- Evaluation Plan:
- 2021-2025, Uzbekistan
- Evaluation Type:
- Final Project
- Planned End Date:
- 10/2021
- Completion Date:
- 10/2021
- Status:
- Completed
- Management Response:
- Yes
- Evaluation Budget(US $):
- 25,000
Final evaluation: Enhancing the adaptation and strengthening the resilience of farming to Climate Change Risks in Fergana Valley
| Document | Type | Language | Size | Status | Downloads |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 2._ToR_Nat_Evaluator_FR_Project.pdf |
tor | English | 874.46 KB | Posted | 575 |
| 2. ToR_Int. Evaluator_FR_project.pdf |
tor | English | 809.18 KB | Posted | 568 |
| UNDP Uzbekistan Fergana FE Report final .pdf |
report | English | 1749.42 KB | Posted | 683 |
| Title | Final evaluation: Enhancing the adaptation and strengthening the resilience of farming to Climate Change Risks in Fergana Valley | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Atlas Project Number: | 00117191 | |||||||||
| Evaluation Plan: | 2021-2025, Uzbekistan | |||||||||
| Evaluation Type: | Final Project | |||||||||
| Status: | Completed | |||||||||
| Completion Date: | 10/2021 | |||||||||
| Planned End Date: | 10/2021 | |||||||||
| Management Response: | Yes | |||||||||
| Focus Area: |
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| Corporate Outcome and Output (UNDP Strategic Plan 2018-2021) |
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| SDG Goal |
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| SDG Target |
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| Evaluation Budget(US $): | 25,000 | |||||||||
| Source of Funding: | RTF | |||||||||
| Evaluation Expenditure(US $): | 12,693 | |||||||||
| Joint Programme: | No | |||||||||
| Joint Evaluation: | No | |||||||||
| Evaluation Team members: |
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| GEF Evaluation: | No | |||||||||
| Key Stakeholders: | CCI, UNDP, RTF | |||||||||
| Countries: | UZBEKISTAN |
| Lessons | |
|---|---|
| 1. | In July 2021, there was a presidential resolution for the amalgamation of plant protection and quarantine services, to become PPQA. Therefore a new mandate has been set for PPQA services. The project has demonstrated the need not only for traditional specialists (e.g. agronomists, entomologists) to be recruited to keep up with climate change impacts, but also that new types of specialists, such as agrometeorologists and IPM / biological pest control specialists are needed. It is useful that PPQA maintains its in-house training institute to train its inspectors. CHS also have professional agrometeorologists, but the link with PPQA agromet specialists in continued professional development was not apparent. Embedding project innovations into two universities and two agriculture research institutes showed foresight and is having a very positive impact on agriculture research topics, student curricula, and ultimately on producing the next generation of agrometeorologists, agronomists, plant pathologists, and agromet software designers. PPQA is expected to maintain the agromet stations, but the forecasting system include is still under development. Thus, there is a need to ensure that it will be completed and its sustainability built in. The main concern here is for continuing to fine-tune the forecasting (weather and pest-problem) software, and for hosting the platform and for providing its services after 2022. For joining up the agriculture information network, from a farmer’s point of view, there is no plan at present. CHS provide agromet services, directly to MoA who pass on to their DoAs, especially seasonal, monthly, and 10-day windows, on a regional level. However, the farmers at present have to hunt down this information separately. It would be a benefit to farmers, if they could concurrently receive official CHS user-friendly weather forecasts to compare with the more localised agromet services. The value of providing a free access service of agromet information should be understood in the context of improved economic value of horticulture exports. If these new services became fee-paying, then it would be a regressive step. |
| Findings | |
| 1. | One of the impacts of climate change has been that winter cold weather snaps are less common now (compared with even five years ago), so this means that there is less natural control of particular plant diseases and pests. Also insect disease and pests are also becoming climate adapted (e.g. earlier breeding season due to earlier higher spring temperatures), thus the software algorithms based on particular ‘breeding’ dates need to be monitored and updated periodically (based on pest breeding cycle knowledge and the weather data). The project work with the two universities and two agriculture research institutes proved valuable, because they are now using the knowledge of new agromet technologies and predictive software to train the next generation of researchers and students, in the methods and benefits of such systems. This was an important aspect of the project. The project installed 24 micro-climate agromet stations, compared with the 12 planned. This was made possible by through collaboration with Tashkent University / Amudario who designed a much cheaper ‘datalogger’, allowing more stations to be procured. They also designed the software, Amudar to go with this datalogger. The coverage of agromet stations, supplied by the project reached 13%, but more are needed to create this finer granularity of agro-based weather forecast. The project has proved to be successful in just three years, and this in spite of covid restrictions. There is a need to improve the horticulture export value-chain, but this was mostly outside the scope of this project, except to demonstrate post-harvest cold-storage facilities. Whilst, the improvement in PPQA services and in their disease / pest control has taken a clear step up for the three regions, the step to create export phytosanitary green corridors is for another project. Whilst CHS holds ~100 years of historical weather data for the Fergana Valley, it is unclear if it has as yet effectively digitized the data. There are however, plans to manage and archive the project stations’ agromet data under their new software platform. The purpose is to provide trends in weather changes |
| Recommendations | |
|---|---|
| 1 | The crop yield prediction software needs to be further developed and piloted, or at least handed over [CCI with UNDP] |
| 2 | There is an agromet based GCF concept proposal that could be re-visited, in order to further develop agromet systems [UNDP with CCI, PPQA, CHS] |
| 3 | The project supported 14 horticulture projects, but there is a need to provide more detailed lessons learned [UNDP with CCI] |
1. Recommendation:
The crop yield prediction software needs to be further developed and piloted, or at least handed over [CCI with UNDP]
Management Response: [Added: 2022/01/27]
The crop yield prediction software needs piloting will be explored in one of the UNDP's project in 2022
Key Actions:
| Key Action | Responsible | DueDate | Status | Comments | Documents |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The crop yield prediction software needs piloting will be explored in one of the UNDP's project in 2022
[Added: 2022/01/27] |
UNDP (ECA) | 2022/12 | Initiated |
2. Recommendation:
There is an agromet based GCF concept proposal that could be re-visited, in order to further develop agromet systems [UNDP with CCI, PPQA, CHS]
Management Response: [Added: 2022/01/27]
GCF concept proposal will be considered for re-visiting in 2022
Key Actions:
| Key Action | Responsible | DueDate | Status | Comments | Documents |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Explore opportunities to re-visit GCF concept proposal in 2022
[Added: 2022/01/27] |
UNDP (ECA) | 2022/11 | Initiated |
3. Recommendation:
The project supported 14 horticulture projects, but there is a need to provide more detailed lessons learned [UNDP with CCI]
Management Response: [Added: 2022/01/27]
Lessons learnt for 14 horticulture projects will be elaborated by the Environment Cluster in 2022
Key Actions:
| Key Action | Responsible | DueDate | Status | Comments | Documents |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Elaboration of lessons learnt for 14 horticulture projects which were implemented by UNDP in prior years
[Added: 2022/01/27] |
UNDP (ECA) | 2022/11 | Not Initiated |