| Project Detail |
Proposed Development Objective(s)
To pilot climate smart grassland management practices in Qilian County of Qinghai Province.
Components
Grassland Management Pilots
Policy and Strategy Development
Knowledge Management
Project Management
Project Description
17. The project will support four components: (a) Grassland Management Pilots, (b) Policy and Strategy
Development, (c) Knowledge Management, and (d) Project Management.
18. Component 1: Grassland Management Pilots (GEF Financing: US$2,719,083). This component will first support
selected herders in Mole/Qilian to adopt a suite of climate-smart grassland management practices. Interventions to
restore productivity of natural grasslands include (a) no-till grass seeding/fertilization for 530 ha of degraded natural
grasslands to restore grassland productivity, (b) no-grazing in spring for about 50 days on 3,200 ha of winter/spring
pasture to allow initial grass growth, and (c) enhancement of cultivated grasslands of 333 ha. In addition to the project
support, the Government will continue implementing its ongoing grassland conservation programs in different parts of
the project town, which include (a) grazing bans, (b) grass-livestock balance, (c) repair of existing fences and livestock
pens, (d) control of rodent and insect pests, (e) value chain development, and (f) improvement in nutrition supplies in
animal feed/fodder and adjustment of the herd structure. Pilot project interventions will be carried out in areas under
grass-livestock balance areas. Participating herders from these areas will continue receiving support from the on-going
PES scheme. Project activities will take full account of grassland biodiversity, GRFA and IAS issues to ensure the
conservation and sustainable use of endemic grasses and livestock species, and the prevention and control of IAS as
appropriate.
19. Selection of project beneficiaries will be done through a randomized and transparent selection process to
ensure proper design and implementation of a robust impact evaluation (IE) that can generate concrete evidence of
project impacts. To select the treatment and control groups of herder households, sample restrictions will be applied
first to exclude herder alliances with high elevation of winter pastures (over 5,000 m) or with less than four herder
households from all 27 NVs. For each AV, their NVs will be stratified and then randomly selected as treatment villages
and half as control villages. This stratification process will seek a balance on key village-level characteristics that are
likely to determine project-level outcomes, such as average elevation of winter pastures, soil types, and
remoteness/accessibility. After the selection of treatment and control villages, a randomized process will be adopted to
select three alliances from each treatment and control village as treatment and control alliances, respectively. It is
expected that a total of 42 treatment alliances and 39 control alliances will be selected. From treatment and control
alliances, four herder households will be selected as either treatment or control herder households. All treatment and
control herder households will be interviewed for the detailed baseline, including their grassland management and
herding practices. Treatment herder households will receive project support to improve their grassland management
and herding practices. All herders will receive support from existing government programs. For the randomized
selection of alliances and herder households, public drawing events will be organized to ensure herders’ full confidence
in the selection process.
20. To receive project support, at the beginning of each year, treatment herder households will sign agreements
with Qilian County to participate in project activities. Such agreements will detail clearly the responsibilities of
treatment herder households, including a list of agreed grassland management and herding practices and associated
technical instructions, technical support provided by the project, key results indicators to be monitored and reported,
and the PES payment criteria and levels for verified implementation of agreed practices. Treatment herder households
will be requested to invest their own resources first to implement such practices and keep evidence of their performed
activities, such as payments to no-till seeding/fertilization services and fodder. As needed, treatment households with
financial constraints could apply for partial support (advances) to carry out their agreed activities. Existing and projectsupported extension services will provide needed technical support to all treatment households. In this regard, farmer
field schools will be organized at the NV level to help treatment group herders better understand project-promoted
climate-smart grassland management and herding practices.
21. At the end of each year, project-specific PES payments will be paid to treatment herder households based on
their actual implementation results of agreed project activities. To obtain concrete evidence on the implementation and
effect of project interventions, this component will recruit independent M&E consultants to verify grassland
management and herding results at both treatment and control herding households. Advanced and low-cost monitoring
techniques, such as satellite imaging and global positioning system tracking, will be used as appropriate to collect field
data. Strict M&E requirements of IE will be followed for data collection. At the mid-term review, the project will
examine the possibility of linking PES payments to actual improvements in grassland productivity or soil carbon based
on M&E results of the first two years. Such a linkage between PES payments and actual performance could ensure the
long-term sustainability of project interventions.
22. Component 2: Policy and Strategy Development (GEF Financing: US$450,000). This component will first
support MOARA to distill lessons learned from Component 1 activities into policy recommendations that may influence
future grassland conservation policies and programs at the county, provincial, and national levels. In this regard, the
first set of policy recommendations will be on measures to scale up climate-smart grassland management and herding
practices in future grassland conservation programs. The second set of policy recommendations will be on how to
design and implement evidence-based PES schemes to link financial incentives with actual achievements of desired
conservation practices and results. Related to these policy recommendations, technical guidelines on climate-smart
grassland management and herding practices and evidence-based PES systems will be prepared to support the policy
discussions at the county, provincial, and national levels.
23. This component will support a study on the valuation of ecosystem services provided by grasslands under the
project. This study is deemed necessary because it will help monetize such ecosystem services and thus help
stakeholders understand better benefits from grassland conservation. Its results will also help refine the payment levels
to be considered in future grassland PES schemes.
24. The component will also examine actions needed to include carbon credits generated from improved grassland
management practices into China’s national carbon trading system. Currently, the national system is in the process of
including forest carbon credits to provide market incentives for forest conservation initiatives.
25. Component 3: Knowledge Management (GEF Financing: US$420,520). This component will support first the
creation of a project website and information dissemination through this web platform. It will also support MOARA to
develop a knowledge management and capacity building strategy through broad consultations. Under the strategy,
MOARA expects to organize and participate in knowledge exchange and capacity building events domestically and
internationally on sustainable grassland management. Such events will on one hand, help MOARA and its experts to
strengthen their capacity on key topics of this project, for example, climate-smart grassland management practices and
IE. On the other hand, these events will also help MOARA disseminate project results to wider audiences and thus to
provoke necessary technical discussions and policy debates on the significance of project results and the possibility of
scaling up such interventions with project counties, provinces, and at the national level.
26. This component will support knowledge management activities organized under the Partnership Program to
ensure the project can learn best practices on sustainable GRFA uses and IAS management from—as well as exchange
lessons learned from project activities with—other child projects. In addition, this component will support M&E
activities of the Partnership Program, including but not limited to (a) sharing of annual project progress reports with the
program and (b) participating in annual review meetings of the program.
27. Component 4: Project Management (GEF Financing: US$179,480). This component will support MOARA to
properly manage project implementation in closely collaboration with Qinghai Department of Agriculture and Rural
Development (QDARA), Qilian Agriculture, Water Resources, Science and Technology Bureau (AWRSTB), and the Mole
Township Government |
