Contact/s:
Christine Berger
christine.berger@idele.fr
Sladjana Blazevic
sladjana.blazevic@biosense.rs
The Key Role of the National Coordinator in a Project such as CFD: Scope and Limits of His/Her Tasks
Europe
European scale
- European CSA project
- Intermediate management
Summary for Practicioners on the Main Finding(s)/Innovative solution(s)
The Climate Farm Demo (CFD) project promotes Climate Smart Farming Practices across 26 countries, involving 1,500 farmers and 250+ advisors. To ensure effective implementation, the project relies on National Coordinators (NCs), who serve as the crucial link between the European management team and national agricultural networks.
The NC’s main responsibilities include:
Facilitating smooth communication between the European team and national stakeholders.
Reporting challenges and progress from their country to the project management team.
Ensuring all project documents are accessible in the local language.
Managing the national network by organizing knowledge exchange events and maintaining advisor and farmer engagement.
Supporting and monitoring national partners in carrying out their expected tasks.
Expanding the project’s reach by engaging policymakers, researchers, and farmers through effective communication.
Contributing to policy development by working with national and regional authorities.
NCs may have expertise in specific agricultural fields, but they are not required to be specialists in all aspects of climate adaptation and mitigation. However, their role has certain limitations:
They do not have decision-making authority over national partners.
They cannot provide specialized training outside their expertise.
If solely acting as NCs, they are not directly responsible for audits, adaptation plans, or demonstration events.
Overall, NCs play a vital role in ensuring the project’s success by bridging communication gaps, supporting local stakeholders, and broadening the impact of climate-smart farming initiatives.
Additional Information
Climate Farm Demo (CFD) is a project that focuses on the deployment of Climate Smart Farming Practices by those working in the field, in this case farmers engaged in various production systems, accompanied by advisors.
The CFD project is deploying its scheme in 26 countries and with 1,500 farmers, accompanied by more than 250 advisors. To bring such a programme to life, it is essential to rely on an intermediary operational management link, the ‘National Coordinator’ (NC). The NC is essential, because he is familiar with the operating methods (the ‘codes’) of his country’s agricultural ecosystem and, of course, carries out his tasks in the local language!
The NCs are the ‘’ pivotal ‘’ links between the project’s management at global (European) level and the networks deployed in each of the countries(26 countries in the case of CFD). Their main roles are to:
• Ensure a fluid exchange between the team managing the project at European level and the deployment of national actions on the field(and make sure that all the documents made available within the project are accessible in a language that everyone in their country understands),
• Act as a link between the partners in its country (mainly advisory bodies and farmers) while managing the national network by organizing skill-building and knowledge exchange events and ensuring continued engagement among advisors and farmers,
• Contribute (under the responsibility of the project’s general management) to monitoring and supporting the tasks expected of the partners in his/her country throughout the project,
• Broaden the impact of the Climate Farm Demo project within his country by engaging a broader audience, including the farming and scientific communities, through suitable communication channels. Build relationships with national and regional policymakers and contribute to shaping the strategic plan for Policy Initiatives and Policies (PIPs),
• Report on initiatives and difficulties encountered by advisors and farmers in his/her country to the project management.
The NC may of course combine several roles and be an advisor, or a scientific specialist in a particular field or sector, or even be involved in running a Living Lab. However, they are not required to be scientific specialists in all areas of climate change adaptation or mitigation.
The main limitations of his mission are as follows:
• They have no decision-making responsibility in relation to the partners in their country involved in the project.
• They are unable to provide training to their country’s advisors or farmers in specialized subjects, except in their own areas of expertise.
• In case they perform only the role of the NC, they are not directly involved in delivering project outputs such as audits, adaptation and mitigation plans, or demonstration events.
From CFD’s experience, it is essential to connect the National Coordinators together in order to create a dynamic peer’s network. We experienced an efficient pattern through a quarterly online meeting when NCs share highlights, needs and issues of their national networks, while coordination team can communicate information relevant for all national networks.
One of the keys to success is to create an operational intermediate management function through a ‘Network Management Unit’, which is extremely important and valuable in making the project run smoothly.
In CFD, during the first two years we created small groups of 5 to 7 NCs to create favourable conditions for the NCs to get to know each other. From the third year, once the working links had been developed, we moved to groups of 8 to 10 NCs to widen the circle of exchanges, which has proved to be quite effective and relevant.
In addition, the NCs systematically have a dedicated face-to-face session at the annual meetings organised in one of the partner countries.