Consultation for International Organization in Iraq

Courses and curriculum development on regenerative agriculture and climate change adaptation

Challenge

A globally operating international organization (IGO) needed an expert on the topics of regenerative agriculture, climate change, and food security to support their projects in the Middle East.

What we did

We supported the local staff as consultants by providing various services. Besides facilitating online workshops with the IGO’s staff across the Middle East and finalizing reports, we supported the development of a curriculum focused on regenerative agriculture and climate change adaptation. In addition, we developed various easy-to-use Excel tools for local staff to use for their projects. One of these tools was designed to evaluate if planned and ongoing projects are ‘climate-proof’. The tool provides a traffic-light rating system to understand if the project (or individual measures) results in an improvement in climate change adaptation. It also provides suggestions to improve the climate-proofing status of projects thereby making them more sustainable. Another tool supports the evaluation of the economic feasibility of agricultural projects. The tool was designed in such a way that minimal user input is required to calculate the cost-benefit ratio of the project measures. Hence, the tool can be used in advance to ensure that investments in agricultural installations (e.g. building of irrigation canals or setting up greenhouses) will be economically feasible for the local population within a few years.

Impact

Through our consultancy service, we provided knowledge of interest to the local staff of an IGO. In addition, our tools support their daily work and can be used to evaluate the projects’ climate-proofing potential as well as economic feasibility in advance, thereby increasing the success rate and the sustainability of these projects.