Water Security Strategy for Agriculture Resilience At Catholic Relief Services

Please see the CRS.org website for full scope of work and attachments https://www.crs.org/about/bid-opportunity .

The objective of this strategy is to better frame CRS interventions in the sector in the Gambia based on evidence and climate change scenarios. More specifically, it will be to:

1. Establish a baseline of water security and agriculture vulnerability in the context of climate change in Gambia (whole country)
2. Identify strategic areas of intervention for the CP in terms of water security considering the vulnerability of agriculture sector in climate change context.
3. Develop budgeted pilot projects for demonstration related to the different strategic axis for next 4 years.
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4. Present the financing mechanisms for the implementation of scale-up projects.
5. Define a monitoring and evaluation framework for the scaling up of pilot projects and the strategy.

Activities for this consultancy are as follows:

1. Conduct a stakeholder consultation process for the diagnostic study and strategy development.
2. Analyze patterns and rates of change in land use and land cover (LULC) change compared with a somewhat recent reference time (pre-1991, depending upon satellite image availability)
3. Project future LULC changes thru the year 2050, based on i) extrapolation of observed changes since the reference period and ii) any expected future changes in relevant laws and regulations or their enforcement.
4. Identify a hydrologic/hydraulic modeling approach suitable to quantifying the effect of LULC changes on priority ecosystem services flows.
5. Develop an integrated biophysical (hydrological) and socio-economic assessment in climate change context.
6. Develop climate change scenarios, evaluate and modelling the impact of climate change on agriculture sectors for next 10, 20 and 30 years.
7. Define a water security strategy to address agriculture vulnerability for resilience with actions plan for implementation for next 4 years integrating pilots projects, financing mechanisms for implementation and scale-up and monitoring and evaluation framework.

Deliverables for this consultancy are as follows:

1. A diagnostic study on agriculture vulnerability in Gambia’s context of climate change
2. An evolutive database about agriculture and scenarios with climate change
3. CRS strategy to address agriculture’s climate vulnerability in The Gambia
4. An operational action plan budgeted for the implementation and scale-up of the strategy.