Background: Smallholders have begun to take advantage of a growing pool of investment in climate change mitigation. Meanwhile, early movers in this area are working to develop innovative models that will allow projects to be financially sustainable and scalable while benefiting local actors. This study focuses on two of these projects in East Africa, managed by Vi Agroforestry in Kenya and ECOTRUST in Uganda. They engaged in a participatory action research process to identify ways that local actors could take on expanded roles within the projects.Results: Results are presented as case studies which include project context, roles of local project actors, actions selected, and the outcomes of the actions on the key actors targeted. The actions focused on building the capacities of community-based intermediaries, facilitating partnerships with local government and local non-governmental organizations, and supporting a more active role played by women. Key findings from this process were that community-based intermediaries can play a leading role in land management trainings; local government involvement is critical to project success; local non-governmental organizations and businesses can play central roles in training and providing market incentives to farmers to implement sustainable practices; and women's roles in projects can grow if project benefits are aligned with their needs and trainings are made more accessible.Conclusions: These cases demonstrate that there is substantial scope for the responsibilities within agricultural carbon projects, and by extension climate-smart agriculture initiatives more broadly, to be institutionalized at the local level. However, regardless of the institutional setup, due to carbon market factors beyond the control of these projects, the financial case for smallholder projects that rely solely on financing from carbon credits remains challenging to these projects and others like them. As programmatic and policy-led approaches grow from these project models, it may be easier to find ways to integrate carbon financing with support for climate change adaptation, rural development, and ecosystem services provision. With these new models, the ability to institutionalize management and implementation capacity at the local level will remain critically important.

Working paperNon-PRIFPRI1; CAPRi; CRP7; CRP2EPTD; PIMCGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS); CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM

Introduction: This study provides light on the impact of implemented projects on biodiversity in Uganda in terms of harmful and enhancing projects. Biodiversity harmful projects are defined as the types of projects that destroy or led to biodiversity loss during their implementation. While biodiversity enhancing are projects that lead to biological diversity during their implementation.Objective: The objective of the study was to assess the impact of implemented projects in the communities on biodiversity conservation and management in Uganda. Methods:The data used in this analysis was obtained from Uganda Bureau of statistics (UBOS) previously collected during the National Service Delivery Survey. Multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) was used to derive the different impact dimensions of projects on biodiversity among the communities in Uganda.Results: Implemented projects in the communities impact on biodiversity both positively and negatively. Findings revealed that livestock improvement/restocking/breeding contribute about 30% on the biodiversity positive impacts while introduction of improved crop variety at about 20% and agricultural technology at about 11.4%. Furthermore, construction of new road/bridges are the leading projects in destroying biodiversity accounting for about 13.5% of the variation in negative impacts while construction of toilet/latrines and health units accounts for 11.8% and 9.4%, respectively of the variation in biodiversity loss. Conclusions and recommendations:Construction related projects impact negatively on biodiversity in their implementation while agricultural related projects are the leading agro-biodiversity enhancing projects in Uganda. This implies that works sector must play an important role in biodiversity conservation in Uganda. Secondly, construction and agriculture related projects should endeavour to allocate a percentage of the project budget equivalent to expected impact on biodiversity towards its management and restoration.

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