Ustahimilivu Project
Promoting use of climate services, integrating scientific evidence and indigenous knowledge, for climate resilient decision making
Support to Resilience for Sustainable Livelihoods, Isiolo County (DRIC)
The E4Impact Foundation is part of a consortium implementing “Support to Resilience for Sustainable Livelihoods” project in Isiolo County that is funded by the European Union. The overall objective of the EU Project is to contribute toward increased resilience to droughts and another negative impact of climate change for vulnerable groups and improve the nutrition of children under 5 years in Isiolo County. The Specific Objective of the project is: to enhance Food and Nutrition Security (FNS) for vulnerable Pastoralist and Agro-pastoralist Communities in Isiolo County, generating Sustainable livelihoods, protecting productive assets and improving climate smart County service delivery. The action will target beneficiaries located mainly in 7 priority wards namely Oldonyiro, Ngaremara, Chari, Cherab, Kinna, Sericho and Garbattula.
The Expected Output
- ER1: Improved drought resilient and nutrition-sensitive agriculture/livestock production, integrated with conflict resolution and peace building strategies:
- ER2: Key productive household (HH) assets and community investments are sustainably built and recovery capacities against recurrent droughts are strengthened, with a particular focus on women’s economic empowerment:
- ER3: Isiolo County is empowered to address FNS issues, improved data collection and cross-sectoral collaboration to facilitate local political commitment and awareness raising
E4Impact is implementing activities related to strengthening the resilience of pastoralist and agro-pastoralist communities through entrepreneurship, links to markets and development of value chains, enhancing the One Village One Product Initiative, and lobbying Isiolo County to incorporate climate-smart technologies for strengthening resilience
About of the consultancy
E4Impact Foundation is currently seeking to hire a consultant to support with promotion of the use of climate smart technologies and integrate modern sciences with indigenous knowledge, for climate resilient decision making in Isiolo County. The assignment will entail;
- Engaging stakeholders and project partners from various administrative levels and professional dimensions (local communities, governance administrative units, researchers, NGOs, development partners etc.) with the goal of better understanding climate knowledge from various spheres, thus developing a robust framework of efficiently and effectively integrating modern sciences with indigenous knowledge.
- Collecting primary & secondary data at regional, national, county & local/field level
- Performing geospatial & remote sensing (Earth Observation) analysis to support climate smart decisions and
- Strengthening existing county structures and training county officials & partners on the methodologies and tools applied to ensure continuity and sustainability of the project activities.
Geographical Scope
The consultancy will cover the entire Isiolo county. Therefore field data collection must be collected from all the wards namely Oldonyiro, Ngaremara, Chari, Cherab, Kinna, Garbatulla,Sericho, Burat, Wabera and Bula Pesa
Duration
3 Months
General objective of the climate smart technologies consultancy
The objective of the climate smart technologies consultancy is to promote the use of climate smart technologies, modern sciences and indigenous knowledge with the aim of generating valuable information that can support smart climate resilient decisions.
Specific Objectives
R1. Animal value chain decision support – Fodder/Camels/Livestock
- Mapping spatio-temporal vegetation cover changes. The mapping exercise should also distinguish fodder from invasive species by applying appropriate classification techniques
- Mapping spatio-temporal herd movements to optimize on herd grazing areas and inform grazing committees
- Mapping of water points/structures (earth dams, sand dams, pans etc.) for watering the animals and irrigation
R2. Crops value chain decision support
Provide climate services and Earth Observation climate information on;
- Climate change detection
- Climate/Weather projections
- Drought assessment
- Landuse-Landcover classifications and change detection
- Spatio-temporal information on crop status indicators such as biomass, vegetation indices, Leaf Area Indices, fraction of vegetation cover
- Crop suitability mapping and crop calendar development
R3. Climate Smart Sustainability and Advocacy Actions
- Workshops with county officials, grazing committees, farmers and any other stakeholders
- Training local climate smart officials from the County Government of Isiolo (CGI), National Drought Management Authority (NDMA), Kenya Meteorological Department (KMD) and other partners on interpretation and dissemination of the climate smart products. The training exercise should borrow lessons learnt from previous efforts in the county or training best practices applied in others parts of the country under similar scenarios
- Strengthening existing county structures and train county officials on the inclusion of climate smart actions in their annual budgets to ensure that the actions continue after the end of the project
Use of findings
E4Impact Foundation, the county government and other partners will use the information from this consultancy in:-
- Drought monitoring and early warning systems – this is aimed at providing significant benefits for drought risk management, efficient and timely response, adaptation, mitigation, and reduced vulnerability in the county
- Drought impact, climate services, and risk financing – understanding the impacts of drought events along with associated vulnerabilities is key to support with efforts aimed at mitigating the impacts of drought and understand how to build resilience in the future. Furthermore, risk financing, through credit and insurance, is an effective tool to minimize losses from hazards such as drought
- Agricultural land use, crop assessments, livestock feed availability and water resources – Earth observation data/information could be assimilated into crop models and used to recalibrate model parameters thereby reducing on uncertainties associated with seasonal weather conditions. Incorporating ground observations in the models could further reduce these uncertainties.
- Evaluate and strengthen existing technical/expert working groups to further foster county and regional cooperation – strengthening regional partnerships with participation from national & regional institutions, private sectors, and local, regional & international organizations to improve climate services using Geospatial and Earth Observation and facilitate smart agricultural decision-making to help with food security in the county
Methodology:
The consultant is expected to use various methods of carrying out this assignment including, but not limited to:
- Desk review – reviewing relevant documents generated by both local and national governments, NGOs and other organizations that would assist in the use of climate smart technologies to support climate resilient decision making e.g. reports from the Community-based livestock & early warning systems project, Kenya Rapid project
- Liaise with project partners (such as CCM, KMD, NMDA, AMREF, NEMA and relevant national/county government ministries/departments) to gather more information on existing/past relevant work thereby build on the work and avoid duplication of efforts.
- Application of modern scientific techniques to obtain & process historic, current and future climate/weather information from existing global and regional climate model data repositories
- Develop and apply methodologies and/or tools for validation of these climate/weather information against local measurements from weather stations
- Application of modern geospatial and earth observation techniques to generate high resolution products of favourable animal feed resource availability (fodder) and vegetation health status using appropriate indicators; such as biomass, vegetation indices, Leaf Area Indices, fraction of vegetation cover. The consultant should utilise state-of-the-art and robust techniques to distinguish different vegetation types with the aim of mapping out invasive species from appropriate livestock fodder. This may involve use of multispectral and/or hyperspectral images to generate unique spectral signatures of different vegetative types.
- Analyse the spatio-temporal variabilities of animal feed resource availability over the entire county and develop weekly/decadal/monthly/seasonal maps of feed availability
- Application of modern geospatial and earth observation techniques to map/retrieve water resources use and productivity information.
- Map water resources availability for animal and irrigation water sources for irrigated agriculture. This must be validated with ground information gathered during field missions and from secondary information held by other project partners such as the Kenya Rapid project.
- Using available livestock census data and information gathered through interviews, perform detail analysis of herd movements against animal feed resource availability and advise on potentially ideal herd movements during the different times of the year
- Link all geospatial and EO products to a web GIS developed under component 3 of activity 1.5 (led by CCM)
- Development robust and easy to use algorithms/tools for geospatial analysis and satellite image processing to be shared with county officials and partners for application in geospatial and remote sensing data processing
- Partner with CCM to set-up a main data processing unit/station at the county equipped with the required state-of-art hardware, software and methodologies/algorithms. The unit is expected to continuously perform geospatial and remote sensing analysis and relay the information on a timely basis to other sub-stations in the county for climate resilient decisions and action. Local servers, setup at the county offices, along with subscription to cloud-based server systems will be utilised to store raw and processed data and make them always available to county users using a user friendly dashboard/portal.
- Strengthen existing county structures and train staff from Isiolo County (Environment, Agriculture, Water, KMD, NDMA, NEMA and the other key partners) on tools and methodologies applied, interpretation of results and dissemination of information to locals to support climate smart decisions
- Carry out public participation at the beginning and the end of the consultancy to ensure ownership and impact of the activity.
Deliverables and Outputs:
The consultancy is expected to deliver the following outputs during and at the end of the consultancy assignment;
- Inception report – the inception report, submitted one month after start of the consultancy, will present the methodology and tools to be used to perform the different consultancy tasks
- Detail mapping report – the mapping report will present all data collected, analysis performed and results obtained from all consultancy tasks
- Raw and processed data – the consultant will be required to organise all the raw and processed data from the consultancy and hand them over to the client. The data will be required at the right formats to support easy sharing and ensure that they can still be utilised for future analysis
- County geospatial unit setup report – upon setting up of a county geospatial unit, equipped with all the required hardware (computing systems and servers), software and mapping algorithms, the consultant will be required to document all the unit resources and procedures used to setup and commission the unit.
- Training report – the consultant will also be required to produce a training report after providing county officials and partners with the required trainings.
Consultant:
a) Core responsibilities of the Lead Consultant:-
The lead consultant will be expected to perform the following core responsibilities:
- Review all relevant secondary sources of data and any other relevant information to the study.
- With advise and under the supervision of E4IMPACT, engage with all project stakeholders such as county departments of Environment, Agriculture, Livestock, Water, KMD, NDMA, NEMA, FAO and the other key partners
- Develop all necessary data collection methodologies/procedures, tools, implementation plan, time schedule and present them for review before use.
- Recruit and train field data collection assistants and supervisors under the supervision of E4Impact
- Conduct both quantitative and qualitative data collection using acceptable methodologies approved and supervised by E4IMPACT.
- Develop relevant databases and provide supervision of data collection using the approved methods and procedures to ensure accuracy and quality of data
- Perform geospatial and remote sensing analysis using modern platforms, tools and procedures approved by E4IMPACT and validate the results using ground observations or any other acceptable validation techniques
- Constantly update the client on progress of the exercise through short reports and presentations for quality control
- Take the lead during setup of county main data processing unit/station and associated sub-stations
- Present draft report for review and input.
- Develop the final report incorporating stakeholders’ feedback
b) Skill and knowledge base requirements
- Demonstrated experience in field data collection,
- Excellent knowledge, skills and experience in geospatial and earth observation analysis
- Strong analytical, research and presentation skills.
- Excellent report writing skills
- Ability to take on assignments that require travel, mission and/or appointment to field locations.
Education
Advanced university degree in natural sciences or engineering or similar in one or more areas of disaster management, geospatial technologies, remote sensing/earth observation, sustainable development or other related fields.
Skills and Experience:
- Minimum of 5 years of professional experience in areas related to Geospatial analysis (GIS) and Remote Sensing (RS)
- Skills in desktop and cloud-based GIS and RS data processing software/tools (cloud computing and web GIS)
- Experience in the application of GIS, earth observation and space technologies in disaster management.
- Experienced in geospatial and remote sensing field data collection and processing.
- Good knowledge, skills and experience in setting up or supervising setup of ICT systems/infrastructure required to satisfy institutional GIS and RS needs. Lead consultant may engage an ICT expert to support with this role
- Experience in training staff/officials from different background, with different professional levels on basic to advanced GIS and RS
- Experience setting up institutional GIS/RS stations/units will be an added advantage
Application Procedure
Interested Firms or Individuals should provide the following documents together with the proposal:
- Technical proposal or Expression of Interest indicating prior experience and how this assignment will be executed.
- Financial proposal
- Recent CV with references.
All applications should be emailed to procurement.kenya@e4impact.org by the 15th November 2022