Description
The Namibia Country Partnership (CPP) for Integrated Sustainable Land Management (ISLM) Programme was designed to address problems of land degradation as a major challenge to the livelihoods of the majority of the country’s population. Although the Government of Namibia had been making efforts to reverse this process these efforts were being obstructed by a number of barriers including insufficient capacity at systemic, institutional and individual levels, and inadequate knowledge and technology dissemination. The programme is a five-year initiative focussing on building Namibia’s capacity at national and local levels to absorb investments in combating land degradation. The goal of the programme is to “Combat land degradation using integrated cross-sectoral approaches which enable Namibia to reach its MDG #7: “environmental sustainability” and assure the integrity of dryland ecosystems and ecosystem services”. The programme objectives are i) to build and sustain capacity at systemic, institutional and individual level, ensuring cross-sectoral and demand driven coordination and implementation of sustainable land management (SLM) activities; and, ii) to identify cost effective, innovative and appropriate SLM methods which integrate environmental and economic objectives.
CPP is being implemented in twelve regions of the country. It is spearheaded by seven government Ministries and civil society organisations. The programme is implemented under National Execution arrangements with the National Planning Commission, as the national body responsible for development coordination, being the government entity responsible for programme delivery.
The evaluation was composed of three main activities, namely: Literature Review, Interviews with main stakeholders who were either affiliated to the project or who might be expected to be impacted by the project and Report writing. The overall conclusion of the Midterm evaluation is that the project has made considerable progress towards meeting its objectives and is rated Satisfactory (S). There is a need to refine intra-programme sharing of information and experiences before going out to network with external entities. With this improvement the project can develop consistent learning messages for wider dissemination in Namibia and beyond.