Cost effectiveness of the project will be achieved: a) using best experience in the project design (see Strategy section); b) through strong collaboration with on-going projects and donors via leveraging resources for all project components (see Partnership section).
Component 1 benefits from investments ongoing or planned by ARC, CSIR and partners in the Northern Cape Province, including the Department of Agriculture, Forests and Fisheries (DAFF), which is ceding the land for the Northern Cape Hub.
For Component 2 several site-specific baseline investments especially focusing are relevant see Annex X-2 and X-3 for details), and this project specifically addresses identified gaps to a successful implementation of pilots, some of which are also linked to Component 1 for the R&D aspect.
The Output on the Pelargonium management plan (Output 2.1) implementation will be done in close collaboration with the Pelargonium Working Group. For the cultivation of Aloe ferox (Output 2.2) and African Ginger (Output 2.4), the project will collaborate with the Tyefu Community and ARC respectively. ARC will also be key for achieving results with the extension aspects of the Northern Cape Hub, along with the Department of Agriculture of Northern Cape (Output 2.5). The Honeybush pilot (Output 2.3) will be rolled out with the assistance from the Small Grants Program (SGP). Finally, the negotiations pertaining the flagship ABS agreement on Rooibos would not be possible without the assistance of South African Rooibos Council (SARC), San & Khoi Traditional Council.
For Component 3, which focuses on systemic measures, two partners are particularly important: DST and SANBI. Regarding these aspects, the baseline investments made by these two partners in respectively developing the TK recordal systems for ABS and researching the interlinkages between conservation and ABS have created the good condition for the proposed activities to have a positive systemic impact.
During implementation, the project will adopt a standard set of measures required for GEF-funded projects to achieve cost-effectiveness and maximise the financial resources available to project intervention activities while decreasing management costs (as already planned in this project document). All activities will be included in the Annual Work Plan, which will be discussed and approved by the Project Board to ensure that proposed actions are relevant and necessary. When the activities are to be implemented and project outputs monitored and evaluated, cost-effectiveness will be taken into account but will not compromise the quality of the outputs.
When hiring third party consultants, the project will follow a standard recruitment and advertising process to have at least three competitors for each consultant position. Selection will be based on qualifications, technical experience and financial proposal, to ensure hiring the best consultant (individual or organization) for optimal price. Economy fares will be applied for necessary air and road travel, and appropriate lodging facilities will be provided to the project staff that ensures staff safety and cost-effectiveness.
Expenses will be accounted for according UNDP rules and in line with the GEF policy. The project will follow a tendering process for equipment purchase and any printing/publishing that accounts for more than USD 10,000, comparing at least three vendors. In case there is a single vendor only for any activity, appropriate official norms will be followed to obtain approval from UNDP and GEF. Co-location of the PMU within DEA and UNDP will also deliver significant cost-effectiveness in terms of reducing the need to hire technical staff within the PMU.
Risk Management
As per standard UNDP requirements, the Project Manager will monitor risks quarterly and report on the status of risks to the UNDP Country Office. The UNDP Country Office will record progress in the UNDP ATLAS risk log. Management responses to critical risks will also be reported to the GEF in the annual PIR. The full risk log completed by UNDP is included in Annex I. Three risks had been identified at PIF stage, of which one of them (concerning “industry funding conflicts”) had been reformulated. At PPF stage, a total of six (6) project level risks apply and have been validate, of wich three (3) have been recorded as either social or environmental through the SESP and recorded there as well. For re-validated `PIF stage risks, the responses have been enhanced.
Other risks at output-level may apply, but these do not threaten the achievement of the project objective as whole or other key aspects of its implementation. These lower-tier risks were therefore either incorporated into the project’s Monitoring Plan (Annex B), or as ‘risks and issues to be watched’ with respect to different outputs (in Annex X-3). UNDP may opt to log them as ‘issues’ to be monitored, rather than project risks.
The table below summarizes the project-level risks (the guiding matrix in Box was applied): Table : Project Risks
Overharvesting of species in the wild continues unregulated
Environmental
PIF stage, validated at PPG stage, response enhanced
Impact = Medium
Probability = Highly likely
Level = Moderate
The project will put in place an online system that will provide information about abundance and availability of resources for bioprospecting activities (linked to the permitting application system) and an online permitting system for efficient access to resource by national, regional and international traders. Furthermore, Biodiversity Management Plans supported by the project will ensure harvesting of genetic resources is based on current resource assessment, carried out under legitimate tenure arrangements and in compliance with relevant laws, regulations and agreements.
Finally, the project, in its fully designed stage, established how it will support the strengthening of the capacity at various levels for stricter enforcement of BABS regulations; monitoring of wild species’ populations, both through pilots and systemic measures.
2
Lack of coordination between national and provincial environmental protection agencies and/or district environmental agencies as well as across different sectoral ministries to ensure traceability and adherence to various legislations and regulations
Organizational
PIF stage, validated at PPG stage, response enhanced
Impact = Low
Probability = Not likely
Level = Low
Coordination will be improved by using platforms such as the bioprospecting forum and the biennial biodiversity economy indaba whose capacity will be further strengthened by the project. In addition, the project, in its fully designed stage, carefully how it will support bioprospecting value chain development e.g. in the Northern Cape and Eastern Cape provinces through the establishment of provincial hubs. Provincial authorities were duly consulted during the PPG Stage (see PRODOC Annex X-4), reducing thereby the project level risk.
3
The project has a complex financial set-up and implementation arrangements, which may limit the production of results
Financial
PPG stage
Impact = High
Probability = Likely
Level = High
UNDP will work together with DEA and support the PMU by pre-inception activities such as “Orient PMU members (project upstart)”, an activity foreseen in PRODOC Annex A, as well as through due diligence in connection with the capacity screening of responsible parties and the quality assurance of project design (refer to PRODOC Annex H and PRODOC Annex J respectively for additional information).
4
Private companies utilizing and commercializing the cultural heritage of TK holders by patenting traditional remedies from the wild and selling them at a vast profit, allowing little or none of that profit to go back to the country or indigenous and local communities of origin.
Impact = High
Probability = Highly likely
Level = High
The Project aims to ensure the fair sharing of benefits throughout targeted value chains. Appropriate agreements will be put in place to prevent private companies from excluding local and indigenous communities from the value chains and to disable the situation, where the TK is commercialized, without any profits going back to the community. Altogether, the project will mainstream within the plant bioprospecting segment ABS compliant practices such as obtaining free, prior and informed consent from communities in addition to developing a variety of mechanisms for equitable benefit sharing.
5
Commercial cultivation of species encroaching into natural ecosystems, endangered species’ habitats, directly or indirectly transforming them in a negative way
Environmental
PPG stage, included in the SESP
Impact = Moderate
Probability = Moderately likely
Level = High
The theory of change behind the overall Project Strategy explicitly adopts the Ecosystem Approach for helping shape strategies for the project’s pilots (see e.g. PRODOC Figure ). Hence the efforts will focus on ensuring that (i) Aloe ferox, Pelargonium spp. and wild-harvested Honeybush landscapes are sustainably managed; (ii) the Northern Cape hub can create better conditions for ecologically-adapted cultivation systems for species of interest to the bioprospecting value chains; (iii) the Rooibos gene-pool, whose wild distribution falls mostly within the Western Cape and to a lesser extent the Northern Cape Province and covers an area of approximately 56,231 sq km, continues to be well conserved across multi-use landscapes; and (iv) the critically endangered African ginger recovers from the extinction path through a rapid and sustainable transition to cultivation, while also safeguarding its precious gene pool across its natural landscape. Further to this, all pilots that include cultivation will be subject impact assessment in view of avoiding encroachment into natural ecosystems. As a guiding principle, the project will not promote cultivation in areas of land that had not been previously used for agriculture.
6
Indigenous, community-owned land arrangements and indigenous-claimed resources affected by commercial cultivation, threatening traditional livelihoods, and possibly making access to important resources such as traditional medicine more difficult.
Social
PPG stage, included in the SESP
Impact = Medium
Probability Moderately likely
Level = Moderate
The project will support the agreements between indigenous communities and the bioprospecting industry to make sure that the indigenous rights (including land rights) are being respected. Additionally, the project will contribute to improving the economic well-being of indigenous TK holders and communities of harvesters by securing more fair way of sharing the financial returns from the production of the species-derived products. Overall, the project is now in its fully designed stage and it has included a detailed investigation of the current use and access regimes of communities with respect to each of the proposed ABS pilots. The details are included in PRODOC Annex X-2. Further to this, the project introduces across the value chains and within the bioprospecting sector, a few systemic measures based on existing legislation that will be highly strategic in terms of developing the national capacity for ABS.
Low risk count = 1
Moderate risk count = 2
High risk count = 3
Critical risk count = 0
General risk assessment at project level: MODERATE
