Since 2015, the UK Department for International Development (DFID)-funded Building Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Extremes and Disasters (BRACED) programme has worked to build sustainable and scalable resilience for climate-vulnerable communities across the Sahel, East Africa and Asia. At the end of 2017, to build on the results already delivered, the Programme was further extended and an additional policy engagement component was commissioned – Component D. This was further split into three parts – local-level work led by implementing partners (IPs) (D1), national-level policy engagement work (D2) and international policy-focussed activities (D3).
Component D2 work was led by the BRACED Fund Manager (FM), with results managers (RMs) assigned to establish and facilitate a process in the following six countries: Nepal, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mali, Senegal and Chad. As stated by the FM: ‘The aim of the D2 process is to consolidate evidence and lessons learned from the BRACED experience in terms of what builds resilience and use this to influence policy making at the national level.’
Recognising that policy change processes are complex and emergent, and can take significant time, an adaptive and flexible approach to Component D2 was taken – that is, rather than delivering through a traditional project work plan, budget and logical framework (‘logframe’) approach, Component D2 was designed to be more organic and stakeholder-driven.
The main purpose of this report is to summarise, compare and contrast the main findings from three country-level ‘deep dive’ case studies in Kenya, Mali and Nepal conducted by the BRACED Knowledge Manager (KM). As well as presenting the key findings, we also offer more summative lessons drawing from all three studies in an attempt to answer the key learning question: To what extent, how and in which circumstances did the Component D2 (policy dialogue) investment modality deliver (steps towards) policy change?
