Purpose
The World Bank’s Investment in Forests and Protected Areas for Climate-Smart Development (IFPA-CD) project in Uganda seeks to ‘Increase revenues and jobs from forests and wildlife protected areas’, through investing $38.5 million in the tourism and production forestry sectors. This ex-ante study aimed to establish a pre-pandemic baseline to estimate the quantity and quality of employment in nature-based tourism, wood-processing and production forestry. As there are limited existing methodologies for measuring the employment impact of providing funding to wood-based value chains and tourism sectors, this baseline study also piloted a methodology which could be used in other World Bank countries.
Action
EDI Global conducted a baseline survey on behalf of the World Bank and the National Planning Authority (NPA) across 93 districts of Uganda. EDI Global localised and piloted the survey, used computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI) software to program the survey tools, worked closely with government forestry officers to obtain local permission, and, using business registers, implemented a field survey with hotel managers, tour operators, national forestry managers and wood-processing business owners. EDI Global’s solution-focused approach and extensive local networks were utilised when the business registers proved to be outdated, and EDI Global was able to conduct agile in-field listing and sampling, alongside district authority officers.
Impact
EDI Global has conducted the baseline survey and has completed field interviews with 564 establishments, including:
central forests
hotel and catering facilities
tour operators
wood and timber processors
The IFPA-CD project is still in the early phases of the project implementation, with reports not yet released.
