This document describes the proposed design, research methodology, work plan, team composition, and estimated budget for a mixed-methods performance evaluation of the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) “Supporting Deforestation Free Cocoa in Ghana” project Bridge Phase. USAID’s Office of Land and Urban in the Bureau for Economic Growth, Education, and Environment (USAID/E3/LU) commissioned the Communications, Evidence and Learning (CEL) Project to conduct this evaluation.

To meet the learning interests of USAID and IPs for the Bridge Phase activities — and given the complexity of the three Bridge Phase interventions, which vary in scope, geography, selection criteria for beneficiaries, and anticipated timeline for maturation of key outcomes — this mixed-methods evaluation will use different analytic approaches to assess the effects of each of the three Bridge Phase interventions. The three interventions are focused on: (1) cocoa farm rehabilitation; (2) tenure documentation; and (3) village-level land use planning. At USAID’s request, the evaluation is designed to aim for as rigorous a quasi-experimental design as possible, within available budget, recognizing that the small scale of implementation for the Bridge Phase activities is a limitation on evaluation rigor and power. An RCT design was not considered feasible for this Bridge Phase, given the short time frame to finalize implementation design and work with collaborating private-sector partner implementation needs.

To increase the learning potential from the evaluation, the evaluation will use quasi-experimental approaches for the two farmer-level interventions: the farm rehabilitation service and the tenure documentation service. Effects of the farm rehabilitation intervention will be assessed using a regression discontinuity approach. Effects of the tenure documentation intervention will be assessed using a difference-in-difference with statistical matching approach. A pre-post qualitative approach will be used to assess outcomes for the land use planning component, which is not amenable to a quasi-experimental design due to the small number of implementation villages.

The evaluation will collect qualitative and quantitative data at baseline and endline from farmers in the four Bridge Phase villages and in eight comparison group villages. The comparison group villages are communities in the same district, and where the farm rehabilitation service has also been offered, but the tenure documentation and village-level land use planning interventions will not be implemented.

Reviewing and Updating the MEL Plan

The Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) Plan serves as a tool to guide overall project performance. As such, the team will update it as necessary to reflect changes in USAID AMPR’s strategy and ongoing tasks. Updates will also incorporate feedback from USAID as well GoCAR. Monitoring, evaluation, and learning are therefore not one-time occurrences, but rather part of an ongoing process of review, revision, and implementation. The MEL team will review the MEL Plan annually, update if necessary, and submit a revised version along with the proposed Annual Work Plan. For this purpose, the monitoring period each year is from October 1 – September 30.

This plan is the second version of the MEL Plan produced in September 2019 and submitted for USAID approval along with the second Annual Work Plan (2019-2020).The main revisions are in annual targets and some baseline values following the studies and data collection conducted in the first year of project implementation.

Performance Indicators

USAID AMPR’s performance indicator table (Table 1) presents a range of both custom and standard indicators at the output, outcome, and impact levels. The table also includes all the standard foreign assistance indicators (“standard indicators” or “F indicators”) relevant to project activities. USAID AMPR will also track custom outcome indicators to measure the eight results listed in the contract plus several custom crosscutting indicators. The team will disaggregate indicator data reported by task/country and all person-level indicators by gender, except where government-provided data does not allow disaggregation.1 The Performance Indicator Reference Sheets (PIRSs) in Annex A contain full details for each indicator, including use of indicator, baseline procedures, data collection methodologies, data quality assurance measures, and justifications for proposed targets.

Executive Summary 

The Artisanal Mining and Property Rights (USAID AMPR) project supports the USAID Land and Urban Office in the Bureau for Economic Growth, Education, and Environment (E3/LU) in improving land and resource governance and strengthening property rights for all members of society, especially women. Its specific purpose is to address land and resource governance challenges in the artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) sector, using a multidisciplinary approach and incorporating appropriate and applicable evidence and tools. The project builds upon activities and lessons from the Property Rights and Artisanal Diamond Development (PRADD I and II) projects. The USAID AMPR contract was signed on September 28, 2018 and will run initially for 3 base years and with two optional years possible. Most project activities will be carried out in the Central African Republic.

The Initial Environmental Examination (IEE) Summary submitted was approved on March 20, 2018. The IEE gave a Negative Determination with Conditions (See Annex for copy of the IEE). Pursuant to the requirement to submit an Environmental Mitigation and Monitoring Plan (EMMP) within 60 days of signature of the contract between Tetra Tech and USAID, this initial statement spells out the ways in which the project will respond to the conditions spelled out in the IEE. In subsequent years, annual reports will indicate how the environmental issues are addressed.

During the project start-up phase, the project management team led by Project Manager Dr. Mark Freudenberger, Technical Deputy Terah DeJong, and Chief of Party Maxie Muwonge will conduct training sessions for all project staff on the intent of EMMP’s and the specific measures the project will take to implement the negative determination with conditions. The project management team is blessed with experiences learned from the Property Rights and Artisanal Diamond Development Project (PRADD II) carried out previously in the Central African Republic, Côte d’Ivoire, and Guinea. In these countries, the project confronted successfully many environmental problematics associated particularly with the artisanal diamond economy.

Monitoring and Evaluation Plan 

The Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) Plan serves as a tool to guide overall project performance. As such, the team will update it as necessary to reflect changes in USAID AMPR’s strategy and ongoing tasks. Updates will also incorporate feedback from USAID as well GoCAR. Monitoring, evaluation, and learning are therefore not one-time occurrences, but rather part of an ongoing process of review, revision, and implementation. The MEL team will review the MEL Plan annually, update if necessary, and submit a revised version along with the proposed Annual Work Plan (AWP). For this purpose, the monitoring period each year is from October 1 – September 30th.

Performance Indicators 

USAID AMPR’s performance indicator table (Table 1) presents a range of both custom and standard indicators at the output, outcome, and impact levels. The table also includes all the standard foreign assistance indicators (“standard indicators” or “F indicators”) relevant to project activities. USAID AMPR will also track custom outcome indicators to measure the eight results listed in the contract plus several custom crosscutting indicators. The team will disaggregate indicator data reported by task/country and all person-level indicators by gender, except where government-provided data does not allow disaggregation.1 The Performance Indicator Reference Sheets (PIRSs) in Annex A contain full details for each indicator, including use of indicator, baseline procedures, data collection methodologies, data quality assurance measures, and justifications for proposed targets.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)/Kosovo Property Rights Program (USAID PRP) aims to improve the property rights regime in Kosovo, strengthen the rule of law, and increase economic growth and investment. Outreach activities, public education campaigns and support for the legal system were a few of the means used to support these objectives.

USAID PRP contracted UBO Consulting to conduct the Endline National Survey on Property Rights in Kosovo to collect data that sheds light on the legal, procedural and administrative barriers constraining women from inheriting property, and identify additional cultural issues that prevent women and girls from exercising a broader range of property rights. The gathered data reveals current attitudes and perceptions of the general public in  Kosovo towards property ownership and women’s rights to inherit property, as well as their level of satisfaction with courts in resolving property disputes. In addition, the survey was used to measure the level of exposure to USAID PRP communications products, and their effect on the community.

The Endline Survey was conducted between October 19, 2018 and November 22, 2018. It collected information from a nationally representative sample of 1,258 respondents residing in Kosovo. There was an oversampling of minority communities for the survey, with the objective of permitting a statistically significant analysis. The results included in this report have been weighted to reflect the size of the minority communities relative to the overall population. The sample of 1,258 respondents included 855 Kosovo Albanians, 204 Kosovo Serbs and 199 Kosovo nonVSerb minorities.

BACKGROUND

Land is central to livelihoods and economic growth. Agricultural land acts as a social safety net for the poor, unemployed, and elderly to meet subsistence needs, and at the same time, provides opportunities to multiply economic value with targeted investments in infrastructure, fertilization, water, or conservation of existing natural resources. For many countries, property taxes and ground rents in urban areas are the backbone of public service delivery. Strong land and resource management rights and supporting institutions within national and sub-national governments can protect the rights and interests of vulnerable populations and supporting social stability; unlock private sector investment for transformative growth; and, provide reliable public revenue contributing to national self-reliance.

Zambia is a land-rich country with a small rural population and a high degree of urbanization. Yet to date, and despite over 20 years of liberalization of Zambia’s land markets, neither the rural nor urban land sector has been the driver of inclusive economic growth that it can and should be. The Government of the Republic of Zambia (GRZ) has developed a draft land policy and programs with the goal of providing land tenure security to Zambians, promoting economic growth, and generating government revenue from the sector, all consistent with the 7th National Development Plan. Yet the realization of these goals will require assistance to be implemented successfully.

This assessment provides an overview of the land sector in Zambia as of early 2018, including current challenges and interventions across stakeholder groups and land types. It also summarizes the achievements of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded Tenure and Global Climate Change (TGCC) program and the remaining gaps and priorities, and then outlines recommendations for future interventions focusing on policy and legislation, training and capacity, data analysis and IT, research, and field activities that either build on TGCC momentum, test new pilots, or scale tested approaches. The assessment aims to inform USAID, other cooperating partners (CPs), and other government stakeholders.

Forests are being lost at an alarming rate driven by the expansion of internationally traded commodities. A number of companies have responded by pledging to remove deforestation from their supply chains. This catalyzed the creation of the Tropical Forest Alliance 2020—a global public-private partnership aimed at reducing deforestation associated with commodities. Governments have also made commitments to reduce commodity-driven deforestation. In Ghana, cocoa produced by smallholders has been the leading agricultural product driving deforestation. In response, Ghana’s Intended Nationally Determined Contribution to the Paris Agreement on Climate Change specifically includes a 45 percent reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from the cocoa landscape.

Implementation of these supply chain commitments is lagging, as many companies and governments find that reducing deforestation is harder than expected. Production of deforestation-free commodities is hampered by lack of land use planning, tenure insecurity, weak policy implementation, lax law enforcement, and insufficient monitoring and accountability systems. Meanwhile, governments face an enormous challenge in balancing demands for higher cocoa production with plans to minimize deforestation, environmental degradation, and biodiversity loss. For example, the Government of Ghana wants to more than double cocoa output to 1.6 million tons by 2026 to increase farmer incomes and export earnings while simultaneously reducing deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions.

This report examines the interrelationships between land and tree tenure, cocoa productivity, and deforestation to identify interventions that can help Ghana meet its productivity and REDD+ goals. There are a number of important challenges. A large expanse of cocoa land is experiencing productivity decline. Small growers who once migrated to old growth forests to carve out new cocoa stands now suffer due to diminished remaining forests. Replacing old and unproductive cocoa trees offers potential to increase cocoa productivity while reducing deforestation, but tenure insecurity discourages landlords from allowing tenants to replant trees, while high costs of cocoa rehabilitation are prohibitive to resource-poor small farmers. Promoting shaded cocoa cultivations with timber and non-timber species helps promote sustainable cocoa cultivation and biomass, and on the margin could enable REDD+ payments through fair benefit sharing, but insecure tree rights discourage tree planting. While the Forestry Commission now allows farmers rights to shade trees, this is not widely known or clearly operationalized. Land and tree administration systems are disjointed, and co-sharing of benefits between tenant and landlord untested.

While the Lands Commission is interested in promoting commercial leases for industrial agriculture, the prevalence of a customary land regime promotes smallholder cocoa production. This has prevented large-scale capital investments that could overcome the high replanting costs. Customary tenure arrangements have also historically created incentives to carve out newly planted cocoa farms from secondary and old growth forests, thereby encouraging producers to expand their area rather than intensify production. Due to technical and financial constraints of customary institutions, landscape-scale governance and land use planning within rural cocoa areas rarely happens.

The assessment report concludes with concrete activities to strengthen land and tree tenure, and assist farmers with cocoa rehabilitation to increase productivity, rebuild forests with shaded cocoa, and reduce land use pressures at the forest fringe. Lessons learned would help inform sustainable cocoa production and Ghana’s Cocoa Forest REDD+ Program implementation as well as programs emphasizing other cocoa agroforestry systems (CocoaAction).

Presently, smallholder farms are stuck in an inefficient deadlock of contestations around ambiguous land and tree tenure terms that encourage farmers to keep unproductive cocoa farms in use. Unblocking this deadlock would help create a conducive atmosphere for farmers, landowners, and customary and statutory authorities to mediate and negotiate standard terms for existing land contracts to both improve productivity over the long term as well as reduce deforestation. Tenure reform is urgently needed that improves coordination between customary and statutory structures, reduces conflict between landlord and tenant, clarifies and documents rights in different contractual arrangements to strengthen tenure security, transfers rights over timber trees to landowning groups, channels payments from revenue-sharing schemes to cocoa farmers, and assists smallholders with cocoa rehabilitation to increase land use value.

Based on the land and natural resource governance and tenure assessment, an interlinked set of interventions are identified that encourage replanting old cocoa farms while reducing land use pressures on the forest fringe:

• Strengthen Land Governance. Establish mechanisms to resolve tenure disputes; enforce land, tree, and farm rehabilitation agreements; and establish tenure-responsive land use planning to help address both problems of accountability and transparency and promote farm rehabilitation.
• Clarify Rights to Land and Trees. Educate farmers and landlords on benefits of clarifying rights. Document land and tree tenure to help address problems of tenure security in land and trees that undermine incentives to invest in present cocoa lands and maintain shade trees on cocoa farms.
• Invest in Cocoa Farm Rehabilitation. Engage cocoa buyers, Ghana’s Cocoa Board, and the chocolate industry to create financing plans for tree removal, inputs, and extension services to help overcome the high costs of cocoa farm rehabilitation facing resource-poor farmers. Some small farmers do not want to replant, and others will continue to move to frontier areas because that is what they have always done. But, for many other farmers in the cocoa sector, combining the commitment and wherewithal of cocoa companies, government support agencies, and even the timber industry in a public-private partnership with donor funding would help promote entrepreneurship (particularly among youth), increase cocoa productivity, establish valuable tree species, and improve environmental sustainability.

Some of these components could be implemented as a pilot via a public-private partnership between bilateral donors and the private sector in collaboration with the communities involved. This report puts forward a series of pilot interventions that mirror many aspects of the Government of Ghana’s Cocoa Forest REDD+ Program as well as the World Cocoa Foundation’s CocoaAction program.

The report was commissioned by the United States Agency for International Development through the Tenure and Global Climate Change task order under the Strengthening Tenure and Resource Rights Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity contract. It was prepared with input and support from Hershey’s and AgroEcom Ghana Ltd.—a subsidiary of Ecom Agroindustrial Corp—who supplies Hershey’s with cocoa from Ghana.

Executive Summary

This report corresponds to the impact evaluation (IE) of the Feed the Future Tanzania Land Tenure Assistance (LTA) activity commissioned by the Office of Land and Urban in the United States Agency for International Development’s Bureau for Economic Growth, Education and Environment (USAID/E3). The evaluation uses a two-phase randomized controlled trial design to rigorously test how mobile mapping and facilitation of land tenure certification affect income, women’s empowerment, dispute prevalence and other factors related to land use and tenure security in Iringa District, Tanzania. This document provides findings from the Phase II baseline for the IE, which includes a snapshot of key demographics, household characteristics and outcome variables. The report also covers the Phase I midline and provides comparisons between the Phase I midline and baseline data. The document further provides a robust overview of key metrics for households in rural Iringa, and investigates whether changes have occurred between the two Phase I data collection rounds.

LTA Activity Description

Tanzania presents a dynamic land tenure context. All land in Tanzania is owned by the state and held in trust by the president, but individuals residing on or using designated “Village Land” have the right to obtain formal documentation of their use rights in the form of a Certificate of Customary Right of Occupancy (CCRO).1 However, insufficient capacity of district land offices (DLOs) that issue CCROs, a lack of funds to pay CCRO fees, unfamiliarity with formal land laws and other factors have resulted in few villagers obtaining formal documentation for their plots. Increasingly, the Government of Tanzania (GOT) and the donor community recognize that improving the security of land rights is essential to protecting the rights of smallholders, reducing disputes and tensions and maximizing the economic potential of the region.

USAID/Tanzania awarded the four-year, $6 million LTA activity to DAI in December 2015. The activity seeks to clarify and document land ownership, support local land use planning efforts, and increase local understanding of land use and land rights in Tanzania. The LTA activity assists villages and the local DLO in Iringa and Mbeya districts in completing the land use planning process and delivering CCROs in select villages. It also provides education on land laws, CCROs and land management. The LTA activity is using the Mobile Application to Secure Tenure (MAST), an app that facilitates the mapping and CCRO process. The LTA activity is being implemented in 36 villages: six that were chosen for initial implementation, and an additional 30 in Iringa District, Tanzania as part of the IE.