Integrating Climate Risks in Water-Related Infrastructure Investment Planning in the Nile Basin Initiative

In the past years, the Nile Basin Initiative has invested significant resources to build the capacity of project managers, planners and designers in integrating climate risk considerations into the different phases of infrastructure investment planning as well as how to assess climate risks of multi-purpose dams.

Besides a vast series of capacity-building activities, workshop-based climate risk assessments, engaging NBI stakeholders, were piloted. They focused on risk assessment methodologies as well as ways to deliver climate information to be used in risk assessments. The activities carried out were designed and delivered as instructor-led face-to-face learning sessions and were often not directly connected to overall processes of institutionalizing climate-proofing and accordingly provide advisory services. To work towards institutionalization, there is a growing need for clustering technical advisory, training and peer learning, networking and collaboration, and climate service delivery into a holistic service offer access to a diverse group of stakeholders.

Especially, in a  travel restricted Covid-19 world, face-to-face advisory services are associated with high transaction costs. NBI has been carrying out a digitalization campaign and implemented the so-called Climate Service Knowledge Management Hub (CSKMH) for NBI private and public stakeholders. The hub guarantees equal access to just-in-time as well as on-demand capacity development resources and services for a growing community. The hub’s services include:

• orientation and guidance on climate-proofing processes throughout the infrastructure investment cycle,
• peer exchange for collaboration and mutual exchange and networking,
• orientation and access to NBI’s climate services,
• self-paced e-learning on climate proofing.

All four key components are fully integrated, complementarily organized and allow for participatory knowledge sharing, learning and experimentation. The hub can be used as a collaborative platform for a user-community represented by project managers, planners, designers, ministerial staff who need to engage in climate-proofing and seek for a community of practice. After having developed the newly established Climate Service Knowledge Management Hub (CSKMH) as a “final draft” and to become operational, it has to be tested and evaluated, refined, promoted, launched, as well as a user community has to be onboarded and capacitated on the functionalities and opportunities it provides. Confidence in the value of the Hub is required to arrive at a sustainable roll-out and use to serve its overall purpose.

PlanAdapt supports NBI in this endeavour. The PlanAdapt team will take the lead, manage and implement a series of workshops for stakeholders of the Nile Basin Initiative. The workshops aim at (a) familiarizing a selected group of experts with the vision, applications, design and functionalities of the newly established CSKMH, (b) a virtual participatory evaluation and provision of recommendation for continuous improvement of the newly established CSKMH in the field of design, contextual validity, functionality, user-friendliness by engaging selected experts in the testing and evaluation of the CSKMH; (c) the development of a user-interface and its functionalities for the integration of a user community into the CSKMH; (d) communicating and rising awareness of all CSI related activities and processes to the relevant NBI stakeholders.

This initiative is embedded in the  GIZ Enhancing Climate Services for Infrastructure Investment (CSI) Project.