Experience

LEAD Analytics brings together legal and economic expertise in order to effectively address growth and development objectives in developing countries, with a particular emphasis on agricultural development, natural resource management, and responses to climate change.

Areas of Expertise

Land Tenure and Property Rights—More than 15 years of experience working in multidisciplinary teams on land-tenure and property-rights issues, predominantly in Sub-Saharan Africa, but also in Mexico and Chile. We have worked in countries exhibiting a wide range of land-tenure and property-rights systems, including many communal systems with fuzzy, complex, overlapping rights at the local level and under various forms of state recognition. We have participated in a number of policymaker workshops and developed policy briefs in order to bring a richer discussion of the costs and benefits to property-rights reforms at the policy level. We have also developed capacity in analyzing the legal framework necessary for land reform.

Natural Resource Management, Institutions, and Collective Action—Extensive experience working on issues related to pastures, soil and water conservation, irrigation, and agro-forestry systems, primarily in regions where such resources are communally owned or managed, thus requiring a firm understanding of factors that aid or hinder collective action to achieve natural-resource management goals. In addition to community characteristics, we have evaluated the effect of linkages between households and communities to higher-level institutions (such as extension systems, irrigation authorities, and research systems) and of the legal framework on local-level, natural-resource management outcomes. We have worked with donor, NGO, and government-based projects.

Climate-Change Adaptation and Mitigation—Strong capacity in working on climate-change adaptation and mitigation issues, including developing materials (policy briefs, side-event presentations) for the UNFCCC conferences that focused on the potential role of agriculture in both the climate-change adaptation and mitigation strategies of developing countries. We have closely followed the negotiations, particularly with regard to the development of Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs), National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPAs), as well as existing and proposed carbon-financing mechanisms and corresponding monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) systems. We have also been involved in the development of climate-change adaptation and mitigation indicators and logical frameworks for the Climate Investment Funds (CIF) initiative. And, as noted below, we have developed a “climate change” survey module. Finally, we also have relevant experience in disaster risk management and weather index-based insurance instruments, experience that is clearly relevant for the development of climate-change adaptation options.

Survey Sampling and Design—More than 15 years of experience designing sampling strategies for household- and community-level surveys; designing and implementing multi-topic household-, community-, institutional- (such as local community groups, and extension service providers), and market-level surveys. Surveys have been implemented in Mexico, Chile, Ethiopia, Niger, Burkina Faso, and Kenya, and we have worked with the World Bank to develop a “climate-change adaptation” module for Living Standards and Measurement Surveys (household, community and market), with surveys being implemented in Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda, and Niger.

Contract Design, Regulatory Rules, and Intellectual Property Rights—Strong capacity in evaluating contract design, organization by-laws, and government regulation of collective organizations. We also have experience with developments in multinational intellectual property rights law, particularly with respect to existing and proposed rules under the World Trade Organization and with respect to technology transfer of “clean technologies” among nations.