Request for Information (RFI) for Verification Services for DFAT-Funded “Transforming Rice Value Chains for Climate Resilient and Sustainable Development in the Mekong Delta” (TRVC) Project

SOLICITATION TYPE:            Request for Information (RFI)

DATE OF ISSUANCE:              December 8, 2022

DUE DATE:                             January 6, 2023 at 17:00 EST

TITLE:                                   Preliminary Request for Information (RFI) for Verification Services for DFAT-Funded “Transforming Rice Value Chains for Climate Resilient and Sustainable Development in the Mekong Delta” (TRVC) Project

OPEN TO:                               All Interested Parties

SNV is requesting information from qualified and eligible suppliers who are interested in participating in a potential future procurement to provide verification services for a Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) Australia-funded project entitled “Transforming Rice Value Chains for Climate Resilient and Sustainable Development in the Mekong Delta”. Interested parties are asked to provide a company profile and respond to the questions posed below. Eligible offerors will be included on a list to be notified regarding potential future Request for Proposals solicitation.

The information contained within the RFI is provided for background only and does not constitute a final Terms of Reference (TOR). This RFI is issued solely for information and planning purposes as per Section I below, and does not constitute a Request for Proposal, a Request for Quotation, an Invitation for Bids, a Solicitation, or an indication that SNV or any other party will make an award based on information gathered through this RFI. Responding to this RFI will not give any advantage to any firm or organization in any subsequent procurement and will not lead to an organizational conflict of interest. Responses will be held in strict confidentiality.

I.    Request for Expression of Interest

This request is intended to:

• Advise organizations that, if the project is fully funded by DFAT, SNV Vietnam intends to issue a Request for Proposals for Verification Services for the TRVC Project in 2023;
• Obtain organization profiles from qualified organizations that may wish to participate in a potential future procurement;
• Allow SNV Vietnam and Deloitte Consulting to obtain industry input and feedback to help shape the procurement Terms of Reference (TOR) and to validate industry methods and capabilities to carry out the intended work.

II.  Submission Instructions

Interested organizations should submit responses that cover the requested items below:

Organization Profile

1. Contact information (full name of the organization, contact person and position, e-mail addresses, and website, if any);
2. Legal Status (firm, NGO, etc) and headquartered location;
3. Organization Profile to include: brief presentation of the organization, including relevant experience and year(s) in business, short narrative describing what makes your firm/organization potentially qualified to offer the services described in the Verification Concept Note in Section III.

Key Questions guiding the development of your organization’s Verification Concept Note

1. What is your organization’s experience performing similar work?
2. When measuring GHG emissions in rice in Vietnam and the Mekong River Delta (MRD) specifically, what are the most critical emissions factors to measure and/ or model at scale?
3. What are the most cost-effective tools, technologies, and approaches to measuring GHG emissions in paddy rice at scale (i.e. 200.000 hectares of rice paddy or more)? What are the most important trade-offs to consider with respect to precision versus cost at scale?
4. Given the MRV system will be deployed for large scale rice paddy cultivation in 3 major adjacent rice intensive provinces in the MRD, describe an appropriate/optimal verification scheme and standard that your organization will deploy.  Would your MRV system needs time to test and refine the scheme, or would you be ready to deploy on day 1?
5. What advantages of your MRV system provide as compared to project specific MRV system that have been deployed to verify the GHG emissions from rice cultivation in Viet Nam and the region?
6. What other considerations should the project designers take into account/ include in any future procurement for verification services for this project?
7. Does your organization qualify as an eligible Verifier in accordance with article 14 of the Degree 06-2022/ND-CP issued on January 7, 2022? See below for qualification parameters:

Article 14. Requirements for verifying units

1. Units verifying GHG emissions mitigation (hereinafter referred to as "verifying units") are organisations with verification capacity recognized by the UNFCCC; or be certified 14065 standard to the ISO on requirements for GHG verification and validation bodies to use in accreditation or other forms of accreditation; or have a certified technician who has completed a course on GHG inventory a required by the United Nations Framework Convention on climate change for the respective sectors.

Please find the information via the link https://smrtr.io/cqWpy and send responses to this RFI by responding to the instruction in this site and emails to Justin Kosoris, [email protected], and Tran Thu Ha, [email protected], by the closing date listed. There is no page limit but please keep responses concise and specific to the presented issues. Responses should be submitted in English. No feedback or debrief will be provided on comments received. Phone calls or hard copy responses will not be accepted.

III. Project Background and Verification Concept Note

A.   Project Background

In 2017, AgResults publicly launched the Vietnam Emissions Reductions Program (AVERP) which was an $8 million prize competition (funded by DFAT Australia, Global Affairs Canada, UKAID, USAID, and the Gates Foundation) that aimed to incentivize private sector agribusinesses in Vietnam to convince smallholder farmers (SHF) to adopt improved rice-growing practices and technologies while reducing emissions in on-farm rice production.

SNV Vietnam managed the implementation of this project between 2017-2021 which focused on the Thai Binh province in the Red River Delta. The project developed and applied an innovative approach using Pay-for-Results prize incentives to attract a diverse pool of private sector actors to “compete” against each other to incentivize smallholder farmers in the province to adopt improved farming practices. Outcomes were assessed using a combination of remote sensing, field observations, and modeling using DeNitrification DeComposition (DNDC) to determine overall percentage yield increases and GHG reductions against a modeled baseline. The prize mechanism worked well as a model to incentivize scaling of climate-smart/low carbon rice technologies to over 25,000 farming households, especially in comparison with standard push-mechanism approaches generally adopted by government programs and other development projects. Competitors saw the competition as a motivating factor that compelled them to adjust their business models to promote sustainable rice farming technologies to a greater number of SHFs than before. This outreach led to demonstrated positive impacts such as mitigated GHG emissions, increased yields, reduced input costs, increased per-unit SHF incomes, and improved land and water management that benefited rice growers and their communities. It was also a strong example for private sector companies and government stakeholders in Vietnam who were excited to work with a promising new model for private sector engagement that could be replicated around the country. More about this project, the means of verification, and the lessons learned may be found on the AgResults website, www.agresults.org, and in the project final report.

Building on this experience and lessons learned from AVERP, Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) has allocated funding to design and implement a subsequent project titled “Rice Value Chain Transformation for Sustainable Development of the Mekong Delta.” SNV Vietnam will implement this program by employing a results-based financing mechanism that will target private enterprises in the Rice Value Chain (RVC) as key drivers for innovation, investment, and scaling of sustainable rice production and marketing practices. The project will focus on the most rice intensive production provinces in the Mekong River Delta (MRD): An Giang, Kien Giang, and Dong Thap. It is anticipated that the project could reach up to at least 200,000 hectares.

The project will be designed to actively contribute towards the objectives of the Government of Vietnam’s Resolution 120 that outlines climate-resilient and sustainable development in the MRD as well as accomplish the following objectives:

• Improve smallholder rice farmers’ livelihoods
• Improve rice value chain linkages for enhanced efficiencies and facilitate rice quality assurance, traceability, and certification of good agriculture practices/low-carbon rice production
• Reduce vulnerability to climate change via the smart combination of crop-based adaptation and mitigation measures at scale
• Develop and pilot a verification scheme that allows for potential carbon credit accreditation to:
  
  • Contribute to the NDC of Vietnam or
  • Distribute a mechanism for the sale of CERs/VERs
• Lead policy dialogues to support the development of an enabling framework for scaling low carbon technologies across large rice production areas of the Mekong Delta

Deloitte Consulting has been tasked by SNV Vietnam to design a new prize competition that takes into account the previous learnings and experience of AVERP.

B.    Verification Concept Note

Verification of project results will be a key element in measuring the impact of the project on GHG reductions and providing reliable data to the project and its funders. This data will be the basis for awarding prizes to project competitors, as well as potentially establish the basis for carbon credits that could be traded as offsets, and/ or contribute to Vietnam’s NDCs.

Verification will measure two outputs of the project: yield and/ or profit increases, and GHG emissions reductions. Both will be measured and/ or modeled against a baseline, established through surveys and/ or derived as a modeled counterfactual. Verification will consist of a third-party assessment of the project’s income increases and GHG emissions reductions, and may include any combination of remote sensing, field-based observations, and modeling at scale to achieve that assessment at scale, i.e. across up to hundreds of thousands of hectares in the MRD. 

At a minimum, the verification design will be expected to work with international standards and employ MRV standards, particularly regarding methane abatement. These standards will also address options for both rice off-sets. This MRV approach is oriented to the 1) enrollment of participating countries; 2) monitoring agricultural producers; 3) quantification of GHG outcomes; and 4) packaging the data so that it can be used by carbon trading platforms.

The verification approach will focus on mechanisms to monitor alternate wetting and drying (AWD) as a primary driver of paddy rice emissions, with other potential factors to consider including residue management, fertilizer application, plant type and density. It is expected that verification will employ a GHG emissions measurement methodology that employs Tier 3 emission factors.

In addition to GHG quantification, the methodology for verification should address the economic efficacy of the technology utilized (likely in the form of randomized surveys to assess on-farm profitability of adoption of technology packages), as well as the probability of farmer compliance, and individual competitor performance on which any prizes would be assessed and paid.