Mauritania: Enhancing Resilience of Communities to the Adverse Effects of Climate Change on Food Security in Mauritania (Project concept; WFP; MTN/MIE/Food/2011/1; US $7,639,287)

Having considered the comments and recommendations of the Project and Programme Review Committee, the Adaptation Fund Board decided to:

(a) Endorse the project concept, as supplemented by the clarification response provided by the World Food Programme (WFP) to the request made by the technical review; 

(b) Request the secretariat to transmit to WFP the following observations: 

(i) At the full proposal stage, more information should be provided on the technical staff that will be trained and the specific services that will be supported, as well as their current capacities, including the size and level of coverage at the communal, regional, national levels;

(ii) New tools and technologies to be implemented under this project should be compatible with existing tools and frameworks in use by the Government. That also applies to any methodologies and approaches that have not been developed in coordination with WFP;

(iii) More details on the amount of investment and training costs will be needed in the full project proposal in order to be able to assess the cost-effectiveness of these interventions. Different activities under component 3 require different amounts of physical investments vs. training, and that should be clearly reflected;

(iv) Evaluate the possibility of establishing an ecological monitoring system, which would be essential to assess the success of the restoration activities. In doing so, it should also assess which scope would fit best for such a system;

(v) Include more detailed analysis and description of the proposed safety nets (cash or food for work) in the full project proposal; and

(vi) Ensure that costing efficiencies will be looked at, for all project activities, during the full proposal preparation stage.

(c) Request WFP to transmit the observations under item (b) to the Government of Mauritania; and

(d) Encourage the Government of Mauritania to submit through WFP a fully-developed project proposal that would address the observations under item (b).