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MECCA AfricaVolume1,No.7,January2012

Initiatives

in

Africa**MECCA Africa is the official newsletter of the project An Experimental Approach to Capacity and Toolkit

Development for monitoring and Evaluation within Climate Change Adaptation Initiatives, which is supported by the

Climate Change Adaptation in Africa (CCAA) programme, a joint initiative of Canadas International Development

Research Centre (IDRC) and the United Kingdoms Department for International Development (DFID).

Communities of Practice: Lessons learned from the SEA Change experience

on Monitoring and Evaluation of Climate Change Interventions

DennisBoursI,Leodegardo PrunaII,andSarya SokIII |Dbours@Pactworld.org

WhatareCommunitiesofPractice?

Cognitive psychologists Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger1 define Communities of Practice (CoP) as

groups of people who share a passion for something they do and who interact regularly to learn how

MECCAAfrica will undertake two important

outreach and training activities, namely:

Produce a documentary video based on

the experience of IUCNs PAGEV Project in

utilizing the MECCAAfrica M&E toolkit and

training manual, and

Announcement

.about, how they function, and what capabilities they produce.

Each Community of Practice is unique, but they share the following common characteristics:

Peer to peer collaborative networks;

Driven by the willing participation of members;

Focused on learning and building capacity; and

Engaged in knowledge sharing, developing expertise, and solving problems2.

What is SEA Change?

rgan ze a tra n ng wor s op n a at onthe aforementioned M&E toolkit for over

30 M&E and climate change professionals.

More information on these activities is

available in the Upcoming Activities Section

on Page 4.

SEA Change is a newly formed Community of Practice (CoP) focused on improving the practice of

monitoring and evaluation of climate change interventions in Southeast Asia. SEA Change is an

answer to the growing needs found in the intersection of monitoring and evaluation and

implementation of climate change interventions in Southeast Asia and beyond. For more information

on SEA Change, refer to the Member Profile Section on Page 2.

Lessons Learned

The main recommendations and lessons learned from the startup of the SEA Change CoP were: (i)

IN THIS ISSUECommunitiesofPractice:Lessons

learnedfromtheSEAChange

experience

on

Monitoring

and

EvaluationofClimateChange

Interventions..................................../1Capita ize on s are vision an goa s, (ii Focus on ey areas o s are interest, (iii Continue to ui

membership base, (iv) Foster internal interaction and move from the central role towards a

facilitator role, (v) Leverage internal champions as leaders, (vi) Further research on external

intellectual resources, (vii) Recognize diversity and need for contextualization, (viii) Learn from the

successes (and failures) of others, and (ix) Start small.

In its first year, the SEA Change CoP witnessed a significant growth in members, from 18 to 70, and

also in the percentage of its members who were M&E practitioners, from 17% to 64%. A second

Annual Members Meeting took place on November 9 10 2011 to discuss the way forward in the

Member Profile: SEA Change../2

EnergyandClimateChange

AdaptationinAfrica../3

UpcomingMECCAAfrica

Activities............../4

legacy4.

Lessons from the SEA Change experience were drawn through an Organizational Network Analysis

(ONA) that was undertaken to understand the evolution of the COP. These lessons, which arediscussed in subsequent sections, provide ample learning opportunities to similar COPs such as

MECCAAfrica.

Continued on page 2

Monitoring and Evaluation of Climate

Change initiatives in Africa (MECCAAfrica)

is a network of organizations, experts and

stakeholders with interest and involvement

About the Network

TheSEAChangeSecondAnnualMembersMeetingreport:

UNECA

The project An Experimental Approach to Capacity and Toolkit Development for

monitoring and Evaluation within Climate Change Adaptation Initiatives is

jointly implemented by UNECA, OSS, AGRHYMET, and IUCN.

in c imate c ange a aptation issues in

Africa.

Visitus:http://www.uneca.org/mecca/

I. Mr. Dennis Bours is the current team leader of SEA Change

II. Dr. Leodegardo Pruna is a Professor at the Tarlac State University. He is among the earliest and most

active members of SEA Change

III. Ms. Sarya Sok was the team leader SEA Change during its nascent years. She is currently a consultant

for a company based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

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MECCA AfricaVolume1,No.7

Continuedfrompage1

Using ONA to Understand the CoPs Evolution

During the SEAChange kickoff meeting in October 2010 an initial ONA was completed,

which was repeated during the second Annual Meeting to map the CoPs network

expansion over time. The CoP network grew not only in members, but also in the

number of connections between and among SEA Change members. Closer analysis of the

network metrics reveals a heavy reliance for connectivity upon a number of network

hubs and in one year the network was about twice as reliant upon these hubs as what

would be necessary for longterm sustainability.

With funding from the Rockefeller Foundation and

technical and logistical support from Pact, SEA Change

is a newly formed Community of Practice (CoP)

While this suggests that there is still much work to be done, this pattern is a normal one

for networks of SEA Changes maturity. In the paper Building Smart Communities through

Network Weaving5 Krebs and Holley discuss four stages of network development: (1)

Scattered Fragments; (2) Single HubandSpoke; (3) MultiHub SmallWorld; (4)

Core/Periphery. The second ONA suggests that in its first 12 months of existence the SEA

Change CoP has progressed from scattered fragments to a hub and spoke network.

In conclusion, the first year has followed a normal progression pattern and marked a

success for the evolution of the SEA Chan e CoP. New connections have been made both

evaluation of climate change interventions in

Southeast Asia. SEA Change seeks to assist both

practitioners and funders in leveraging the power of

networking to improve organizational performance

and achieve crosscutting goals in regional responses

to climate change.

SEA Change aims to achieve this through:

Fostering partnerships and building memberwithin the CoP itself as well as with external resource hubs. These connections in turn

can be leveraged to further advance the goals of SEA Change over the coming years.

Some recommendations for doing this are as follows:

Sustainability of SEA Change: It is critical to begin to foster stronger

interconnectivity between members through small world networks. These small

world networks can either focus on geographic or thematic relations, or focus on

relationship building across traditional divides so that people have access to

innovation and important information. The main focus should be to facilitate

capacity for strengthening M&E in climate

change

Sharing best practices, lessons learned,

guidelines, approaches, methods, tools and

innovations to improve M&E practices,

particularly in relation to M&E of adaptive

responses to climate change

Influencing policy and practice around M&E of

collaborations for mutual benefit

Partnerships: Besides the empowerment of individual members and their

interconnectivity, it is important to form partnerships between SEA Change, other

Communities of Practice and organizations with a similar vision and goals. At this

point in time, SEA Change has signed partnerships with the Climate Eval CoP, the

Adaptation Knowledge Platform (AKP) and the Asia Pacific Adaptation Network(APAN) and is seeking further collaboration with networks that will add value to its

activities,

interventions

SEA Change conducted its KickOff Event on October

29, 2010 with participants representing five Asian

countries to analyze the relevance of this initiative to

CoP members and to formulate the first mission

statement for SEA Changea. The KickOff Meeting

results and subsequent communication were used to

develop the Community Charter, formulating the

Leadership From Within: SEA Change will continue to provide a strong platform for

local leadership to connect across the region and internationally. Creating more

opportunities for members to lead webinars, publish their work and represent SEA

Change at conferences will support and encourage local leadership and

entrepreneurship,

Impact: It is important for SEA Change to evolve from a platform where members

share information to a platform where they collaborate and take action on

improving the practice of monitoring and evaluation of climate change

communitys rationale, goals, deliverables,

membership guidelines and community organization,

including the establishment of an advisory board. The

final Community Charterb and advisory board

composition were completed by March 2011.

In April 2011, SEA Change commenced a full

implementation of its activities, with its online

platform going live on April 1, 2011 and its first

interventions. Concurrently, improved practice can positively influence climate

change policy makers thereby leading to longterm impact brought about by the

CoP.

Conclusion

Most of the lessons learned from the SEA Change experience are not unique to

monitoring and evaluation of climate change interventions, though a number of

characteristics make the development of the SEA Change CoP both extremely necessary

a. The SEA Change kickoff report: can be accessed at:http://www.seachangecop.org/seachange/files/docum

ents/2010_11_30_COP_KickOff_Meeting_Report.pdf

b. The SEA Cha n e Communi t Cha rt er can be

we nar os e on ay , .

For more information on the SEA Change CoP, visit:

http://www.seachangecop.org or send an email to

the team leader Dbours@pactworld.org

as well as challenging:

Continued on Page 3

January2012Page2

.

accessed at:

http://www.seachangecop.org/seachange/files/docum

ents/Charter1.0.pdf

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MECCA AfricaVolume1,No.7

Continued from Page 2

Yacob MulugettaI |YMulugetta@uneca.org

Context

The energy challenge in Africa is at the heart of the continents development

challenge. It is a worrying fact that today millions of people across Africa lack

access to the most basic energy services, electricity and clean cooking facilities. The

region has the lowest electrification rate of all the regions at less than 30% of

Monitoring and evaluation of climate change interventions

is not a science set in stone. It is a highly dynamic field withconcepts and frameworks developing rapidly in the fields of

M&E and climate change individually as they do on the

intersection of the two fields,

The concept of climate change is often misunderstood

and misused as a buzzword or fad, like the use over the.

picture becomes even more complex when considering the future energy landscape

where the annual rate of new connections in Africa is not keeping pace with new

household formation due to population growth. Moreover, reliance on traditional

biomass is prevalent in many African countries, amounting to about 80% of the

primary energy demand in the continent. According to the WHO, the overreliance

on traditional biomass to meet basic energy needs comes at a significant human

cost in terms of the amount of time spent in collection and use of fuels, and the

associated health impacts from the use of such low grade fuels. It is important to

past decades of empowerment, structural adjustment

and Millennium Development Goals, which makes it more

difficult to identify realclimate change interventions and as

such creates fluidity on the boundaries of the SEA Change

CoP,

Talking about climate change interventions we have not yet

delved into the discussion on what we see as an

intervention. The original 18 members focused mainly on

stress ere t at t e energy access pro em p aces a eavy ur en on women anchildren who are the main providers and users of household energy.

Of course, the energy access and energy security concerns are not solely confined

to the household sector, but also extend to the productive sector. For example, the

agricultural sector accounts for less than 2% of the total energy and 3% of

electricity consumed in the continent despite employing 6080% of the working

population and accounting for over quarter of GDP in most African countries. Thus,

access to modern energy services (including equipments and machineries) at all

c ma e c ange a ap a on, u y e ruary , emembership base has grown to 130 members with more

new members focusing on mitigation and climate change

policy. The key areas of shared interest for SEA Change

might very well be shifting accordingly,

Monitoring and evaluation is all about measuring whether

you reached preset goals within a certain framework.

Measuring the actual output of a Community of Practice on

enhancing income generation and meeting other key Millennium Development

Goals. In essence, addressing the energy access concerns relating to the productive

sector is an important step for making a systemic transition to a more efficient and

modern energy pathway.

Clearly, the achievement of universal access to modern energy services is an

important goal for Africa. Indeed, the urgency of linking energy access to human

and economic development was underlined recently by the UN Secretary General

durin his launch of the Hi hlevel Grou for the Sustainable Ener for All

change over time with changes in the concepts of M&E and

climate change, change in our member base and the

interests and focus areas of new and current members.

This demands agility within SEA Change to respond to this

fluidity.

As SEA Change matures over time as a Community of Practice,

members will refine its direction and take the lead on creating

knowledge products. While members continue to be the key to

Initiative. The initiative seeks to achieve the goal ofSustainable Energy for All by

2030 by meeting three interlinked global targets: universal access to modern

energy services; doubling energy efficiency; and doubling the share of renewable

energy in global energy supply. This will also locate energy at the core of two of the

most pressing global challenges reducing poverty and minimizing the risks of

climate change.

ClimateChangeandEnergyrelatedinterventionsinAfrica

this growth, it will not occur with SEA Change members alone.

Linkages with other M&E and climate change networks and

communities are critical to building dynamic evaluation

frameworks that are adapted for climate change interventions.

Reference

1. Wenger, Etienne (2006) Communities of practice. A brief

introduction http://www.ewenger.com/theory/ Accessedma e c ange s a e n ng ssue o our me an a us ness as usua s no

longer a viable option for Africa as climaterelated impacts could impose yet further

costs on future development targets. Hence, the mission to widen energy access

and improve energy security and addressing climate change are now widely viewedas interrelated objectives. It is estimated that Africa needs to invest about $23

billion per annum over the coming two decades to widen energy access in order to

meaningfully support the ambitious regionwide development plans and deliver on

social development goals. It is also critical that the future energy system in Africa is

climate resilient, whereby new energy infrastructures are designed with adverse,

January 30, 2011; Wenger, Etienne and Richard McDermott,

and William Snyder (2002) Cultivating communities of practice:

a guide to managing knowledge. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard

Business School Press2. Pioneers of Change (2005), Building Communities of Practice A

summary guide, prepared for INK ABM/URP, Ethekwini

Municipality:

http://www.meadowlark.co/community_of_practice_

handbook.pdf

January2012

weatherrelated contingencies built into them; and existing infrastructures are

upgraded to meet the climaterelated challenges of the future.

Page3

.

http://www.seachangecop.org/files/documents/2012_01_05_S

EA_ Change_CoP_Annual_Meeting_ReportFinal.pdf

4. Valdis Krebs and June Holley, Building Smart Communities

through Network Weaving, 2006:

www.orgnet.com/BuildingNetworks.pdf I. Dr. Yacob Mulugetta is the Senior Energy and Climate Specialist at the AfricanClimate Policy Centre (ACPC), UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA)

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MECCA AfricaVol.1,No.7

Continued from Page 3Upcoming Activities

Furthermore, the high degree of climate uncertainty due to the range of predictions from different climate

models requires designing and building infrastructure that would withstand different impacts and

possibilities. This is likely to have cost implications but the do nothing option will leave criticalinfrastructures exposed to the vagaries of climaterelated impacts, which in the longrun is likely to impose

higher economywide costs. A recent World Bank study warns that countries with underperforming energy

systems may lose up to 12% of growth potential annually as a result of blackouts and the haphazard

interventions needed to avoid total system collapse.

While the energyclimate dilemma for Africa is a cause for concern, there are also reasons to be optimistic.

In the coming months, MECCA

Africa will undertake twoimportant outreach and training

activities.

MECCAAfrica is preparing for the

production of a documentary

Over the past decade, economic growth patterns across Africa have been both high and stable, with at least a

dozen economies across the region having expanded by more than 6% a year for six or more years. The IMF

forecasts growth patterns to remain high over the coming year. However, maintaining growth and economic

diversification requires additional energy supplies and maintaining a reliable and efficient power sector for

which substantial investment in Africas energy infrastructure will be required. In this regard, Africa has a

considerable comparative advantage over other regions given the regions vast underutilized renewable

energy resources such as hydro, solar, wind, geothermal and bioenergy. For example, the region has only

been able to develop less than 9% of its exploitable renewable energy potential to date, and considerable

opportunities also exist in promoting efficient production and consumption of energy. Moreover, countries

experience of the IUCN Project

for Improving Water Governance

in the Volta River Basin (PAGEV)

in utilizing the MECCAAfrica

M&E toolkit and training manual.

The shooting for documentary

video will take place in

Tengodoko, Burkina Faso, where

in Africa do not yet have as much of a sunk cost in carbonintensive infrastructure as other regions, and

therefore in a relatively better position to leapfrog towards a cleaner and sustainable energy pathway. This

will bring longterm economic, health and social benefits as well as potential to enhance the reliability of

energy source and system resilience, provided through a combination of centralized and distributed

(decentralized) technologies and systems. The time for such a rethink could not be better for the region

given the risks associated with pursuing conventional energy trajectory, and the opportunity to chart out a

new energy path and capitalize on new technologies and finance. This will of course require greater

readiness on the part of countries in creating the enabling institutional, regulatory and policy environment

that would encoura e investment in low carbon ener s stems that are reliable and costeffective in the

PAGEV is implementing its

activities. The video will be a

means for reaching the broader

M&E and climate change

community and for disseminating

MECCAAfricas achievements

and knowledge products.

MECCA Africa is also re arin tolongterm.

MonitoringandEvaluation

In the context of climate change, the energy sector has unique significance due to its relevance to both the

mitigation and adaptation agenda. To this end, while progress has been made towards monitoring and

evaluating the mitigation dimension of climate change, for instance, takes the Measurement Reporting andVerification (MRV) of energy related mitigation actions, much less progress has been made in the

measurement of adaptation. However, the Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) of adaptation, along with the

host a training workshop in

Rabat. This workshop will train

over 30 M&E professionals and

program managers, working on

climate change initiatives in

Africa, on the Projects M&Etoolkit .

, ,

countries and organizations addressing the climate change issue in Africa. To this end, work needs to be done

towards mainstreaming energy related adaptation interventions and subsequently in developing and

implementing comprehensive and relevant frameworks to monitor and evaluate the impact of these

interventions. Moreover, given its importance to Africa, there is a need to explore adaptation and energy

nexus in more detail, with a view to understanding what this means for development plans and strategies

across the continent at local, national and regional levels.

activities will be posted as they

evolve on the Events section of

the MECCAAfrica website:

http://www.uneca.org/mecca/in

dex.html

The MECCAAfrica Newsletter Team

Disclaimer

The content of this newsletter do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the project funding and implementing organizations. The

designations employed and the presentation do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the project funding andimplementing organizations concerning the legal status of any country, territory or city or its authority, or concerning the delimitation of its

frontiers or boundaries.

January2012Page4

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