Survey on Community Conservation Practices in Kilimanjaro, Samburu & Mau Landscapes, Kenya

Closing date: Tuesday, 30 December 2014Posted on Thursday, October 30, 2014African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) has had a long development relationship with the Royal Netherlands Embassy (RNE) which has been supporting its Integrated Management Programme for Kenyan which consists of three key landscapes in Kenya: Mau, Samburu and Kilimanjaro.The Current Programme ApproachThe current programme seeks to build on the existing interventions by AWF in Kenya and under the RNE-funded Integrated Management Programme for Kenyan Landscapes (2007-11) in particular. Guided by AWF's East African Regional Strategy 2010-2015, the project is expected to continue to utilize the strategic approach of AWF that is driven by an integrated large landscape conservation and development philosophy and five thematic areas: land and habitat conservation; conservation science and applied research; conservation enterprise; capacity building and leadership development, and; policy support. Therefore, AWF extended its work in Samburu and Kilimanjaro landscapes and is expanding AWF's current interventions in the Mau Forest Complex, all presently implemented with support from RNE.It is expected that this intervention will consolidate the achievements of the pervious RNE grant to AWF in Kilimanjaro and Samburu landscapes in order to ensure that impacts are truly sustainable and transformational and will be based on continuation of activities that showed promising progress and results. At the same time, AWF identified and will add a few strategic activities within new thematic areas such as water management, agriculture, and climate change that should deliver landscape level results. AWF is continuing to work within the two former and one new Kenyan landscapes for a longer period in order to effectively deepen impact, scale-up successes, and consolidate programmes gains and achieve transformational conservation impacts at the landscape level that is sustainable, with the aim of weaning off active community support towards the end the current four-year programme. AWF proposed to scale up and expand its intervention in the Mau Forest Complex in order to preserve and rehabilitate parts of Kenya's most important water tower upon which future development gains rest.Geographical Scope of the Programme sitesKilimanjaro landscape, 24,000 km2, is located in the south-Eastern part of Kenya and the northern part of Tanzania. The landscape is characterized by a wide range of climatic and geographical features with habitats ranging from afro-montane to woodland, open savannah and aquatic. On the Kenya side, the Heartland's most distinguishing features include: Amboseli National Park and seven large Maasai group ranches. The proposed interventions in Kilimanjaro Heartland over the coming four years will focus on intensification and extension of work on carbon, land conservation, water, enterprise and community institutional governance processes to scale up impact of the previous phase of funding and contribute significantly to Objectives 1-3, as well as 4 and 5. See Annex 3 for a detailed description of Kilimanjaro Heartland.This landscape will however not be included in the KAP survey because the attributes being studied can as well be derived from the Samburu landscape. This is because the socio-economic characteristics of Samburu and Kilimanjaro communities are similar. Therefore, the findings of Samburu can be used to generalize for Kilimanjaro. Further, a similar study had been conducted by AWF in Kilimanjaro landscape although some time has passed now.The Samburu landscape, 26,000 km2, is located north of the equator, east of the Great Rift Valley. It includes parts of Mt. Kenya and the Aberdare National Parks and three National Reserves (Samburu, Buffalo Springs and Shaba). It is characterized by shrub and grassland, riverine woodland and higher altitude dry montane forest with the Ewaso Nyiro River being the only permanent major water source. The Samburu landscape is already on a path towards consolidation work heading to a future 'maintenance' phase of work in which AWF works primarily through local partners, giving support in specific technical areas.Mau Forest Complex (Special site)Kenya's forests are one of the country's most important and most threatened natural resources and the Mau Forest Complex (MFC) is of paramount importance not only to Kenya but also to neighbouring countries. MFC is the largest of the five water towers of Kenya. The complex is the source of no less than 12 major rivers, is the source for 60% of all the water flowing into Lake Victoria, and provides water for estimated four million people. Estimates of the MFC's annual contribution to the market value of goods and services generated in the tea, tourism and energy sectors alone, is in excess of 20 billion shillings; this does not include provisioning services such as urban water supply or support to rural livelihoods. Despite its critical importance of MFC the forest complex has been severely degraded and the needs for rehabilitation are great and pressing.The Kenya Government is serious about its attempt to rehabilitate MCF and restore its capacity to become a protected, well-functioning, and sustainably used water tower. In 2010 AWF was approached by the Kenya Forest Service (KFS) as well as by the Interim Coordinating Secretariat (ICS) now Kenya Water Towers Agency (KWTA), in charge of coordinating the implementation of the Mau Task Force's recommendations, with a request to support rehabilitation of Enderit Forest (13,667 ha) and development of livelihood opportunities for the adjacent communities. AWF agreed to undertake the tasks to support GoK's programme to rehabilitate the Mau. AWF interventions in Mau focus on climate change mitigation and adaptation to provide for reduced deforestation and enhanced livelihoods and wellbeing.The rationale behind this survey is to gain a broad empirical understanding of the Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices of communities living around targeted protected areas in Samburu, Laikipia county and Mau, Nakuru and Narok Counties in Kenya. Such empirical data has been lacking in the past.to gain an understanding about the knowledge the rural resource users have concerning conservation and natural resource management;to see what attitudes rural people have towards conservation, and in particular towards wildlife, forests and protected area authorities;to gain an understanding of some of the existing conservation related practices that communities living around the protected areas in these areas undertake;to form one basis for future monitoring of trends of change in knowledge, attitude and practice towards conservation;to provide input into a more participatory community conservation planning process in these areas;The survey will require the critical examination of both qualitative and quantitative data. However, the detailed methodology of the survey will be designed after consultation with AWF.The review of project documents especially community engagement reports will be an important task throughout the assignment. Below are the documents among those are to be reviewed by the consultant:Grant ProposalPolicy documents that talk about Protected Areas in KenyaSocio-economic baseline survey reportRelevant annual reports for the grant at the landscape levelsThe primary data will be collected from various sourcesWith the understanding of total beneficiaries and locations the consultant will propose the sampling method and sample size to AWF for conducting the household survey. This will target household heads only. It will involve administering questionnaires to the household heads3.2.2 Key Informant Interview (KII)Staff from AWF offices in Nanyuki and Mau, relevant county and national governmental departments and other NGOs working closely with AWF in the same areas.Partners will be purposively selected for interviewing to obtain information about the knowledge, attitude, and behaviour, social, cultural and traditional norms of the indigenous people in relation to community conservation behaviour. KII is a flexible tool allowing for a more informal interaction between the interviewer and interviewee. New questions will be brought up during the discussion.3.2.3 Focused Group Discussion (FGDs).The beneficiaries of AWF project in these areas consists of men, women and children who neighbour protected areas. They will be purposively selected for FGDs to assess the knowledge, skills, attitude, and practice norm, perception related to community conservation and natural resource management. It is recommended to organize FGDs for the following target groups:Group of Women aged 18 and aboveGroup of men aged 18 and aboveGroup of youths who are a mix of both women and men and didn't take part in the two above3.3 Data Processing and AnalysisAll quantitative and qualitative data collected from secondary data, household survey, KII and FGD will be consolidated, analyzed and organized following the structure of report mentioned in the TOR.The consultant is expected to develop and propose a methodology, tools and planning for this KAP survey in AWF's project locations in Kilimanjaro- Kajiado County, Samburu- Laikipia County and Mau, Nakuru County. Once the methodology, tools and planning is approved by AWF, the consultant will carry out the survey accordingly in order to achieve the set objectives.Qualifications of the ConsultantA credible independent consultant/ consultancy firm will be recruited. The minimum qualifications and experiences required are:Highly experienced with preparing and managing KAP surveys, preferably in Kenyan context with a bias in conservation effortsKnowledge and experience with local community conservation dynamics in Kilimanjaro, Samburu and Mau areas is an asset, if none, the consultant is willing to get familiar with key concepts and content of community conservation under support of landscape managers and relevant literaturesProven work experience in the field of KAP survey execution and project implementationProven psycho-social experience in working with communitiesExperience in the design of methodology, tools and questionnaires related to KAPExperience in analyzing of the Capacity, Knowledge, Skills, Attitude, and Behaviour ChangeProposals should be submitted to jobs@awf.org