Financial Information Engine on Land Degradation (FIELD)
Full Review

Reviewed by: Jia Xiaoxia, Deputy Division Director, National Bureau to Combat Desertification, State Forestry Admin., PRC
Review posted 4 February 2005
Review No. 33

Information

Content: This CD-ROM provides a useful and easy tool to access funding information on land degradation. It is targeted to those engaged in UNCCD related field and is hands-on rather than academic.
Date: 1 August 2003
Audience: Government officers engaged in international cooperation in the UNCCD-affected countries. Staff in various donor agencies, NGOs, as well as researchers who are new to the field.
Size: 507MB
Price: Free
Manual needed: No
How to order:

The Global Mechanism
International Fund for Agricultural Development
Via del Serafico, 107
00142 Rome, Italy
Tel: +39 654592129
Fax: +39 654592135
E-mail: gmmailbox@ifad.org
Access FIELD online.*

*This link takes you outside the ADBI website. Please use the back button to return to ADBI.org.

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Full Review

Introduction

The CD-ROM 'FIELD' contains approximately 5,000 structured summaries or abstracts and 1,800 full text documents, and thousands of links to external websites and other relevant sources of financial information on land degradation. It provides easy access to information on desertification and drought-related funding sources, projects, analyses, publications and relevant financial and policy reports.

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Users

FIELD is designed to provide inventories for all the parties of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD)to review the Convention's implementation from aspects of partnership arrangements and resources mobilization, and analysis gaps between supply and demands. Government officers engaged in international cooperation in the UNCCD-affected countries and staff in various donor agencies would be the main target users. The content is hands-on rather than academic.

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Content

All the information is in eight main sets of inter-related inventories detailed below. Four search options are provided labeled "Funding Finders", "Finding Projects", "Finding Analyses", and "Other Data". These search options are linked with all eight inventories.

1. Profiles: This section provides a brief introduction of affected countries and of local, national, and international organizations, research and academic institutions, UN agencies, NGOs, foundations, private sector companies, and other organizations engaged in the UNCCD process and/or dealing with issues related to combating land degradation and poverty. It also contains basic contact information about focal points, experts, and other individuals dealing with desertification-related issues. However, it does not specify every country’s focal point agency or its role in combating desertification. In addition, some information is provided by hyperlinks to web sites so offline users cannot access the information. The profiles of agencies engaged in land degradation in affected countries are inadequate.
2. Funding: This is the CD-ROM's core content. It lists almost all the possible financial sources to assist with land degradation and the related field of rural poverty alleviation. It systematically describes aspects of bilateral and multilateral co-operation programs, financial mechanisms, budget lines, funds, and other financial resources available for UNCCD implementation. These include relevant national funding in the affected country plus resources made available by NGOs, foundations, academic institutions, and private sector entities. This is valuable information for affected developing countries to help locate potential donors and their requirements. It could be improved by listing each donor’s country eligibility requirements, e.g., ADB does not provide finance to non-ADB member countries.
3. Projects: This section contains marvelous project proposals, ongoing and closed projects summaries resulting from UNCCD action programs, and from other sustainable development plans against land degradation. Using the search options of "finding projects" and "finding analyses" here makes it easy to obtain desired information. Unfortunately, some of the summaries are too brief to convey adequate information. The summaries also do not include information about recipient countries’ implementing agencies (the core information source) nor input from recipient countries about cost sharing.
4. Needs: Though finding gaps between needs and demand is described as one of the objectives of this CD-ROM, the content was not well designed for this purpose. Currently "Needs" appears only on the submenus of only a few developing countries’ profiles. However, most countries have already made out their priorities in the National Action Programme for Implementation of UNCCD. Also, regional and sub-regional priorities have been indicated in the regional and subregional action plans. It may be better therefore to list "Finding Needs" at the main page as a search option and then create links with action programs. It would be also useful to provide project summaries to be financed as a subtopic under this inventory for donors' reference.
5. Droughts: This section provides figures on amounts disbursed, the breakdown of contributions by donor, and by type of intervention with simple words within one table. There are no links or summaries on activities or projects that donors financed: for example, establishing a drought early warning system, impact mitigating or disaster preparation. Although some links to other web sites covering affected people by natural disasters are provided, offline users cannot access.
6. Lessons and Action Programmes and Reports: This section provides lessons learned, methodologies, and practices utilized in combating desertification and poverty, including experience, indigenous knowledge, and local practices. It also contains information on approaches to resource mobilization for UNCCD implementation, including case studies, success stories, partnership frameworks, conventional and innovative financing. Action Programmes and Reports includes national, regional, and sub-regional actions plans developed in the framework of the UNCCD, by the country parties and organizations. Since the materials reflect lessons and experience, most of original sources of this section are reports.
7. Publications and Statistics: The publications section lists documents, websites, information systems, databases, and networks, etc. which can be used for awareness raising, partnership building, resource mobilization, technologies and best practices dissemination and relevant meetings and events. Statistics includes statistical data, reports and analyses including development assistance flows, private investment flows, external debt statistics, socio-economic data, economic outlook, development indicators, charts, etc. Both sections provide useful references for users in the field.

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User Friendliness

The CD-ROM has an Autorun function and is easy to run on a computer with a pentium processor and Windows operating systems from 95 upwards.

One improvement would be to list the glossary with the main inventories parallel with finding funders, finding projects, finding analyses, and other data instead of placing it in the About FIELD section under current terminology. It would also be good to create a more comprehensive glossary with detailed definitions or establish links with the glossary on the UNCCD website. The present terminologies provided by ABOUT FIELD are of limited usefulness now. This adjustment would make it easier for people to better understand the special words.

Another inconvenience to offline users is the hyperlinks provided to the original information sources. In some developing countries users working offline will not be able to access that information. Also, some of the links are dead.

The last issue is language related. FIELD indicates three languages on the CD-ROM cover and home page. But it is not a tri-language version CD-ROM, e.g., most of the information from Latin America is only in Spanish, which limits the exchange of knowledge among different regions.

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Navigability

The search options provide a very convenient tool for users to find information by key words. The submenu attached to countries or organizations makes it possible to search all the information affiliated to them without going back to the home page. This design improves the efficiency of searching. Users can easily access the targeted information through the search options and then skip the content already viewed.

However, when reading PDF documents this is not so easy. A possible improvement would be to indicate the exact phase and page number on which the information is located in a PDF text.

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Interactive Facilities

The interactive facilities are limited to users sending in e-mails to update information that will be included in future editions of FIELD. This feature is clearly described in the introduction of the About FIELD section. Designing an open online discussion on the land degradation projects might be a possible way to encourage participation of more users. Simplified comments sheet might be another improvement.

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Distribution

The FIELD CD-ROM can be easily obtained free of charge during UNCDD's Conference of the Parties and other relevant meeting and workshops. It is available for free online and copies can be ordered from The Global Mechanism. Details are listed in the How to Order section above.

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Sustainability

Because donors usually adjust their strategy every four or five years, most funding policies are consistent within a financial cycle. Most information in this CD-ROM will remain relevant to the field of land degradation and related problems. Lessons and analysis would be valuable over a relatively long period. However, since donors’ planning years are different and new projects emerge every year, the producers will have to provide an updated offline version annually to keep the content current. Online users might be much easier to get updated information through hyperlinks provided by the FIELD online version.

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