Finding Positive Deviants among pastoral communities in Somalia.

Innovation methods

Data sources

SDG(s)

Sustainable Development Goal(s)

2Zero hunger

6Clean water and sanitation

13Climate action

15Life on land

Disclaimer:

Please be aware that the content herein has not been peer reviewed. It consists of personal reflections, insights, and learnings of the contributor(s). It may not be exhaustive, nor does it aim to be authoritative knowledge.

Title

Please provide a name for your action learning plan.

Finding and Learning from positive deviant pastoral communities in Somalia.

Challenge statement

Challenge type: If you are working on multiple challenges, please indicate if this is your "big bet" or "exploratory" challenge. Please note: we ask you to only submit a maximum of 3 challenges - 1x Big Bet, 2x Exploratory. Each challenge must be submitted individually.

BIG BET

Challenge statement: What is your challenge? (Please answer in specific terms: "Our challenge is that...”.)

In this pilot, we are looking for communities within Somaliland to the north of Somalia, that have demonstrated enhanced rangeland health since the 2016–2017 drought.

Background: What is the history of your challenge? What is causing or driving it? Who is involved? How does the current situation look like? What undesired effects does it produce?

This challenge was a result of previous work on finding solutions to emphasize drought resilience within the pastoral communities in Somalia. Most of these communities are the hardest hit by any fluctuations or disturbance in rainfall. And with the effects of climate change exacerbating time-period between rainy seasons or disruption the amount of rainfall the effects on these communities are devastating. The recurrent droughts also effect rangelands and cause deep rooted degradation and desertification and loss of animal feed resources for the most vulnerable pastoral population.

Quantitative evidence: What (official) data sources do you have on this challenge that better exemplifies the importance and urgency of this frontier challenge? You can add text, a link, or a picture.

- satellite imagery (SAVI) - Land cover data - Precipitation level data - High definition satellite imagery

Qualitative evidence: What weak signals have you recently spotted that characterizes its urgency? Please provide qualitative information that better exemplifies the importance and urgency of this frontier challenge. You can add text, a link, or a picture.

The degradation of rangelands that follows from the occurrence of drought and flooding as well can be illustrated in the following picture below.

Value proposition: What added value or unique value proposition is your Accelerator Lab bringing to solving this challenge? Why is it your Lab that needs to work on this challenge and not other actors within UNDP, other stakeholders in the country respectively? Why is it worth investing resources to this challenge?

The value proposition lies in finding the best performing communities in terms of sustaining the health of their rangelands. Casting a closer focus on these communities and finding the behaviours, strategies and practices they utilized to sustain their rangelands. Then transferring these practices towards other areas and provinces which suffer from land degradation to prepare and regenerate vegetation in them as well.

Short “tweet” summary: We would like to tweet what you are working on, can you summarize your challenge in a maximum of 280 characters?

Join us in a journey to find rangelands defying the odds in Somalia : a data powered positive deviance approach!

Challenge classification

Partners

Who are your top 5 partners for this challenge? Please submit from MOST to LEAST important and state Name, Sector and a brief description of the (intended) collaboration.

Please state the name of the Parter:

GIZ

What sector does our partner belong to?

Government (&related)

Please provide a brief description of the collaboration.

This pilot was a result of a collaboration between GIZ and UNDP Accelerator Labs.

Is this a new and unusual partner for UNDP?

Who are your top 5 partners for this challenge? Please submit from MOST to LEAST important and state Name, Sector and a brief description of the (intended) collaboration.

Please state the name of the Parter:

FSNAU

What sector does our partner belong to?

United Nations

Please provide a brief description of the collaboration.

In the early stages of the pilot we collaborated with FSNAU and FAO SWALIM to help us map out and design the challenge.

Is this a new and unusual partner for UNDP?

Learning questions

Learning question: What is your learning question for this challenge? What do you need to know or understand to work on your challenge statement?

What are the combination of rangeland conservation methods, livelihoods and community behaviours that can contribute to healthy rangelands? Can healthy rangelands help sustain rural pastoral and agropastoral communities throughout drought periods? Can we find equilibrium points within the system of healthy rangelands?

To what stage(s) in the learning cycle does your learning question relate?

Sense, Explore, Test

Usage of methods: Relating to your choice above, how will you use your methods & tools for this learning question? What value do these add in answering your learning question?

We used positive deviance to find the communities who have sustained the health of their rangelands. Next

Existing data gaps: Relating to your choice above, what existing gaps in data or information do these new sources of data addressing? What value do these add in answering your learning question?

The geospatial data analysis and scientific research would help us in finding the areas where vegetation levels has sustained before, during and after the drought of 2016/17. While system Maps can help envision the whole system around

Closing

Early leads to grow: Think about the possible grow phase for this challenge - who might benefit from your work on this challenge or who might be the champions in your country that you should inform or collaborate with early on to help you grow this challenge?

The transfer of the community practices or interventions which helped to sustain rangelands can be transferred to other areas. In this the best collaborators are our local UNDP climate change and resilience team as they can use the learning and insights to better design in their projects.

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