Agro-Water and Climate Resilience Project

dropped

The proposed Project will be an Investment Project Financing (IPF), funded by an IDA grant in the amount of US$20 million and aUS$80 million contribution from the Afghanistan Reconstruction Thrust Fund (ARTF) over a five year period. It will follow anintegrated landscape approach and focus on both irrigated and rain-fed farming systems while introducing improved and climate smartagriculture and water application practices and technologies. The project will build on and consolidate the successful gains ofrecent and on-going projects to expand the activities to more communities in priority areas of the country. These areas will beselected based on government’s strategic objectives, level of poverty and drought impact, and level of implementation readiness.The Project will be organized around the following four components:Component A: Support to Irrigated Agriculture Productivity.Will combine rehabilitation of irrigation schemes with provision of improved water saving technologies and production practices toincrease on-farm water application efficiency, maximize yield and quality of products and allow crop diversification. This willlead to modernizing irrigation schemes, bringing currently fallow command areas, located mainly in the downstream of the selectedirrigation schemes, under regulate production. Component A will build capacity of farmers and promoting best practices for on-farmwater management, thereby building capacity to better address weather-related shocks and potential impacts of climatechangeComponent B. Support for Dryland Farming and Watershed Management. This component will focus largely on building theresilience of communities in the water scarce areas to maintain and build their productive assets through a range of innovative andclimate smart interventions. The key target group of the component are communities living in dryland or seasonally irrigated areas.The project will undertake in selected watersheds and rain-fed areas, a range of activities such as better rangeland planningand management, rain water harvesting, soil moisture control, supplementary irrigation systems through intermediate forms of watercontrol (for example spate irrigation), and introduction of drought and heat resistant varieties of crops and grasses. It will bestructured into three sub-components: (i) Watershed management planning to support technical assistance and community-basedfacilitation to design watershed management and dryland productivity plans following a landscape approach; (ii) Improved drylandfarming and sustainable watershed management and adaptation to climate change. It aims at building capacity and supportingstakeholders within the target watershed to adopt sustainable land and water management practices and Climate Smart Technologies asdetermined and prioritized under subcomponent B1; and (iii) Support for Agro-Meteorology Services. Component C: Access to Market.Will strengthen market linkages between producers and off-takers by supporting the establishment of producer organizations,including specific targeting of women groups, and linking them with input suppliers, regional and local buyers, and processingcompanies. It will support the diversification from staple crop production to higher-value crops, increasing farmers opportunityfor income diversification and strengthening resilience to market and production shocks. It will follow a demand-driven approach,where a value chain diagnostic will identify the opportunities and constraints for promising commodity value chains and identifyfarmers’ constraints to participate in these value chains, as well as constraints along the enabling environment. Component D:Implementation Management Support and Institutional Strengthening. This component will finance a need-based Project Management Unit(PMU), headed by a Project Director and staffed by national and some international staff. It will be established to execute theproject and manage all components, including technical, procurement and financial management, monitoring and evaluation (M&E),communication functions. The PMU will include a core team in Kabul as well as decentralized units at the regional level. The PMUwill work under the technical supervision of the relevant MAIL directorates. A high-level cross ministerial steering committeewill be formed to provide necessary guidance, and strategic direction to the project and ensure coordination between the relevantministries, and donors. This component will also support institutional strengthening and capacity development for the relevantdepartments in the Government.