Implementing Climate-Smart Agriculture: A Study in the Northeast of Syria

INTRODUCTION:
About Expertise France:
Expertise France is a public agency part of the AFD Group, merging six agencies under the supervision of the
French Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Economy and Finance with a strong inter-ministerial vocation. EF offers programme engineering and technical assistance by developing and implementing international cooperation actions worldwide. EF operates in various development and institutional cooperation fields, including safety and security reform, post-crisis/stability, public health, human rights, strengthening of institutions and NGOs, and governance.
Expertise France designs and implements projects which aim to contribute to the balanced development of partner countries, in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda and the priorities of France’s external action.

CONTEXT
Syrian conflict
The Syrian conflict is having a devastating and lasting impact on Syria and across the region. With the conflict almost entering its eleven-year, the needs of the affected populations for assistance, including 13.1 million people inside the country and more than 5.6 million refugees plus their overstretched host communities in neighbouring countries, are of an unprecedented scale. In 2013, the Syria crisis transformed itself from a humanitarian emergency to a multidimensional and protracted crisis directly affecting several countries in the region – mainly Lebanon and Jordan, but also Iraq, Turkey, and Egypt – whose social and economic capacity to deal with the ever-growing influx of refugees is all but exhausted. All actors involved in the crisis response agree that this massive challenge requires a comprehensive regional response, not only humanitarian aid but also longer-term structural support to host countries and communities, especially as no political solution to the crisis is in sight in the short term.
Many communities inside Syria face disrupted humanitarian support and quickly deteriorating public services and
infrastructure, including the communities of northeast Syria.

EXPERTISE FRANCE IN SYRIA:
Since 2013, Expertise France has been implementing direct non-humanitarian assistance programmes in nonregime-held areas across Syria. EF developed and implemented several stabilization projects targeting conflictaffected communities in Syria through local Syrian NGOs and CSOs with whom EF built strong partnerships.
Expertise France’s fields of intervention cover the following sectors: health, livelihoods, early recovery, and
capacity development.

Expertise France in Northeast Syria:
Expertise France has been engaged in northeast Syria since the defeat of ISIS with an aim to support the transition to stability. EF stabilization efforts pursue backing the third pillar of France’s stabilization approach that involves improving access to essential services and stimulating economic recovery and livelihoods.
To support this endeavour, Expertise France is currently implementing the second phase of the Health Recovery in Northeast Syria (HERNES) project, aiming to improve access to basic health care, including primary health care, dialysis, pediatric and gynecological care, the COVID-19 response, and training for medical professionals.
The first phase of HERNES was implemented between 2019 and 2021.
Furthermore, Expertise France implements the Syria Area Based Integrated Recovery (SABIR ) project since 2020 targeting multi-sectors, including improving (I) access to essential services through public infrastructures rehabilitation (II) promoting access to livelihoods and income generation through agriculture, livestock, technical and vocational education and finally (III) foster social capital by delivering tailored capacity building activities to local partners.

PROJECT BACKGROUND:
Supported by the French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs, Expertise France has launched the third phase of the Syria Area-Based Integrated Recovery (SABIR) project in order to respond to the protracted crisis in NES following the same integrated area-based approach, targeting a cluster of communities in specific geographic areas in the south of Al Hasskah and Ar-raqqa provinces, and taking into account the links and exchanges between sectors, local regions and stakeholders to maximize impact.
The SABIR III project was built on lessons learned from SABIR I and SABIR II, maintaining, and expanding good practices, especially the successful area-based and holistic approach to respond to the inter-related and multisectoral needs as a mean for stabilization, while adopting a more active community engagement and localized approach under SABIR III through forming community-based committees who would represent the targeted communities and their interests. Particular attention is devoted to mitigating climate change, prevailing environmental degradation, and water scarcity in the NES. SABIR project’s overall intended impact is to contribute to addressing the post-crisis recovery challenges to pave the path towards sustainable development. The sub-objective of SABIR III is to build more resilient local
communities towards greater stabilization in the northeast of Syria.

SABIR III focus areas:
A. Support the recovery of essential services through the rehabilitation of public infrastructures.
B. Promote access to livelihoods and empower the local economy through agriculture, livestock,
TVET, entrepreneurship, micro-grants, and other income-generating activities.
C. Reinforce the capacity of social capital through capacity development to partnered organizations
and the Community-Based Committees.

STUDY PURPOSE:
Expertise France is seeking a consultantcompany to design and carry out a technical research study on practices, options, constraints and capabilities within the “Climate Smart Agriculture” in SABIR intervention areas. The objective of this study is to provide EF with practical, evidence-based solutions to enhance its climate smart agriculture programming. It is expected that this study will provide insights into the kind of inputs, practices, and Innovations that could help local communities to better cope with climate change impacts. Additionally, the objective is to better understand how to promote climate smart agriculture behaviors among smallholder farmers and other market actors and how particular inputs and climate issues more broadly are influencing the purchase practices among consumers. Finally, the study should examine the effectiveness of approaches to climate smart agriculture that are currently being used by SABIR project and other actors. The study should inform overall understanding of climate smart agriculture dimensions focusing on access and use of water resources, local farming practices, local breeding practices, etc.
The outcomes of this study will be used to facilitate dialogue with various actors, such as private Sector actors (Agribusinesses), institutional actors (national and or governorate level), Donor community, INGOs and CBOs,
Academic, Research and Farmers Institutions, Local communities and Individuals, etc.

STUDY OBJECTIVES:

1. To understand constraints and opportunities in promoting climate smart agriculture in Northeast of Syria.
2. To identify capacities of key market actors responsible for promoting climate smart agriculture inputs and
   extension services.
3. To identify and present best options of Input products and services, practices and innovations that support
   climate smart agriculture and ensure greater resilience and adaptation to climate change,
4. To further validate climate smart agriculture input, products and services, practices, and innovations that
   SABIR has been promoting and what other recommendations could be considered.
5. To identify and understand existing policy frameworks and how smallholder farmers are impacted by its
   existence.

METHODOLOGY:
In addition to presenting general knowledge related to the study topic, this study aims to integrate with the activities of the Sabir project and its work sites. It will comprehensively review current practices and generate practical recommendations for improvement. The envisioned research design is expected to be fully qualitative or a mixedmethods approach, incorporating diverse data sources and analysis strategies. These may include a question-based approach, facilitated by focus group discussions, preferably utilizing the Climate Vulnerability Capacity Assessment tool. Key Informant Interviews will be conducted with various stakeholders, including actors from the Private Sector (Agribusinesses), Government (governorate level), Donor community, NGOs and CBOs, Academic and Research Institutions, Farmers’ Institutions, Local communities, and Individuals. Farmer interviews or any other suitable semi-structured stakeholder interviews and participant surveys may also be employed in the research process.
The consultant(s) will organize, code and analyze the data collected, using appropriate quantitative and qualitative analysis techniques. Quantitative data will be analyzed using statistical software, while qualitative data will be analyzed thematically to identify key patterns, emerging themes and relationships. The analysis will provide a better understanding of the impacts of climate smart agriculture, current local adaptation capacities, opportunities, gender dynamics and agricultural packages (climate-smart practices, adapted inputs, financing products etc.) to improve local adaptation and resilience to climate change in the study areas.