Applications Invited for USAID Broad Agency Announcement for Sustainable Landscapes

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About the Organization:

United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that is primarily responsible for administering civilian foreign aid and development assistance. With a budget of over $27 billion, USAID is one of the largest official aid agencies in the world, and accounts for more than half of all U.S. foreign assistance—the highest in the world in absolute dollar terms. As an official component of U.S. foreign policy, USAID operates subject to the guidance of the President, Secretary of State, and the National Security Council.

USAID Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) for Sustainable Landscapes (SL)

The Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) seeks opportunities to co-create, co-design, co-invest, and collaborate in the research, development, piloting, and scaling of innovative interventions for reducing land-based greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and increasing long-term carbon sequestration at scale.

USAID’s Office of Global Climate Change (GCC) within the Bureau for Economic Growth, Education and Environment (E3), in cooperation with USAID regional bureaus and selected Missions, developed this BAA for Sustainable Landscapes to improve the Agency’s ability to assist partner countries in solving complex challenges that threaten sustainable development.

This BAA seeks to engage with a wide range of actors to develop and provide innovative interventions that further USAID’s commitments to assisting partner countries on their Journey to Self-Reliance through protecting the environment and natural resources and promoting sustainable development and livelihoods in ways that reduce land-based greenhouse gas emissions or increase long-term carbon sequestration at scale. Interventions should offer significant promise for conserving, managing, and/or restoring ecosystems and productive lands in developing countries through one or more levers that address the key threats and drivers that influence GHG emissions and carbon sequestration in the land sector.

Challenges:

Through this BAA, USAID and its partners will co-develop and implement innovative approaches, tools, unifying platforms for action, and other solutions that can make transformative contributions to reducing land-based GHG emissions and increasing long-term carbon sequestration in forested and productive landscapes around the world. This may include both global and regional or country-level efforts. This call spans multiple aspects of work, potentially involving research, pilot initiatives, and/or implementation of strategies to promote sustainable landscapes at scale, including, but not limited to the following areas:

• improving availability, access to and use of accurate data and information about land use and associated drivers, including bringing down costs of monitoring, reporting and verification;
• improving land use governance, for example through increasing transparency and public participation, clarifying and strengthening rules and rights regarding land and resource access and use, including safeguarding the rights of Indigenous Peoples, supporting community forest programs, and improving enforcement;
• strengthening the capacity of national and sub-national governments, local communities, the private sector, civil society, and other stakeholders to manage land use and participate effectively in associated decision making necessary to support sustainable landscapes;
• supporting changes to national, subnational, or institutional policies and incentives to advance sustainable landscapes objectives, including through a broad array of interventions that would assure the sustainability, public acceptance, and effectiveness of such reforms;
• enhancing coordination and communication between national and sub-national governments and institutions for effective land use management, and enhancing their capacity and commitment to engage effectively and inclusively with the full range of affected stakeholders;
• fostering the engagement of the private sector, including small and medium enterprises, in support of efforts to conserve, sustainably manage, and restore forests and other carbon-rich landscapes, through reforms to the enabling environment, establishment of market mechanisms, and financial and other incentives to align commercial opportunities with sustainable landscapes objectives;
• identifying, developing, and/or promoting new sources of finance or financial models that can support natural resources conservation, sustainable management, and restoration
• promoting sustainable commodity production, through interventions at various levels of the value chain, including by supporting implementation and strengthening enforcement of existing laws (e.g., the Lacey Act Amendments of 2008, and relevant host country domestic laws), trade policies, and anti-corruption efforts to address illegal logging and associated trade and/or illegal deforestation;
• assisting with low emissions development planning at national, sub-national, and local levels;
• strengthening the capacity of educational institutions to contribute to research and the longterm development of the human capital necessary to effectively manage forests and other land types;
• promoting sustainable livelihoods at scale, including through developing models for productively engaging the relevant stakeholders and simultaneously addressing differing objectives; and
• ensuring meaningful engagement, effective integration, and full consideration of the equities of women, youth, indigenous people, and marginalized groups in all relevant processes and strategic approaches.

Eligibility Criteria:

• USAID is looking to engage a wide range of potential Offerors in this BAA process – including other donors, financial institutions, private companies based in developed and developing countries, resource partners, non-governmental organizations, and funded partners.
• These different roles may be filled by any organization that brings something of value to bear on the process, including public, private, for-profit, and not-for-profit organizations, as well as institutions of higher education, public international organizations, nongovernmental organizations, research institutions, and other international or multilateral organizations.
• All organizations must be determined to be responsive to Addenda issued under this BAA and sufficiently responsible to perform or participate in the final award type.

Deadline: Sep 24, 2022

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