Brazil, Latin America and Caribbean  Show on interactive map

Jan 2014

The World Bank, Ministry of Integration, National Water Agency and 40+ partners in the Northeast Region and Federal level

Maria Emilia Accioli Nobre Bretan

Brazil has historically coped with drought, a phenomenon that especially impacts the semi-arid lands of the Northeast. To deal with the various impacts of a current multi-year drought (2010-ongoing), the Government of Brazil, led by the Ministry of National Integration, partnered with the World Bank (WB) on a non-lending technical assistance program (i.e., Drought NLTA) to foster proactive drought policy and management. The program works across sectors in relation to the outcomes and stakeholders it aims to achieve and influence, and trough the integration of WB Global Practices and programs.
The program framework is based on three pillars of drought preparedness: 1) monitoring and early warning; 2) vulnerability and impact assessment; and 3) mitigation and response planning and management. Fully and properly implemented, the pillars strongly contribute to greater climate change resilience, with potential impacts in a diversity of sectors (water and sanitation, agriculture, environment, and disaster risk management) and reach a broad community of beneficiaries.

Inspired by successful models and lessons from other countries, the Drought NLTA key-component include: 1) building a Northeast Drought Monitor, a bottom-up process mainly led by regional multi-sector agencies (e.g. climate/meteorology and water agencies); 2) pilot drought preparedness plans for different sectors across Northeast (urban water supply, rural rainfed agriculture, and river basin, each at different scales of planning).

To monitor and evaluate this pilot initiative, which results were highly depending on the ‘buy-in’ and active engagement and voluntary collaboration among stakeholders from different states, institutions and levels, the selected approach, developed by the World Bank Institute, integrates the Bank’s Capacity Development Results Framework, with Outcome Mapping and Outcome Harvesting, methodologies that build on concepts of systems’ and complexity theories.
Unlike traditional monitoring and evaluation methodologies, this qualitative and participatory approach (i) understands outcomes as sustainable changes influenced by the development agency, but promoted and implemented by the stakeholders (considered as the Bank’s partners) and (ii) acknowledges that sustainable change is a result of complex collaboration processes that are – naturally - negatively and positively influenced by many factors (commonly considered as “externalities” in traditional approaches).

Being a stakeholders’ focused approach, a results framework - that included outputs, outcomes, indicators and a set of progress markers for each group of partners - was developed after consultation with the key-stakeholders involved, capturing their vision and commitments to the change process. Outcomes were harvested to capture the (intended and unintended) relevant political and institutional changes generated along the process, allowing the Bank’s to understand its influence beyond the scope of the program – and beyond outputs.