create a baseline understanding necessary
for the sessions that follow.
Output: Map of watershed listing key
components
Photo: Liza Debevec / IWMI

9. Comparison with MoARD Community Based
Participatory Watershed Development Guideline
(2005)
• The guidelines offer the option of 2 maps (social (infrastructure etc.)
and natural resources)
• Due to our focus on the ecosystem services, our map focuses on the
natural resources.
• A possible alternative would be to use a predesigned baseline map
containing some key infrastructure points

10. Module 3
Describing relationships
of ecosystem services to
livelihoods
Description: Participants identify main sources
of their livelihoods and break them down to
specific activities. For each type of livelihood
activity they list 2-3 ecosystem services they
depend upon, and 2-3 harmful and positive
effects on ecosystem services that may result
from the activities.
Objective: Raising the awareness of the
important connection between people's day to
day socio-economic activities and the
environment they inhabit and the negative
impact that their activities may have on the
ecosystem that provides resources for their
survival.
Output: Matrix/table with links between
ecosystems services and livelihoods that depend
on them
Photo: Liza Debevec / IWMI

11. Comparison with MoARD Community Based
Participatory Watershed Development Guideline
(2005)
• The socio-economic study has a livelihood component.
• The added value of our approach is that we make the important link
between ecosystems services and livelihood, which we discuss by
asking the participants to list positive, negative and neutral impact of
individual livelihood on specific ecosystems services. This helps in
raising awareness on how our everyday practices impact the
environment.

12. Module 4
Creating timeline of major
events and their effects on
ecosystem services
Description: Farmers discuss observations
related to the landscape and ecosystem
services, and create a timeline of major life-
changing events (positive & negative). The
observations should include range of life-
changing events, e.g., food
availability/market prices, crop
diseases/pests, weather events, births,
deaths, natural disasters, other major events.
Objective: The objective is two-fold; 1) to jog
people's memory and remind them of key
events. 2) the results can help
understand/support reading of the historical
rainfall and other climate data.
Output: Matrix/table with list of key events
and their consequences on the environment

13. Comparison with MoARD Community Based
Participatory Watershed Development Guideline
(2005)
• In the document, a similar exercise is trend analysis (of the
biophysical and socioeconomic survey analysis) where primary and
secondary data are collected and analysed to gain understanding
about the community, watershed, landscape, livelihood and others.
• In addition there is historical transect, simple time lines that cut
across time (see forth coming sections). Transect walk involves careful
observation and semi-structured interviewing with villagers met
during walks.
• Our approach allows to combine the bio-physical data with
perceived/observed major shocks

14. Module 5
Describing coping /adaptive
strategies for sustaining
ecosystem services
Description: The participants will create a
table of existing challenges/issues, then list
all the coping strategies that are in place for
dealing with these challenges. The
participants will then be asked to name the
actors who participate in these activities and
describe their role.
Objective: This helps the community
evaluate existing strengths and weaknesses.
The researchers/practitioners get a baseline
on strengths and weaknesses in the
community.
Output: Matrix/table with list of challenges
and strategies
Photo: Liza Debevec / IWMI

15. Comparison with MoARD Community Based
Participatory Watershed Development Guideline
(2005)
• This module is comparable with the ‘Problem identification exercise’
(page 33) - to get to know people's needs, strengths and aspirations,
discussion on vision for change - identifying problems related to
biological, physical, environmental, economic, institutional, social or
cultural factors, and others. Once problems are identified, they will be
ranked... preference ranking (ranking by voting), direct matrix ranking,
pair-wise ranking and wealth ranking. (Page 34).
• The MoARD document groups people by special interests (gender,
age, etc.) whereas our approach groups people by kebele or village.

16. Module 6
Developing a watershed
action plan for sustaining
ecosystem services
Description: The participants develop action
plans for sustaining ecosystem services and
community well-being within the watershed
for sustaining ecosystem services.
Objective: The aim is for the community to
take on a number of tangible tasks related to
the discussions that they had about their
watershed and challenges it faces. This
activity is aimed to reinforce the buy in from
the community for current and future
implementations.
Output: Detailed action plan that includes
activities, time frame and responsible actors.

17. Comparison with MoARD Community Based
Participatory Watershed Development Guideline
(2005)
• This activity is comparable with the action plan that is developed as
part of the MoARD guidelines.
• In our approach representatives from all the levels are involved in
preparation of the action plan, while the MoARD approach has
different section of the community involved in different aspects of the
development and approval of the plan.

18. Overall comparison of IWMI and MoARD approach
IWMI’s Guideline MoARD’s Guideline
Participants are from all levels (community, kebele and
wereda), men, women, elderly, experts, various association
leaders, DAs etc..
Different groups participate at different stages:
1. Wereda watershed team (mainly experts),
2. Kebele watershed team (DAs and other kebele representatives)
3. Community watershed team (men, women, religious leaders, youth
and respected community members).
4. The community (general assembly) participates in validation of the
socioeconomic and biophysical study results and in the discussion and
approval of the watershed plans developed by DAs and community
watershed team.
Challengesidentified relate to ecosystem, livelihood and
watershed mainly but participants can also raise other
challenges that may be related to cultural practices.
Challenges in relation to watershed are identified and prioritized.
Problems are recognized as:
biological
physical
environmental
economic
institutional,
social or cultural factors…
Action plan contains, what, who, when and how activities
can be implemented. It is mostly a one year plan. Resource
for implementation is from locally available resources and
clearly identified existing external sources.
Action plan contains, what, who, when and how activities can be
implemented. It is mostly developed for more than a year, but for the
first year it detailed. Resources mainly for implementation are from
what is available in the area.

19. How do we measure progress of the action
plan? (M&E)
Suggested methodology:
Short term (0-9 months after the workshop):
- Immediate post workshop discussions?
- Survey questionnaires ?
Long term (1 , 3 and 10 years after the implementation)
- Surveys on livelihoods/vulnerability; socio-economic surveys?
- Comparative analyses of the bio-physical data?
Ensuring alignment with other social and bio-physical M&E processes

20. Conclusions
• The draft protocol was designed after careful examination of existing
resilience tools/protocols and a detailed review of scientific literature on
resilience of social-ecological systems to climate change
• It was tested in two sites in Ethiopia and additionally revised following the
testing.
• The protocol was also compared with existing approaches to watershed
management and resilience building by the Ethiopian government and
further revised.
• Added value of our approach compared to the existing MoARD guidelines
is in the addition of the ecosystem services component and the link
between community livelihood practices and the overall well-being of the
communities and the ecosystem
• Preliminary results of the testing show that the protocol is a practical, low
cost and effective tool for facilitating community dialogue for creation of
watershed action plant for building resilience by sustaining ecosystems
service

21. Thank you for your attention.
For more information, please contact:
Dr Liza Debevec, IWMI Ethiopia
l.debevec@cgiar.org