ECO was founded by Dr. Steve Sepp, Cornelia Sepp and Dietrich Busacker in 1992. It is amongst Germany's leading consultancies for natural resources management in official development assistance. In order to enhance livelihood support systems, combat poverty and prevent the decrease of bioresources we touch on all political intervention levels, resorting to a wide scope of technical disciplines.

Looking back at close to 50 longterm projects and 300 short-term missions, they offer broad experience worldwide, with a special focus on the francophone Africa and Maghreb. They are called by implementation agencies such as Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH and commissioning bodies such as the European Commission, FAO, the World Bank as well as non-governmental organizations.

Their 15 in-house experts and associate consultants form an interdisciplinary team. In order to provide for a comprehensive approach to development, ECO has developed a network of branches. ECO sustains two domestic offices in Oberaula (head office) and Frankfurt am Main. Other offices are based in the field projects. In 2005, the ECO Consulting Group established its Agadir office, ECOG Maghreb, as a special basis for cooperation in the Maghreb.

 

SERVICES

 

FIELDS OF WORK

Environmental governance	Natural resources management
Conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity	Education
Climate change mitigation/ adaptation	Biomass energy
Rural development and food security

 

IDENTIFICATION, PLANNING, MONITORING AND EVALUATION OF PROGRAMMES AND PROJECTS

ECO has conducted a large number of project appraisals and feasibility studies for various national and international commissioning bodies. They dispose of broad experience in the relevant state-of-the art methodologies and tools for planning (logical frame work, ZOPP, RBM) as well as setting up monitoring and evaluation schemes.

 

PROGRAMME AND PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION                

With a long history in successful project management, ECO currently implements 16 long-term projects throughout the world. ECO has proven experience in managing complex und dynamic project set-ups, with responsibility for overall programs and entire components as well as carrying out subcomponents of complex programs in a team of consortium partners. Increasingly, we support large programs in cross-sectional tasks, e.g. knowledge management.

 

FACILITATION AND TRAINING

ECO offers specialized training services to experts from developing countries (decision makers, trainers, etc.), as well as to international and German development professionals. Their characteristic is the successful match of technical expertise with longlasting experience in training in international and intercultural settings.

 

MANAGEMENT ADVICE AND ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

As it is a well-known fact that sustainable institutions are crucial to sustainable development processes, any ECO-Project works on organizational development. While some projects apply an learning by doing approach, others ask for specific ‘lessons learnt’ support, one-to-one support for specialists and executive staff, or team development processes. Especially in the field of rural development, organizational development is an aim in its own, and we support state and non-state actors in decentralization and democratization processes.

 

POLICY AND STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT     

In policy and strategy development, ECO works on different levels. At country level we support reforms processes in forest legislation reforms, e.g. through analysis and provision of comparative examples as recently done in China.  At international level ECO gives advice to forest relevant political processes such as IPF/IFF/UNFF and Multilateral Environmental Agreements (SSD, CBD and UNFCCC).

 

METHODOLOGY AND INSTRUMENT DEVELOPMENT                   

Beyond sector specific needs, ECO is renowned for its instrumental approaches to development, assisting the question of ‘how to’. Their practically applicable instruments, such as simulation games and data bank based decision support systems, support all stages of the management cycle at project level.

 

SOCIAL, ENVIRONMENTAL AND ECONOMIC ASSESSMENTS

Sound assessments of the social, environmental and economic situation in the project area, lay the ground for ECO’s successful project implementation work. Beyond this, ECO offers specialized services in the field of ecological monitoring and economic simulation models, and also trains experts in both fields.

 

PUBLIC RELATIONS AND MEDIA

ECO Expo’s expertise in the field of communication and PR complements our technical experience. Being highly proficient in development communication, we offer their services on a stand-alone basis as well as included in technical project approaches. Their portfolio includes: production of online- and print-products, composition of exhibitions, as well as project-based or sector-wide communication strategies, integrated approaches to lessons learned, capacity building, facilitation and training.