Replication and Scaling Up: Where to from Here? - Combating Desertification in Asia, Africa and the Middle East - page 433

such as business and related planning support. Feasibility studies also need to
be supported in many cases, together with social and environmental impact
assessments.
3. Assess project context and seek to create an enabling environment .Akeyrole
for programs as promoters of larger scaling up efforts will be the identification
and resolution of challenges and barriers that are beyond the scope of influence
of the enterprises themselves. Again, this requires a more engaged approach and
a thorough assessment of the context in which an innovation is functioning in
order to determine what the challenges are and how they might be resolved. This
will require greater links to local, national and regional actors.
4. Longer term , proactive engagement . For greater sustainable development
outcomes, programs must take a more proactive, longer term engagement with
communities to help them increase the scale and impact to a level which leads to
a step change in sustainability in a given country or sector.
5. Improved monitoring and reporting . Programs will need to establish credible
performance monitoring to assess whether the step changes are in fact being
achieved. There is little evidence of specific concerted or established strategies
for identifying and reporting on the success of scale-up, or strategies for both
promoting and reporting on where the project might have been replicated
elsewhere.
6. For replication , foster peer learning . With respect to replication, incentives
will be needed to encourage the originator to transfer their ideas, approaches and
lessons learned to others. If they are in agreement to having their idea tested and
developed by others, then the key to this effort will be the active fostering of peer
learning, by linking replicated practices to the original. Building the community
of practice around the initiative being replicated will help to mitigate differences
encountered in implementation and might transfer valuable lessons back to the
originator as well.

Key elements of success in replication and scaling-up involve working with local
and national government counterparts from the design stage of the project to ensure
adoption and identifying and creating links with relevant development programs to
ensure sustainability.

2.2 Lessons Learned

• Leadership and ownership of the project at the highest level of government are

essential for sustainability, replication and scaling up of the initiative at the
national level.

• The challenge in attracting and retaining private sector firms to participate in this

type of initiative must be addressed.