Midterm Review Conservation of Snow Leopards and their Critical Ecosystems in Afghanistan GEF/UNDP/Government of Islamic Republic of Afghanistan UNDP GEF PIMS: 5844 Implemented by The Wildlife Conservation Society Government Partner: National Environmental Protection Agency Camera trap image: Ween Sar, Shikargah Valley, Wakhan National Park, 28 Jun 2020 Andrew Laurie, MTR International Consultant Cambridge, United Kingdom [email protected] Mustafa Hasani, MTR National Consultant Kabul, Afghanistan [email protected] 24 May 2021 Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS............................................................................................................................................ III ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS ......................................................................................................................... III 1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY .......................................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 PROJECT INFORMATION TABLE .............................................................................................................................. 1 1.2 DESCRIPTION OF PROJECT .................................................................................................................................... 2 1.3 PROJECT PROGRESS SUMMARY ............................................................................................................................ 3 1.4 MTR RATINGS & ACHIEVEMENT SUMMARY ............................................................................................................ 4 1.5 SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS ................................................................................................................................. 5 1.6 SUMMARY OF RECOMMENDATIONS ........................................................................................................................ 7 2. INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................................................... 8 2.1 PURPOSE OF THE MTR ......................................................................................................................................... 8 2.2 MTR SCOPE, METHOD AND LIMITATIONS ............................................................................................................... 8 2.3 STRUCTURE OF THE REVIEW REPORT ..................................................................................................................... 9 3. PROJECT DESCRIPTION AND BACKGROUND ................................................................................................. 10 3.1 DEVELOPMENT CONTEXT..................................................................................................................................... 10 3.2 PROBLEMS THAT THE PROJECT SOUGHT TO ADDRESS: THREATS AND BARRIERS TARGETED .................................... 12 3.3 PROJECT DESCRIPTION AND STRATEGY ............................................................................................................... 12 3.4 PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION AND PARTNER ARRANGEMENTS .................................................................................. 13 3.5 PROJECT TIMING AND MILESTONES ...................................................................................................................... 14 3.6 MAIN STAKEHOLDERS ......................................................................................................................................... 14 4. MTR FINDINGS ...................................................................................................................................................... 15 4.1 PROJECT STRATEGY ........................................................................................................................................... 15 4.2 PROGRESS TOWARDS RESULTS .......................................................................................................................... 19 4.3 PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION AND ADAPTIVE MANAGEMENT .................................................................................... 26 4.4 SUSTAINABILITY .................................................................................................................................................. 32 5. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS ..................................................................................................... 35 5.1 CONCLUSIONS .................................................................................................................................................... 35 5.2. RECOMMENDATIONS .......................................................................................................................................... 38 ANNEXES ................................................................................................................................................................... 44 ANNEX 1 PROJECT STATUS OF COFINANCE AT DESIGN AND AT MTR ........................................................................... 44 ANNEX 2 MATRIX FOR ASSESSMENT OF PROJECT PROGRESS .................................................................................... 44 ANNEX 3 THE PROJECT INDICATORS (FROM SRF AT INCEPTION) WITH MTR COMMENTS ON DESIGN ............................ 44 ANNEX 4 PROJECT MANAGEMENT'S ASSESSMENT OF PROGRESS AT MTR STAGE ....................................................... 44 ANNEX 5 PROJECT MANAGEMENT'S ASSESSMENT OF PROGRESS AGAINST INDICATORS AT MTR ................................. 44 ANNEX 6 MTR TERMS OF REFERENCE ..................................................................................................................... 44 ANNEX 7 LIST OF DOCUMENTS, BOOKS AND VIDEOS REVIEWED, AND WEBINARS PARTICIPATED IN ................................. 44 ANNEX 8 LIST OF PEOPLE INTERVIEWED WITH DATES AND TIMES ................................................................................ 44 ANNEX 9 UNEG CODE OF CONDUCT FOR EVALUATORS AND MIDTERM REVIEW CONSULTANTS .................................. 44 ANNEX 10 QUESTIONNAIRE ....................................................................................................................................... 44 ANNEX 11 ANALYSIS OF RESPONSES TO THE QUESTIONNAIRE.................................................................................... 44 ANNEX 12 MID-TERM REVIEW EVALUATIVE MATRIX TEMPLATE ................................................................................... 44 ANNEX 13 INDICATIVE INTERVIEW QUESTIONS ............................................................................................................ 44 ANNEX 14 PARALLEL EUROPEAN UNION PROJECT UNDER THE WCS PROGRAMME ...................................................... 44 ANNEX 15 MTR RATINGS SCALES ............................................................................................................................. 44 ANNEX 16 UNDP GEF ADVISORY NOTE - LACK OF THE SOLUTION ............................................................................. 44 ANNEX 17 MONITORING AND EVALUATION PLAN FROM INCEPTION REPORT, WITH MTR COMMENTS ............................. 44 ANNEX 18 UNDP GEF BIODIVERSITY ADVISORY NOTE - INDICATORS......................................................................... 44 ANNEX 19 EXAMPLE OF A FLOW DIAGRAM FOR A GEF PROJECT THEORY OF CHANGE ANALYSIS .................................. 44 ANNEX 20 SAFEGUARDS DESK REVIEW 2021 WITH MTR COMMENTS ......................................................................... 44 ANNEX 21 TRACKING TOOLS -- [SEE SEPARATE FILES] ............................................................................................... 44 ANNEX 22 COMMENT AUDIT TRAIL -- [SEE SEPARATE FILE] ......................................................................................... 44 ANNEX 23 MTR CLEARANCE FORM ........................................................................................................................... 44 ENDNOTES ................................................................................................................................................................ 45 ii Acknowledgements The consultants would like to thank the many people in Afghanistan, including experts and officials from government, international aid organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), academia and the private sector, who gave up their time to talk or write about their observations and experiences in relation to the project, often through unstable video links and at inconvenient times and locations. We are grateful too to Koustubh Sharma of the Global Snow Leopard Ecosystem Partnership (GSLEP), Tom McCarthy, John Farrington, John MacKinnon and others who talked with us about their experience of Snow Leopard conservation outside Afghanistan. Together, our interlocutors (listed in Annex 8) helped us to build up a picture of the project and to inform the review. We were welcomed by the WCS team in Kabul in an initial Zoom meeting and received steady support throughout from Project Manager Mujtaba Bashari, Country Director Garry Shea and other members of the team. We thank also Project Analyst Mohammad Salim of the UNDP Country Office in Afghanistan, and Tashi Dorji, UNDP Regional Technical Advisor, for their assistance and support. We were unable to visit the project field site in Wakhan and