Copyright Š 2010 The World Bank 1818 H Street, NW Washington, DC 20433 USA All rights reserved First published April 2010 This paper has not undergone the review accorded to official World Bank publications. The findings, interpretations and conclusions herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or its Executive Directors, or the governments they represent. To request copies of the paper or for more information on the paper, please contact the Social Development Unit of the East Asia and Pacific Region of The World Bank. The paper is also available on the World Bank’s East Asia/Pacific Region Social Development website: www.worldbank.org/eap Photo courtesy of: State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development (PRC), Department of Social Welfare and Development (KALAHI-CIDSS Project, Philippines), Aga Khan Foundation (Rural Development Project, Afghanistan), Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources (National FADAMA Development Project, Nigeria), Ministry of Home Affairs (Kecamatan Development Project, Indonesia)
Proceedings the on
of
International Conference Community-Driven
Development
and
Rural
Poverty Alleviation
Beijing, China October 18-19, 2009
Table
of
Contents
v F oreword vii A cknowledgments ix L ist of
1
Abbreviations
1. Executive Summary
1 Conference overview
1 The elements of CDD
2 Tools and collaborators 3 The CDD platform 5 Scaling up 5
Conclusions and recommendations for the People’s Republic of China
8
2. Conference Overview
10
3. The Elements
of
CDD
11 The power of community mobilization
12 The diversity in starting points for community mobilization 14 The sector content of CDD programs
15 The options for facilitation and support to community groups
16
The role of savings and external finance
17 The power of federation
19
4. The CDD Platform
19 Partners in the platform and their roles
i
20 The resulting program architecture and accountability relationships 21
Options for project approval and financial flows
23 Accountability systems
23 Monitoring and evaluation
25 What can the platform achieve? 27 Dealing with national priorities 29 Financing CDD programs
30
5. Scaling
up
CDD
30 The policy preconditions for scaling up the platform 30 Political commitment 30 Consensus building
31 Scaling up step by step
32
6. Conclusions and Policy Recommendations People’s Republic of China
for the
34 Facilitation
34 Livelihoods
35 Knowledge sharing
37 Annexes 39 Annex 1. Summaries
of
Conference Presentations
39 Session 1. Opening remarks
40 Session 2. Keynote speeches
41 Session 3. Six thematic topics 41
42 44 45 47 49
Theme 1. National Strategies for Financing and Budgeting for CDD
Theme 2. CDD and Improved Public Service Delivery Through CDD
Theme 3. CDD and Inclusion of Marginalized Groups: Practical Experiences and Implications in Poor and Ethnic Minority Areas Theme 4. Environmental Protection Elements in CDD Theme 5. Improving Livelihoods Through CDD Theme 6. Monitoring and Evaluation in CDD
49 Session 4. Wrap-up and closing session 50 Post-conference workshops
51 Annex 2. Comparative
tables
52 Table 1. Basic project or program characteristics
ii
Table of Contents
56 Table 2. Community mobilization, facilitation, and training 60
Table 3. Program architecture and the flow of funds
62 Table 4. Field-level accountability mechanisms 64 Table 5. Funding sources
66 Annex 3. Opening Remarks
and
Background Papers
66 Opening Remarks
66 Fan Xiaojian—Director, State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development (LGOP)
68 James Adams—Regional Vice President East Asia and Pacific Region, The World Bank
70 Lawrence Greenwood, Jr.—Vice President (Operations 2) Asian Development Bank
73 H. E. David Mulroney—Canadian Embassador to China
75 Background Papers
75 Social Mobilization: A Key to Poverty Reduction 75 South Asia Experience
83 Accountability, Flow of Funds, and Financing of Community-Driven Development 83 The Global Experience
95 The Andhra Pradesh Rural Poverty Reduction Project
100 The Rural Poverty Reduction Program in Northeast Brazil 103 Summary of CDD pilots conducted in the PRC
114 Annex 4. International Conference on Community-Driven Development and Rural Poverty Alleviation 114 Welcome remarks
115 International Conference on Community-Driven Development and Rural Poverty Alleviation 115 Agenda
118 Facilitated workshop: International CDD Best Practices
119 Annex 5. Participants List 119 I. International
123 II. International (Based in China) 124 III. China
Annex 6. CD-ROM
with
Presentations (in
Table of Contents
sleeve )
iii
Figures
13 Figure 2: Building Blocks, Outputs, and Outcomes of the CDD Platform 18 Figure 3: The Federation Model 19 Figure 4: The Partners in CDD
20 Figure 5: The Traditional Approach to Financing via Ministerial Silos
21 Figure 6: The Modern LCDD Implementation Architecture 22 Figure 7: Responsibilities for Proposals, Approvals, and Disbursements
24 Figure 9: The Complaints Mechanism in the CDD Pilot in China 25 Figure 10: The CDD Platform and Community Priorities
27 Figure 11: Adding Special National Priority Programs to the CDD Platform 29 Figure 12: Sources of Funds
Boxes
iv
31 Box 1: Steps to Scaling Up
Table of Contents
Foreword
P
overty is a common challenge the world faces today. Reducing poverty has become a moral obligation and shared responsibility of the international community. Since the founding of New China, the central government has been committed to poverty reduction. Thanks to the arduous and unremitting efforts in the past 30 plus years, China has made tremendous achievements in its drive to assist with the development of poor areas. It has taken the lead in achieving the Millennium Development Goal of halving the population living in poverty. China’s poverty reduction effort has promoted development in poor areas, optimized economic structure, fostered ethnic solidarity, and enhanced political stability, borderland security and social harmony. Moreover, China’s efforts have accelerated the progress of global poverty eradication. In the new century, while China’s government is dedicated to promoting economic, social and environmental development in a coordinated and sustainable way, the drive for development-oriented poverty alleviation remains a long-term historical task for China, which needs to be pursued with persistent effort so as to lay a foundation for building a prosperous society. Moving forward, China’s government is determined to uphold the scientific concept of development, pay more attention to human development and focus on strengthening the self-development capacity of the poor.
In order to improve China’s poverty mitigation policies and strategies and enhance international communication and cooperation in the field of poverty relief, the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development (LGOP) of the People’s Republic of China teamed up with the World Bank in implementing community-driven development (CDD) pilot programs in 2006, with the objective of exploring ways and methods that can inspire the poor to play an active and dominant role in the development of poor communities. Through “Learning by Doing”, the pilot programs have improved the ability of poor people to organize, manage, monitor and develop themselves. These programs established three platforms: for resource coordination, for project investment and for training. The platform for resource coordination allows poverty alleviation resources to be coordinated and allocated at village level. The platform for project investment is where poverty alleviation projects are constructed at village level. And the platform for training helps to implement projects and build capacity. Also as a result of the pilot programs, China has developed a mode of CDD that has its own characteristics—“guaranteed by laws, incorporated into projects, driven by innovation, and carried out by communities.” The International Conference on CommunityDriven Development and Rural Poverty Alleviation was held in Beijing in October of 2009. The conference was jointly hosted by LGOP,
Foreword
v
the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the Canadian International Development Agency. The objectives of the conference were to exchange global experiences and lessons of CDD and rural poverty reduction, to introduce China’s experiences to the world, and to discuss the implications of CDD for rural poverty reduction, in particular in China’s context. This conference on Community-Driven Development and Rural Poverty Alleviation is the first international conference held in some years where the fruits of CDD efforts around the world have been explored. It is also held at a critical time when China is planning a new ten-year poverty reduction program. Repre-
sentatives from international organizations and other countries attending this conference are longtime practitioners in rural development and well experienced in CDD. Their discussions and advice are valuable for improving China’s CDD mechanism and can be taken as references in formulating China’s next stage of poverty alleviation policy. Today, the results of the conference are compiled into this proceedings document. We hope it can be of some referential value for poverty reduction agencies, rural development specialists and policy makers in China. We also hope it can direct and help with poverty reduction initiatives all over the world.
Fan Xiaojian Director, State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development (LGOP) February 2010
vi
Foreword
Acknowledgments
F
irst, we wish to thank the co-sponsors of the International Conference on Community-Driven Development and Rural Poverty Alleviation: the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank (ADB), and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). The participation of their management in the conference, as well as their financial contribution and technical support provided to the conference are most appreciated. Second, we thank the representatives from many countries and international organizations who dedicated time and effort to convey their experiences in poverty reduction and community-driven development (CDD) programs. Their participation has raised the profile of the conference remarkably and ensured its goals will be achieved. Third, we want to thank representatives from line ministries and relevant provinces as well as the experts who provided support and assistance and shared their experiences. Meanwhile, we would like to thank our colleagues in the poverty alleviation offices and project management offices in both Sichuan and Shaanxi provinces for organizing very impressive field trips and sharing best practices in community development, allowing all the participants to witness the changes brought about by CDD programs and the sincere satisfaction expressed by the beneficiaries. We also want to thank them for the considerate and detailed logistical arrangements and excellent services provided to the field trips.
Finally, we want to thank by name the members of the Organizing Group: Yitao Liu, Gengsheng Xia, Shengan Liu, Huixian Wang and Zheng Gong for the Foreign Capital Project Management Center, LGOP; Meixiang Zhou, Chaogang Wang and Alan Piazza for the World Bank; Cliff Burkley for the ADB; and Tarik Khan and Jane Lang for CIDA. In each of these organizations, many other staff assisted, including: Sean Bradley, Patricia Fernandes, Minuit le Khorami, Barbara Machado, Hua Zhu and Lu Zeng from the World Bank; Honey Manzano from the ADB and Wei Zhao from CIDA. Our thanks also go to Mr. Hans Binswanger and Ms. Jacomina de Regt. They provided outstanding support to the preparation of the conference and the finalization of these proceedings. For the many we name, there are countless more who have carried forward the CDD reality country-by-country and community-by-community. We thank them on behalf of the millions more who we hope will benefit from their efforts.
Zengyu Fan Director-General, Foreign Capital Project Management Center February 2010
Acknowledgments
vii
viii
List
of
Abbreviations
AKRSP
Aga Khan Rural Support Program
ADB
Asian Development Bank
CDD
Community-Driven Development
CDF
Community Development Fund
CIDA
Canadian International Development Agency
CoP
Community of Practice
GEF
Global Environment Facility
India-AP
Andhra Pradesh State-wide CDD program
India-HP
Himachal Pradesh Watershed Development Program
KDP
Kecamatan Development Program (Indonesia)
LCDD
Local and Community-Driven Development
LGOP
Leading Group on Poverty
M&E
Monitoring and Evaluation
NGO
Nongovernmental Organization
NRM
Natural Resources Management
PA
Participatory Assessment
PNPM
National CDD Program in Indonesia
PRA
Participatory Rural Assessment
PRC
People’s Republic of China
List of Abbreviations
ix
1. Executive Summary
Conference Overview
Annex 6 is a CD-ROM that includes all presentations.
The International Conference on CommunityDriven Development and Rural Poverty Alleviation was held in Beijing on October 18–19, 2009, under the auspices of the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development (LGOP) of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The conference was preceded by field visits to two of four provinces where the LGOP ran pilot community-driven development (CDD) programs that were completed in June 2009. The objectives of the conference—which brought together nearly 200 experts, policy makers, and learners—were to exchange global experiences and the lessons of CDD, to foster their application in the PRC, and to introduce the nation’s experiences with the approach to the world. These objectives were fully met. Section 2 is an overview of the conference. Sections 3 to 6 discuss (a) the elements of the approach, (b) its methods and collaborators, (c) the CDD platform, (d) scaling up projects, and (e) the conference conclusions and recommendations for the PRC. Detailed descriptions of sessions, presentations, and workshops that followed the event are included in Annex 1-5.
The conference concluded that the CDD approach would be particularly helpful to alleviating rural poverty in the PRC and could be scaled up if it were adapted to local conditions. International cooperation would continue to be necessary to help the PRC apply lessons from worldwide experience.
The
elements of
CDD
CDD mobilizes communities and gives them control of investment resources and assistance to identify development opportunities and implement projects to achieve them. It helps local communities become the most important actors in their own development and changes their attitudes from passive recipients to managers of their own destiny (Figure 1). During the process of mobilization, communities analyze their problems, opportunities, and constraints, and develop a list of projects and activities they would like to undertake. In many programs, communities put their priorities into two prioritized lists. The first consists of projects they can implement without outside resources, such as simple improvements in environmental and natural resources management or cultural activ-
1. Executive Summary
1
ities. The second includes projects that require outside technical and/or financial support. Some CDD programs may focus narrowly on infrastructure, livelihoods, or agriculture, while others may include all needs of the communities, including for example a ping-pong table for young people. Communities appoint management and finance committees and subgroups to implement their choices. Learning-by-doing and careful facilitation can turn these into durable village institutions. Communities become responsible for implementing their own projects, purchasing and contracting, accounting to their members, and to the program authorities for the funds they receive. Communities do not function in isolation. In the PRC pilot projects, as well as in Indonesia, the Philippines, and other CDD programs, these are formally linked to local government. The PRC’s CDD program borrowed and adapted many features from Indonesia, one of the best CDD programs in the world. Strong community mobilization and technical support goes hand in hand with the provision of funds for village development programs and with capacity building to strengthen decentralized local governments. The CDD platform completely turns the usual delivery model of rural development programs around. Communities are now the top decision makers rather than passive recipients of sector-specific development initiatives that are coming down to them in separate silos, and are hard to coordinate and integrate at the township and village level (Figure 6). Accountability flows primarily from village committees to villagers, with program authorities providing simple but rigorous processes to account for funds received. Village institutions and their investments create community empowerment, better livelihoods, and improved services, which translates into greater well-being, a stronger voice for rural people, and a transformed relationship with government.
2
Tools
and collaborators
Tools for community mobilization differed widely among programs reviewed at the conference. They can vary from information meetings and intensive dialogue to collecting planning data such as mapping or inventories of the resources and supports available to the community. Groups of men, women, children, and ethnic minorities usually start with their own separate gathering and then come together to review the results and agree on priorities. The priority lists and the associated village structures constitute the community development plan. Communities are assisted by different agencies. In some cases it may be local governments working with a state authority dedicated to poverty alleviation (as in the PRC), or an autonomous organization may take the lead—as in Andhra Pradesh’s statewide program (India-AP). NGOs or the private sector may be involved. Government and donor funds for collective investments are usually conditional on community cofinancing in cash or in kind, usually unskilled labor and local raw materials. In the PRC projects, the government disburses cofinancing on a grant or quasi-grant basis, and community organizations manage the funds. In addition, many CDD programs, including the PRC pilots, have special savings components to finance individual investments, or to amass collateral for obtaining credit from financial institutions. In China, these are called Community Development Funds (CDF). Membership in the CDF—or similar organizations that manage the individual savings and investments—is usually on a voluntary basis. Communities are often encouraged to federate in a variety of ways, the simplest example being when neighboring villages join forces to build and share a school. More elaborate forms emerge where communities are engaged in productive activities that require skills they cannot provide themselves. In both a PRC cooperative
1. Executive Summary
marketing project and in India-AP, organizations increase in size up to the regional level (Figure 3), where federations can coordinate relationships with local governments, banks, and providers of technical services, and may also be a political force lobbying for self-help groups.
The CDD
platform
The entire organizational structure for implementing local development plans is known as the community-driven development platform. In this structure, responsibilities for coordinating community activities with the local development plan, for cofinancing, and for arranging assistance rest with the local government (Figure 2). Facilitators and support organizations help communities organize and may provide technical support. They may also assist program authorities in the goal of scaling up and widening its geographic reach, making it more inclusive, and embedding community empowerment in the entire development process. In a mature CDD platform, technical support can come from a variety of sources, including government, NGOs, and the private sector. Support for infrastructure, water, health, and education would often come from government agencies, while support for agriculture, the management of natural resources, improving nutrition, market access, and income generation can come from any of the three types of partners. The initiation of collaboration can come from any of the partners in the platform—the community, the sectors that may find it efficient to work with the communities to enhance their outreach and impact, or the private sector— that may find collaboration with communities a profitable way of doing business. Early CDD programs, such as the Brazil program, organized approval and disbursement around individual community projects, but this approach has progressively been abandoned for
a more empowering and efficient approach of focusing on community development programs. In modern CDD programs—such as in Indonesia or Mexico—the responsibilities for approving community development programs and disbursement of funds is divided among different levels. In the PRC CDD pilot, budget allocation formulas exist for the development programs of townships and also for administrative villages and natural villages. Communities devise individual projects and put them together into community development plans for subdistrict approval. The PRC pilots take the approval process to the lowest possible level; that is, the administrative village that approves plans for the individual village communities within it. The township (the subdistrict) has power only to perform a technical review. If the review rejects a project as technically infeasible, the community can substitute it with a backup of its own choosing. The burden of accountability for project management, procurement, and expenditure falls on the community in the CDD. Typically, the finance committee keeps the books in the local language so literate community members can read them, while the possibility of audits by higher authorities has been found to be an important anticorruption component. Indonesia pioneered the addition of independent monitoring and audit committees to inspect accounts as well as bids for work, goods purchased, and the quality of the output. These were adopted in the PRC pilots, which also successfully applied a formal complaints system to prevent grievances of community members and other stakeholders from escalating into crises. Once a CDD platform exists, it can be used for multiple development purposes. It usually starts with the provision of basic, productive, and social infrastructure (Figure 10) and then progresses to livelihood activities and natural resources management. Productive activities are much more challenging
1. Executive Summary
3
for CDD programs than infrastructure projects. Livelihood programs presented at the conference showed a variety of ways to organize with communities. In Andhra Pradesh, intensive facilitation and training linked women’s self-help groups to commercial banks and marketing systems. Many programs give farmers and other economic interest groups access to credit, while all make arrangements for technical assistance and training.
The platform may also serve national priorities such as employment generation, youth outreach, environmental preservation, or combating HIV and AIDS (Figure 11). Since they have important externalities and may conflict with community priorities, these activities may require support and special incentives. Working out how to achieve national priorities through the CDD platform represents a new frontier for the approach.
Monitoring allows project managers to learn what works, what doesn’t work, and why (Figure 9). Evaluation focuses on the impacts of the program. It asks whether the program has reached its stated goals over the long term. And it pioneers new approaches to decide whether they should be expanded and pursued on a larger scale. Constraints to M&E include (a) the difficulties in collecting real-time accurate data in complex operations; (b) the lack of in-country, specialized skills for impact evaluation; and (c) the time required to prepare baseline studies and to maintain the control groups for a sufficient period of time. Special difficulties of CDD projects are the multiple results and the measurement of social capital and empowerment. As shown by Indonesia, the cost of a comprehensive M&E system is not prohibitive, and it is small compared to the benefits. Fortunately, the CDD pilots in the PRC have well-developed M&E components that already have started to provide good information on impacts.
There are three broad ways of reconciling such national priorities with community priorities and for getting the communities to undertake the related activities: (1) a supplemental resource allocation to the activities that are a national priority, such as a special NRM window in the project that provides cofinancing on top of the normal CDD allocation (Nigeria’s GEF-funded window); (2) a reduced or zero cofinancing requirement for the activities of national priority with strong externalities; and (3) special subsidies for activities that are associated with national priorities, such as carbon capture (India-HP, Nigeria GEF). The exact nature of the incentive and its delivery mechanism will depend on the priority and the particular national conditions.
As shown in Figure 12, there are five possible sources of finance for CDD programs: (1) cost recovery; (2) community cofinancing in cash and in kind; (3) local government resources; (4) provincial or central governments; or (5) donors. Local government resources may be either raised by the local government itself, or may be a consequence of revenue sharing arrangements that give local governments an unrestricted budget. The objective of government and development partners should be to mainstream the CDD program fully into the intergovernmental fiscal system—as in Indonesia, where all the donors pool their resources in a trust fund—and to exit as a source of finance after several phases of the program.
In addition, communities may use a CDD platform to start simple activities that do not require outside resources, such as soil reclamation, regulation of livestock herding, or tree planting. Health and education services may also start to provide social safety nets, such as home-based care for HIV and AIDS patients.
4
Truly scaled up CDD programs using the new architecture, fund transfer, and accountability mechanisms are few and far between, with Indonesia’s being the most prominent example. One reason for the slow progress is the poor state of monitoring and evaluation (M&E).
1. Executive Summary
Scaling
up
Political commitment to local empowerment and decentralization is vital to scaling up CDD programs and the only means to ensure power actually shifts from the top to the bottom. Political will, however, is not enough. Many stakeholders have to change behavior and commit to core concepts for CDD to succeed in cutting rural poverty. The process of building consensus cannot be underestimated and requires continuous attention—by national, provincial, and local governments, stakeholders, and by communities themselves. The participation of central institutions, ministries, and provincial authorities in the Beijing conference is one such example of the consensus-building taking place in the PRC. Well-functioning pilot LCDD successes are a prerequisite for scaling up, but they can rarely be scaled up directly. Diagnostic and pilot phases are necessary to develop and test the processes, logistics, and tools for scaling up to national levels. The scaling up of pilots should cover all communities and subdistricts in at least one district of a county and produce an operations manual that can be translated into local languages and adapted across a country, province, or state. Only then can a truly scaled-up LCDD program be devised to cover an entire country.
Conclusions and Recommendations for the P eople ’ s R epublic of C hina Participants at the conference and in discussions that followed recommended that to foster CDD, the PRC should undertake the following: 1. Community-driven development (CDD) should be scaled up in PRC because the prin-
ciples and practices of CDD are highly applicable in PRC and Chinese provincial officials have expressed interest in expanding the CDD model in existing provinces where it has already been pilot-tested in new provinces. The process of scaling up can be accelerated because the PRC has strong and capable local governments that could be reoriented to assist communities first and foremost with facilitation for projects that do not need to deploy additional resources. 2. A policy note on community-driven development should be prepared by LGOP for Chinese decision makers with precise policy recommendations for inclusion in the 12th FiveYear Plan and other rural development plans with recommendations on the application of the CDD approach for rural poverty reduction as well as for general service delivery in rural areas. 3. CDD should be harmonized with other development approaches in the PRC. Several gaps have been identified that limit full implementation of CDD. This will require analysis and modification of legislation and policies aimed at developing poverty-affected areas. The identified gaps include: a. Local government development plans are too narrowly focused on singlesector investments. Development plans could also include facilitation of projects that could be undertaken by communities with minimal inputs as soon as the planning process is complete. b. Current poverty alleviation funds and programs should be harmonized with CDD, such that they can assist with the provision of block grants for administrative villages and natural villages. c. Government loan provision modalities—including repayment requirements—for poverty-affected jurisdic-
1. Executive Summary
5
tions should be reconsidered so that they do not pose an obstacle through the creation of a repayment burden to the effective use of block grants that generate CDD-based economic activity and small infrastructure provision. d. Rural finance and access to credit may require modification, so that communities can move from Community Development Funds (revolving credit within villages) to existing rural credit schemes that are made more accessible to administrative villages and natural villages. 4. Consider the application of community-driven development in other sectors that focus on national priorities and often already include participatory techniques at the community level. Environmental sustainability and natural resource management warrant integration of the CDD approach. Local governments and village organizations should be encouraged to harmonize and integrate environmental protection efforts across administrative jurisdictions—the township, the county, and the province—to respond to issues that affect watersheds and other geographic units. Adapting to climate change and protection of biodiversity, including global financing for carbon sequestration and biodiversity preservation, present additional funding sources and incentives for communities to conserve the environment. 5. Ensure that community facilitation is adequately resourced. While CDD models vary in their reliance on local government staff, NGO staff, or local cadres from village organizations, the expenses required for facilitation and training should be fully provided for. Facilitation costs in the PRC
6
can be cut significantly if government staff as well as NGOs or an autonomous organization are involved; these groups can then progressively withdraw into training, monitoring, and advisory roles. 6. Work with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). NGOs can be an important source of expertise for scaling up participatory community development through CDD, although their mandate should be clear and their objective should be to impart community facilitation and management skills to local institutions. NGOs providing assistance for CDD should have adequate resources and specialized skills, a clear plan for transferring skills and knowledge to local communities, as well as a gradual phaseout and handover strategy. 7. Create partnerships for market development. International experience shows that for villagelevel organizations to move beyond subsistence and develop sustainable economic activities, they must build effective marketing chains to sell their products. Partnering with private sector organizations is one way to bring in the skills in management and business development. Well-organized village organizations can also mature into larger agglomerations of village organizations or cooperatives with stable and rules-based decision making that allows them to manage a range of social and economic development functions within a community, from social service provision to cooperative product development and marketing. 8. Continue to share knowledge on community-driven development with the international community. China has demonstrated impressive results
1. Executive Summary
worldwide in reducing poverty over the past two decades and many countries are eager to learn from its example. The conference demonstrated that South-South learning events and learning exchanges provide powerful forums for the exchange of knowledge that will benefit the adaptation and application of CDD in China. China’s best practices, particularly its unique
blend of a strong government role coupled with participatory community development, will provide important lessons for other countries in their efforts to reduce poverty. It is recommended that China continue to be an active and leading member in the growing community of practice (CoP) around communitydriven development.
1. Executive Summary
7
2. Conference Overview
T
he International Conference on Community-Driven Development and Rural Poverty Alleviation was held in Beijing on October 18–19, 2009. The People’s Republic of China State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development (LGOP), the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank were hosts, and the Canadian International Development Agency cosponsored. Nearly
200 participants from 12 countries, international organizations, and 21 provinces and many central ministries in the PRC attended. The conference enabled leading experts, scholars, practitioners, supporters, and learners to exchange knowledge and experience with CDD through presentations and a workshop held in the afternoon of the second day. It was preceded by field visits to pilot CDD programs in Nanchong Prefecture, Sichuan Province, and Baishui, Shaanxi Province. The objectives were to (a) exchange global experience and lessons of the CDD approach; (b) foster the application of international CDD experience to the PRC; and (c) introduce the PRC’s experience to the world. The conference concluded that these objectives were fully met.
Field visit in Baishui county of Shaanxi province
8
2. conference overview
Opening remarks from the four sponsoring organizations emphasized the CDD approach is worth supporting “because it works,” as David Mul-
roney, Canada’s ambassador to the PRC, told participants. All sponsors emphasized the need for the PRC to scale up the CDD pilot work it has carried out over the past three years, and to embed it into government policies. Their remarks are reported in full in Annex 3. LGOP Vice-Director Zheng Wenkai said that while the PRC has made progress in lifting its population out of poverty—with the number of people who cannot meet basic food and clothing needs down from 250 million in 1978 to 14.79 million in 2007—an equitable distribution of gains has yet to be achieved. Some 40 million rural people are still classified as poor and the challenge is to offer services and to improve their livelihoods, guided by the roadmap for poverty alleviation adopted at the 17th CPC Central Committee in 2007, he said. A CDD pilot covering 60 villages in nationally designated poor counties in Guangxi, Sichuan, Shaanxi, and Inner Mongolia improved production and living conditions, increased farmers’ incomes, and changed the environment in the project area. Zheng outlined how experience with the pilot program, which ended in June 2009, might be applied to an expanded program. Cyprian Fisiy, director of the World Bank’s Social Development Department, said that despite many challenges in deepening the approach, CDD can help protect the poor from the effects of the current world economic crisis and is an appropriate platform for handling responses to the rising incidence of natural disasters. Bart Édes,
Opening session of conference
director of ADB’s Poverty Reduction, Gender, and Social Development Division, focused on the importance of scaling up and aligning CDD programs with policies to promote inclusive growth. Shoaib Sultan Khan, the pioneer of the Aga Khan Support Program (AKSP) in Pakistan, said his experience in South Asia over the past 30 years shows the power of social mobilization to transform a community’s hopes and dreams into reality and foster freedom of choice. Conference participants were able to improve their understanding of these issues in six sessions with specific themes on CDD covering (1) national strategies for financing and budgeting; (2) improved service delivery; (3) the inclusion of poor and marginalized groups; (4) environmental protection; (5) the provision of livelihoods; and (6) monitoring and evaluation. Workshops that followed have been integrated into the proceedings. All presentations and the workshop conclusions are presented in Annex 6.
2. conference overview
9
3. The Elements
C
DD gives local people the knowledge and investment resources to identify, implement, and manage their own projects to improve living conditions and livelihoods. The historic struggle to empower communities started in India and East and West Pakistan some 60 years ago and has spread all over the world. The approach turns the top-down delivery model of development around by giving rural communities the role of decision makers. It requires them to take responsibility and act accountably, rather than be passive recipients of initiatives from sector-specific central government ministries whose isolated goals are hard to integrate in townships and villages. The approach is based on the following core beliefs, highlighted in the presentation on Andhra Pradesh, about how poor communities can be mobilized for their own development: (i) The poor have a strong desire and innate ability to emerge from poverty. (ii) The poor have a strong sense of self-help and volunteerism, but face many obstacles—psychological, social, economic, political—that suppress their innate ability. (iii) Social mobilization can be used to unleash their abilities.
10
of
CDD
(iv) The poor can come out of poverty only through their own institutions. (v) Social mobilization isn’t automatic; it needs to be induced. (vi) Hence the need for sensitive support institutions for the poor. During the process of mobilization, communities analyze their problems, opportunities, and constraints, and develop a list of projects and activities they would like to undertake. They then organize themselves to achieve these, with or without outside help. They may typically appoint a community management committee and finance committee, as well as subgroups, to complete items on their priorities list. Careful community mobilization can revive or create village organizations and provide the management and financial training to turn them into durable institutions. Communities are responsible for implementing their own CDD projects, for purchasing and contracting. They are accountable to their members and to program authorities for the funds they receive. This is the community empowerment model, in contrast to the community participation model in which communities are involved only in identifying what should be developed,
3. The elements of CDD
providing labor, cofinancing, and later in operating projects implemented by contractors, the government, or intermediary NGOs. Only two projects using the community participation model were presented at the conference: one from Morocco, which focused on participation in local government, and a watershed project in the PRC. Communities with CDD programs typically do not function in isolation, but work with local authorities and—in the cases of the PRC, Indonesia, the Philippines and other projects—are associated formally with local governments. In the Mid Himalayan Watershed Development Project in Himachal Pradesh, India (India-HP), the community is the “gram panchayat,” or village assembly, which is linked to subdistrict and district panchayats, the higher levels of local government. Women’s self-help groups in India-AP are federated in villages, subdistricts, districts, and at the level of the state itself. The entire organizational setup—from communities to local governments—is referred to as the “community-driven development platform.” The activities, outputs, and outcomes of this platform are described as “local and community-driven development” (LCDD).
The
power of community
mobilization Empowered communities can do a lot for themselves. In many programs, such as those run by the Aga Khan Foundation in Central and South Asia, communities put their priorities into two lists: (1) projects they can implement without outside resources, such as simple improvements in environmental and natural resources management, cultural activities, and dispute resolution; and (2) projects requiring outside technical or financial support. In a number of programs, community priorities may focus on infrastructure, livelihoods, and agriculture, while in others they may include a more comprehensive inven-
tory of community needs, down to a ping-pong table for a youth group, for example. Communities should be encouraged to start implementing projects they can carry out themselves, as success in these develops self-confidence and confidence in the new or renewed organizations. For cases requiring outside assistance, help is usually provided in the CDD project itself. In others, communities were encouraged to find outside help and financial resources themselves. In the Aga Khan Rural Support Program in Northern Pakistan, this achieved an astonishingly large list of high-impact development activities. However, communities can do much more if they also receive financial assistance. In many programs, this is provided for several projects or for an entire village development plan. Even the AKRSP gave communities funds for one productive infrastructure project. Community mobilization changes people’s behavior and attitudes from passive recipients, expecting government to do for them, into self-confident managers of their own programs (Figure 1). Figure 1: Transformation of Community Residents
I want to do it
I can do it well
Ask me to do it You do it
Source: Presentation of Wang Tiezhi on the PRC’s ethnic minorities pilot
3. The elements of CDD
11
Community mobilization doesn’t only result in development activities and outcomes, but brings about a change in village and local governance toward empowerment, transparency, and democracy, and a transformed relationship between the population and government.
The
diversity in
starting points for community mobilization In Annex 2, we present five tables that focus on different features of the CDD programs. The five tables are: (1) basic project/program characteristics; (2) community mobilization, facilitation, and training; (3) program architecture and the flow of funds; (4) field-level accountability mechanisms; and (5) funding sources. The order in which the CDD programs are presented in the tables is based on a logic that may not be immediately apparent to the reader. We start with the AKRSP project in Northern
A village map from the Philippines
Pakistan, which initially focused primarily on community mobilization to achieve its development objectives, although subsequently communities were provided with financial resources for a productive infrastructure project. For their other priorities, communities were expected to mobilize resources, including technical support, from a variety of sources. This approach exemplifies the power of organized communities to manage their own development.
A planning meeting in Afghanistan
12
3. The elements of CDD
The second approach is exemplified by Brazil, which focused from the start on investment projects that the CDD program funded. Communities are provided with information in meetings and through the mass media, and subsequently assisted in developing and implementing projects of their choosing. Money and learning-bydoing, rather than intensive assistance, are the primary drivers of community mobilization. The disadvantage is that the social capital developed in this approach is often not used for a broader menu of community projects, includ-
ing those which could be executed with their own resources. Nevertheless, the approach also has spillover effects in terms of reduced conflict, greater initiative, and building self-confidence. The emphasis in the third approach is on helping local government to involve the community in poverty reduction goals, as exemplified by the Morocco project. This is appropriate when the capacity of local government is weak and it needs to change its attitude toward participatory development. The fourth approach, exemplified by Indonesia, brings all three of these approaches together to build a comprehensive CDD platform. Strong
community mobilization goes hand in hand with the provision of funds for subprojects and with capacity building to strengthen decentralized local governments. The CDD programs in the Philippines, PRC’s CDD Pilot and Ethnic Minority Areas Pilot, as well as Ethiopia are all examples of this integrated approach to the CDD platform. The approach and its results framework are illustrated in Figure 2. A variety of means can be used to help a community mobilize, ranging from information meetings and more intensive community dialogue to the application of a number of participatory assessment and planning tools. These include mapping, transects of the landscape, schematic
Figure 2: Building Blocks, Outputs, and Outcomes of the CDD Platform
Generic Results for CCD Aproaches
Source: Presentation of Susan Wong on monitoring and evaluation
3. The elements of CDD
13
“trees” that help identify problems, and inventories of resources within the community and available from outside. Often these are applied separately by groups of men, women, children, and ethnic minorities. The tools can be used to compile a list of different priorities and proposals that can be aggregated via a variety of consensus-building or voting mechanisms, allowing new or renewed village or community development committees to implement and monitor the resultant projects. Together the lists Villagers voting on community plan — Hai Basin, PRC and the associated organizational structures conMost CDD programs also have improvements stitute the village or community development in livelihoods as explicit objectives; for inplan. Plans may be submitted to higher authoristance, Nigeria’s National Fadama Developties in their entirety (as in the PRC CDD pilot), ment Project focuses on improving livelihoods or communities may present their most pressing and incomes. Social protection or inclusion of priority for approval, sometimes in competition vulnerable groups featured in nearly all the with other communities as in Indonesia and the CDD programs described at the conference. Philippines. The India-AP program set up self-help groups for women as its most basic tool for community he sector empowerment, while all other programs emphasized this too. Youth are often targeted, as content of in Ethiopia, India-AP, Indonesia, and Morocco. programs Ethnic minorities were at the center of special projects in the PRC and India-HP, while EthioAnnex 2, Table 1 shows that most CDD propia’s program has the sole objective of helping grams enable communities to develop infrapastoralists. Other vulnerable groups are the structure either to improve services such as target in some programs, such as households health, education, and water—as in conference led by women in Indonesia and homeless orpresentations from Ethiopia, Indonesia, Morocphans in Morocco. co, and the Philippines—or to advance productive purposes, such as projects from Brazil and While natural resource management isn’t a comNigeria. In almost all CDD programs, commuponent of all CDD programs, the PRC Hai Basin nities first identify these types of infrastructure Project, India-HP, and Indonesia’s Rural PNPM investments as priorities. focus specifically on this objective.
T
14
CDD
3. The elements of CDD
tors is that public officials initially rarely share the core beliefs about the poor discussed at the beginning of this section, or do not have incentives to support communities. Public officials are also attached to specific areas or local governments and may not be in a position to contribute to scaling up programs. NGOs may include the core beliefs about the poor in their mission statements as well as behavioral incentive structures for their staff. They may be disadvantaged by dependence Constructed borehole for Sauka Fulani agro-pastoralists, Nigeria on funds from government or donors, funding that can end at any time, and therefore their role as fahe options for cilitators suffers from low sustainability. Many international NGOs would also have multiple facilitation and support programs, with mobilization of communities as to community groups just one of their contracts, while national ones may be small and need in-depth training to Annex 2, Table 2 shows there are three ways to encourage CDD. The Aga Khan Foundation’s facilitate and mobilize communities: (1) provide approach to ensuring sustainability is to have information (Brazil); (2) have state agencies play the international and national NGOs train sufthe role of community mobilizers and facilitaficient numbers of local and community facilitators, as exemplified by the watershed projects tors to fill facilitator roles. The PRC deliberately and one county in the PRC pilots, and also trained people from communities in all three of Ethiopia and Morocco; or (3) use outside agenits pilots to overcome these difficulties. cies such as NGOs or specialized organizations. Facilitators are embedded in the government Another model is to set up a specialized comstructure in many Latin American countries, munity support organization focusing on mobiwith ministries of community development, or lization and the scaling up of projects, as exemfor example in the CDD programs of the PRC plified by the India-AP program and the Rural and Indonesia. Lead ministries may differ: the Support Program in Pakistan. The Society for Ministry of Home Affairs takes the role in Inthe Elimination of Poverty (SERP), which was donesia, while it is the Ministry of Interior in set up in Andhra Pradesh in 2000, is being repMorocco. licated in other Indian states, while Pakistan is following the model provided by the Aga Khan Foundation. The challenge of community supThe disadvantage of state agencies as facilita-
T
3. The elements of CDD
15
port organizations is to find a way they can be funded at the stage when donor funding is phased out of a program. In many instances, mixed models emerge. Experience in the PRC showed equally good results in the three CDD pilot counties where NGOs worked with their own and government staff to mobilize communities, and in the one county where local government undertook that role. Conference participants offered different opinions concerning the use of NGOs in scaling up CDD pilots in the PRC. Some advocated hiring NGOs or setting up an autonomous organization as outside facilitators, and generally as the third leg to the stool of government, communities, and civil society. Others cautioned that insufficient NGOs exist with the resources, local staff, and skills required to accomplish the task, arguing that local governments, oriented to work with a new set of values, would have the required capacity.
PRC can be reduced significantly if programs make use of government staff as well as NGOs or an autonomous organization, which can progressively withdraw into training, monitoring, and advisory roles. Conference participants also recommended that NGOs or community support organizations should be large and well-established enough to be dependable, and they preferred groups that employ people who are fully conversant with local cultures and languages and keep staff turnover to a minimum.
The
role of savings and
external finance The AKRSP included a very strong savings component from the start of its activities in Pakistan. The India-AP program required women’s self-help groups to reach an initial savings target before they could be eligible to receive gov-
Discussions also brought up issues that arise because upfront facilitation costs of CDD exceed the administrative costs of centrally designed and delivered projects. This creates resistance to the approach and creates questions like: “Why go through all this trouble when we know what they need?” The international experience clearly shows, however, that proper community facilitation and mobilization has long-term social, economic, and governance benefits. Monitoring and evaluation of CDD pilots in the PRC has started to corroborate this. And Women’s microcredit group, Indonesia facilitation costs in the
16
3. The elements of CDD
ernment credit for running their own revolving fund. A similar approach is being used in the PRC CDD pilot and in Indonesia. Community and individual savings can be collected in this way to mobilize additional resources, either as the basis of community cofinancing for investments receiving outside funding, or for individuals or groups to borrow from outside financial institutions. Where revolving funds are created, only those in the community who commit to the requirements and behavioral norms that being a member implies are involved in managing the funds. The repayment record of a self-help group and its individual members serves for raising credit from the rural financial system in IndiaAP — cooperative credit societies, commercial banks, and micro-finance institutions. The entire group becomes liable for repayment of loans. In contrast, the PRC CDD pilot provided gov-
ernment cofinancing on a grant or quasi-grant basis, with disbursements into revolving funds managed by communities themselves. The PRC program hasn’t yet progressed to linking community development funds to the rural financial system, and this should be the next step in its evolution. The other major source of community finance is cofinancing from governments and donors for basic, social, and productive infrastructure projects. Communities contribute their share of the financing either in cash or in kind, usually in the form of unskilled labor and local raw materials. They also need to agree on a plan to finance recurrent costs by, for example, taking over the responsibility for road maintenance or via cost recovery for water or infrastructure. Local government funds may either be raised by local governments themselves or through revenue-sharing arrangements that give them unrestricted budgets. The more empowered communities are, the more cofinancing they are willing to provide. Programs that provide a financial envelope for a number of village projects are likely to attract much greater resources from the community and therefore achieve more development.
The
power of
federation
Women actively participate in road construction in Garut, Indonesia
3. The elements of CDD
Communities within CDD programs are often encouraged to unite to achieve development objectives in a variety
17
organization. This may contain about 200 members, who together can manGeneric Results for CCD Aproaches age their objectives more efficiently and strengthen their capacity to develop. Number of Zilla Samakhaya The village organiMembers zations in a subdis300,000 - 500,000 trict, or mandal, then join forces and the resultant federation Mandal typically represents Samakhya 6000 - 9000 a few thousand individuals. When the subdistricts in a district (known as the zilla) join forces, the Village 150 -120 resulting federation Organization may number as many as half a million individuals. Federations Self help groups in a mandal and zilla 10 - 15 coordinate relationships with local government, banks, and Source: Adapted from B. Rajsekhar presentation on Andhra Pradesh providers of technical services. They may have superviof ways, the simplest example being when two sory functions and are likely to lobby politicians villages decide to build a school to serve them on behalf of the self-help movement. both. More elaborate forms of federation emerge when communities engage in productive activiThe PRC presented a model of productive ties that require skills to be brought in or for groups in a territory federating into one rural marketing beyond the local area. For example, cooperative. The India-HP project showed how in India-AP (Figure 3) individual community milk producers organized into one cooperative. self-help groups, each with 10–15 members Various models of federation were highlighted who have taken out loans, first form a village in the presentation from Brazil. Figure 3: The Federation Model
18
3. The elements of CDD
4. The CDD Platform
Partners
in the platform
and their roles
nutrition. For instance, NGOs with special expertise in biodiversity preservation work with government in the Green PNPM.
The private sector should partner with commuWe have already talked about the importance nities in the provision of inputs and marketing of the CDD platform. Figure 4 illustrates how local people are at the center of its activities. of outputs. In many cases, this takes the form In a mature platform, local government takes the bigFigure 4: The Partners in CDD gest responsibility for aligning community activities with the local development plan, for cofinancing, and for facilitation. Support orSupport ganizations and facilitators help communities to mobilize their resources and assist with the scaling up of a program. The support orgaPrivate Technical nization may initially also Community Sector sectors provide technical support, but this should shift to government technical departments such as those responsible for agriculture, water, Local Government health, and education. Other technical support may come from NGOs with expertise in, for example, natural Source: Authors of Proceedings, adapted from various presentations resource management or
4. The CDD Platform
19
of contract farming. The private sector can also be used to provide technical support, as for example in Brazil and Nigeria, where government cofinancing can be used to purchase such services. The initiation of collaboration in a mature CDD platform can come from any partners—the community, sectors that may work with it to enhance their own outreach and impact, or private companies that may find collaboration a profitable way of doing business.
The
Khan, intended. When the World Bank and other donors entered integrated rural or area development in the 1970, they ended up channeling resources via sector silos that couldn’t be coordinated at the level of local governments or communities, despite their intentions to the contrary. Evaluation of several hundreds of World Bank-financed area development programs at the end of the 1980s showed that the approach led to poor results, disempowered communities, and little institutional development. One of the main reasons for the failure of the silo model is that development activities at the community or local level inherently need inputs from many sectors. Improving agriculture in a community may require a variety of activities, from land development, the construction of a road or small-scale irrigation system, the building of drying floors and places for storage, to marketing arrangements, the supply of credit
resulting
program architecture and accountability relationships
The CDD platform leads to a complete change in the implementation architecture for service delivery and development activities. Figure 5: The Traditional Approach to In the classic public service Financing via Ministerial Silos model, development sectors work as if they were in silos, receiving financial resources Ministry of Finance from the ministry of finance and then using these in a cascading system to provincial and local governments and National then down to communities (Figure 5). The same structure emerged when successful pilot programs were scaled up, for example in the community development programs of East Pakistan and India in the 1950s, or similar programs in Brazil and Mexico from the 1960s. This centralization was contrary to what pioneers of the approach, such as Akhter Hameed
20
Provincial
Local
Community
Community Project
Source: Adapted from the presentation by Hans P. Binswanger-Mkhize
4. The CDD Platform
or, for that matter, childcare. When separate sectors are responsible for providing these components in hundreds or thousands of communities, central organizations face an impossible information and coordination problem that has never been mastered. However, if development resources, including those to purchase technical services, are put in the hands of local people, the community can coordinate all those activities. Since community groups have intimate knowledge of their environment, organization, and projects, a single organization controlling the contracts and finance for implementation is able to deal with all the sector investments and interventions needed. The information and coordination problems therefore become manageable and the entire process is more efficient.
However—and as previously discussed—a community cannot do all its development on its own, but requires organizational, managerial, and technical support. This leads to a new program architecture (Figure 6) in which the community is the top decision maker, supported by local government from at least two levels—in the PRC, the township and county administrations—and technical input providers and facilitators. Local government usually also has coordination, approval, and monitoring and evaluation functions.
Options
for
project approval and financial flows
When development programs first became serious about community involvement, as in the case of social funds Figure 6: The Modern LCDD Implementation Architecture promoted by the World Bank from the middle of the 1980s, the flow of funds was typically from Community Development Council the donor to a specific project implementation unit set up in parallel to government structures, and initially operating from national or provincial offices. Community Sub-District Development projects were evaluated Council only by the central unit, and resources were disbursed directly from there to service providers. This proved very cumbersome and the reMonitoring and District Development Facilitation sulting workloads at the Evaluation Teams Council Technical Support center made it almost impossible to scale up the programs to more Source: Adapted from the presentation by Hans P. Binswanger-Mkhize than a few hundred community projects per year.
4. The CDD Platform
21
Project units were decentralized, and/or intermediary NGOs or other organizations were entrusted with the contracting and disbursement of funds. Such approaches suffer from the fact that intermediary organizations have to set up and pay a cadre of people to handle all these transactions, a costly overhead. With the advent of direct disbursement of subproject funds to communities, scaling up became much easier to achieve because the latent capacity of communities to implement projects and manage funds was mobilized at no cost to the program. In the pioneering 1990 Mexico Municipal Funds Project, funds were decentralized to municipalities, and many projects continued with central management units still handling case-by-case approvals. Gradually these unwieldy centralized approaches were abandoned. The programs increasingly relied on local governments for approval and disbursement of funds and the supervision of project expenditures and activities. This mainstreamed the programs into the government system. Additional simplifications occurred when local government, as in the case of early projects in Mexico, were given budget envelopes and case-by-case approvals, freeing up central authorities to perform the wider task of reviewing entire project portfolios. The stage was set for the incorporation of the LCDD funding mechanisms into the intergovernmental fiscal system (see figure 6), which was
22
first achieved in Mexico in the late 1990s. A final step to the present way of managing financial flows in CDD was accomplished when budget envelopes were further decentralized to the community level—as in the PRC pilot where budget control was handed to the administrative village—and approval at the local government level was widened to community programs rather than projects. A new system for proposals, approvals, technical reviews, and disbursements emerged as a result of these changes (Figure 7). Early CDD programs—such as Brazil’s program, which began in 1993—organized approval and disbursement around individual community projects, but this has been progressively abandoned for a more empowering and efficient fo-
Figure 7: Responsibilities for Proposals, Approvals, and Disbursements
Source: Adapted from the presentation by Hans P. Binswanger-Mkhize
4. The CDD Platform
cus on community development programs. In later programs, such as in Indonesia or Mexico, responsibilities for approving project expenditures, community development programs or project proposals, and the disbursement of funds are divided. National or provincial governments provide funds, design budget allocation formulas, often based on poverty measures, as well as the cofinancing formulas for the communities, and different levels of government. Approval authority is usually devolved to the subdistrict level, although it may be devolved even further, as in the case of the PRC pilot, where it is in the community organization of the administrative village, which contains several villages or communities. The township (subdistrict) in the PRC has a technical review function for projects only and can only request administrative villages do more preparation. If the project subsequently proves infeasible, the community can substitute it with an alternative.
Accountability Systems The new architecture puts the primary burden to ensure accountability on the community, whose leaders answer to its members on questions concerning project management, procurement, and expenditure (see Annex 2, Table 4). In most projects, they also report on expenditures to higher levels of authority, and are subject to the possibility of audits. In most programs, there is a community finance committee, usually comprising at least three members and often including women. India-AP is an exception because the self-help groups are very small. The committee reports to the community, and normally keeps the books in the local language. The Kecamatan Development Project (KDP) in Indonesia was the first to add an independent community monitoring and audit committee to inspect the accounts, as well as bids, the goods purchased and the quality of
the output. These committees, often staffed by women, tend to take their jobs very seriously. The practice has spread and is used in most of the CDD programs reviewed in the conference. Indonesia also pioneered the use of NGOs not involved in the program and journalists as independent monitors. In Morocco, these functions are performed by the National Observatory for Human Development, an autonomous government institution. In the PRC pilot, they are carried out by a university. Many programs have developed formal systems for community members and other stakeholders to raise grievances involving their leaders, local governments, and service providers. The presentation on the PRC pilot monitoring and evaluation discussed the setup and results of this grievance system. Higher authorities also reserve the right to perform audits. Since projects are often small and widely dispersed, the cost of professionally auditing all projects would be prohibitive, so audit systems typically draw a random sample instead. In the Philippines, 20 percent of projects were selected which is probably at the high end of such checks. The impact of the risk of being audited in the Indonesian KDP has been found to be an important anticorruption element. Audits may also result when a complaint is raised.
Monitoring
and
Evaluation
The struggle to empower communities all over the world to take charge of their own development has been going on for about 60 years. Shifting resources from dysfunctional singlesector programs directly to communities is an integral part of that struggle. Truly scaled up programs using the new architecture to transfer funds and accountability are few and far between, with the Indonesian program started in 2006 being the most prominent example. One reason for the lack of success in promoting decentralization, community empowerment, and
4. The CDD Platform
23
Figure 8: The Components of the M&E System in the China CDD Pilot
Source: Adapted from presentation of Liu Sheng’an
direct fund transfer to communities is the poor state of monitoring and evaluation (M&E) in most CDD programs. A World Bank review in 2000 found that only 5 percent to 10 percent of projects had sound evaluation plans. The lack of evidence to prove convincingly that the LCCD approach is superior to sector-based programs is one of the reasons the struggle has been so hard to win. Fortunately, the CDD pilots in the PRC are doing better in this area. M&E in the PRC CDD pilot (Figure 8) has a number of components. Monitoring allows project managers to learn what works, what doesn’t work, and why. It measures
24
progress against work plans and provides feedback for decision makers. Monitoring systems include routine project assessment, complaint mechanisms, and auditing methods. Evaluation focuses on the impact of programs, asks whether it has reached its long-term goals, and assesses changes in the well-being of individuals and households that can be attributed to the program. It also pioneers new approaches to decide whether projects should be pursued on a larger scale and employs special studies to shine light into dark corners of the programs. Figure 9 illustrates the complaints mechanism developed in CDD pilots in the PRC. Complaints can be received from community members about misconduct in the community organization, the program implementation, or about the project management organization and costs. State, provincial, and county project manage-
Figure 9: The Complaints Mechanism in the CDD Pilot in China
Source: Adapted from presentation of Liu Sheng’an
4. The CDD Platform
ment organizations received a total of 21 project-related complaints—15 for county organizations, and six at the provincial and state level. These complaints came from farmers (18), community facilitators (1), construction contractors (1), and a county-level technical department (1). These were handled systematically and speedily, thereby avoiding escalation into crises.
What
can the platform
achieve ?
The structure, potential intervention areas, and outputs of a comprehensive CDD platform that is fully embedded in local government are illustrated in Figure 10. Community priorities usually start with the desire for building basic, productive, and social infrastructure. These objectives are the easiest to incorporate into CDD programs.
The cost of a comprehensive M&E system is not prohibitive. In the Indonesian KDP and its successor PNPM program, for example, it was between 1 and 3 percent of the program’s budget. Evaluations and field reports found the program It is often more challenging to address liveliwas popular in communities, delivered the exhood and income priorities, as work at the compected results, and had a high rate of return on munity level needs to be complemented by the original investment. As a consequence, the careful attention to supplying advice, marketgovernment expanded the program nationally. ing systems, and other inputs beyond the comAn external review of the microfinance compomunity’s capacity that require specialized skills nent in 2002 found that it didn’t work well and or organization from government, NGOs, or the so was redesigned. Supervision reports, qualitaprivate sector. Livelihood programs presented tive case studies, and impact evaluations found at the conference showed a variety of ways to the program failed to meet the needs of marorganize communities. India’s Andhra Pradesh ginalized groups. Accordingly, the government program focuses on people, especially women, launched a special program for them. Figure 10: The CDD Platform and Community Priorities Constraints on M&E include (a) the difficulty of collecting real-time accurate data in complex operations; (b) the lack of in-country specialized skills to assess the impact of projects; (c) the time required to prepare baseline studies; (d) the task of maintaining control groups over the period of assessment; and (e) multiple results and the difficulty of measuring improvements in social capital and empowerment in CDD projects. For all these approaches, methods have been developed that can be applied around the world.
Source: Adapted from presentation of Cyprian Fisyi
4. The CDD Platform
25
in the community helping themselves through intensive facilitation and training, and linking to the commercial banking and marketing system once the groups have enough social and economic capital to leverage. Many CDD programs provide communities, farmer associations, or other interest groups with access to credit. Often, this is part of the community grant: a fund that the community operates as a revolving credit facility for small groups or individuals. In a revolving credit facility, funds that are repaid can be borrowed again. All CDD programs make arrangements to provide technical assistance and training to groups in communities engaged in activities that improve livelihoods. Emerging issues for enhancing assistance in this regard are efforts to increase access to markets and further aggregate producer groups into associations—as in Brazil and India—or rural cooperatives, as presented in one case from the PRC.
This in turn requires that community producer organizations are given assistance to federate themselves in order to strengthen their market positions. The rural cooperative model in the PRC was presented as one that allows producer organizations of all products in one geographic area to band together. India presented a model of a cooperative along production lines (milk producers) and gave many examples of economic groups organizing into other “federated” formats, such as province-wide organizations formed through the CDD program, to take advantage of commercial credit and marketing arrangements. Community development funds play different roles in different CDD programs. Ideally they should be connected to a strong rural financial system. While the CDD pilot in the PRC was designed after study tours to other countries and programs, the funds aren’t yet connected to rural finance. A stronger rural financial system is a prerequisite for scaling up, and policy makers should work on this task in parallel. It is recommended that the role of the CDF and its sustainability should be assessed once more before CDFs of the pilot CDD projects in the PRC are scaled up.
A kindergarten in Kametan, Indonesia
26
4. The CDD Platform
In addition to infrastructure and livelihood activities, communities may quickly start simple natural resource management activities such as soil reclamation, regulation of livestock herding in the community, or tree planting. More complex natural resource and biodiver-
sity management may require special outside skills or incentive mechanisms, as shown in the watershed management projects of the PRC and India-HP, or for the PNPM in rural areas of Indonesia. While communities may have strong reasons for managing pastures, forests, and groundwater tables, the externalities associated with these resources may mean that they lack incentives to undertake such projects. This is also typically the case for projects aimed at carbon capture or preserving biodiversity.
Dealing
with
national priorities As well as serving community priorities, the CDD platform can be used to achieve a number of national priorities that may or may not be important for the communities themselves (Figure 11). Local people may not be able to speak about HIV and AIDS, for example, or their activities may conflict with national priorities such as setaside areas for wildlife. National priorities may target specific groups, such as youth and the urban unemployed, or they may be achieved through community selection and supervision through the provision of conditional grants. These are the frontier areas of CDD that will require much more attention in future.
Currently the PRC CDD pilots finance natural resource management and environmental components, but this part of the program hasn’t worked well. Environmental management responsibilities are integrated into the villagelevel in the CDD programs, but this arrangement may not take account of the additional complexity of having to deal with both adminReconciling national and community priorities istrative jurisdictions—the township, county, and getting the communities to undertake reand province—and geographic divisions such as watersheds that cut across administrative lated activities may be achieved through: boundaries. A way will have to be found to better Figure 11: Adding Special National Priority coordinate village activities Programs to the CDD Platform with those at different levels and scale. Within their own development plans, communities often single out social services like health and education, including the building of clinics and schools, and the need for strengthening their involvement in health management and education activities such as disease prevention and literacy programs. They may also want to start to provide safety nets for disadvantaged or disabled people, such as home-based care for HIV and AIDS patients.
Source: Adapted from the presentation by Cyprian Fisiy
4. The CDD Platform
27
The focus on marginal and vulnerable groups was presented at the conference. CDD projects for women, ethnic minorities, pastoralists, and excluded groups (as in the PRC pilot) were discussed, as were the special components of programs in Brazil, Indonesia, and Morocco. Natural resource management was featured in watershed projects in the PRC and IndiaHP, as well as the Green KDP/PNPM project in Indonesia, which also includes measures to protect biodiversity. An irrigation channel in Flores Timor, Indonesia
(i) The introduction of a supplemental resource allocation for activities of national priority, such as a special NRM window that provides cofinancing on top of the normal CDD allocation, as in the part of Nigeria’s program financed by the Global Environment Facility (GEF). (ii) The reduction of cofinancing requirements for activities of national priority, or elimination of the community’s contribution for those with strong externalities. (iii) The provision of special subsidies for activities associated with national priorities such as carbon capture—as in the India-HP program and financing from the GEF in Nigeria. The exact nature of the incentives and their delivery mechanisms will depend on national conditions and priorities.
28
Given the scale and pace of biodiversity losses worldwide, how governments can encourage communities to preserve these natural resources is of particular importance for CDD. People who live in and around places rich in biodiversity are generally among the poorest in rural areas. If resources could be protected from direct and indirect harvest by external agents, and instead left for careful use by the communities who traditionally benefit from them, much of the pressure would be removed. National objectives of poverty reduction and the conservation of biodiversity resources also would be served. Within an existing CDD program, a window for community grants targeting conservation activities could be introduced. These would be most effective if geographically focused. Since grants would primarily serve national objectives, a modest time commitment from communities rather than cofinancing should be favored. The allocation of project funds to each subdistrict (or the equivalent) could be calculated from current
4. The CDD Platform
knowledge of the distribution of biodiversity and its status. The Green PNPM has shown that environmentally sensitive CDD programs or windows can be very popular among donors.
Financing CDD
Figure 12: Sources of Funds Sustainability and scaling up require progressive exit of donors
programs Community
CDD programs are funded through five possible sources (Figure 12), including (1) cost recovery, (2) community cofinancing in cash and in kind, (3) local or central government resources, (4) provincial or central governments, and (5) donors. The objective of government and development partners should be to mainstream the CDD program fully into the intergovernmental fiscal system—as in Indonesia, where all donors pool resources in a trust fund—and to exit as a source of finance after several phases. It is therefore disappointing to see that in Brazil, after nearly 20 years of program operation, the World Bank share of funding is still 70 percent and the program hasn’t been integrated into the
Cost recovery
Donors
Local Governments Central provincial government
Source: Presentation of Hans P. Binswanger-Mkhize
state or national systems. Similarly, the Ethiopia pastoral system and the Nigeria Fadama project still have donor shares that are clearly unsustainable in the long run. Sources of finance for CDD programs are also listed in Annex 2, Table 5.
4. The CDD Platform
29
5. Scaling
The
policy preconditions
for scaling up the platform Scaling up is more than the physical mass replication of pilot programs. It means making the process more inclusive (social scaling up) and moving beyond participation to embedding community empowerment into the entire development process (conceptual scaling up). Examples of the integration of all three elements were presented from other countries. For LCDD to be scaled up from a pilot project to a national program, it is necessary that national leadership is fully behind the approach, that central institutions and sectors are aligned, that administrative and fiscal decentralization is making progress, and that governments’ own fiscal resources, both national and local, can eventually become the main source of funding.
Political
commitment
Strong political commitment to local empowerment and decentralized government is vital to scaling up. That alone can ensure that power actually shifts from the top to the bottom. The impetus for change has come from the very top itself, such as King Mohammed VI of Morocco’s decree for a more participatory approach
30
up
CDD
in 2004, or when Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono launched PNPM, a nationwide program to scale up and unify CDD in urban and rural areas in 2006. Change can also come from state governors (as in Brazil) or chief ministers (as in India-AP). Successive governments in Pakistan have funded independent and autonomous support organizations since 1992 that have succeeded in being somewhat buffeted from political winds, according to Dr. Khan.
Consensus
building
Political will is not enough. Many stakeholders have to change their behavior to enable CDD to succeed. They have to be brought together to build consensus around the core CDD platform and concepts. The commitment to this cannot be underestimated and needs to be done as a continuous process. The participation of central institutions, ministries, and of provincial authorities from the PRC at the conference in Beijing is one such example of consensus building. It is important to be able to present solid evaluation data and use them in consensus building, as was made clear in the presentation from Indonesia. Consensus building also has to take place with stakeholders at each level: national, provincial, and local government and in the community itself.
5. Scaling up cdd
Scaling
up step by step
Box 1 presents the steps involved in the scaling up process. Well-functioning pilot LCDD successes are a prerequisite for scaling up, but they can rarely be scaled up directly. A diagnostic phase is necessary to establish the preconditions for a scaled up LCDD program. This should be followed by a pilot phase in which the processes, logistics,
and tools for scaling up to national levels are developed and tested. Such pilots should cover all communities and subdistricts in at least one district of a country. This leads to proven procedures, logistics, and tools that can be summarized in a local-language operational manual, which can then be rolled out and adapted to fit conditions in the remaining districts of a country, province, or state. Only then can a truly scaled up LCDD program be put in place that can cover an entire nation.
Box 1: Steps to Scaling Up Diagnostic Phase to Ensure Minimum Conditions • Assess the LCDD underpinnings in the national context • Align with the national government, donors, and other partners
• •
Synchonize or transform policies, regulations, and laws with LCDD Have national leadership and coordination
•
Appoint scaling up team
• •
Achieve local buy-in Set up communications
• •
in conducting participatory planning Undertake participatory planning Supply technical support
Pre-Program Development—National Level • •
Define the program Select pilot districts
Pre-Program Development—Local Level • •
Select districts Assess the LCDD underpinnings in the local context
Pilot Phase of Scaling Up • • •
Define players and roles Conduct training Ensure that facilitation capacity and facilitators are in place to assist in conducting
Resource Flows and Accountability • •
Direct financing to communities Devise options for allocating funds
•
Devise options for managing and disbursing financial resources
• •
Devise a communications strategy Put in place a system for monitoring and evaluation Take into account special conditions Conduct pre-launch activities
Scaling Up • • • • •
Ensure that the necessary elements are in place Plan finances Manage bureaucratic hurdles Design a management system Focus on costs and logistics
• •
Consolidation • Achieve self-sustainability
Source: Binswanger-Mkhize, Hans P., Jacomina P. de Regt, Stephen Spector, 2010. Local and Community Driven Development. Moving to Scale in Theory and Practice. Washington D.C., World Bank Publishers
5. Scaling up cdd
31
6. Conclusions and Policy Recommendations for the P eople ’ s R epublic of C hina
B
elow are a series of key policy recommendations for scaling up CDD programs in the PRC. These are derived from the conference and workshop that followed and are presented for consideration to China’s Leading Group on Poverty Alleviation and Development (LGOP), line ministries, and decision makers. 1. Community-Driven Development Should Be Scaled Up in PRC The International Conference on Community-Driven Development and Poverty Alleviation demonstrated that the principles and practices of CDD are highly applicable in PRC. Examples from many countries at different stages of development demonstrate that effective implementation of CDD results in increased incomes and a range of other positive development outcomes for the rural poor. CDD is based on community participation and ownership, the provision of block grants for small-scale infrastructure and economic activities to accountable village organizations, and village-level oversight of budgets and local procurement. Chinese provincial officials have expressed interest in expanding the CDD model in existing provinces where it has already been pilot-tested and in pilot-testing CDD in new provinces that have not yet been exposed to the methodology. Both could
32
be done in parallel. The process of scaling up can be accelerated because: • The PRC has strong and capable local governments that could be reoriented to assist communities first and foremost with facilitation for projects that do not need to deploy additional resources. • Coordination would be carried out at the township and village level using the structures put in place under CDD programs. Funds would be held and managed by villagers. The CDD pilots provide reassurance that these approaches can work, and that with proper training communities are capable of handling funds, as has been proven the world over. 2. A Policy Note on Community-Driven Development Should Be Prepared for Chinese Decision Makers A policy note on community-driven development in China, which distills the body of evidence-based research from China and other countries into precise policy recommendations
6. conclusions and recommendations for the prc
for inclusion in the 12th Five-Year Plan and other rural development plans, should be developed by the appropriate ministry; that is, the Leading Group on Poverty Alleviation and Development. This policy note should provide recommendations on the application of the CDD approach for rural poverty reduction as well as for general service delivery in rural areas. 3. Harmonize Community-Driven Development With Other Development Approaches in the PRC With CDD now having been pilot-tested in several Chinese provinces, several gaps have been identified that limit the full implementation of CDD. These gaps suggest that some legislation and policies aimed at developing poverty-affected areas may require analysis and modification. The conference recommends a participatory stocktaking involving the full range of actors to show how the CDD approach either fits with or contradicts existing policies and laws. The identified gaps include: a. Local Government Development Plans: At the county and township levels, current plans may be too narrowly focused on single-sector investments requiring outside support and driven by top-down planning. Development plans should include provision for CDD and CDDbased priorities that administrative villages can undertake on their own with facilitation and minimal technical input and start to implement as soon as the planning process is complete. b. Current Poverty Alleviation Funds and Programs should be harmonized with CDD, such that they can assist with the provision of block grants for administrative villages and natural villages. c. Government Loan Provision Modalities, Including Repayment Requirements, for poverty-affected jurisdictions should be
reconsidered such that they do not pose an obstacle to the effective use of block grants that generate CDD-based economic activity and small infrastructure provision. Examples from Mexico, Indonesia, India, and other countries suggest that loan arrangements to local government should avoid creating a repayment burden for poor communities that hampers the start-up of CDD. d. Rural Finance and Access to Credit may require modification, such that communities can move from community development funds (revolving credit within villages) to existing rural credit schemes that are made more accessible to administrative villages and natural villages. 4. Consider the Application of CommunityDriven Development in Other Sectors PRC should also consider adopting the core CDD principles of community participation and mobilization, as well as community management of funds for other programs, that focus on national priorities, including disaster risk management/climate change adaptation, primary education and school construction, rural health (including HIV/AIDS prevention), housing, roads and bridges, rural electrification, water resource management, participatory forestry management, primary school construction, and agricultural extension and credit. Many of these programs are vertically implemented at the village level, and some apply participatory approaches, yet they can benefit from the same CDD principles, namely that village organizations offer a primary organizational unit in which community decision-making coupled with the provision of local funds ensures local ownership, greater transparency, and more effective development results for each sector. An example (provided in annex 3) shows that a CDD pilot in urban areas was also successful.
6. conclusions and Policy recommendations for the prc
33
Environmental sustainability and natural resource management warrants particular attention and integration with community-driven development at the village level, as not all pilot experiences have been positive. Local governments and village organizations should be encouraged to harmonize and integrate environmental protection efforts across administrative jurisdictionsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;that is, the township, the county, and the provinceâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;to respond to issues that affect watersheds and other geographic units. Cluster village organizations (e.g., at the valley level) offer an important layer of CDD governance that should be considered when scaling up efforts. Adapting to climate change, including global financing for carbon sequestration, presents an additional funding source and incentive for communities to conserve the environment. Climate change funds can complement CDD programs, providing there is adequate assistance from government for monitoring and reporting, because the requirements for evidence and reporting are beyond the means of communities. (Guidelines and tools are available at <http:// go.worldbank.org/T3HVM1IW00>.) Similarly, there are global funds available to protect biodiversity. These serve poverty reduction objectives, as communities traditionally living in and around biodiversity hotspots are often among the poorest rural groups. Special windows in CDD programs have proven to be an effective way to accomplish this goal in other countries.
Facilitation 5. Ensure Community Facilitation is Adequately Resourced In remote rural areas, the cost of facilitating, mobilizing, and training village organizations should not be underestimated. While some CDD models vary in their reliance on local government staff, NGO staff, or local cadres from
34
village organizations, the expenses required for facilitation and training should be fully provided for. International experience illustrates that proper community facilitation and mobilization has long-term social, economic, and governance benefits. The monitoring and evaluation program of the CDD pilots in the PRC has started to corroborate the international experience. Facilitation costs in the PRC can be cut significantly if government staff as well as NGOs or an autonomous organization are involved, which can progressively withdraw into training, monitoring and advisory roles. 6. Work With Nongovernmental Organizations Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) can be an important source of expertise for scaling up participatory community development through CDD, although local governments in PRCâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s CDD pilot did equally well. It is worth using the capacity of NGOs to assist local government in the implementation of CDD, but their mandate should be clear and their objective should be to impart community facilitation and management skills to local institutions, including village organizations. NGOs providing assistance for CDD should have adequate resources (such as staff and administrative capacity) and specialized skills (such as local languages and community facilitation), a clear plan for transferring skills and knowledge to local communities, as well as a gradual phaseout and handover strategy.
Livelihoods 7. Create Partnerships for market development International experience shows that for villagelevel organizations to move beyond subsistence and develop sustainable economic activities, they must build effective partnerships with
6. conclusions and Policy recommendations for the prc
buyers and markets in China and abroad. The role of the CDD program management has to evolve toward developing marketing chains to help the poor sell their produce. This often requires a new set of skills in CDD management. Partnering with private sector organizations is one way to bring in the skills in management and business development. The international examples of CDD implementation demonstrate that well-organized village organizations can mature into larger agglomerations of village organizations (for example, at the cluster or valley level). Similarly, village organizations can also mature into cooperatives with stable and rules-based decision making that allows them to manage a range of social and economic development functions within a community, from social service provision to cooperative product development and marketing. The examples of cooperatives in China and other countries worldwide should be further studied as a potential long-term outcome for village organizations that reach full maturity.
Knowledge Sharing 8. Continue to Share Knowledge on Community-Driven Development with the International Community
China has demonstrated some of the most impressive results worldwide in reducing poverty over the past two decades. As China commits itself to closing its last mile in poverty reduction, integrating community-driven development with its economic development approaches, many countries are eager to learn from its example. The International Conference on Community-Driven Development and Poverty Alleviation demonstrated that South-South learning events and learning exchanges provide powerful forums for the exchange of knowledge that will benefit the adaptation and application of CDD in China. China`s best practices, particularly its unique blend of a strong government role coupled with participatory community development, will provide important lessons for the consideration of other countries in their efforts to reduce poverty. It is recommended that China continue to be an active and leading member in the growing community of practice (CoP) around community-driven development. Use the results of the pilots in the short term to build awareness and establish the CoP. Study tours to pilot areas and overseas programs should be regular practice. In parallel to strategy and policy development, more needs to be done to create a shared vision among communities, facilitators and/or civil society, local governments, line ministries, and provincial and central government.
6. conclusions and Policy recommendations for the prc
35
Annexes
Annex 1. Summaries of Conference Presentations
T
he International Conference on Community-Driven Development and Rural Poverty Alleviation was held in Beijing on October 18 and 19, 2009. The China State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development (Foreign Capital Project Management Center), the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank hosted the conference. The Canadian International Development Agency cosponsored the conference. The conference was preceded by visits to the Pilot Community-Driven Development (CDD) programs in Nanchong Prefecture, Sichuan Province, and Baishui, Shaanxi Province. The conference brought together close to 200 participants from 12 countries, international organizations, as well as representatives from 21 provinces and many central ministries. There were leading experts and scholars, practitioners, supporters, and learners. All in fact were learners, as participants exchanged experiences and learned from each other through the presentations and the workshop, which was held on the afternoon of the second day. The objectives of the conference were to: a. Exchange global experiences and lessons of the community-driven development approach;
b. Foster the application of international CDD experiences to PRC; and c. Introduce the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) CDD experiences to the world. These objectives have been fully met as described in the proceedings.
Session1. Opening Remarks Opening remarks from leaders of the four sponsoring organizations are attached in Annex 3. All emphasized their support for the CDD approach, because, in the words of Ambassador Mulroney, “it works.” All spoke about the need to scale up results of the PRC pilot program and embed it at the policy level. Note: The actual presentations are available on the CD-ROM and can also be viewed on the website at <http://www.adb.org/Documents/Events/2009/CDD-Rural-Poverty-Alleviation/program.asp> and also at <http:// go.worldbank.org/QV3GJUXSB0>.
Annex 1. Summaries of Conference Presentations
39
Session 2. Keynote Speeches Reflections from the four keynote speakers provided the basis for the discussion during the conference. Zheng Wenkai, vice-director of the PRC’s State Council Leading Group of Poverty Alleviation and Development (LGOP), noted the nation’s remarkable progress in lifting the population out of poverty and said challenges remain for more equitable distribution of these gains. Some 40 million rural people are still classified as poor; the challenge is to offer them services and to improve their livelihoods, he said. A new roadmap for poverty reduction was adopted at the 17th CPC Central Committee. Zheng described a successful CDD pilot in 60 villages in four provinces and how the CDD principles fit with existing government strategies, policies, and laws. He outlined a vision for the future; that is, to i. Apply lessons from experiences in direct fund management by villages, project selection and decision making, public disclosure and the complaints mechanisms, government support mechanisms, and the simplification of procedures and efforts to cut project management costs. ii. Explore how the CDD pilot experience might apply to other government initiatives, including the Village Development Program, post-disaster and reconstruction, the Fifth Poverty Alleviation Project (with World Bank financing), and the Poor Village Cooperative Fund Pilot. iii. Strengthen cooperation with the international community by establishing a platform to serve as an international community of practice (CoP) on CDD.
40
Cyprian Fisiy, director of the World Bank Social Development Department, presented some global perspectives on CDD. The relevance of the CDD approach to help deliver what people need has been illustrated in the current economic crisis, where cash transfers have been made for labor-intensive construction of assets in stricken areas, and in the rising frequency of natural disasters, where it is applied as a rapid response mechanism, such as in the aftermath of the 2004 Asian tsunami. He also discussed the challenges and limitations of the CDD platform, noting the difficulty in applying it to an urban environment, where human networks may first have to be built. In the future, CDD platforms may become an anchor for enhancing participatory local development, social accountability, and good governance. They may evolve into national programs aligned to the budget processes of various ministries, he said. The creation of a global knowledge base and CoP also are important. Bart Édes, director for poverty reduction, gender and social development at the Asian Development Bank, identified the CDD approach as an instrument to achieve inclusive growth in Asia and highlighted lessons learned from the development institution’s CDD portfolio in the region. He urged the PRC to (a) anchor CDD in a broad strategy with an enabling framework for devolving responsibilities and financial management rules; (b) scale up CDD using available worldwide knowledge; and (c) work deliberately toward building consensus among stakeholders on the merits of the approach. He also recommended that the PRC government should link local-level funding sources with community development plans. Shoaib Sultan Khan, chairman of the National Rural Support Programme in Pakistan, reflected on his long career in community development and the incredible transformations that community mobilization can achieve. He related his experiences with the Aga Khan Support Program (AKSP), as well as the transformation of
Annex 1. Summaries of Conference Presentations
the Andhra Pradesh (India-AP) program from humble beginnings to its present reach, which now involves 10.2 million women.1 He argued for independent community support organizations to catalyze communities organizing themselves for their own development. For scaling up, he said the state must take the lead and provide funds, as no other organization is capable of doing so.
Session 3. Six Thematic Topics The chairs briefly introduced their themes and summarized the main points of the presentations. As there was no time for discussion from the floor, participants were asked to submit written questions to commence an electronic dialogue as the beginning of a CoP. None took this opportunity.
vincial or district governments, and between donor-financed operations and communities. (iv) Design considerations and innovations that ensure the effectiveness of CDD interventions. Presentation 1. Republic of Indonesia: CDD as a National Program. Sujana Royat, deputy to the Minister for Poverty Alleviation, Republic of Indonesia; Victor Bottini, senior social development specialist, World Bank; and Camilla Holmemo, poverty reduction specialist, ADB. Theme: Using multi-partner pooling of resources to support a national program. i. Pilots and scaling up CDD take time and effort; however, the returns are worth it. ii. It is essential for designers to pay close attention to simplifying procedures, especially in fund transfers and management.
Theme 1. National Strategies for Financing and Budgeting for CDD
iii. Consolidating different models of poverty reduction by different agencies and donors is challenging but possible. It is recommended the PRC transform its different programs into a national strategy for poverty reduction, with CDD as its centerpiece.
Wen Tiejun, a professor at Renmin University, PRC, chaired the topic. Presenters examined the experience and lessons from financing CDD operations in the PRC, Indonesia, and other countries. Various financing modes and resource transfer arrangements, and their evolution in Indonesia, were discussed. Also examined were:
iv. A multi-donor fund modelâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;as in Indonesia, where donors, governments, civil society, and private groups contribute skills, technical support, and project funds for CDDâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;may be an arrangement that the PRC can consider in scaling up.
i. The roles of different institutions, especially central and local governments and donors, in financing CDD. ii. Issues of scaling up, effectiveness, sustainability, and mechanisms to achieve social accountability. iii. Resource-transfer arrangements, especially those between national and pro-
This figure is from the notes of B. Rajsekhar, chief executive officer of the Society for Elimination of Povery (SERP) in Andhra Predesh. Rajsekhar was unavailable to deliver the presentation.
1
Annex 1. Summaries of Conference Presentations
41
Presentation 2. The PRC: Experience with Poor Rural Community Development Fund Pilots. Xu Hui, director of the Department of Planning and Financing, LGOP. One element of many CDD programs is the provision of a grant to the community—the Community Development Fund (CDF)—that the community can use as a revolving fund for making loans to various groups. The Mutual Aid Fund Pilot Project in poverty-stricken villages covered 8,009 villages in 28 provinces. About one-third were fostered by the central government and two-thirds by local governments. Theme: Building social cohesion in mutual aid organizations and lending programs. i. Social mobilization is an important element to build ownership of proposals to form mutual aid cooperatives as communities compete for the privilege to participate. This builds social cohesion and strengthens social accountability. While facilitation takes longer than in other programs, it is required in order to fully engage communities in the development process. Investing in social preparation that helps build social cohesion is a necessary element of successful scaling up. ii. The legal status of community groups needs to be addressed in CDD operations. This is a policy consideration to ensure that communities or community-based organizations are recognized as legal entities to manage funds from the government. Capacity building support must also be provided, especially in managing funds. iii. Scaling up of a mutual aid organizations’ lending program is dependent on the local context and cannot be applied in every situation. Some communities
42
already have access to the private financial market; others have no productive capacity. Studies on the context and relations and interactions within communities must be undertaken as part of the program design. iv. Targeting can be improved. v. Links with the financial sector need to be established. Presentation 3. Accountability, Flow of Funds and Financing of Community-Driven Development. Hans P. Binswanger-Mkhize, South Africa. Theme: Promoting international best practice in financing arrangements for CDD. i. The direct disbursement of untied funds to be managed by communities is the preferred model to improve empowerment and accountability. ii. An increased role for local governments in CDD approaches, tied to broader decentralization, leads to better sustained systems and scalable programs. Parallel operations tend to be unsustainable. iii. The role of NGOs is in the facilitation of community processes and technical support, not as a channel for funds. The distribution of funds through NGOs contributes to disempowerment of communities and of local institutions and governments.
Theme 2. CDD and Improved Public Service Delivery Through CDD Tang Min, deputy secretary general of the People’s Republic of China Development Research
Annex 1. Summaries of Conference Presentations
Foundation, chaired discussions on the topic. CDD is known worldwide for its simple and innovative approaches to delivering services and small-scale infrastructure to the poor. Reliance on community decision-making ensures that actions are responsive to local needs and that services can be delivered transparently and efficiently. Improving the service-delivery relationship between communities and local governments is, however, essential if CDD is to have an impact over the long term. Communities and local government need clear agreements that identify their service delivery roles, responsibilities and accountabilities. Other issues on delivering services include: ensuring disbursement of funds to local communities is transparent and accountable; matching community-level demand with suppliers in local government or agencies; strengthening the ability of local government to support CDDbased service delivery; and devolving local responsibilities and budgets while scaling up. Case studies from the Philippines and Morocco illustrated these lessons, while the experience of Pakistan and Afghanistan illustrated the importance of community mobilization. Presentation 1. Enhancing Public Service Delivery Through CDD: the KALAHI-CHIDSS experience. Lualhati Pablo, undersecretary, Department of Social Welfare and Development, the Philippines. Theme: Creating community demand for services can strengthen the capacity of local governments to meet it. i. A policy and legal framework to institutionalize and integrate the processes, funds flow, and locally created units into the local government structures and processes must be created for effective scaling up. ii. Capacity building and technical support
should be provided not only to communities and community-based organizations, but also to local governments and other service providers. iii. International partnerships for knowledge exchange, technical assistance, and financing are key factors in scaling up. Presentation 2. Morocco: Improving Service Delivery Through a Participatory Approach for the National Initiative for Human Development (INDH). Mohamed Medouar, senior rural development specialist, World Bank, and Souleimane El Hajjam, deputy director INDH, National Initiative for Human Development, Ministry of Interior, Morocco. Theme: Decentralization can be strengthened through participatory development focusing on the most vulnerable and their needs for services and livelihood improvements. i. Giving people the space and financial resources to develop their own ideas through bottom-up planning is more effective than centrally driven planning and implementation. ii. Bottom-up planning is possible even on a grand scale; political leadership from the very top (the King) was key to driving the participatory process and the transformation of a bureaucracy. iii. The risk of elite capture is real in CDD projects; strengthening communities through capacity building and facilitation is important in minimizing it. iv. Simplification of rules and procedures is a challenging but necessary part of effective scaling up. Presentation 3. Participatory Governance: Experience of Aga Khan Development Organiza-
Annex 1. Summaries of Conference Presentations
43
tions in Central and South Asia. Henri Suter, regional programme advisor (Asia), Aga Khan Foundation Rural Development Program. Theme: Community mobilization strengthens decision making and governance, and the best incentive for people to embrace it is to improve their access to services that can be completed without grants. i. Comprehensive plans should be the focus of community development interventions rather than one-off project-type interventions. ii. CDD approaches encourage communitiesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; continued engagement, ensuring improved access to services through better participatory governance. iii. Facilitators/NGOs play an important role in making necessary connections to service providers and in the provision of technical and facilitation support.
Theme 3. CDD and Inclusion of Marginalized Groups: Practical Experiences and Implications in Poor and Ethnic Minority Areas Wan Guanghua, senior poverty reduction specialist, ADB, chaired the topic. CDD practitioners assert the approach is able to target and benefit poor and traditionally excluded sectors of communities, including women and ethnic minorities. Key factors that lead to success are the mechanisms used for targeting groups, differentiated social mobilization or facilitation methods, and the ability to simplify and adapt programs to specific situations. The session examined the experience and lessons of different CDD projects targeting the poor and its effectiveness in promoting inclu-
44
sion, especially in ethnic minority areas. Examples of targeting methodologies and social mobilization tools used in CDD approaches were presented. Case studies from the PRC, Ethiopia, and Pakistan presented challenges in designing and putting programs into action. The successful use of NGOs as facilitators was highlighted in one presentation, while the case from Ethiopia focused more on overcoming the difficulties of reaching an ethnically diverse and geographically dispersed population, where livelihoods as pastoralists are under increasing ecological pressure. Presentation 1. Community-Driven Development: ADB Country Experience in Pakistan and the PRC. Betty Wilkinson, senior finance specialist, ADB. Theme: Investing the time in working with all stakeholders in difficult circumstances pays dividends. i. Civil society organizations play an important role as third-party facilitators and in providing technical and facilitation support. ii. Flexibility in project rules, especially in projects with ethnic minorities or in areas with marginalized people, assures better inclusion. Rules must be adjusted to suit the needs and the circumstances of the power relations and population. Simplifying processes where necessary allows for increased participation. iii. Marginalized areas and ethnic minorities require more intensive support because of lower capacities in the areas. Presentation 2. Overview of Achievements and Challenges in Implementing CDD Projects in Pastoral Communities: The Pastoral Community Development Project in Ethiopia. Assefa Tewodros, coordinator, Pastoral Community Development Program, Ethiopia.
Annex 1. Summaries of Conference Presentations
Theme: Focusing a CDD program on one target group, in this case poor pastoralists, allows for adaptations to fit their circumstances; for example, interventions to reduce environmental vulnerability, mobile support teams, and disaster management in times of drought. i. Issues to pay attention include low capacities, limited policy framework, the absence of an annual plan and budget at local government level, and elite capture. ii. CDD must be adjusted to the situation of each country and be sensitive to cultural practices. The involvement of customary institutions is important. iii. Links with markets and financial institutions are necessary to create incomegenerating schemes. Presentation 3. Piloting CDD with Ethnic Minorities in the PRC. Wang Tiezhi, counsel, Economy and Development Department from State Ethnic Affairs Commission, PRC. Wang Tiezhi presented the results of a two-year (2008–09) CDD demonstration pilot in 60 villages in two ethnic minority areas (Xinjiang and Yunnan provinces). “Bottom-to-top” project selection improved grassroots democracy, and the ethnic minority population’s ability to achieve results was enhanced by participatory and technical training and the strengthening of community organizations. Transferring ownership of the community development fund transformed the roles of local government and communities. Also, government staff learned new roles and adopted a service-driven attitude. The State Ethnic Affairs Commission staff learned by doing and will apply the same methodology to other eligible ethnic minority areas. The lessons learned from this were: i. Continued support for capacity build-
ing is necessary in ethnic minority and poor areas; low population densities and modest transportation networks create special challenges for community mobilization and participation. ii. Designers of CDD programs serving ethnic minorities need to be sensitive to the challenges to honor and protect their cultures and bring about transformation through the CDD approach. Translating materials into language that poor and marginalized people can understand is necessary for real participation to occur. iii. Participation of communities enhances their relations with local authorities. Different institutional arrangements should, however, be tested to see what works well to encourage greater participation (twinning between poor and better-off households; rotating and cellbased group lending; village collective economic associations; tripartite arrangement among farmers, village associations, and markets.)
Theme 4. Environmental Protection Elements in CDD John Leigh, human development adviser, United Kingdom Department for International Development, chaired the topic. CDD programs have not consistently included an environmental focus beyond the principle of “do no harm” at the most elementary level. Yet there are examples where environmental protection has been the main objective and CDD has been used to achieve it. The Himachal Pradesh program (India-HP) focused on overall watershed management, erosion control, and livelihood improvements. The case from the Hai Basin in the PRC focused on groundwater and irrigation management in the pilot area, again with income and livelihood objectives. The rural PNPM in Indonesia is also moving in this direction, us-
Annex 1. Summaries of Conference Presentations
45
ing CDD principles of the nationwide PNPM but including a special window for its green focus. The objective of those CDD programs is to make communities guardians of their environment and biodiversity. Whether this takes the form of natural resource management, such as a preservation of watersheds and forests, or more specifically, in the conservation of specific elements of biodiversity, such experiences have rich lessons. Presentation 1. Mid-Himalayan Watershed Development Project in Himachal Pradesh. R.K. Kapoor, chief project director, Mid-Himalayan Watershed Project, Himachal Pradesh, India. Theme: CDD is a good approach to organize people living within a watershed and can combine mobilization with livelihood improvements and environmental conservation. Opportunities for involvement in global carbon financing will provide income to individuals and communities and reinforce motivations to protect the environment. i. Applying the CDD approach to administratively subdivided ecological regions is challenging, as is organizing across local government boundaries around natural resource endowments or watersheds. ii. (ii) Organizing user groups ensures that those who benefit from their immediate environment have access, control, and management. iii. (iii) Linking efforts at conservation and protection with enterprises is an incentive for communities to become active guardians of their environments. iv. (iv) A clear definition of roles in memorandums of agreement and in programs involving multiple parties helps ensure that environmental protection goals succeed.
46
Presentation 2. The Achievement and Effectiveness of the CDD Pilot in the Haihe Water Resource and Water Environment Management Project. Li Yonggen, deputy director of Global Environment Facility (GEF) Haihe Project Office. Theme: The CDD pilot in a GEF-financed water resource protection project has been replicated elsewhere in the PRC. It succeeded because it took one step beyond participatory approaches already practiced in water management. i. Organizing the community and clarifying responsibilities is important to ensure operational effectiveness. ii. Information dissemination and capacity building must be part of the design, especially when behavioral change is targeted (such as for water conservation or water and sanitation projects). iii. While local knowledge is powerful and appropriate in most cases, technical support is required to ensure projects are feasible. An effective mechanism in the PRC experience is the local planningâ&#x20AC;&#x201C; technical feedback loop. Presentation 3. Community-Driven Conservation: Putting Conservation into CDD. Anthony Whitten, senior biodiversity specialist, World Bank. Theme: It takes special efforts to put conservation into the CDD approach, but it can be done. i. It is essential that all parties and sectors do what they can to stem the loss of biodiversity. The problem is too great to be left to grants from external donors. ii. Much of the pressure would be removed if biodiversity resources were protected from harvest by external agents and left for use by communities who tradition-
Annex 1. Summaries of Conference Presentations
ally have benefited from them. iii. People living closest to areas of biodiversity are generally among the poorest in rural areas—and therefore the focus for many CDD projects—but are in the best position to act as protectors and guardians of biodiversity, since natural resources are their traditional buffer in times of hardship. iv. Community grants for conservation activities could be considered using the mechanisms of CDD. These would be most effective if focused geographically and may need some modest time commitment from the community. v. Indonesia’s PNPM program has shown environmentally sensitive projects can be very popular among the larger donors. vi. The allocation of funds to each subdistrict (or equivalent) could be calculated from current knowledge of the distribution of biodiversity and its status. vii. Environmental and biodiversity conservation could be institutionalized within CDD designs. viii. There is a need to explore whether payments to communities will be effective in the conservation of biodiversity.
Theme 5. Improving Livelihoods Through CDD Tarik Khan, counsellor (Development), Embassy of Canada, chaired the topic. CDD programs everywhere invariably face one of a community’s main concerns: how do we improve our livelihoods? Some programs have more restrictive menus and do not offer communities the choice to use the grants for livelihood improve-
ments. Many others have allowed funds to be successfully used for livelihood improvements. The modalities employed to organize communities to take advantage of such grants differ significantly. Choices are made to target groups within communities that would be eligible for grants: the poorest, women, those who grow a certain crop or receive irrigation water may, for example, be considered. Experience shows that all CDD programs generally succeed in creating social capital. Leveraging that into economic capital is the challenge and is tackled differently in different continents. In India-AP, the entire program was focused on empowering women for their social and economic development and soon women’s groups started to use federation and better links to markets to leverage their individual economic activities. In Brazil, the CDD program allowed individual communities to make productive investments from the start, and lately also moved toward federation. In Nigeria, the Fadama program also focuses on productive infrastructure, helping to build the required networks to access markets and rural finance. Finally the Chinese Cooperative Project showed how CDD principles could be harnessed to a cooperative structure to create powerful product-specific value chains. Presentation 1. Comprehensive Poverty Eradication Through Social Mobilization and Empowerment of Rural Poor Women. B. Rajsekhar, additional chief executive officer, Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty, Andhra Pradesh, India. The presentation was delivered by Shoaib Sultan Khan, who formerly worked in Andhra Pradesh. Theme: The building of social capital by the poorest, especially women, then converting this into economic capital can bring empowerment, increased production and income, and a reduction in vulnerability. i. Significant advantages, including greater
Annex 1. Summaries of Conference Presentations
47
negotiating power in commercial transactions and obtaining financial resources, accrue when community institutions are organized into larger federations. ii. The private sector brings in significant contributions as a partner, not only in providing the market but also financing and skills for entrepreneurship. iii. Governments play a critical role in linking and scaling up similar initiatives, creating the necessary policy environment and connections to service providers across sectors, as well as financing the social mobilization efforts; in this case, an independent agency. Presentation 2. Nigeria: Fadama (Watershed) Presentation. Bukar Tijani, director of the Fadama program in Nigeria. Theme: This CDD program provides user groups rather than communities with resources, both technical and financial. The user groups “federate” into a community association. i. Block grants to user groups allow them to purchase the best and most appropriate services they require (including extension and technical, from public as well as private sources). ii. The project role is crucial in building links to formal and informal financial institutions and providing technical expertise to help user groups develop their enterprises. iii. A separate window, financed by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), allows for environmentally focused subprojects and payments for carbon sequestration. Presentation 3. Brazil: Challenges for Production, Marketing, and Poverty Alleviation. Ed-
48
ward Bresnyan, senior rural development specialist, World Bank. Theme: In mature CDD programs, communities evolve toward livelihoods projects. CDD support organizations will need different skill sets and partnerships to assist. i. “Productive” subprojects create a need for marketing chains, with the private sector playing a significant role. ii. Management information system (MIS) support provides relevant market-production driven information, identifying potential and actual suppliers and markets. iii. Well-organized support systems—forums with private sector, MIS, technology, aggregating—and good links with markets improve the potential to scale up small enterprises servicing both local and international markets. These aren’t easy to establish, however. Presentation 4. PRC: Farmers’ Cooperatives in Zhejiang Province. Tong Rihui, section chief of the Agriculture Bureau of Zhejiang Province . Theme: Farmer cooperatives could play a role in “federating” income-generating groups in CDD programs and linking them with finance and markets. i. Multiple players, coordinating toward a common objective, are essential in a successful livelihood program. The state sets the policy and recognizes the status of special farmers’ cooperatives. Rural credit cooperatives extend financing, specialized cooperatives organize the production side, provinces top up the support fund through the poverty alleviation fund, and agricultural extension agencies provide technical support. ii. Cooperatives can link rural families to
Annex 1. Summaries of Conference Presentations
markets, aggregate production, ensure quality, and enhance competitiveness of otherwise small-scale production units. iii. Constant support to maintain solidarity among cooperative members sustains the gains.
Theme 6. Monitoring and Evaluation in CDD Hans Binswanger-Mkhize, independent consultant, South Africa, chaired the topic. CDD programs are often justly criticized for their lack of effective monitoring and evaluation (M&E). This has hampered evidence-based discussion of their impact compared to more traditional top-down sector approaches to development. Experience in Indonesia showed the importance of having impact data in discussions to scale up programs nationwide. In an era where much attention is given to achieving Millennium Development Goal targets, being able to show CDD’s measurable results for service delivery and poverty reduction is important. Equally important is the ability to show the impact of community empowerment. Presentation 1. Monitoring and Evaluation for CDD Operations: Lessons Learned. Susan Wong, senior social development specialist, World Bank. Theme: Incorporate M & E at the outset and it will pay off in the long run; obtain services from the right experts. i. M&E informs policy and decision making for a scaled up program and a feedback loop must be well-established. For scaling up in the PRC, lessons generated from the M&E system of the CDD pilots should inform scaling-up steps and policies. ii. Complaint mechanisms affect people’s behavior toward better participation
and lower corruption. Presentation 2. Monitoring and Evaluating the Results of CDD Pilots in the PRC. Xu Xiaoqing, deputy director, Research Department of Rural Economy of DRC, the PRC. Theme: Every PRC CDD pilot was appropriately monitored; baseline, mid-term, and final evaluations were conducted. The complaint system was particularly helpful in mitigating problems before they became crises. This will provide a good basis for scaling up the nation’s CDD.
Session 4. Wrap-Up and Closing Session Tan Weiping, International Cooperation and Social Mobilization Department, LGOP, closed the conference, declared it met all objectives and summarized the conclusions that had emerged for the PRC: i. While PRC started late with CDD operations, they have succeeded and one can rely on the approach. ii. The approach is particularly helpful for the PRC to mobilize and engage the poor in self-development. iii. Projects need to be localized; the CDD approach must be adapted to local conditions when scaled up. iv. The PRC will need to strengthen international cooperation with the World Bank and ADB and obtain more financial and human resources, and especially obtain more training. Tan thanked the sponsoring organizations, the organizing team, and the many staff who made the conference possible.
Annex 1. Summaries of Conference Presentations
49
The groups’ discussions and recommendations overlapped; the learning has been integrated into the section on conclusions and recommendations. Cyprian Fisiy summarized the lessons participants took from the three workshops into the following five points: The need for a Global Community of Practice (CoP). Given the interest and broad spectrum of issues discussed during the conference, it was evident that we need to establish a CoP bringing together people from academia, policymakers, field practitioners, and other non-state actors, including NGOs.
Post-Conference Workshops The conference was followed by workshops that focused on three sets of questions with the aim to draw out international best practice. Workshop 1: Exchanging international experiences What are the international experiences applicable in the PRC? What would participants recommend, in the short, medium, and long term? Workshop 2: Improving livelihoods through CDD What are the main lessons from the conference for using CDD to improve livelihoods and incomes in the PRC? What are the main challenges and what would you recommend now and in the medium and long term? Workshop 3: Scaling up CDD in the PRC What are the main issues in expanding CDD in the PRC? How can they be addressed in all time frames?
50
Scaling-up and institutionalizing CDD approaches in the PRC. Scaling up will require rigorous M&E that itself makes a compelling case for institutionalization. The long-term reward of this shift is to move from a “project model” to a “national planning model” whereby CDD funding goes on budget. Rural Development Reform Agenda. The entry point to influence this agenda is the 10-year poverty reduction program. This will require the following shifts: (a) simplifying flows of funds to allow for resources (block grants) to move down to the community level; (b) enhancing the process dimensions of CDD, which call for intense community-based participatory processes; and (c) better alignment of participatory planning processes with budget flows. Economic Empowerment of the Poor. By building institutions of the poor, we enhance forward linkages to markets through better organization and quality enhancement and backward linkages to farmers through technical/extension support. CDD and Environmental Externalities. The government of the PRC is keen to use the CDD approach to mobilize communities to fight environmental degradation.
Annex 1. Summaries of Conference Presentations
Annex 2. Comparative tables
This section is designed to help the reader draw comparisons about the commonalities and differences between the approaches and objectives of CDD programs presented at the conference. The five tables show: Table Table Table Table Table
1. Basic Project/Program Characteristics 2. Community Mobilization, Facilitation, and Training 3. Program Architecture and Flow of Funds 4. Field-Level Accountability Mechanisms 5. Funding Sources
Table 1 shows that most of the programs featured at the conference can be characterized as mature or repeat programs, with the exception of the PRC pilots and the recently started Green PNPM program in Indonesia. Even India-HP repeats a project that initially covered eight states. Most of the programs (apart from Morocco, which is in its first phase) employed evaluation systems of good-to-average quality, and therefore produced more than just monitoring data alone. This provides the basis for trust in the viability of the lessons explored at the conference. CDD programs are presented in the table in an order that requires some explanation. The projects are grouped according to four distinct approaches and their objectives:
Approach 1. Programs with a primary focus on community mobilization, as exemplified by the Aga Khan Rural Support Program (AKRSP). Approach 2. Programs with a primary focus on subprojects executed by the community and financed by outside funds, such as the approach presented by Brazil. Approach 3. Mobilization of communities as a means to strengthen local government decentralization and introduce the participatory approach, as illustrated by Morocco. Approach 4. The full CDD platform, where strong community mobilization goes hand-in-hand with the provision of funds for subprojects, and capacity building to strengthen decentralized local government also plays a major role.
Annex 2. Comparative Tables
51
Examples of this approach include programs in Indonesia, the Philippines, and the PRC’s CDD Pilot and Ethnic Minority Areas Pilot. We then present the more specialized projects that either build on or use the CDD platform: Nigeria to improve livelihoods, the two watershed programs (India-HP and the Hai Basin in the PRC), and the Green PNPM program in Indonesia. Finally, we present the PRC Village Mutual Aid Finance Pilot.
Table 1. Basic
project or
program characteristics The first feature highlighted is the different content of the CDD programs. Six observations emerge: i. Almost all have as an objective to empower the community through facilitation; some only aim for community participation (Morocco and the Hai Basinin the PRC) ii. Many enable communities to improve infrastructure either for social purposes to improve services—such as health, education, water, in Ethiopia, Indonesia, Morocco, and the Philippines—or for productive purposes—as in Indonesia and Fadama, Nigeria—to provide producers better conditions to improve their livelihoods (markets, storage facilities, irrigation canals, as well as common village enterprises). Many infrastructure investments made by communities everywhere in the world— such as footbridges and roads—will serve both purposes.
able groups features in almost all of the CDD programs presented. Women are by far the largest vulnerable group, and special attention is invariably paid during facilitation to their inclusion. India-AP focuses on the creation of self-help groups for women as its most basic community empowerment tool. CDD programs differ in rules and procedures about the inclusion (of voices) of vulnerable groups, be they women, youth (Ethiopia, India-AP, Indonesia, and Morocco), ethnic minorities (the PRC and India-HP), or pastoralists (India-HP, Fadama, and Ethiopia’s CDD program, which is solely focused on pastoralists). Some programs target other vulnerable groups such as homeless orphans in Morocco, or female-headed households in Indonesia’s PNPM. v. A natural resource management (NRM) objective is present in some CDD programs. Three specific NRM programs (the PRC, Hai Basin; India-HP Watershed; and Indonesia’s Green PNPM) use different modalities for working with communities. This is also true of the NRM objectives of drought management in Ethiopia and the GEF-financed component of Fadama in Nigeria. However, common features include: a. Technical staff built additional facilitation and explicit community education and training into the programs. b. There are additional funds available for community and inter-community works; community contributions for NRM (from zero to about 5 percent of project costs) are lower for such investments in order to compensate for the externalities involved.
iii. Not all CDD programs have as their explicit objective to improve livelihoods; some endeavor to alleviate poverty through improved service delivery only. However, no such cases were presented at the conference. iv.
52
Social protection or inclusion of vulner-
c. Many programs pay for the labor involved in NRM, generating employment and income for communities. iv.
Two programs presented their arrange-
Annex 2. Comparative Tables
Table 1. Basic Project
or
Program Characteristics
Project or Program
When started
Lead institution
Responsibility for community mobilization: Support organization(s)
Coverage
Objectives
Activities supported
What is being funded
Pakistan AKRSP
1982
AKF
AKRSP
Gilgit, Baltistan, Chittral
Rural development via community mobilization
Mobilization, livelihood infrastructure, NRM
Mobilization
India
1995
Andhra Pradesh State
SERP
Statewide
Women’s empowerment Poverty reduction
Productive and social investments
Mobilization Individual investments
Brazil
1992
State governments
State technical units
10 states, Northeast Brazil
Poverty reduction
Infrastructure Livelihoods
Community activities
Morocco
2005
Ministry of Interior
None
Countrywide, rural and urban
Reduction of poverty, social exclusion, vulnerability
Local governance Infrastructure, social services, culture, sport
Capacity development, community activities
Indonesia PNPM (Rural)
1998
Ministry of Home Affairs
Provincial governments recruit the facilitators
National, rural
Empowerment, decentralization poverty reduction, access to services
Mobilization, infrastructure, NRM, livelihood, social
Mobilization, community activities
Philippines
2002
Department of Social Welfare
Project Unit in DSW with training arrangements with local governments (LG)
Poverty targets: 184 municipalities, 4,229 communities
Empowerment of communities, LG capacity building, poverty reduction, social service delivery
Community mobilization, infrastructure, community enterprises, capacity building,
All
People’s Republic of China (PRC) CDD pilot
2005
LGOP, provincial, local governments
NGOs in three counties, local government in one county
Pilots in 60 villages in four provinces
Cut poverty by helping villages manage their development; improvements to infrastructure and public services
Infrastructure Livelihoods Environment
Mobilization, community activities, private investments/goods
PRC Ethnic Minorities pilot
2006
State Ethnic Minority Affairs Commission
Local government
60 villages in two provinces
Poverty reduction, capacity building, empowerment
Infrastructure, livelihoods
Mobilization, capacity building, subproject block grants
Ethiopia Pastoral
2003
Ministry of Federal Affairs
Project staff
55 pastoral woredas (districts) out of 138 in four states
Public service delivery, livelihoods, disaster management
Mobilization; infrastructure and livelihoods through community investment fund; disaster preparedness through risk management fund
Mobilization Investments for communities; disaster preparedness (inter)- community investments
Nigeria Fadama
2003
Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources
Fadama staff at LG level, NGOs
National
Rural poverty reduction and income diversification; capacity building and empowerment of rural producers; NRM
Group-owned productive invesments; productive infrastructure; individual credit for producers; capacity building
Mobilization, group assets, knowledge, credit
(cont’d pg. 55)
Annex 2. Comparative Tables
53
ments with the Carbon Financing Facility to bring a steady stream of funding in return for communities carrying out conservation work and carbon sequestration (India-HP and Fadama, Nigeria). This is an attractive source of perpetual income for communities, but requires negotiating capacity beyond their capacity and is therefore best done by more mature CDD programs with strong national administrative capacity. Once the negotiations are done, central administration should only facilitate the required reporting, but not build in layers of administration that could â&#x20AC;&#x153;eat upâ&#x20AC;? the community benefits. India-HP presented the community benefit to be about $150 per hectare per year, based on a price of $10 per ton of carbon dioxide sequestered. While reforestation is the most obvious target, garbage disposal in urban communities can also generate sequestration income. The second feature highlighted by the organization of programs in Table 1 is arrangements for community mobilization. Comparisons identified four common threads and pointed to one distinct achievement: i. Careful mobilization and organization alone can lead to community empowerment and motivate improvements in each of the CDD platform areas: livelihoods, infrastructure, service delivery, and/or social protection. The AKRSP programs in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia are the most important examples built on this approach. Communities prepare two project lists, one they can implement without outside resources, such as improvements in resource management or environmental management, and another for projects that require outside resources. They immediately implement those projects that do not need outside resources. Under this approach, all community needs are included in the priority list, not just infrastructure and productive projects. The benefits of broadening priority lists of all community needs to include those for which no outside resources are required is a key lesson of
54
the conference. It gets around one of the main concerns expressed by participants; namely, that funds from international finance organizations are often slow in being made available to CDD programs. ii. Many CDD programs focus on facilitation only for the decision making pertaining to funds or grants that will be provided, as in the case of the Brazil and PRC projects. As a consequence, the fundamental lesson of what the community can do for itself is sometimes forgotten, and long-term sustainability of village organizations may be jeopardized. Nevertheless, resources are a powerful means for inducing and accelerating community mobilization. Brazil, through an information and communication campaign, provides enough incentives for communities to come up with project proposals by themselves. Evaluation studies have shown that social capital increases as a result of community participation and the formation of community associations to manage community assets, which in turn is strongly associated with increased trust, solidarity, and cooperation.2 However, on average, each community in Brazil has implemented only 1.2 subprojects. In addition, a low mobilization effort may lead to dependence on outside forces. Evaluation studies in Brazil, in the first phase, noted a high correlation between water-hole drilling companies providing information and communities choosing to apply for a borehole project. iii. In highly centralized countries, participatory approaches may be introduced as part of a reform of local governance. In Morocco, using community mobilization and participation as a new task for local governments is an approach that will force behavioral changes in institutions often highly resistant to change. In many CDD programs, local governments are brought
Binswanger-Mkhize, Hans, et al. 2009. Rural Poverty Reduction in Northeast Brazil: An Evaluation of Community-Driven Development. Washington, DC: World Bank.
2
Annex 2. Comparative Tables
(cont’d)
Table 1. Basic Project
or
Program Characteristics
Project or Program
When started
Lead institution
Responsibility for community mobilization: Support organization(s)
Coverage
Objectives
Activities supported
What is being funded
PRC, GEF Haihe watershed project
2005
Ministry of Water Resources
Local project office recruits staff from local government and line agencies; university staff gave PRA training
Pilot in two counties
Integrated water resource and environmental management in the Hai Basin
Mobilization, water conservation, pollution control, livelihoods, creation of Water User Associations
Mobilization and capacity building on water management cropping pattern adjustment. Project funds irrigation facilities, greenhouses etc., but not through community organization
India, HP, Watershed
2005
HP Natural Resource Management Society
NGOs and project staff
272 watersheds, one-third of state; 4,680 villages, 602 LG, 10 districts, 250,000 families
Reverse watershed degradation; improve productive potential of watershed resources; increase livelihoods of rural population watershed conservation; integrate vulnerable groups
Community mobilization and organization;selfhelp group creation, capacity building; technical interventions for watershed conservation; livelihoods improvements
Mobilization; community development fund; infrastructure, plantations, irrigation, sustainable agriculture etc. Capacity building and facilitation for new technical skills (e.g. marketing)
Indonesia, PNPM, Green
2007
Ministry of Home Affairs
Provincial governments recruit “green” facilitators, some from NGOs.
10 Provinces
NRM/Conservation, micro-hydro schemes, renewable energy; will lead to livelihood improvements
Community awareness and mobilization; micro-hydro, renewable energy projects, and biodiversity conservation projects
Community mobilization, investments
PRC, Mutual Aid Fund Pilot
20062009
Department of Agriculture of Ministry of Finance and LGOP
Project office staff at county and township level
20 villages in two counties: Wangcang in Sichuan Province, Ye County of Henan Province
Pilot objectives: does this model maximize poverty alleviation, is it sustainable and scalable? Is it the most productive balance between role of government and self-management of communities?
Mobilization to organize the Village Mutual Assistance Association (VMAA) and funding of Village Mutual Assistance Fund (VMAF)
Technical assistance VMAF
into the program only in a second phase, after the community mobilization and financing are well under way. This is not the best approach, as local governments feel bypassed if they do not control the funds or if the funds do not flow through them, making it difficult to engender them to change. Involving local governments from the start—as coordinators, facilitators, and as providers of technical services—motivates them to back the approach. A full-fledged
LCDD approach can provide incentives—such as additional conditional performance-based grants or transfers—to local governments that perform well with the CDD platform in their jurisdiction. The case of the Philippines, where local governments took responsibility for public services in the nineties but lacked the funds and means to effectively deliver them, is an example of how the injection of funds to communities can set up a mechanism for a much more par-
Annex 2. Comparative Tables
55
ticipatory, stronger, and more responsive local government. iv. Most mature CDD programs combine community mobilization with the provision of funds to communities and linkages to local governments. This is easiest in countries where decentralization is taking place (Ethiopia, Indonesia) or has already been implemented (the PRC, Philippines). The PRC Village Mutual Aid Finance Pilot is a case by itself. Like the Hai Basin watershed project, it uses participatory approaches. The pilot sought to experiment with communities managing rotating funds for members of self-help groups, a feature present in other CDD programs (India-AP and India-HP; Fadama in Nigeria). It demonstrated success in applying the principles and lessons of programs elsewhere.
Table 2. Community mobilization , facilitation , and training
Table 2 shows how the various projects and programs presented at the conference have organized the mobilization and facilitation relationships. There are three ways to facilitate: (1) provide information (as mentioned earlier in Brazil); (2) have state agencies play the role of community mobilizers and facilitators (the PRC Watershed and one county in the PRC CDD pilot, Ethiopia and Morocco); or (3) use outside agencies, such as NGOs (as in the other three counties in PRC’s CDD Pilot Project), or dedicated and specialized organizations (SERP in India-AP). Facilitation by state agencies has the advantage of sustainability. For instance, in many Latin American countries where there are Ministries of Community Development, the facilitators can be permanently embedded in the ministry struc-
56
ture. In other countries, Ministries of Decentralization could play this role (they seldom do so far); in Indonesia, it is the Ministry of Home Affairs, in Morocco the Ministry of Interior. The disadvantage is that public officials initially do not share the core beliefs about the poor (see below), or do not have the incentive structure in place that will reward them to behave in support of their clients, the communities they are to serve. Core beliefs about the poor • The poor have a strong desire and innate ability to come out of poverty • The poor have a strong sense of selfhelp and volunteerism • Obstacles — psychological, social, economic, political - suppress their innate capability • Social mobilization to unleash their innate abilities • The poor can come out of poverty only through their own institutions • Social mobilization — not automatic, needs to be induced • Hence, need for sensitive support institutions for the poor Source: B. Rajsekhar, Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty in Andhra Pradesh
The advantages of NGOs or other independent support organizations is that may indeed have the core beliefs about the poor in their mission statement as well as behavioral incentive structures for their staff.
Annex 2. Comparative Tables
Table 2. Community Mobilization, Facilitation,
and
Training
Project
Purpose of mobilization
Who mobilizes the community?
Who trains the community?
Who provides /technical support?
Tools of mobilization
Pakistan AKRSP
Rural Development
AKRSP
AKRSP
Different partner institutions, government
PRA
India, AP
People-centered poverty reduction; empowerment through self-managed groups; livelihood improvements through linkages to financial markets, private sector, IT; reduction of vulnerability; insurance
SERP, one mobilizer per 2,000 members
Community resource persons (para professionals accountable to selfhelp groups),
SERP, community resource persons, federations
PRA, facilitating group meetings, capacity building. Self-help group members are motivated to save money, to construct a budget and financial plan for households, obtain rotating credit. Self-help groups are motivated to act collectively to solve key issues, guided on collective action and formation of federations
Brazil
Empower communities to make investments
State Technical Units (STU) with NGO support
STU
STU extension services, communities, contracted technical services
Information campaigns, meetings, financial resources
Morocco
Empower communities and promote local governance
Ministry of Interior staff, local governments, NGO support
Local government staff, Social Development Agency staff, NGOs
Local facilitators connect to line ministries, microcredit associations
Information meetings, financial resources
Indonesia
Making community investments
Facilitators hired by provincial government
Facilitators, with some support by others
Field engineers hired by program and local technical agencies
Some PRA tools have been introduced
Philippines
Empower communities to make investment plans; to finance and implement some of the investments; to mobilize engagement of local governments
Community facilitators are staff of DSW, community volunteers
DSW and NGOs, some academia
DSW and local government engineering group NGOs in PRA
PRA tools to identify problems and action plans; village assemblies to select which projects compete and fit best into requirements for local development plans
PRC CDD pilot
Create awareness on communitiesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; responsibilities and accountability in CDD, and how they have opportunity to control resources
NGOs and/or local government
NGO or community facilitators trained by community organizations or local government
County technical committees and county staff help solve technical issues; NGOs support the CDD process
PRA
PRC Ethnic Minorities pilot
Community awareness about CDD processes
Local government
Same as above, but no NGOs
Local government
PRA
Ethiopia, Pastoral
Empower pastoral communities to make community investments
Project and district staff
Project and district staff, community staff (health education, animal health workers), civil society
Mobile support teams (from project staff) as extension service; support to community-level planning
PRA/PLA tools, capacity building (around disaster management)
Nigeria, Fadama
Organize producer groups and their community associations; provide capacity building on technical, social organization skills
NGOs, staff at Fadama desk in local government
NGOs, Fadama staff and Ministry of Agriculture staff from local and state government
Ministry of Agriculture and Fadama staff from local and state government
PRA; the identification of vulnerable groups; business planning for economic interest groups
(contâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d pg. 59)
Annex 2. Comparative Tables
57
The disadvantages are that they are dependent on funding and risk being displaced at a moment’s notice; hence there is a risk of low sustainability. Many international NGOs would also have multiple programs and program objectives and the mobilization may just be one of their contracts. National NGOs may be small and may need in-depth training in facilitation and mobilization. In Afghanistan, as reported by Henri Suter, the goal of relationships is to have the international and national NGOs train sufficient numbers of local and community facilitators to create a cadre to fill these roles. This principle was applied in the PRC pilots. Conference participants recommended that NGOs be sufficiently large and well-established with resources that they are dependable, that staff turnover be kept to a minimum, and that staff need to be fully conversant with local cultures and languages.
58
Regardless of who carries out facilitation, special considerations are required in dealing with marginalized groups. All facilitators should be sensitive to the circumstances of the marginalized, be it ethnicity, with different languages and cultures, or marginalized people who are actually from the dominant ethnic group in society, as is sometimes the case with street children. Language and cultural capability and above all an attitude of respect for the minority culture would have to be a first requirement. This would include respect for that culture’s power structure and engaging all the traditional leaders, including the spiritual ones (Ethiopia’s first pastoralist CDD program learned that lesson). Training of community facilitators from the marginalized group who can become interpreters between two cultures is a recommended way to deal with such community mobilization requirements, as done in the PRC’s CDD pilot for ethnic minorities.
Annex 2. Comparative Tables
(contâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d)
Table 2. Community Mobilization, Facilitation,
and
Training
Project
Purpose of mobilization
Who mobilizes the community?
Who trains the community?
Who provides /technical support?
Tools of mobilization
PRC Watershed pilot
Communities decide technical and behavioral changes needed around evapotranspiration and water savings and cropping patterns; training changes behavior in water, irrigation, farming skills and to organize WUA
Project unit, with local government technicians trained in PRA
Social scientists for PRA; technicians from line agencies
Line agencies; water resources and agriculture
Capacity building at community level, PRA
India, HP Watershed
Make communities aware of the potential of watershed if behaviors change; mobilize self-help groups and producer organizations; impart technical skills
NGOs, society staff
Society staff with line ministry staff
Line agencies
PRA, technical skill training;
Indonesia PNPM (Rural)
Make community investments in NRM, micro-hydro, renewable energy, conservation, and biodiversity
Facilitators hired by provincial government; primarily from environmental Community Support Organizations
Facilitators, with some support by others
Field engineers hired by program and local technical agencies
Some PRA tools introduced; CSOs raised environmental awareness
PRC Mutual Aid Fund Pilot Project
Mobilize targeted villages to submit a competitive bid to participate in the pilot VMAF through preliminary implementation proposals
Facilitators from communities, trained by the project implementation team (PIT)
Community facilitators
PIT and county technical officers
Participatory approaches in the villages and, once bid won, to prepare the VMAA and elect its board and officers
Annex 2. Comparative Tables
59
Table 3. Program
tutional sustainability. The Gram Panchayat has three levels, village (or group of small villages), subdistrict, and district.
architecture and the flow of funds This table shows the vast variety of ways community priorities are funded. The most common and also the recommended approach is that communities are fully empowered to hold the accounts and to spend from them. However, several programs held accounts at levels above the community itself (Morocco, and the Hai Basin in the PRC). The Himachal Pradesh project in India specifically moved toward placing the account at the Gram Panchayat level instead of the community level, as had been done in the preceding CDD project to ensure greater insti-
In all CDD programs, the communities presented the proposals; however, they are not always approved at the level immediately above, such as the subdistrict. In some cases, several authorities are involved in the approval process. Devolution of approval of communities’ proposals to the lowest possible level will allow greater empowerment and decentralization. The drawback is that authorities one level higher than communities do not always have the technical capacity to review proposals, and that special attention has to be paid to ensure that such expertise is made available to ensure sustainabil-
Table 3. Program Architecture
and
Flow
of
Funds
Project
Management levels
Management of funds
Proposal generation
Approval
Budget envelope
Formal upward reporting
Pakistan AKRSP
Village Organization AKRSP
Community
Community
AKRSP
None
AKRSP AKF
India
Self-help groups Village organization Sub-districts District
Self-help group
Individuals with support of the groups
Self-help groups
None
Probably not, as all accountability is within the SHG and its federations.
Brazil
Community Association, Municipal Development Council (MDC), State Technical Unit (STU)
Community Association
Community Association, Prioritization by MDC
MDC, Technical approval and no objection at STU level
Municipal budget envelope based on poverty measures and percentage of rural population
MDC project subcommittee State Technical Unit
Morocco
Committees for Human Development (LCHD) at the commune, province, and regional levels
NGOs, communes, governors of provinces
NGOs, local government, facilitators; LCHD prioritizes
PCHD RCHD for projects for vulnerability
Province
LCHD, PCHD, Ministry of interior
Indonesia
Community Subdistrict District
Community
Community Inter-village meetings
List is approved by the subdistrict head
Subdistrict block grants
Community Subdistrict facilitators, district
Philippines
Community group, municipal interagency team, regional inter-agency groups. At national level, DSW acts as chair of inter-agency cabinet level group
Community
Community
Inter-community forum by competition
No municipal envelope. About $6,000 per village, but by competition a village can be granted what it “needs” for its winning proposal
Inter-community forum Project management
(cont’d pg. 61)
60
Annex 2. Comparative Tables
(contâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d)
Table 3. Program Architecture
and
Flow
of
Funds
Project
Management levels
Management of funds
Proposal generation
Approval
Budget envelope
Formal upward reporting
PRC CDD pilot
Natural village, Administrative Village, Subdistrict, County
Natural village
Natural Village
Administrative village approves. Technical review takes place at county level
Fixed amount per admin village
No formal reporting upwards is needed, but lots of publicity inside the village; county PMO will review/ inspect whether processes are observed and local government takes funds away if the rules are not followed
PRC Ethnic minorities pilot
See above
See above
See above
See above
See above
See above
Ethiopia Pastoral
Community (kebele development committee), District (woreda development committee), Province, Federal
Community, through committees for Kebele project management, service management, business management, womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s business management
Community development committees
District development committee
None
To the district development committee
Nigeria Fadama
Fadama user groups and economic interest groups, Fadama community associations, Fadama at local government, state and federal levels
Fadama user group Fadama community associations, for some projects Economic interest groups
Local fadama development committee (at local government level)
Local fadama development committees, with technical reviews by local government line ministry desks
PRC, Hai Basin Watershed pilot
Community project unit
Project unit managed the funds
Community
Project unit
Fixed amount per pilot village and local governments contributed
Project unit to ministry and local governments
India, HP Watershed
Community Ward Village assembly (Gram Panchayat) District Watershed development coordinator
Gram Panchayat
Community proposals are aggregated at ward, village assembly, local government, and watershed levels for technical reviews and inter-community and watershed projects
Gram Panchayat
None
Community groups to Gram Panchayat, and then to the project
Indonesia Green PNPM
Community, Subdistrict, District
Community
Community, Inter-village meeting
List is approved by the head of the subdistrict
Subdistrict block grants for NRM expected to be $55,000; for Micro Hydro Power schemes: 90-130K
Community Subdistrict facilitators, district
China Mutual Aid Pilot
Village, Township, County, Province
VMAF
Village
County technical review County approval
RMB 100k for first 4 villages; RMB150k for remaining 16 villages
County/ PIT
Annex 2. Comparative Tables
Fadama user group reports to the community association, and development committee at local government level.
61
ity of the communities’ investments. The size of grants provided to communities differs in size and scope. Targeting mechanisms differ by country. In some, the amount of the grant is based on the size of the population. In several programs presented at the conference (the PRC pilot, Philippines), poverty targeting was used to select the areas, and communities’ proposals competed within that county/ municipality. Evaluation research3 from the Philippines shows that, within a municipality, resources flow to the poorest and most active communities.
Table 4. Field-level
accountability mechanisms This table describes how communities hold themselves accountable, and how the accountability relationship between communities and (local) government is structured. It also records whether or not the CDD projects/programs have any independent monitoring systems, a grievance system and/or independent audits. In Morocco, there is no accountability to the communities by the local governments. In Indonesia, where many of the field-level accountability mechanisms have been pioneered, they are well-developed and widespread. In most programs, there is a community finance committee that usually consists of at least three members, and often includes women. An exception is the India-AP project, where the groups are very small. The community finance committee reports to the community, and normally keeps the books in the local language, which can be read even by members who only have undergone literacy training in the local language rather than any national language. The KDP program in Indonesia pioneered the addition of an independent community moni-
62
toring and audit committee that inspects bids, goods purchased, the quality of the output, as well as the accounts. These committees, often staffed by women, tend to take their jobs very seriously. The practice has spread to a majority of CDD programs reviewed. Indonesia also pioneered the use of NGOs (which are not involved in the program) and journalists as independent monitors that have at least their travel expenditures covered by the program. In Morocco, these functions are performed by the National Observatory for Human Development, an autonomous government institution, while in China a university is performing the function. Many programs have developed formal grievance systems where community members and other stakeholders can raise grievances involving their leaders, local governments, and/or service providers. The presentation on the Chinese CDD pilot monitoring and evaluation discusses the setup and results of this grievance system. Higher authorities also reserve the right to perform audits. Since projects are often small and widely dispersed, the cost of professionally auditing all projects would be prohibitive. Instead, audit systems typically draw a random sample of subprojects to be audited. In the Philippines, the sampling fraction is 20 percent, probably at
3 Labonne, Julien, and Robert S. Chase. 2007. “Who is at the wheel when communities drive development? The case of KALAHI-CIDSS in the Philippines.” Social Development Paper #107. Washington, DC: World Bank. This study examined ex-ante preferences of elected villages leaders and community members concerning which project proposals received funding. The findings show that the degree of involvement of households in community activities influences the likelihood their preferences will be represented in the village proposals and that within a municipality resources flow to the poorest and more politically active villages. Controlling for poverty, the more unequal villages are more likely to receive funding. In the more unequal villages, the elected officials are more likely to override community preferences and influence the inter-village competition such that resources flow to their villages.
Annex 2. Comparative Tables
Table 4. Field Level Accountability Mechanisms Project or Program
Accounting by finance committee to the community
Community audit committee
Independent monitoring
Grievance system
Random audits
Pakistan AKRSP
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
No
India, AP
No, within the self-help group
No
No
No
No
Brazil
Yes
No
No
Yes
No
Morocco
No
No
National Observatory for Human Development
No
Jointly by ministries of finance and Interior
Indonesia
Yes
Yes
By NGOs, journalists
Yes
Yes
Philippines
Yes
Yes
NGOs
Yes
Yes, 20%
PRC CDD pilot
At natural village level, three people together do the bookkeeping
Yes, monitoring group
Yes, NGOs Independent evaluation by university
Yes
National audit commission selects villages randomly
PRC Ethnic Minorities pilot
As above
Yes, monitoring group
No
Yes
No
Ethiopia Pastoral
Yes
Yes
No
No
Yes
Nigeria Fadama
Yes, to user group to community association for FCA projects
No
No
China, Hai Basin Watershed
No, but WUA has operational and monitoring committees
No
No
No
No
India, HP Watershed
Within user groups, SHGs, community groups there may be a finance monitoring â&#x20AC;&#x153;committeeâ&#x20AC;? Probably at GP level as the formal level for community investments
GP level
By consultant like Winrock
Telephone number is given
internal audit
Indonesia, Green PNPM
Yes
Yes
By NGOS By journalists
Yes
Yes
China, Village Mutual Aid Pilot
Within the VMAF, the Board both approves and monitors
No
No
No
By county level project offices
the high end of such systems. The impact of the risk of being audited on corruption in the Indonesian KDP has been studied and found to be an important measure limiting corruption at that level. Audits may also result when a complaint is raised. Some CDD programs have participatory monitoring and evaluation committees, where out-
comes and impact are also measured and noted by the community. In such cases, communities may use simple metrics for impact: for instance, how many babies died in childbirth or before their first birthday, or how many students were promoted in each grade, and correlate this with simple monitoring data such as the number of prenatal visits recorded at a health center, or the presence/absence of a teacher.
Annex 2. Comparative Tables
63
Table 5. Funding sources
resembles that of Brazil. It is also important to study how India resolved this problem.
This table records the five sources of funding for the CDD projects and programs. The most common sources of funding are communities themselves (through contributions made in cash and in kind, and cost recovery mechanisms), government (at the local, provincial, and central levels) and outside donors or development partners. The goal is to gradually diminish the importance of donor funding and to increase sources of funding either from communities themselves or local governments. It is noteworthy that after 20 years of implementation, the Brazil program, though scaled up significantly, is still dependent on donor funding, as it hasn’t been integrated into the nation’s financial architecture. The program has leveraged funding successfully; for every $1 of the project’s funds, $5 from other programs (from federal, state, and municipal sources) is channeled using the same participatory mechanisms at the municipal council levels, but it is still a separate program. This is an important lesson for the PRC, where the financial architecture
64
Required contributions by communities average around 10–15 percent of project costs. However, many evaluation studies show that the community contributions are considerably higher when the final accounting is done. Sujana Royat mentioned that, in KDP/PNPM in Indonesia, private landowners donated some 12,000 hectares because they were motivated by the results of the program. It is important to ensure a monitoring system is put in place to adequately record all community contributions, be they in kind (management time, labor, food, materials, land) and/or in cash. Generally, the accountants and bookkeepers abhor valuing and recording in-kind contributions. As CDD programs mature, contributions by local governments should increase. Again, we often see unrecorded, but substantial contributions by local governments once CDD programs become successful, as a way for local politicians to become associated with successful service delivery. The Philippines provided a good example of institutionalization: where local government put up the required 20 percent financing, the project responded quickly.
Annex 2. Comparative Tables
Table 5. Funding Sources (in
percent )
Project or Program
Donors
Central govt
Provincial or state govt
Local govt
Community
Cost recovery mechanisms
Pakistan AKRSP
Yes for mobilization activities and for one productive infrastructure project
No
No
No
Most funding mobilized by community
Rates for water, electricity, irrigation, seedlings, etc.
India
27
9
14
0
50
Loan interest and repayment
Brazil
75
0
15
0
10
Electricity and water rates
Morocco
20
60
0
20
0
Indonesia
401
40
0
20
15 on top of block grant
Rates for water, electricity, irrigation, interest
Philippines
35
35
0
10–15
10–15
Maintenance arrangements are criteria for the competition. User charges for maintenance on all micro projects and community enterprises
PRC CDD pilot
35
3
402
7
15
Same
PRC Ethnic Minorities CDD pilot
10
0
803
0
10
None
Ethiopia Pastoral
76
17
0
0
7 (15% for the subprojects)
User group
Nigeria Fadama
55.6
5.1
17.1
8.9
13.3
User groups charge user fees; community associations also charge user fees; credit groups charge interest
PRC Watershed
GEF
Yes *
0
Yes *
No
WUA: water charges recover 25% of operational costs
India Watershed
74
0
18
0
8
User associations charge for water and other services provided.
Indonesia Green PNPM
64
36
0
0
0
Water and energy charges
PRC Village Mutual Aid Pilot
100
0
0
0
0
Monthly interest is .7–1% for borrowers; small loans (RBM3000) for repeat borrowers
4
* Percentage unknown
1. Percentages adjusted to add to 100 %; however, the community contribution is on top of all other contributions and communities compete via their offer of cofinancing. 2. PRC CDD pilot: Each province has different arrangements for financing. NGOs funded their own participation in the pilots and are counted as donors. In one province (Sichuan), most of the government funds came from the county. 3. PRC Ethnic Minority CDD Pilot. Central government funds are allocated to the provinces for the Ethnic Minority Programs. In this case, the provinces decided to finance the CDD pilots from these dedicated funds. The number in Table 5 is an estimated average for the four provinces. 4. The PRC’s Economic Reform Implementation Technical Assistance (TA) Project financed the pilot of the Village Mutual Aid Funds. It is possible that this particular project is not financed at 100 percent by the World Bank, but that there is a government contribution for the project as a whole. Annex 2. Comparative Tables
65
Annex 3. Opening Remarks and
Background Papers
Opening Remarks Fan Xiaojian, Director, LGOP,China
as well as scholars, experts at home and abroad, and friends from the press, for your long-term concern and support to China’s poverty alleviation work.
Honorable Vice President James Adams, Vice President Lawrence Greenwood, Your Excellency David Mulroney,
This year is the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. During the 60 years, especially since China adopted the reform and opening-up policy, China’s economy accelerated at breakneck speed. Its overall national strength increased notably, with the lives of the people improved substantially; Noticeable changes happened in the countryside, and the poverty reduction cause achieved great success. China’s achievements in poverty alleviation not only helped to promote the economic and social development in the poor areas, but also played a very important role in ensuring China’s domestic political stability, ethnic solidarity, borderlands stability, and social harmony. Meanwhile, China’s efforts in poverty alleviation accelerated the global poverty reduction process, and thus made a great contribution to the whole world poverty reduction cause.
Ladies and Gentlemen: Good Morning. On behalf of the China State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development, I would like to extend our sincerest welcome to all of you to this important conference on Community-Driven Development and Poverty Alleviation. I also would like to take this opportunity to appreciate all the multilateral and bilateral donors—including the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and Canadian International Development Agency—for your assistance to China’s poverty reduction cause, and my gratitude also goes to the involved Ministries and Departments of China,
66
Looking back on China’s poverty alleviation
Annex 3. Opening Remarks and BackgrouNd Papers
process, we always insisted on emancipated thinking, constant exploring and innovation, and proceeding from China’s realities. Meanwhile, China also earnestly absorbed and drew upon the fruits of international poverty reduction theories and practices, so as to utilize international experiences suitable to China. Since 2006, in collaboration with the World Bank, we implemented the community-driven development pilot project in China. The pilot project has achieved good results in many aspects, such as accelerating the self-governance of rural communities and the grass-roots democracy development, further inspiring poor people to be more self-reliant and self-developing, and improving the degree of agricultural organization among poor rural households. During the implementation of the pilot project, we have developed a community-driven development model with China’s own characteristics, which can be characterized as “using laws as guarantee, with concrete projects as the carriers and platforms, regarding innovation as the driving force and putting the masses in the position of development main body.” Guaranteed by laws, in particular, authorized by the law of villagers’ committee, we promote the implementation of democratic elections, policy making, management, and supervision. Through using concrete projects as carriers and platforms, we aim to improve the self-development capacity of poor communities and poor populations in the process of project selection, project implementation, and management. We regard innovation as the driving force and encourage the integration of independent innovations and the introduction of external innovations, so as to further improve poverty reduction management mechanisms. We should try to take full advantage of the initiatives and creativity of the masses, and make them the driving force of development. This will add energy to our current poverty alleviation work. All these practices and experiences help further promote sustainable development in China’s poor areas and China’s poverty alleviation as well.
China’s poverty alleviation now has entered into a new stage, which requires both development-oriented poverty reduction efforts and direct-relief-based efforts. Direct relief is the survival guarantee for the poor, while development-oriented efforts help the poor achieve development. In this new stage, our prioritized task is to resolve the problem of feeding and clothing of the poor and become affluent within the soonest possible period, with improving the self-development capacity of the rural poor population as the focal area. Therefore, we will continuously stick to development-oriented poverty alleviation efforts, and further increase support to revolutionary areas, ethnic minority areas, border areas, and poor areas. We will also promote policies regarding regional, industrial, and social development that more benefit poor areas and poor populations. In addition, we will further improve domestic strategies and policy systems of poverty alleviation, so as to realize the effective linkage of the domestic rural minimum living standard security system and poverty reduction policy system, and ensure poverty alleviation policy covering all low-income populations. Meanwhile, we will further promote scientific development in poor areas, to effectively narrow the development gap and ensure that all citizens benefit from the fruits of reform and development. The Chinese government always pays great attention to international communication and cooperation in the field of poverty alleviation. In this new stage, we will, with a more open attitude, contiguously intensify our communication and cooperation with international communities, through mutual learning and mutual promotion, and make joint contributions to the global poverty reduction cause. This conference on Community-Driven Development and Poverty Alleviation is the first international conference, held on the basis of the rich fruits of many years’ exploration and practices of CDD approach. This international conference is also held in a crucial time, when China is planning a new ten-year poverty reduction program.
Annex 3. Opening Remarks and Background Papers
67
Therefore, we hope participants from international donors and other countries attending this conference, many of whom are experts in rural development and are engaged in this field for a long period and are very much experienced in community-driven development, could actively engage yourselves into the discussion and raise your valuable advice on improving China’s community-driven development mechanism, and on formulating China’s next stage of poverty alleviation policy. Lastly, I wish a great success to this conference! I also wish our friends coming far from other counties a pleasant stay in Beijing! I wish all participants good health and all the best with your work! Thank you!
James Adams, Regional Vice President East Asia and Pacific Region, The World Bank (Salutations to His Excellency the Vice Minister, Mr. Fan Xiaojian, Head of the Leading Group on Poverty, our host; Mr. Greenwood, Vice President of the Asian Development Bank and His Excellency David Mulroney, Ambassador to China from Canada: Ladies and Gentlemen: On behalf of the World Bank, let me first express my strong appreciation to all of you for attending this conference. There is much to discuss and I hope many of you also got to see something of China’s experience with communitydriven development through the field visits to Sichuan and Shaanxi.
68
China now stands at a very important moment in its long march toward poverty reduction as it prepares its new Ten-Year Poverty Reduction Strategy. I am confident that these proceedings will lead you to believe, as we in the World Bank do, that “community-driven development” (or CDD) and other highly participatory development approaches can help China take very important steps to construct a better, more equitable society. Why do I believe that CDD is an important poverty reduction approach for China and the countries here gathered? Let me first review how much China has already achieved in poverty reduction and what challenges it is likely to face in the next ten years. Then I want to review very briefly the contributions that have been made to poverty reduction in other parts of the world by applying the CDD approach. First, I want to recognize publicly how far China has come in its poverty alleviation efforts. China’s success in reducing extreme poverty over the last 25 years has been remarkable. The World Bank and government estimates both show massive reductions in the number of absolute poor. The decline in poverty in China alone accounts for the global decline in poverty over that same period. I also want to recognize the role that the government’s Leading Group on Poverty has had in achieving this remarkable success. Despite this tremendous success, China’s remaining poor account for the second largest concentration of extreme poor in the world—after India—and it has become increasingly difficult to address the needs of this group. Many of the very poor reside in remote and inaccessible regions of the western and central provinces, often in ecologically fragile environments, and
Annex 3. Opening Remarks and Background Papers
they are dependent on subsistence farming. These poor are hard to reach. The government of China’s current poverty reduction efforts target the village level, but there have been obstacles to effectively extend these efforts below to the township level. It is therefore heartening to know that the Leading Group on Poverty has applied, on a pilot basis, community-driven development approaches to complement the current interventions. In the pilots, about which we will hear much more during the conference, the villages chose to use funds for roads, small-scale water resource development, health and education interventions, and income-generating projects. The pilots showed the same results as elsewhere in the world. That is that the CDD approach constitutes one of the most effective poverty reduction measures available. I hope that the government will scale up these CDD programs considerably in the next ten years, and we at the World Bank stand ready to partner with you. Why do I believe CDD is a worthwhile strategy in China’s efforts to tackle its remaining poverty? Let me give you some concrete examples from other parts of the world. In South Asia, over the last ten years, some 20 CDD programs have reached 12 million households from over 90,000 villages and helped form over 1 million grassroots community groups. The social capital of these groups has been leveraged into real financial capital. As you will hear in this conference, in the state of Andrha Pradesh in India, incomes increased for close to 90 percent of poor rural households, including for some 8 million women. Six million households now have access to credit, and the private financial sector is growing as the poor have become their new client base. In Indonesia, the government decided to expand the CDD approach into a national program cov-
ering all rural and urban communities. KDP, the rural forerunner to this national program, was developed ten years ago in the midst of Indonesia’s political transition and decentralization process. KDP helped to improve local governance and decentralization by pushing decision making down to the lowest level: the communities. It allowed the villagers to make their own choices about the kind of projects they need and want. The communities are empowered because the funds, planning, and decision making are in their hands. Local government councils were also strengthened and accountability has improved at all levels. KDP also had an impressive evaluation program. It showed that there were marked poverty reduction gains. One more example, this time from Africa, from Tanzania. I spent considerable time with the successful CDD programs in that country and visited many communities and districts. Believe me, it is a great pleasure to visit a community and meet with women showing off their new plow and oxen or health center where they can safely deliver their babies. In Tanzania, over 200,000 people gained increased access to education; more than a million improved their sanitation situation; and over 1.4 million got improved access roads. The CDD program has become fully integrated in the decentralized local government structure. What is also very impressive is that the CDD program targets the vulnerable through a special grant window: some 400,000 orphans, widows, disabled, and elderly designed their own projects. Some 1,400 subprojects so far have received grant funding. What I have seen worldwide is that such programs result in communities being empowered, and holding each other and government, especially local government, accountable for results. Overall, it has also been shown that CDD helps facilitate the provision of services—particularly those for the poor—at 30 to 40 percent lower costs. The CDD approach can help governments
Annex 3. Opening Remarks and Background Papers
69
use their resources effectively and efficiently and allocate them based on needs. It is for these reasons that the World Bank believes that the deliberations here today and tomorrow will be an excellent cross-learning experience for all involvedâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;representatives of the government of China, guests and resource persons from other countries, development partners personnel, and civil society representatives. We hope you will come away with an enhanced understanding of the power and potential of CDD. In conclusion, I hope that this unique international event will inspire you and allow you to learn from each other. I also hope that the government of China will use the lessons on CDD learned here, adapt them and apply them in the preparation of the next ten-year poverty reduction strategy. As said before, we are very interested in collaborating with you in this endeavor. Thank you.
Lawrence Greenwood, Jr. Vice President (Operations 2) Asian Development Bank Introduction The Honorable Fan Xiaogang, Your Excellency David Mulroney, Vice President Adams, Excellencies, colleagues in development, good morning. On behalf of the Asian Development Bank, it is a great honor for me to extend our sincerest welcome to all of you to this important forum on community-driven development and poverty alleviation. Allow me to thank in particular
70
the participants who have traveled from as far as Africa and Latin America to share with us today their vast experience in community-driven development and how these approaches have been instrumental in their own poverty reduction efforts. The Peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Republic of China (PRC) has enjoyed rapid growth over the last three decades, with its economy growing an average of over 9 percent per year. Nearly 300 million people have been lifted out of poverty during this period. Despite this impressive record, the PRC is still home to over 200 million people living on less than $1.25 a day. Reducing that poverty remains a daunting challenge, especially in the context of the current global economic slowdown. Resuming and sustaining growth will be vital, of course, but just as important will be ensuring that the poor share in the benefits of that growth by directly involving them in addressing poverty, ensuring their inclusion in the development process. This is relevant to us in ADB. Our recently launched Strategy 2020 reiterates our commitment to strive for an Asia Pacific region free of poverty focusing on inclusive growth. This strategy is borne out of a realization that, despite tremendous growth, the region remains home to about 900 million poor persons living on less than $1.25 per day, an international measure for those living in extreme poverty. The PRCâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s development-oriented poverty alleviation program and rural development policies have prioritized interventions in improving the capacity of the rural poor in poverty alleviation. These policies lay the foundations of our discussions in the next two days. Central to these policies will be the experience of the PRC and those present here today in empowering the poor in their development through an approach known as community-driven development or CDD. Discussions in the next two days on how to use lessons from the pilot CDD project in the PRC and the experience in other countries in empowering the poor will without
Annex 3. Opening Remarks and Background Papers
doubt be valuable to all of us in the development world.
CDD Lessons and Experience Community-driven development empowers the beneficiaries of local development at a village or community level to decide themselves on how to best deploy development resources. Pilot CDD initiatives have been carried out in the PRC since 2005. LGOP and the World Bank have jointly undertaken this in Guangxi, Sichuan, Shaanxi, and Inner Mongolia. The ADB has provided technical assistance to support the design and demonstration of models for NGO participation in government-funded poverty alleviation efforts at the village level in Jianxi province. These initiatives aim to devise and improve mechanisms for poverty alleviation that enhance the ability of poor and marginalized communities to improve their well-being. The pilot projects have tested approaches and systems that give communities real opportunities to influence the use of public resources: transparent information on budgets, channels for appeal, and local-level management of funds.
applied with great success in other developing countries. In the last decade, CDD approaches have become among the major tools to empower communities and alleviate poverty. Over 100 countries are implementing CDD projects. ADB has supported projects with strong CDD elements in several countries in the region. The Inter-American Development Bank, World Bank, and bilateral development agencies such as the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID), Germany’s Development Cooperation Agency (GTZ), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), and the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID) have also invested considerably in CDD. Most investments are aimed at improving local rural infrastructure and public facilities, addressing poverty and basic needs in locations where local government capacity is limited or absent, in post-conflict or natural disaster-affected areas and areas where local resource management schemes are appropriate. Several flagship CDD programs are ongoing, with long-term investments in a government decentralization process whereby resources and responsibilities for local development are devolved to local government units and community-based organizations.
The pilots have shown promising results through improved productivity and the living conditions of communities. They have introduced effective decision making and meaningful participation at the community level, marking a significant departure from more common top-down approaches. The pilots have also strengthened ownership of the development process by communities—especially in self-organization, selfmanagement, and self-development—which are core elements of PRC’s “Development-oriented Poverty Alleviation Program.” The greater the stake the local community feels it has in the success of a development effort, the harder it will work to achieve that success.
Limitations of CDD
CDD approaches are not new and have been
CDD approaches have considerable potential
The benefits from the success stories include: (i) better targeting of people with few resources; (ii) faster disbursement of funds at lower costs than other government-run projects; (iii) wellconstructed infrastructure; (iv) higher economic returns; and (v) high participation of women and poor persons. CDD approaches can also be applied usefully during economic downturns, as they provide targeted, quick-disbursing mechanisms that stimulate economic activity.
Annex 3. Opening Remarks and Background Papers
71
to reduce poverty relatively quickly on a large scale in a variety of sectors and country conditions. However, the approach also has built-in limitations, and is not suited to all contexts and cases. Several CDD operations have encountered challenges in scaling-up: for example, ineffective targeting, which exacerbated the exclusion of already marginalized upland communities in some parts of the Philippines because of tendencies to target population centers; added costs such as the increase in total project cost due to additional social preparation and facilitation and the costs of participation on the poor; limits to participation in practice, as when mere attendance in meetings is considered sufficient; occasional cases of “supply-driven demand-driven” development, especially when sectoral agencies impose the types of projects according to their own expertise rather than the need of communities; and a lack of institutional sustainability, especially for earlier CDD projects that promoted parallel delivery mechanisms over established ones, failing to institutionalize the process. These are the areas that I would propose we give particular attention to over the next two days, exploring how—in the context of the PRC— they can be overcome. How can lessons from small-scale CDD operations and the pilot in China be applied to substantially increase community coverage and the resources made available for use by local authorities and communities? How do we ensure that policy designs for CDD initiatives properly incorporate significant participation, a core trait of the CDD approach? What kind of enabling framework is necessary to support devolving and clarifying responsibilities and accountability for disbursing funds to communities? In the next two days, examples of how these and other issues that have been encountered and addressed by other countries will be presented. The Indonesia model, one of those from which the PRC CDD pilot benefited, and which is also being supported by the ADB and the World Bank, has scaled up from a pilot of 200 villages
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to national coverage after nine years, using the robust funds flow mechanism, established and adjusted according to the realities and capacities of rural financial institutions in the country. The Philippine model, another area visited by the implementation team of the PRC pilot, has used the bottom-up planning systems under their local governance legislation to support and institutionalize CDD. Experience has shown that the challenges of using CDD can be met if governments and donors are committed to promote it as a long-term institution-building process to promote inclusive growth within a good governance framework, and to address poverty and solicit community support at a very local level. For example, funding agencies can collaborate to offset high startup costs and increase benefits by applying lessons from past experience, pooling resources behind a common country strategy and fiduciary framework to offer longer-term, predictable program-based financing. A multi-year, multidonor effort also provides officials at higher levels of government a longer planning horizon to champion a scaled-up program
Conclusion CDD is a proven approach for involving local communities in local development, and has generated tangible economic and social benefits. Poor communities and women in particular, have benefited from the process. Lessons from successful pilots and several flagship projects can guide us in considering how to scale up CDD operations in tandem with a country’s program for promoting inclusive growth or poverty reduction. I am certain that in the next two days, we will see that, when designed and implemented properly, CDD approaches add tangible value to economic development efforts by creating the connections necessary to engage and benefit poor communities, and thereby enhance the poverty
Annex 3. Opening Remarks and Background Papers
reduction impact and sustainability of the overall project or program. Today we will hear firsthand accounts from our colleagues in government, development institutions, CDD practitioners from all over the world concerning their experience in designing, implementing, and monitoring CDD activities. They will tell us stories of great promise, impressive successes, and daunting challenges. I believe the exchange of experiences and ideas that this forum provides will help us refine our decade-long effort, as partners to governments and of PRC, in engaging poor communities in the development process, and making efficient use of development resources intended for their benefit. I wish you all a productive discussion and look forward to hearing you. Thank you.
H. E. David Mulroney Canadian Embassador to C hina Respected Director Fan Xiaojian of the LGOP (Vice Minister level), my colleagues from the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, ladies and gentlemen—good morning. 尊敬的国务院扶贫办范主任，世界银行和亚洲 发展银行的同事们，女士们，先生们，大家上 午好。 It is a real pleasure for me to offer a few opening remarks at this International Conference on Community-Driven Development and Rural Poverty Alleviation. Through the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), Can-
ada has sponsored this conference for one very simple reason: CDD works. Over the years, and across many countries, we have witnessed its powerful results in reducing poverty and giving voice to the dreams and aspirations of the rural poor. The CDD methodology is a simple common sense solution to the poverty trap. It - mobilizes village-level organizations to identify their most pressing needs; - ensures that a democratic community participation process selects local leaders; - ensures that the participation process allows the poorest to have a say and that the voice of the majority can guide the way forward; - provides village organizations with block grants and technical assistance to build small yet critical infrastructure and then move to value-added economic production; - scales up slowly but deliberately from village-level activity to institutional support in areas such as rural finance and credit. I would dare say that community participation has been an important part of Canada’s own history. Our large country was built on the efforts of many isolated rural communities spread out over vast distances and facing tough natural conditions. Our communities were forced out of necessity to be self-reliant and cooperative in order to survive. A great example of this is the rural cooperative movement, which helped Canada weather the Great Depression in the 1930s and then paved the way for key institutions and national services like medicare. Today is a great opportunity for us to see how
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the CDD process is shaping the course of many other countries. Over the course of the conference you will also hear from successful efforts around the world: from South and Central Asia to Africa and the Americas. Each context differs, of course, from countries such as China—where government plays a key mobilization and service delivery role down to the local level, to those countries where government institutions and services are notably absent and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) help fill the vacuum. For example, as far back as 1982, Canada was one of the first supporters of the Aga Khan Khan Rural Support Program (AKRSP) in the Northern Areas of Pakistan. We’re so pleased to have Mr.Shoaib Sultan Khan, the founder of AKRSP, participating in the conference. And in one of the next sessions you’ll have an opportunity to hear him tell the AKRSP story. It is a powerful one of how the CDD or rural support programme (RSP) process filled an institutional vacuum in a remote mountainous area where the poor face lives of constant hardship. But it’s also a good news story in that it shows how sustainable and long-term investments in the CDD process can help grow local institutions and underwrite stability in an area at risk. When one looks today at the Northern Areas, despite its challenges, one can see its remarkable development progress, in a neighborhood that is mired in conflict and instability. Prior to taking up my appointment as Ambassador to China, I served as the senior Canadian government official responsible for coordinating our stabilization and reconstruction efforts in
Afghanistan and reporting to our Prime Minister and the Canadian public. Even in this fragile country, ravaged by decades of war and where many villages still face violence and conflict on a daily basis, I could see the CDD process laying the foundation for stability. We were one of the first supporters of the National Solidarity Program (NSP), a bold effort by the Government of Afghanistan to roll out the CDD process across the entire country. Now in its second phase, the NSP has supported the election of over 20,000 community development councils (CDCs) across all of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. Over 30,000 community-driven projects have been completed in areas such as water supply and sanitation, irrigation, transportation infrastructure, local power generation, agriculture and livelihoods, as well as schools, adult literacy, and vocational training. This is the foundation of the future Afghanistan, an Afghanistan where I believe peace and development are replacing the barrel of the gun. This conference will be a wonderful opportunity to share your insights on what China can learn from CDD examples in other countries, but also what other countries can learn from China, which has lifted millions of its own citizens out of poverty over the past three decades. Our colleagues at the LGOP have identified CDD as one of the key ways of closing the final mile in the race against rural poverty. With the support of the World Bank and other donors, they have been adapting the methodology to its own remote and marginalized communities, and I know they will have much to share with you. I wish you a successful conference and I look forward to hearing about its results. Thank you.
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Annex 3. Opening Remarks and Background Papers
Background Papers Social Mobilization: A Key to Poverty Reduction South Asia Experience Shoaib Sultan Khan I am most grateful to the director of the International Cooperation and Social Mobilization Department, LGOP, Aga Khan Foundation (AKF), and Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) for inviting me to the conference and to the World Bank for the financial sponsorship. When I look back over 56 years of my working life in government, the United Nations, the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF), and Rural Support Programmes (RSPs), my greatest successes and satisfaction were when I succeeded in forging genuine and meaningful partnerships with communities. Over fifty years ago, my mentor Akhter Hameed Khan about whom Nobel laureate Prof. Yunus wrote: “It is not enough to say that he was a great man. He was one of the great human beings of the past century. He was so much ahead of everybody else that he was seen more as a “misfit” than appreciated for his greatness … We have a lot to discover and a whole lot to learn from him.” Akhter Hameed Khan gave me my first lessons in forging partnerships with communities. But it is only during the last 30 years that I got the opportunity, thanks to UNICEF and later to
UNDP, but mainly due to His Highness the Aga Khan, to fully and exclusively devote myself to interacting with communities in Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. However, it was the World Bank which took social mobilization to scale in the state of Andhra Pradesh in India. Over this period, I have personally held dialogues with over 5,000 communities, and this morning I intend to share this experience with you. I still vividly remember the bitterly cold December in 1982 when I drove 600 kilometers from Islamabad to Gilgit on a borrowed jeep. This was the beginning of the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (AKRSP) and the forging of partnerships over the next twelve years with a million people in one of the most inhospitable and harshest terrains anywhere in the world. I brought them a simple message—but time-tested—from the days of Raifessen in Nineteenth Century Europe followed by Japan, China through communes, comilla in Bangladesh, and South Korea’s Samual Undong. This was a message of partnership in development. AKRSP was not there to listen to their demands, needs, and problems and offer solutions. AKRSP offered them only a methodology, an approach and social guidance to overcome their handicaps themselves. The villagers used to look at me with disbelief. A program—bearing the name of one of the richest persons in the world—that was not willing to solve their problems and asking them to do things first? I explained this is a partnership that entails obligations on both sides, and unless the community was prepared to fulfil its obligations, how can the partnership be formed? Many were impatient and would pester me to tell them what was the limit to which the program would help them if they accepted the terms of partnership and my simple response
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used to be your limit is our limit. Whatever the community can do or was willing to do was the program limit.
The one million people I worked with for 12 years in the Northern Areas of Pakistan through the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme reinforced my conviction of the tremendous potential and willingness in people to do many things themselves to come out of poverty. All they needed was a support organization to help them unleash their potential. Once organized, the men and women took their destiny in their own hands. They knew what would bring them out of poverty. They got thousands of villagers trained as service providers in agriculture, horticulture, livestock, and forestry and as managers of their organizations. They identified, constructed, and maintained thousands of physical infrastructure worksâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;irrigation channels, link roads, sprinkler irrigation, flood protection works, and school buildings. They increased
Gradually and incrementally, we moved forward. I had already learned my lesson a few years earlier at Daudzai in the Frontier Province of Pakistan when using a blueprint approach. A portfolio of projects was prepared without consulting the communities, which later on was found to have nothing in common with what the community wanted. The micro-variations at the local level demand consultation and dialogues with each and every community. I was very happy when the approach was reinforced by the first World Bank Assessment of AKRSP in 1987, saying that the first four years of AKRSP were the missed four years of most rural development projects in the world, where Pakistan blueprints took precedence over a process approach. AKRSP did not go to the communities with a preconceived package; it left it to each community to identify their potential not only as community, but also at the household level. CIDA was the first donor that realized the potential of the approach AKRSP was following, and offered assistance to AKF and continues to do so to date.
RSPs Outreach
I have seen people coming out of poverty with my own eyes and smiles on their faces instead of abstruse statistics.
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Annex 3. Opening Remarks and Background Papers
their productive capacity, planted 50 million trees on land brought under irrigation range, generated about six megawatts of electricity through village-built and managed mini-hydels (acknowledged as the biggest concentration of community-managed micro-hydro projects anywhere in the world), and accumulated over Rupees 400 million as their savings, resulting in setting up of the First Micro Finance Bank. In agriculture, horticulture, and livestock, the organized communities made a quantum jump in introducing and later marketing apples from California and cherries from France. Their apricots were picked up by a London buyer from the farm gate at Gilgit. Their initiative in protecting wildlife in collaboration with IUCN and WWF has given rich dividends, sharing 75 percent of the proceeds of trophy hunting with the Wildlife Department. The tourists can now watch ibex, markhor, and sometimes even the snow leopard from the roadside. Last time on my visit to the Northern Areas, I went to Ahmedabad village, where 22 years ago I had gone sitting in a basket pulled across the river as there was no bridge on the river. The village with 110 households was totally isolated although the Karakorum Highway passed by it. The village had no access, no road, no school, no health facility, no potable drinking water, and no electricity. Today it has everything, including two micro-hydels supplying electricity 24 hours and a savings and credit fund of over millions of rupees. These people would never have been touched by any growth strategy or macro planning. They needed a development strategy that involved each and every household in the development process. Unfortunately, this is what our macro planners fail to comprehend. When I asked them what was the secret of their success, their spontaneous response was “we got organized.” The village roads were marked with dust bins and the environment was litter-free.
According to the second World Bank evaluation of AKRSP, in ten years the income of thepeople of the Northern Areas had in real terms more than doubled. In 1994, when UNDP asked me to take the lessons learned in the Northern Areas of Pakistan to South Asia, India being the largest country in the region. It was the greatest challenge to the South Asia Poverty Alleviation Programme (SAPAP) and to me personally as a Pakistani to make a difference to the lives of women and their households there. My apprehensions were baseless. The people of Andhra Pradesh and the state government welcomed me with open arms and treated me with unforgettable kindness, hospitality, and affection and continues to do so. The 20 mandals, which SAPAP took as a demonstration area for empowerment of women and poverty reduction, have a different story to tell today. On my visits to Andhra Pradesh to SAPAP mandals, I had never seen such a tremendous transformation in a short period in the lives of the people, especially the women, not only in terms of economic empowerment but in every aspect of life. Given the opportunity and support by SAPAP, these illiterate rural women demonstrated dynamism, managerial and productive skills, and a sense of responsibility and sensitivity to social evils—such as bonded and child labor, social discrimination, and indifference or excesses of local bureaucracy—that one had to see to believe it. In Andhra Pradesh, I was told that after 7 years almost 75 percent of the organized households had risen above the subsistence level. When I doubted this statement, the women insisted on taking me to their homes. I visited a number of houses which I had visited on my first visit in 1995 and had barely any amenities of life available. I was wonderstruck to find modern amenities like TV, telephone, toilets etc., in the houses. In one house, I did not see TV and I asked the lady if she had been left behind others. She asked me to visit her backyard where more than 35 goats were standing. She explained her children
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are young and unlike other children, do not insist on going to neighbous to see the TV. Hence she made her choice of preferring goats to TV. This reminded me of Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen’s book “Development as Freedom.” One of the important outcomes of mobilized communities in Andhra has been the adoption of community-managed sustainable agriculture (CMSA); to date, it has been adopted by over 300,000 farmers. It has enabled the poor to break out of the exploitative relations with the money lenders, fertilizer, and pesticide traders. In the next 5 years, the Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP) plans to take it to 10-12 million acres covering 50 to 60 percent of the cultivable area of the state. The environmental benefits of CMSA are enormous. It will convert the state into a “green state” with an impact on climate change and global warming. However, the main motivation for the poor for adopting these practices is the quantum jump in their net incomes.
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The lesson is that however good the technology may be, without people’s involvement through their strong grassroots institutions, it will remain in the laboratories and universities. We need a people-centered solution to food security and climate change. The Andhra government keeps on inviting me despite phasing out of UNDP-SAPAP in 2000. In 1999, on my invitation, World Bank Vice President Meiko Nishimizu, after spending 5 days with me in the villages of Andhra Pradesh, told the state government that this was “UNDP’s Miracle” and if the state government wanted to take it to scale, the World Bank would be most willing to support such a program. The Bank subsequently helped the state government in setting up the Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP) to take the program to scale. In July 2008, I was again invited to Andhra,
Annex 3. Opening Remarks and Background Papers
framework of self-help groups (SHGs), village organizations (VOs), and Mahila Mandal Samakhyas (MMSs);
Key Impacts of Andhra Pradesh (India) Poverty Reduction Programme through S ocial M obilization
ii) an independent and autonomous sensitive support organization like the Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP) for fostering a statewide three-tier grassroots institutional framework; iii) an interest-subsidy policy for the poor matched with priority banking by scheduled banks for the poor; iv) a state-wide housing subsidy for the destitute and shelterless identified by VOs:
which had by now organized over 10 million rural women households and helped them rise above the level of subsistence by accessing in 2007-08 over US$ 1 billion from commercial banks for agricultural and other activities. Since 2001, the cumulative credit accessed by the organized groups reached over US$4 billion. Andhra has been able to demonstrate an approach of poverty reduction encompassing over 10 million rural poor families comprising, nearly 45 million people, which has no parallel anywhere in South Asia. Andhra has found the solution to rural poverty comprising: i) a
three-tier
institutional
grassroots
v) full and active support by the state and district administrations under the direction of the chief minister and the minister for rural development; and vi) pro-poor union government policies such as the employment guarantee scheme and other pro-poor initiatives. In 1991, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) had set up an Independent Commission for Alleviation of Poverty. The commission made an overarching recommendation, which the SAARC Summit at its meeting at Dhaka in 1993 endorsed; namely, that social mobilization should be the centerpiece for all poverty reduction strategies of the
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79
governments of the region to be achieved by setting up independent and autonomous support organizations to mobilize rural poor men and women.
grammes Network (RSPN) in Pakistan comprises nine Rural Support Programmes (RSPs) extending to 95 out of 125 districts of Pakistan, covering over 158,000 communities with nearly 2.5 million households (nearly 13-15 million people) as members. Pakistan is probably the only country in South Asia where the government has provided resources since 1992 for fostering independent and autonomous support organizations as envisaged by 1991 Poverty Commission set up by SAARC heads of state.
Dr. Akhter Hameed Khan used to say that in Pakistan, development will not come from the top. It will come from the bottom and it shall happen in pocketsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;one island formed here and one island there. AKRSP and its replication has shown how true it is. He also used to say that the problem of South Asia is not economic but moral. The organized communities at the grassroots in South Asia have shown there is both honesty and a spirit of selflessness in rural areas of South Asia.
A new chapter of development seems to be opening up to take the lessons learned in Northern Areas and Chitral by AKRSP over two decades to scale. The chief ministers of Punjab, NWFP, and Sindh want to make social mobilization the centerpiece of their provincial poverty elimina-
Today, the DFID-supported Rural Support Pro-
Rural Support Programs in Pakistan are in 95/126 districts and 2/13 FATA Agencies/Areas
AKRSP
TA FA GBTI
SRSP RSP NETWORK NRSP PRSP
BRSP SRSO
SGA
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TRDP
Annex 3. Opening Remarks and Background Papers
tion strategies. The federal government is very keen to mainstream social mobilization in the current Annual Plan and the next Five-Year Plan. The government of Pakistan is seriously considering implementing a Union Council Poverty Reduction Plan with a strong women’s empowerment component countrywide. The president of Pakistan gave his approval to the approach for countrywide replication in the next 3–5 years in December 2008. At the recent
National Five-year Poverty S. No.
1
Activity
Social mobilisation & capacity building
If sustainable development leading to elimination of poverty has to be ushered in, governments of the Third World will have to take a lead role in fostering a framework of grassroots institutions of the people through social mobilization.
reduction
Nation-wide Cost (Rs. Mill)
14,608
Friends of Pakistan Donor meeting hosted by Japan, US $3 billion was pledged exclusively for poverty reduction in the next two years.
Plan: Rural Component
Output Indicators - No. of households to be mobilised
9.8 mill househols
- Total No. of COs to be formed
974,000 COs
- Women’s COs to be formed
490,000 WCOs
- No. of VDOs formed - No. of LSOs to be formed - Community representatives to be trained
2
Small grants to the extremely poor
7,513
3
Small loans to the chronically poor
14,608
4
Vocational skills training
5
Social protection
6
Job provision
Output Targets
83,500 VDOs 5,565 LSOs 2 million women and men
- No. of extremely poor households to get grant
300,500 households
- No. of chronically poor household loans
1.98 million household
114,639
- No. of women and men to be trained
4.59 million
12,288
- No. of poor households to get health micro insurance
9.83 million households
194,775
- No. of community physical infraestructure projects to be constructed/repaired
556,500 CPI Projects
- No. of man-days shortterm employment to be provided
200,34 million man-days
- No. of household to benefit
18.73 million households
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National Five-year Poverty S. No.
7
Sanitation and Solid Waste Management
8
Public-Private partnership in education
9
Micro credit from RSPs
10
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Activity
Training of Local service providers
11
Operations and management
12
Total cost
reduction
Nation-wide Cost (Rs. Mill)
Plan: Rural Component
Output Indicators
Output Targets
144,690
- No. of rural localities with improved sanitatiion
111,300 localities
- No. of household to benefit
8.73 million households
111,300
- No. of UCs with PPP in education
5,565 UCs
- No. of households to benefit
8.73 million households
- No. of men & women accesing micro credit
3.1 million men and women
- No. of agricultural service providers to be trained
55,650 men and women
n/a
4,174
- No. of livestock service providers to be trained - No. of basic health service providers to be trained
27,825 646,419
- No. of district offices to be set up n/a
Annex 3. Opening Remarks and Background Papers
55,650 men and women 55,650 men and women 138 district offices US $8 billion
Accountability, Flow of F unds , and F inancing of C ommunity -D riven Development
framework in which local government would be an active partner of communities. The approach would devolve real power to local governments and communities. Capacity support would be provided by technical institutions and sectors, and by NGOs.
The Global Experience
After piloting community development after their vision in selected villages or districts, both Bangladesh and India scaled it up to national levels. Unfortunately, the pioneers did not develop the full implications of their approach for the flow of funds and accountability, but left this to be determined by administrators who were trying to scale their approaches up. Under the pressures of delivery, the original intentions of the founders were undermined and implementation was progressively entrusted to central agencies. This resulted in centralization and disempowerment of local governments and communities. As discussed in Binswanger et al. (2010), similar programs were started all over the world, including the area development approach used by the World Bank between 1970 and 1990, but again and again the centralizing tendencies took over, and participation was undermined, resulting in similarly poor results. The coordination of centralized agenciesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; which had their own interestsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;into a coherent program at local levels proved unsolvable.
Hans P. Binswanger-Mkhize4 Introduction In this paper I first discuss the failure of central approaches to community development and their faulty architecture for the flow of funds and accountability. Then I turn to the critical innovations in implementation architecture, the flow of funds, and accountability mechanisms that led to the emergence of community-driven development (CDD) and that made it into a replicable and scalable approach. I then review various options for the flow of funds and accountability arrangements and discuss their advantages and disadvantages. Since today CDD is generally embedded in local government structures, it encompasses both local and community-driven development (LCDD), and I will use this terminology.
The LCDD vision dates back to South Asia in the 1950s As discussed in chapter 2 of Binswanger et al. (2010), the early pioneers of community development in South Asia, such as Akhter Hamid Khan of Bangladesh, had a very modern vision of community development. They believed that community development should go hand in hand with local development and be planned and managed by local citizens, their communities, and their local governments. This should occur within a clearly defined decentralized
The resulting disbursement and accountability architecture Local and community development involves interventions from many sectors. The classic disbursement architecture had each sector deliver or disburse against its own component
4 Hans P. Binswanger-Mkhize is a free-lance consultant in agriculture and rural development and an Honorary Professor at the Institute for Economic Research on Innovation at the Tshwane University of Technology, Pretoria, South Africa.
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in a silo or stovepipe Figure 1: The Dysfunctional silo approach approach. Figure 1 gives an example of Example of South Africa Land Reform a land redistribution program from South Africa. The problem with the silo or stovepipe approach is that each agency operates using its own systems and timetables, and it becomes extremely difficult to coordinate these interventions at the local level. Worse yet, sometimes the different agencies have their own priorities and are not committed to the goals of the project or program, resulting in even worse coordination problems. Many attempts to coordinate from the top were tried for 40 years all over the world, but World Bank in Mexico introduced bold innovathey could rarely overcome these coordination tions that set up municipal funds, from which inproblems. This is once again vividly illustrated dividual community projects could be financed. by the slow progress of the South African land Funds were allocated to municipalities based on redistribution program since 1994. a formula reflecting their poverty. For the first time in World Bank practice, the project disUnder the silo approach, all approval authorbursed funds directly to communities for subity was centralized, and accountability was upproject implementation. Coordination was fully wards to the line agencies, and eventually the devolved from the center to the local level and to ministry of finance or the donor. The resulting communities. The funds in the municipal fund informational complexities often slowed down were not tied to sectors, thus breaking the coorproject or program implementation, and made dination bottleneck of the silo approach. Rather the approach hard to scale up. In addition, these than specifying what the project could finance, arrangements thoroughly disempowered comthe project had a negative list of items that could munities. not be financed. The project also developed the new community disbursement and procureThe World Bank used this model in its ill-fated ment mechanisms that have later become the area development approach, which was implehallmark of CDD. Very bold changes were thus mented via hundreds of projects all over the introduced all at once and proved immediately world from the 1970s to the early 1990s, and successful and scalable. The following sections then abandoned. In 1990, a Decentralization and discuss all these innovations, as well as variaRegional Development Project financed by the tions in the approaches that emerged, and that
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Annex 3. Opening Remarks and Background Papers
often backtracked on the bold innovations of the Mexico project.
over to communities, or in this case to water user associations.
The slow evolution of participatory approaches
The third approach that emerged in the early 1990s was the community empowerment model. The implementation responsibility for projects was entirely devolved to communities, along with the funds for implementation. Successful scale-ups put money in the hands of communities to harness their latent capacity through learning-by-doing. This is supplemented by relevant capacity building. This approach was the key advance introduced by large-scale community-driven development programs in the 1990s in Mexico, Brazil, and Indonesia. Burkina Faso provides an example of the most advanced form of the empowerment model: As part of the sharing of central revenue, the community empowerment model provided untied funds to communities under a formula. Communities augmented these resources through cofinancing in cash and in kind and through collection of user fees. This empowered communities to plan and execute subprojects according to their own perceived priorities. In this approach, government agencies and NGOs operated primarily as facilitators and trainers. Communities were heavily involved in the design and choice of technology for their chosen projects; usually they managed the project funds and directly contracted for goods and services to implement them. The approach provided communities ample opportunities for increasing skills in project and financial management via learningby-doing.
The first community participation approach that emerged in the 1950s was the community consultation model. In this, government agencies or NGOs consulted communities, but operated as direct service providers using their own staff. This model for the provision by sectors of frontline services to rural areas was widespread and, in many cases, remains so. Today it is no longer considered an appropriate model for execution of community projects, but can be used in the delivery of complex services such as health and education, provided that the service providers are made accountable to communities. The second approach that started to emerge in the 1980s was the community participation model. Government agencies or NGOs invited participation from communities in choosing development priorities and project design; in cofinancing the investments, with contributions in cash or in kind; and in operating the investments once they were completed, including the levying and management of user fees. Frequently this approach used participatory assessment techniques to define the needs and aspirations of communities. This approach was what the earliest pioneers of community development had in mind when they talked about community development. It was widely used again by sectors that introduced participation in the 1980s to enhance the effectiveness of their programs. While no longer the model of choice for community projects, it is an appropriate model for involving communities in large-scale projects such as canal irrigation projects, again provided that the service providers are accountable to communities, and that the management of the project at the community level, such as management of tertiary canals, is truly handed
Funding of communities is accompanied by rules and training The specific rules that are used to implement these innovations are quite simple, but communities have to be trained in their use. The rules are designed to achieve the following objectives:
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• Ensure wide local participation; this is usually done by specifying decisionmaking mechanisms that involve the whole community, rather than just a committee. • Promote transparency and accountability to the community and to the local government. • Prevent fraud and misuse. • Avoid elite capture and social exclusion. • Ensure local resource generation, so that a community can maintain the asset once it is built.
Critical CDD innovations for accountability from Latin America The classic disbursement and procurement approaches used by the World Bank for large projects had to be radically simplified and replaced by new community-based approaches. The following innovations were the most critical ones (de Silva 2002). 1. Legal ownership of the funds. Funds transferred to communities were considered matching grants and therefore became the property of the communities, rather than the executing agency of the program or the World Bank. As with credit from a bank, the spending of these funds became the privilege and responsibility of the owner of the funds— the community. 2. Replacing detailed accounting for the funds by a contract with the community. The expediente técnico for a small community project specifies what will be done with the
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money and how it will be used, as well as the technical details of the subproject to be financed. It is a four-to-six-page document with a cover page, which is in the form of a contract between the executing agency, the community, and sometimes a facilitator or technical agent. At the end of the implementation, the community signs a certificate of completion or handover of the project to the community. The latter certifies that the project has been properly executed and the funds accounted for. Rather than having to produce receipts for each individual expense, it is this completion certificate that serves as the “receipt” for accounting purposes of the executing agency and the World Bank. Verification of the proper use of the funds by the implementing agency of the program or by outside auditors then can consist of verifying that a road or a classroom has actually been constructed and is in operation. 3. Direct transfer of the matching grants into the accounts of the community. This is usually done in tranches. The first follows the signature of the contract, and the second or third depend on demonstrating certain progress benchmarks in the execution of the project. 4. Local shopping for both goods and services. This implies the suppression of the traditional distinction between services and goods in the community procurement rules. Local shopping is the main procurement system of communities for small contracts and quantities of supplies. Local shopping rules mean that a community obtains offers from three suppliers, and that its finance or management committee chooses from these three offers. (Competitive bidding is still required if the community entered into larger contracts where this method is justified). 5. Transparency at the community level.
Annex 3. Opening Remarks and Background Papers
Communities elect finance committees which are in charge of day-to-day spending. Checks must be signed by at least two members of the finance committee. The committee has to present all accounts to the general assembly. The community also may elect an audit committee to audit accounts, purchases, stocks, and their uses. 6. Purchase of technical support by the community. The community can select any capable supplier and use a portion of the matching grant, usually on the order of 8 percent, to pay for the technical services. This makes the suppliers of technical services directly accountable to the community. In addition to the above accountability innovations, LCDD projects may include additional accountability relationships: • Within the community’s development committee and from the committee to beneficiaries; • From facilitating groups (such as NGOs) to the community and to the government implementing entity; • From local politicians or civil servants to their constituents; • From project staff to the politicians or civil servants; • From the district government to the central government, and vice versa; and • From the central government to external donors.
Sector-specific versus multi-sector CDD programs The 1990 Mexican project was a multi-sector
CDD approach, but similar approaches have since been used for sector-specific CDD projects in water supply, natural resource management, HIV and AIDS, and other sectors. In sector-specific CDD programs, funds are tied to a specific sector, thus limiting the choice of communities. In multi-sector CDD programs, funds can be used for different types of investments and therefore put communities in charge not only of project design and implementation, but also of the sector choice. To encourage empowerment, the most advanced multi-sector CDD programs provide an open menu of subproject options, except for a negative list of what the money may not be used for: churches, guns, salaries, etc. But many CDD projects still feature positive lists of types of projects that constrain community choice. Earmarking of funds for specific purposes, as is done in a single-sector CDD project, is appropriate in the case where gaps in community knowledge or stigma prevent allocation of resources by communities to important national priorities, such as in programs to combat HIV and AIDS. It can also be appropriate in water supply or irrigation projects, where a lot of technical assistance is provided by a heavily engaged water authority. Earmarking can be achieved in two ways: (1) via a sectorspecific CDD project, or (2) via the development of special sector windows in a multi-sector CDD project. These windows are dedicated to the specific sectors that are to be particularly promoted.
Flow of Funds and Accountability Architecture for a Mainstreamed CDD program Figure 2 shows the architecture of the most advanced CDD programs that are currently in place in countries such as Mexico, Burkina
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Faso, Benin, or Indonesia. Figure 2 focuses on those processes that involve flows of funds and accountability, and leaves out all other activities such as information and communication, training, and technical support.
Figure 2: Accountability Architecture for Mainstreamed CDD Programs
A community development council prioritizes investments and develops the corresponding project proposals. In Burkina Faso, where a fungible resource envelope is transferred to the community, it develops the Community Development Program and the specific project proposals for the year that is being funded. It submits the proposals to a subdistrict development committee (SDDC)â&#x20AC;&#x201D;or, in countries with small districts, directly to the district development committee (DDC). The SDDC evaluates and approves the funds, supervises the execution, and conducts selected audits. In many cases the SDDC has to submit the individual proposals or the subdistrict programs to the DDC for a second round of approval, which is often in the form of a non-objection, rather than a new evaluation. The SDDC also has to report on program progress to the DDC. After no-objection or approval, disbursement to communities is authorized either by the SDDC or the DDC. The DDC also has to report to higher level authorities and to donors on progress, and on the financial accounts. To this effect it is supported by a monitoring and evaluation team, and sometimes by a separate impact evaluation team. A design team or project facilitators analyze prog-
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ress and help with redesigning projects when weaknesses are found.
How well have the new approaches to flow of funds and accountability performed? In other papers at this conference, the general performance of CDD and LCDD projects and programs will be discussed. In this section we focus on the critical question of fiduciary performance of the programs, which includes disbursement, accounting for funds, procurement, and audit functions. Figure 3 shows the data from the World Bank 2005 Quality Assurance Review (World Bank Quality Assurance Group 2005) of 298 ongoing or recently completed Social Fund of CDD operations all over the world. They all, to various degrees of boldness, utilize the innovations and processes discussed in the
Annex 3. Opening Remarks and Background Papers
Figure 3: 2005 Quality Assurance Review of 298 World Bank Social Fund/CDD Operations
previous sections. They show that in fiduciary terms, 100 percent of these operations performed at satisfactory levels or better, which is quite a remarkable achievement. Indeed the fiduciary dimension is the best performing dimension in these projects. While some of these operations may not have disbursed resources to communities, a large number of them did. These findings should therefore dispel any notion that communities cannot manage money. Similarly, not all of these operations used local governments for coordination, facilitation, and supervision purposes, but many did. Therefore the results also dispel the notion that local governments generally lack capacity to do so or are corrupt. Undoubtedly,
the careful design of World Bank operations in terms of fiduciary mechanisms has been a major reason for this outstanding success.
Variations in Flows of Funds and Accountability There are many options with widely different implications for empowerment of communities and local governments. Some of these variations are advocated by governments that are skeptical about the communitiesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; ability to handle funds, or the ability of local governments to coordinate the programs and provide the necessary training and supervision. Or they may be advocated by specific project teams from the World Bank.
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I first give two examples of what not to do, followed by two recommended approaches.
Figure 4: A conservative project approach to flow of funds and accountability
Figure 4 is a typical conservative project approach with a parallel system that does not involve local government. This is the approach that was widely used in Social Fund projects all over the World until they too started to mainstream their approaches. It continues to be used by very many donor projects all over the world. All coordination, approval, disbursement, and supervision functions are handled by a project-specific technical unit that receives all specific community proposals, approves them, and authorizes the release of funds from a special project account that is not part of the government’s fiscal system. The flaws in this system are three-fold: (1) it is far too centralized, and therefore cannot handle more than several hundred projects per year, far too few for a truly national program that should finance tens of thousands of community projects; (2) it is not mainstreamed in the national system, and there are many cases where, after donor funding stopped, the project units collapsed and all the systems and knowledge that had been accumulated were lost; it is therefore not a sustainable model; and (3), it did not make use of latent management capacities in local governments, and therefore had to hire staff for all its functions, making it also costly in terms of project overhead. In sum, this approach is neither scalable nor sustainable. A second approach was the use of NGOs as program implementers. By using a number of such NGOs, a
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project could increase its implementation capacity, hiring all the staff needed for project implementation into the project unit. It also enabled greater decentralization and outreach, as different NGOs with presence in different regions could be contracted. Under these approaches, the NGOs acted not just as facilitators to the communities, but also managed disbursements, and sometimes actual expenditures at community levels. This approach is no longer recommended for the following reasons: • It is an example of the community facilitation approach and tends to disempower communities. • The approach does not use the latent capacity of local government, but instead uses NGO staff. The high staff costs of NGOs make this approach difficult to scale up. • It stands in the way of the coordination
Annex 3. Opening Remarks and Background Papers
trict or district projects. All levels then prepare Figure 5: The subproject approach subproject proposals that are aggregated into subdistrict and/or district annual budgets. At the subdistrict level, the subprojects are approved individually, while the entire subdistrict plan and/ or annual budget may be submitted to the district level for approval. Authorization for release of funds from a project account can be either issued from the subdistrict or the district level. Sometimes these levels have different approval authorities depending on the size of the subproject. This approach is now used in the national LCDD program funded by the World Bank and and supervision functions of local govother donors in Mozambique. ernment. Of course, this does not mean that NGOs should not be used in CDD projects. But they are better used as facilitators of community processes, for technical support, or for project monitoring (as in the case of the Indonesian KDP program). The two approaches that are widely practiced today are the subproject approach illustrated in Figure 5 and the program approach that is fully integrated into national systems and into the intergovernmental fiscal system (Figure 6) The project approach is widely practiced by the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) in the pilot projects that it has funded all over the world. Communities prioritize their investments and these are aggregated into subdistrict or district plans. These subdistrict or district plans also include the priorities of these levels of government and the respective subdis-
Figure 6 shows an approach where communities and subdistricts prioritize investments over several years and then receive a budget envelope that they can combine with their own resources to implement their respective annual plans. The approach can be fully integrated into the intergovernmental fiscal system, such as in Mexico. There are therefore no project accounts, but accounts for the different levels are part of the national accounting system and may sit either at the district or subdistrict level, or at both. While a SDDC will appraise individual subprojects for their soundness, it approves the Community Development Plan (CDP), rather than the individual project, and disburses money against the entire plan in tranches. It will typically not request approval of these CDPs, but rather request no-objection from the higher level. It is the national or the provincial government
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that sets the rules for this program in terms of budget allocation, cofinancing formulas for the national government or the province, the districts, subdistricts, and communities.
Figure 6: Program approach within an intergovernmental fiscal system
National or Provincial Government Designs budget allocation and co-financing formulas for districts, communities
The subproject and the Allocated budges Authorizes release program approaches District Council to communities of funds can be combined in different forms. For Requests no objection example, the Mexican for CDPs program is a program approach to the level (sub) -District Approves CDPs Sub-District Council of the municipality, Account but the municipality uses a project approach to manage and finance community Presents community development program (CDP) investments. On the other hand, the BurkiReleases funds na Faso CDD project is Community Council not yet mainstreamed into the intergovernmental fiscal system, but uses formulas to allocate money to commupoverty index nities and finances a community development plan rather than individual projects. ◦◦ Since about 2002, municipal infrastructure development grants to municipalities in South Africa are based The allocation of funds to communities and subon formulas that take account of povdistricts is done in a variety of ways: erty levels and of municipal capacities • On a project-by project basis: KDP Indonesia, Brazil, the majority of CDD projects financed by the World Bank
• On a formula-driven basis: This sharply increases community empowerment and community cofinance ◦◦ Since 1990, budgets for community projects are allocated to Mexican Municipal Funds according to their
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◦◦ Since 2000, the budget allocation to community development plans in Burkina Faso is a fixed amount per person residing in the community • Many projects try to tie increases in budget allocation to performance of community or subdistricts, but the costs and benefits of such tying have not yet been measured.
Annex 3. Opening Remarks and Background Papers
Sources of funds Donor-financed Social Funds and CDD projects typically started with three sources of funds. The bulk of the funds were provided by the donor, followed by community contributions that varied from 5 to about 25 percent. Prior to the introduction of direct disbursements to communities, community cofinance was hard to obtain, and often confined to the range of 5 or 10 percent. The greater degree of empowerment associated with direct disbursement to communities encouraged these to provide much more cofinancing, typically ranging between 20 and 30 percent. Central government finance typically was low, as most projects were considered poverty reduction projects and central government cofinancing was often limited to less than 10 percent, especially in poor countries. Figure 7 shows the evolution of sources of finance that should happen over time. As local governments take on greater program responsibility, they should be asked to cofinance the programs, either from their own revenues, or from resources transferred to them by the central government for their own development. For a number of projectsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;such as water supply, irrigation, or electricity supplyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;user fees should become an increasing source of finance to make individual investments sustainable, and to enhance accountability of the project leaders to the users. Central and provincial cofinancing shares should take over from the donors, who should eventually exit the program, as happened in Mexico in the early years of this century.
Conclusions Bold approaches to LCDD financing have been used since the early 1990s, including municipal funds, formula-based allocation of funds to local governments, transfer of funds into community accounts, and community-based accountability
Figure 7: Sources of Funds
Sustainability and scaling up require progressive exit of donors
Community
Cost recovery
Donors
Local Governments Central provincial government
and procurement rules. These approaches have encouraged capacity development and the development of social capital wherever they have been applied. The first Mexican project already embedded the CDD program in local government. The boldest approaches have resulted in far greater empowerment of communities and local governments than more timid approaches. These approaches have reduced subproject costs, improved accountability for funds, and increased community and local government cofinance. Additional innovations were introduced over time, including the allocation of funds to communities for their entire community development plan rather than subprojects, formuladriven allocations of funds at the community level, and the use of NGOs as process and technical facilitators and as program monitors. The approaches have led to more transparent planning and public expenditure systems at the local level, and, far from leading to fiduciary problems, have enhanced accountability and reduced corruption at the community and local levels. Where projects were embedded in local govern-
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ment structures, they have contributed to political, administrative, and fiscal decentralization. And they have led to sustainable systems embedded in the intergovernmental fiscal system. In spite of all these successes, many governments and World Bank staff are still quite reluctant to adopt the bolder approaches that have already proved their success since the earliest days of
CDD. They have tended to cling to project units, parallel channels, and project-by-project financing. This has undermined the progress of LCDD and the empowerment of local governments and communities to manage their own development (World Bank Quality Assurance Group 2005). Let us hope that China, as it scales up LCDD, will adopt the bolder approaches.
References Binswanger-Mkhize, Hans P., Jacomina P. de Regt, and Stephen Spector. 2010. Scaling up Local and Community-Driven Development: A real world guide to its theory and practice. Washington, DC: World Bank. de Silva, Samantha. 2002.Taking the Lead: A Handbook on Direct Financing of Community Subprojects. Washington, DC, World Bank. World Bank Quality Assurance Group. 2005. Quality Assurance Review of World Bank Social Fund/CDD operations. Washington, DC: World Bank.
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Annex 3. Opening Remarks and Background Papers
The Andhra Pradesh Rural Poverty Reduction Project Indira Kranthi Patham The government of Andhra Pradesh has been implementing people-centered poverty reduction strategies for the last thirteen years. Its approach includes reducing vulnerability to shocks like illness, death in the family, and crop failure, as well as helping the poor create productive assets, increase incomes, and link with markets. This is achieved by building institutions of the poor, developing skills to manage them, and making them attractive clients for the commercial sector in this potentially large but overlooked market by creating a favorable investment climate for the poor, resulting in inclusive growth.
The Project The World-Bank-supported Andhra Pradesh District Poverty Initiative Project (2000–2006) and the follow-on Andhra Pradesh Rural Poverty Reduction Project (2003-2009) builds upon the state government’s decade-long experience with women’s self-help groups (SHGs) and the South Asia Poverty Alleviation Project in Andhra Pradesh, which has been supported by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The project—locally known as Indira Kranthi Patham (IKP)—aims to enable the rural poor to improve their livelihoods and quality of life. World Bank (IDA) support for these projects is US$330 million. The project works with over 10.2 million poor women, who are organized into 85,000 self-help groups of 10–15 women. Project investments include institution building, skill enhancement, and a community investment fund, which provides access to assets, rural finance, and income generation. The fund supports the poor and their organizations to leverage resources and investments from banks and other commercial organizations,
helping to make them risk-worthy, credit-worthy, and investment-worthy.
Program investments Institution Building and Social Capital Development • Building self-managed organizations at all levels such as self-help groups, Mandal Samakhyas, and Zilla Samakhyas (see below). • Supporting them through a community investment fund (CIF), which finances demand driven subprojects proposed by the communities • Strengthening the skill base of the poor through intensive training and knowledge dissemination • Developing and using “community resource persons,” community activists, and paraprofessionals for key program processes such as social mobilization and livelihood expansion • Promoting women’s leadership in grassroots organizations. Development of Financial Services for the Poor • Developing financial services products for the poor and creating public and private sector linkages for increased access to commercial credit, access to social safety nets and risk management instruments (such as insurance products) and greater food security (such as a community-managed rice credit line) Livelihoods Promotion and Expansion through Private Sector Partnerships • Encouraging sustainable agricultural
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practices among small and marginal farmers by replacing use of pesticides with regenerative and resource-conserving technologies such as non-pesticide management (NPM) for making agriculture competitive • Promoting investment in collective marketing and trading—for agricultural inputs, commodities, and non-timber forest produce (NTFP)—and linkages with higher value-added markets • Facilitating supply-chain integration and productivity enhancement in the dairy sector through selective valuechain interventions, transferring knowledge and management skills, and access to technology—such as smart card, electronic fat measuring instrument, etc. • Creating jobs through linkages with the service sector and enterprise development, including business process outsourcing (BPO) for the educated rural poor. Leveraging Information and Communication Technologies for Enhancing Livelihoods • Building partnership community institutions to become business correspondents/agents of commercial banks, delivering social security payments and microfinance services to the poorest households using biometric-based smart card branchless banking technologies. Reducing Vulnerability, Promoting Social Action, and Improving Local Governance • Mobilizing collective social action on domestic violence, child labor, family planning and health care, and education through women’s federations and selfhelp groups
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Highlights of K ey I mpacts •
Every US$1 support from World Bank helped the project leverage US$14 from commercial banks
•
10.2 million households provided with access to credit on sustainable basis
•
Cumulative savings and capital of poor households is US$1.44 billion
•
Cumulative credit flow from commercial banks to the poor is US$ 4.8 billion
•
1.2 million families covered by food security program
•
8.1 million members/spouses of SHGs are covered by life insurance
•
12.5 million women are covered by contributory pension scheme
•
185,748 young people are trained and placed in jobs through partnerships with private sector
•
Asset value at the poor households level almost tripled, i.e., from US$1,032 to US$2,974 on average
•
Incomes per household increased 115 percent from US$483 to $1,041 per annum
•
172,500 acres of land access provided to poor households
•
1 million acres of land brought under sustainable agriculture practices and reduced farming cost by US$ 64 million
•
Significant increase in agriculture and milk production among poor households
•
139,000 milk producers linked to formal dairy markets pouring 257,000 liters of milk per day
•
Community organizations get 30-40 percent better market prices for their produce and services.
Annex 3. Opening Remarks and Background Papers
• Organizing low-cost judicial services for the poor • Organizing the disabled into self-help groups to create community–based models of livelihood promotion for the disabled
District Federation
• Empowering women to develop effective partnerships with local governments (panchayats) for increased representation and increased participation in village councils (gram sabhas), enabling them to demand services from public service delivery agencies.
Sub-district Federation
Developing Innovative Franchise Model to Provide Insurance Services to the Rural Poor • Offering insurance protection to the members of self-help groups, their families, assets, health, etc. • Community-based organizations acting as franchisees for the largest insurance company in India to offer protection to the poor
Village Organization
• Setting up 24-hour call center at the district level to provide easy access to customer services to the rural poor in times of need.
Key Development Impacts
SHG
SHG
SHG
Mobilization and Organization of the Poor • 10.2 million rural poor women have been organized into 85,000 self-help groups (SHGs) and 35,525 village organizations (federations of SHGs) at the village level, 1,099 Mandal Samakhyas (federations of village organizations) at the block level, and 22 Zilla Samakhyas (district-level federations of Mandal Samakhyas) at the district level. The project is expected to cover over 95 percent
rural poor households by the time of project completion. Access to Commercial Bank Financing • The poor and their organizations have their own capital (OK?) and savings of US$1.44 billion and have used these internal funds and the community investment fund for negotiating and leverag-
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ing a credit line from commercial banks and other private sector organizations. The annual credit flow from commercial banks to poor households and their groups has increased sixty times, from $41.81 million in 2001 to $2.7 billion in 2008. The cumulative credit flow from commercial banks is expected to exceed $5 billion by the end of the project period. The project worked with the commercial banks to introduce a “total financial inclusion” product that envisages meeting all credit needs of SHG families, including (i) swapping of high-cost debts contracted with moneylenders, (ii) asset creation, (iii) investments in higher education, health, and jobs trainings, and (iv) improving shelters. The World Bank investment has been catalytic, and it is expected that commercial banks and other private sector organizations will step up their investments after the Bank project is withdrawn. This would ensure sustainability of investments in poor households and their livelihood enhancement. Growth in Key Livelihood Sectors • Investments have been made in key rural livelihoods, including agriculture, horticulture, dairy, non-timber forest produce, agribusiness, and new economy jobs. The program is supporting investments in local-level value addition, value-chain infrastructure, and development of market linkages with the private and public sectors. These linkages have provided 30-40 percent higher prices, thus tilting the terms of trade in favor of the poor. Decentralized livelihood support services are also being provided through establishing linkages with community-based organizations, para-professionals, and relevant public and private service providers.
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Increase in Incomes and Assets of the Poor • The value of assets at the poor households level almost tripled, rising from US$1,032 to US$2,974 on average from 2000–06 (which includes the project cycle of Andhra Pradesh District Poverty Initiative Project, the preceding phase of APRPRP). Likewise, there has been an increase in income, from US$483 to $1,041 per annum (115 percent increase) in the same period. Food Security • The food security credit is a direct intervention to tackle the hunger gap in rural areas. Under this initiative, 1.2 million families have been covered and the unit cost of food has been reduced by 15-20 percent, resulting in increased food consumption by the poor households. This has also contributed to increased access to food entitlements through creative bundling of credit with the bulk purchase of food items. Protection against Vulnerability through Insurance Plans • 9.6 million self-help group members and their spouses have been enrolled in life and disability insurance plans. Past experience shows that when the family bread winner dies, the survivors are consequently pushed into poverty and in a very vulnerable situation. The provision of insurance helps prevent more families from slipping into poverty. In addition, the capacities of communitybased organizations have been built so that they can act as the franchisees of India’s largest insurance company, called Life Insurance Corporation of India. Availability of call centers 24 hours a day provides easy and accessible services to the rural poor to make claims at times
Annex 3. Opening Remarks and Background Papers
of distress. District federations, called “Zilla Samakhya,” manage call centers for insurance. Creating Jobs for Rural Youth • 185,748 youth from the poorest families have been trained to date since the establishment of the job training program only two-and-a-half years go. On average, trained rural youth earn three to four times higher income than the average income earned by their families in agriculture. Eighty percent of the trainees have been linked to jobs in well-recognized private companies in various growth sectors, including retail, construction, and sales. The program focuses on tribal youth and targeting is done to include only the poorest in the society. The quality of life has improved for families of youths placed in jobs by this program. Ninety-four percent of the households say they are able to afford more nutritious food, and 30 percent of the families have invested the money to improve their housing conditions. Adopting Sustainable Agriculture Practices with Pesticide Free Crops • The project has developed a community-managed sustainable agriculture approach, which enables practicing technologies and practices—particularly pesticide-free and organic agriculture and organic soil fertility enhancement— to be applied through a network of farmer field schools and community extension agents. Such sustainable agricultural practices have been adopted on over 1 million acres of land by more than 322,000 small farmers. This program has been accepted as best practice at the national level and widely covered by the environmental media in the country. The project is trying to develop climate
adaptation strategies in the context of agriculture. Improving MDGs through nutrition and education • Nutrition. The nutrition-cum-daycare center is a major intervention—directly contributing to the realization of the MDGs—where pregnant and lactating mothers are provided a nutritious diet on a payment basis. The payment mechanism for this intervention is another example of bundling microfinance with other services. There are 600 nutrition centers currently run by community institutions. These have shown exemplary impacts on perinatal and neonatal indicators. A study covering 1,700 deliveries among the members who attended nutrition-cum-daycare centers found there were 98.5 percent safe deliveries, 87.3 percent normal deliveries, no low-birthweight babies, and no maternal, infant or neonatal deaths. • Education. Significant impacts have been made on the education front. There has been an increase in enrollment of children and reduction in drop-out rates among the members of self-help groups. Further, it has been observed that the poor have increased their investments in education of their children from their enhanced incomes. This expenditure has risen by about 17 percent after they joined the self-help groups.
This note has been produced by the Agriculture and Rural Development Unit of the Sustainable Development Department of the South Asia region at the World Bank. Any comments should be addressed to Parmesh Shah at pshah@worldbank.org.
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The Rural Poverty Reduction Program Northeast Brazil
in
Edward William Bresnyan Jr. Poverty in Brazil is concentrated in the rural Northeast. The NE comprises only 28 percent of Brazil’s population and 17 percent of its land area, but almost 50 percent of the country’s poor and a larger share of its rural poor. The region includes nine states and part of Minas Gerais—roughly the size of Germany, Italy, Spain, and France combined. Brazil as a whole is a middle-income country, but if the Northeast states were individual countries, some would qualify for IDA or blend financing given their low per-capita income. The Northeast has made progress over the last few decades, both in terms of growth generally and non-income dimensions of poverty. However, the income gap between the region and the rest of Brazil is not closing. The problem is concentrated in rural areas.
The Bank has been Brazil’s principal external partner in tackling rural poverty in the Northeast. The main vehicle for the past decade has been the Northeast Rural Poverty Reduction Program (PCPR). While that partnership dates back over three decades to the Bank’s McNamara era, the best results have been achieved in the years since 1993. At that time, a large program that operated through federal and state bureaucracies was reformulated into a community-driven development (CDD) program, with resources transferred directly to beneficiary communities. Since 1996, the Northeast state governments have taken the loans directly (guaranteed by the Federal government). Support has continued
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and strengthened over the years, despite several elections and changes of political party in individual states. The PCPR (Projeto de Combate à Pobreza Rural), as the program is known in Brazil, is now operating on a large scale, working with some 38,000 community associations and benefiting over 11 million people. PCPR investments are demand-driven: communities take the lead in prioritizing needs and remain in the drivers’ seat through completion and operation of their subprojects, including managing financial resources.
What are the results? The PCPR has had a measurable impact in improving living conditions in the rural Northeast, with the strongest achievements in the area of non-income poverty. In the 1990s across the region, only 20 to 25 percent of rural households had access to water and 35 to 40 percent to electricity. While the PCPR allows wide discretion for communities in selecting subprojects, in the aggregate about 75 percent of investments have been for basic infrastructure. Three-fifths of the region’s rural households gained access to water and electricity from 1993–2003 alone. They obtained that access through the PCPR. This, in turn, had various positive effects on the cost of obtaining water and on health outcomes. PCPR investments have had a positive impact—at statistically significant levels—in reducing infant mortality and the incidence of various common diseases, including diarrhea and intestinal parasites. The program has been well-targeted: 75 percent of beneficiaries had per capita incomes of less that US$1 a day. Since its beginning, the program has employed various strategies to reach women, indigenous, and quilombola (runaway African-slave descendent) groups. The investments have proven cost-effective when compared with those of traditional public sector supply-driven programs. The quality of works and level of beneficiary satisfaction have also been high. Fi-
Annex 3. Opening Remarks and Background Papers
nally, the PCPR has had an important impact on creating social capital, empowering communities, and creating governance structures at the local level. There are now 1,500 + participatory municipal councils in the 1,600+ municipalities of the Northeast. Beneficiary communities have the majority voting power, but local government officials and other stakeholders also participate. Today the institutional machinery of the PCPR—its community associations and municipal councils— are also being used by a variety of national and state programs to reach local people, thereby leveraging the PCPR’s impact. In most states, for each US$1 of PCPR funds, some US$5 from other programs are allocated using the same participatory methodology. The strategy to link clusters of organized Northeast rural producers to markets includes four key steps: • Meeting the market—that is, contacting national and international representatives of potential buyers—to better understand product demands and requirements. The demand for products originating in the small farm sector in developing countries has been growing at a rate of 25 percent annually in the European Union over the last 10 years. At the same time, there has been a growing tendency in Brazil for exporting firms and supermarket chains to express interest in products coming from family agriculture, including organic produce and those with a favorable impact on the environment. The most important niche is known as “Fair Trade,” formed by an international network of stores specialized in selling products that come from small farmers in low-income countries or poorer regions in middle-income countries (like NE Brazil). The European participants in this network alone include around 2,700 stores in 18 countries, with annual sales of about US$900 million. Representatives of the network
also exist in Australia, Canada, the United States, and Japan, among others. The Bank has been actively inviting these organizations to visit the PCPR, explore the kinds of products in which they have an interest, define volumes they would potentially acquire, and determine the type of investments needed in terms of production, processing, and packaging, to reach the level of quality required by the market. • Facilitating contacts between potential buyers and PCPR producer associations with existing or potential capacity to meet market requirements. One of the comparative advantages of the PCPR in NE Brazil, identified by both national and international buyers, is its scale. The fact that the PCPR is working with almost 38,000 organized communities and 11 million people creates a significant pool of suppliers of particular products, with potential to ensure quantity, quality, and continuity of supply. This offers an advantage that buyers find hard to match. • Engaging private technical support; strengthening partnerships with public technical assistance organizations and national and international NGOs. The PCPR strategy addresses two sets of capacity-building needs of producer associations that are in the process of linking to markets or already have established such linkages. First, on technical matters, in consultation with the buyers, professionals are identified who can provide technical support to producers on reaching quality standards required by the markets. Second, on various aspects of small business management, the NE program has been working in partnership with public sector technical service providers (e.g., SEBRAE). National and international NGOs—such
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as World Vision and CONTAG through its links with international NGOsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;have also been partnering with the PCPR on helping producers understand and navigate exporting procedures from Brazil and importing procedures into Europe and elsewhere. Producer associations that are just starting the process of trading internationally find this kind of help critical; some of those that have acquired more experience are now retaining professionals who do this type of work for commercial exporting companies.
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â&#x20AC;˘ Developing links with financing entities, such as Banco do Brasil and Banco do Nordeste. Linkages have been established with both national banks, which are working at the local level throughout the NE. Representatives of these banks participate in the monthly meetings of the PCPR municipal councils. The National Family Agriculture Support Program (PRONAF) is also using the PCPRâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s participatory municipal councils to allocate credit to family agriculture.
Annex 3. Opening Remarks and Background Papers
Summary
of
CDD
conducted in the
pilots
PRC
Jacomina P. de Regt Over the last decade, the Chinese government’s leadership started to look at community-driven development (CDD) as an approach to poverty alleviation. Four pilot projects have been conducted, each experimenting with different aspects of the CDD approach. In each pilot, lessons from CDD programs in other developing countries were incorporated and adapted to Chinese circumstances.
Evaluation documents from the Ethnic Minority Program, the Community-Managed Funds project, and the CDD pilot are incorporated into the cd-rom in Annex 6. These three pilots were also presented during the conference. We present the data from the urban pilot to complete the record. All four projects share some common characteristics:
The four pilot programs are (1) Assisting the Urban Poor in Liaoning Province; (2) CommunityManaged Funds; (3) the Village-Level Demonstration Project, also referred to as the Ethnic Minority CDD Pilot; and (4) Introducing CDD approaches in China’s Rural Poverty Reduction Program, or simply the CDD Pilot.
Pilot
Provinces
Counties
a. All the pilot programs have been small in scale. b. Evaluation studies have been conducted after 2–3 years of operation and long-term impact data are not available c. The role of local government has been important. d. The pilots have been successful in their demonstration effect and the CDD approach fits in existing government strat-
Number of Population Villages covered
Urban
Liaoning
About 210,000
Ethnic Minority Pilot in State Ethnic Affairs Commission
Yunnan; Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region
22 26
30 31
19,474 37,297
Community-Managed Funds
Sichuan Henan
1 (Wangcang) 1 (Ye)
20
Over 5,000 households
CDD pilot
Shaanxi, Sichuan; Guangxi Zhuang and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Regions
1 (Baishui) 1 (Jialing) 1 (Jingxi)
60
100,000 farmers
1 (Wengniute Banner)
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egies and programs. However, for longer term scaled-up programs, some policies will have to be adjusted, especially regarding the rural financial system.
The Urban CDD Pilot This pilot took place between June 2002 and December 2004. Its objectives were to assist the urban poor in two districts to gain the means and skills for better living and to help poor communities strengthen their capacity to organize themselves for their well-being. It was financed through a Japan Social Development Fund grant of $1.2 million. The skill training and micro-business support clearly resulted in higher monthly incomes for the participating households— about 40 percent of the poor households—and it created some 1,312 micro-businesses. The community component was also rated highly satisfactory. The provincial Project Management Office, with a selected consulting firm, provided workshops on organizing street committees, discerning community needs, and organizing to interact with local government. Street committees chose to work on upgrading of community toilets, constructing a public clothes hanger to dry clothes, and paving dirt roads. The component reached over 188,000 people, or about 80 percent of the households. One important feature of this pilot program was the attention given to learning from other international experiences. Representatives from the province and the two districts participated in a regional workshop on urban poverty and community-based development in Singapore, followed by a trip to Indonesia to observe and learn from the Urban KDP.
Lessons Learned Government leadership, and especially leadership stability, make all the difference. In the county where leadership was stable, the results were better.
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Street committees became the proper community-level organization for small civil works. The Women’s Federation and a private consulting firm provided guidance and training to 15 competitively selected community facilitators, who in turn worked with the communities and the street committees. There is unfortunately no follow-up to this pilot, as it has not been incorporated into urban policies and plans.
The Ethnic Minority Pilot This pilot program took place between 2007 and 2009. It had as its objectives to test the CDD methodology in areas with large minority populations. The State Ethnic Affairs Commission (SEAC) and similar provincial and county-level commissions have a history of providing funds for different programs. The pilot was financed through the China Economic Reform Implementation Project (TCC5). TCC5 provided $3 million, while SEAC provided the management of the pilot project as well as counterpart funds. It was implemented in two areas with large ethnic minority populations (8–10 minorities each). Each demonstration village was allocated a grant of RMB200,000. The CDD model used in the demonstration villages consisted of a participatory community needs assessment and decision making as to prioritization of needs; election of project management, implementation, and monitoring teams; as well as establishment of user associations where appropriate—for example, with drinking water. As this was a demonstration project, much attention was paid to detailed documentation of the methodology, manuals, and training of officials at all levels, as well of villagers. An independent evaluator visited villages in both areas. Overall, the qualitative and quantitative data show that the community-driven project was well-known and recognized in the communities, had a high degree of participation, and has the potential
Annex 3. Opening Remarks and Background Papers
to be sustainable, as village organizations and farmers are willing to maintain the projects.
on large livestock, because complementary programs for cow breeding were in place. Women’s requests for small livestock should also be honored.
Lessons Learned Several lessons emerged from this project. • Government leadership at all levels was highly involved. Some local governments recognized the superiority of this methodology and have extended it to other communities with their own funding. • Counterpart funding was allocated in a timely manner in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (RMB8 million), but less so in Yunnan Province (RMB11 million). • Communities in Xinjiang designed different project components—including crop planting, livestock development, rural infrastructure facilities, rural basic education, medical facilities, women’s education, and tourism—based on ecological conditions, project implementation capacities, and communities’ wishes. Some of the projects had a positive ecological impact, although that could be improved. In Yunnan Province, the projects comprised crop planting (tea, walnut, and rubber), livestock raising, rural infrastructure facilities (biogas pools, drinking water engineering, road establishment with cement, livestock pen construction, improvement of houses, and field irrigation facilities), and women’s traditional handicrafts. More attention to ecologically sound practices was also instituted, in part by valuing and incorporating the ethnic minority cultural practices for environmental protection. •
In Xinjiang, the projects focused mostly
•
Communities could construct small infrastructure themselves rather than having SEAC hire a contractor. This would require a waiver of government bidding regulations.
• With the TCC5 (the CD model, the community realized self-governance, self-maintenance, and self-innovation, accumulating experience and providing a demonstration model for other project management. This is expressed in the slogan: “Community’s things are decided by the community; Community’s things are done by the community; Community’s things are managed by the community.” • SEAC should nurture and train for facilitation skills in the local ethnic minority population; this will reduce costs and improve results. All handbooks should also be available in local languages or as bilingual publications. • Local governments see the value of the creation of community-based grassroots NGOs such as water user associations, livestock associations, etc. These associations should receive project management training.
The Village Mutual Fund Pilot This pilot project was financed as a subproject under the China Economic Reform Implementation Project, a technical assistance loan of the World Bank. Its objectives were to test selfmanagement of poverty alleviation grants by communities and a micro-credit model as an
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instrument of poverty reduction, and explore a functioning model that can maximize its chance of success by being scaled up. Specifically, the pilot project aimed to find a model that (a) maximizes the poverty alleviation impact of the government’s poverty-alleviation funding; (b) is financially sustainable and can be scaled up; and (c) strikes the most productive balance between the role of government and self-management by rural communities. This pilot was part of a large program, the Village Mutual-Assistance Fund (VMAF), which was initiated in poor villages in 14 provinces in 2006. It was proposed, designed, and implemented jointly by the Department of Agriculture within the Ministry of Finance (MOF), and the Department of Planning and Finance within the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development (LGOPAD) of China. The World Bank provided supervision and technical advice. The implementation of the pilot project started in September 2006 and closed in June 2009. Each of the four villages that started the pilot first received RMB 100,000 from MOF. The remaining sixteen villages received RMB150,000 each. The total cost to the government has been 648,866 RMB In addition, the WB covered the expert team. Two pilot counties and communities within these counties were targeted-based on poverty indices. However, after receiving information and training, communities in those counties competed against each other with proposals and only 20 were selected. The review panel consisted of technical department staff at the county level. The implementation was centered on the establishment of a Village Mutual-Assistance Association (VMAA) and Village Mutual-Assistance Fund (VMAF). Project offices were set up at county governments to lead the creation of VMAA and to facilitate their operation. Their
106
specific duties included mobilization of village communities in preparing for the establishment of VMAA, as well as auditing and monitoring the performance of VMAA. They in turn were guided by a provincial team that in turn was assisted by an expert team. Once a community was selected, each community elected a 5–7 member preparation team, and a village implementation plan was adopted through a multi-step participatory process. Efforts were made to mobilize village cadres and residents to participate in the pilot. The preparatory process involved identification of povertystricken households; election of representatives of three groups (poverty-stricken households, other households, and women); communication with villagers by representatives; and adoption of an implementation plan. An “All Villagers’ Conference” was held twice in each village. The preparation team worked to enlist villagers in the VMAA and collected membership fees from them. With the assistance of the project office in the county and township governments, the preparation team (a) drafted “Articles of Association,” as well as regulations governing the operation of VMAA; (b) solicited comments from VMAA members on the draft articles and regulations; (c) organized an election of board members and adoption of the articles of association; and (d) transferred its power to the elected board. The board then started leading and managing the operation of VMAF, which is affiliated with VMAA. Its stated mandates include (a) handling enlistment and cancellation of membership and collecting membership contributions; (b) drafting regulations on VMAA; (c) granting loans and collecting payments on a fixed date each month; (d) monitoring financial operation and usage of VMAF; and (e) reporting to the supervising authorities. In most pilot villages, the board comprises five members: a chairman, an executive team leader, a supervision team leader, an accountant, and a cashier.
Annex 3. Opening Remarks and Background Papers
The operation of the VMAF was set up as follows: 1. Group guarantee. Association members voluntarily team up to form groups of 5–7 people; each group signs a joint liability agreement. There have been cases where a villager paid for his teammate, who could not pay the monthly dues on time. 2. Membership-based eligibility of borrowing. Only members of VMAA are eligible to borrow from VMAF. Villagers with working capability above 18 years old are eligible to join the VMAA. Membership is limited to one per household. Members are required to pay a contribution to the VMAF in the amount of RMB 50–200, as determined by each VMAA. 3. Small amount of loans. A new borrower can receive up to RMB2000 and up to RMB3000 for subsequent loans. 4. Monthly interest rate of 0.7–1.0 percent. The rate is determined by VMAA members based on the principle of “operational cost recovery,” and can be adjusted after one year. 5. A fixed maturity term of 10–12 months. Borrowers start to pay monthly installments from the third month after the loan is granted. The interest is deducted from the outstanding balance. Prepayment is allowed. Dissemination of project information and training are carried out throughout the implementation process. In particular, cadres of the candidate villages and townships are trained before they participate in the competitive bidding. In addition, project team members and trained village cadres explain to the villagers how the VMAF operates during the preparatory stage
before VMAF is created.
Performance Evaluation data show the following: • More than 5,000 households—64 percent of the total—in the two pilot counties have joined VMAA, contributing about RMB334,880 in membership fees. • Over 1,500 loans with a total value of RMB 2,684,700 have been granted to VMAA member villagers. • The average size of the loans is as small as RMB1,744. • As of the end of 2008, outstanding loan balances were RMB1,421,532. The repayment rate averages 152 percent due to a large number of prepayments. • There have been no reports of defaults or overdue payments.
Evaluation Study: Findings The evaluation study has the following findings (data through the end of 2008): 1. The piloted model was effective in improving households’ access to finance in the pilot villages. a. Sixty-six percent of members of VMAAs have borrowed from VMAFs (74 percent in Wangcang County and 58 percent in Ye County), with an average loan of RMB2,457. That implies that 56 percent of rural households in Wangcang County and 31 percent in Ye County have obtained loans from VMAF. b. VMAF lending is cheaper than formal financial institutions and informal money-
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lenders. In terms of interest cost, a VMAF loan is 5 percent lower than financial institutions and 40 percent lower than informal moneylenders. Non-interest costs—such as travel expenses and “gifts”—associated with informal lending are much higher than in the case of VMAF. c. Sixty-two percent of the surveyed households reported that they would have to abandon or scale down their projects without loans from VMAFs. d. Ninety-one percent of the loans were used to finance animal farming activities. e. Eighty-one percent of the surveyed households reported that they made a profit with the loans. f. The average size of the reported profit was RMB2325; 34 percent of the sample households stated that their profit represented half or more of their family income. 2. The model ensured that the poorest households are targeted and served at least as well as others. a. Seventy-three percent of the poorest quintile of the surveyed households joined the VMSA. b. Seventy-six percent of those of the poorest quintile who joined the VMAAs received loans, more than any other quintile groups. c. Fifty-two percent of the poorest quintile of the surveyed households believed that they would have not been able to obtain funds from alternative sources without loans from VMAFs. d. VMAF represents a more important source of borrowing to the poor in one of the two
108
counties. It accounted for 29 percent of the total borrowing of the poorest one-third of the sample households in Wangcang County, compared with 23 percent and 10 percent of the middle 1/3 and richest 1/3, respectively. 3. The model appears to be able to ensure break-even of VMAFs; the cost to the government is substantial but affordable. a. VMAFs in the four villages of the first batch broke even in 2007–08, despite slow lending at the initial stage. However, the labor cost of the board members is lower than it would be if they were paid at the market level of compensation. b. Under certain assumptions, VMAFs will be able to cover the labor cost of board members at market price without incurring a loss. The survey found that an annual subsidy of RMB800–1,000 is considered to be an acceptable market rate. That means, one-third of the annual interest income for a VMAF of RMB150,000 is enough to cover the staff cost of board members. c. The average cost of lending in the 16 VMAFs of the second batch is RMB7.87 per RMB1,000; this is about 16 percent lower than the average lending cost of the first batch, which is RMB9.42 per RMB1,000. d. The VMAFs will likely be in the red if the opportunity cost of the MOF grant is taken into account. At an annual interest rate of 10 percent, for example, the total annual cost to the four VMAFs in the first batch would be RMB40,416. This can be considered part of the cost incurred to the government in its poverty reduction efforts. e. In addition, it costs the government RMB32,443 on average to organize the pilot in each village. This excludes the cost
Annex 3. Opening Remarks and Background Papers
of the expert team, which was covered separately by the World Bank. However, there is a substantial room for cost reduction, and this cost is largely one-off
Other Evaluation Study Findings •
•
•
•
Suitable villages. Local farmers have a great demand for small amounts of capital that could not be obtained from other sources. The demand is associated with a place’s development level and economic structure, as well as the service of local financial institutions. Well-off villages that are well-served by Rural Credit Cooperatives are not suitable for VMAFs. A good relationship among villagers and between villagers and local cadres is also important for a successful implementation of the VMAF scheme. Adequate dissemination and capacity building. Only when local villagers are fully informed and engaged would they actively participate in the project and ensure the arrangement is properly designed and managed. Intensive training of various forms at different stages of the project is necessary for a smooth implementation of VMAF. A large enough size of the fund. The fund should not be less than RMB150,000 so as to ensure that farmers’ needs for capital are met. Strong support of the local government. A VMAF mechanism involves a tremendous amount of work and a large amount of inputs in capital and labor from local government. Government support is also important to ensure sufficient funding to cover up-front costs and effective external supervision of VMAFs.
Policy Recommendations by the Expert Team The concluding report of the pilot project prepared by the expert team proposed seven policy recommendations. 1. Scaling up in villages that fit. VMAF has proved to be a feasible and effective approach to improve the access to finance by farmers, particularly the poorest ones. However, it requires a tremendous amount of preparatory work to build the capacity of administrative bodies at various levels and to engage farmers. Therefore, it is recommended that the VMAF model be scaled up in a gradual and controlled way so as to avoid the mistakes of government micro-credit projects in the 1990s; that is, it should only be launched in strictly selected areas with proper demand and a solid mass foundation, and the volume of VMAFs should be subject to close check. 2. Clarify the role of the VMAF and emphasize its special nature. VMAF is specifically designed as a governmentfunded temporary arrangement that is aimed at helping poor farmers escape poverty by providing a small amount of capital. Therefore, it is not supposed to meet the need for finance of all farmers and should exit the market when the task is fulfilled. 3. Create a specialized supervision agency for VMAFs. A specialized supervision agency that plays the role of project team in the VMAF pilot would be essential for the scaling up of the model. A VMAF Supervision Center should be established at the national level and also at the county level in large counties. Meanwhile, township governments should play a bigger role in supervision and assistance. This would require government
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institutional reform and additional funding. 4. Strengthen capacity building and set standards on VMAF operation. The government should work out regulations to standardize the operation and management of VMAFs. Standard statistics and financial reporting forms should be used to better monitor their performance. 5. Differentiate the size of VMAFs according to the size of villages. Chinese villages vary significantly in size and condition. To ensure the optimal use of funds, the scale of VMAF should match the size of the village. According to the estimate of the expert team, RMB1,000 per member is a roughly adequate level. 6. Provide necessary subsidies to VMAFs in the initial stage. The 20-village pilot shows that it takes about a year before a VMAF reaches normal operation. During the initial period, the VMAF incurs significant expenses while receiving limited income. It is recommended that the government budget a specific amount of funds to subsidize the initial expenses. 7. Reduce the registration fee of VMAA. It costs on average RMB1,899 to register and start a VMAA. The main expenses come from legal entity registration, capital verification, seal inscription, and opening bank accounts. It is recommended that the government waive some of these fees for VMAA.
The CDD Pilot In May 2006, China’s State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development (LGOPA), in collaboration with the
110
World Bank, initiated a CDD pilot program. The program was carried out by the Foreign Capital Project Management Center (FCPMC) of LGOP. The pilot program, modeled in part on CDD operations supported elsewhere in Asia by the World Bank, was expected to cost RMB 64 million ($8 million). The program was supported by a grant of RMB 16 million ($2 million) from Japan through the Japan Social Development Fund in the World Bank. The pilot was carried out in poor and remote areas in PRC and in officially designated poor villages. In the pilot, 60 participating administrative villages received grants in support of three activities intended to attack inadequate living conditions and incomes. In the first activity, villagers received funds to undertake small-scale infrastructure or public service improvements. A second activity provided funds to improve village natural resource management or local environmental conditions. The third activity allowed villagers to collectively manage a revolving fund that provided small investment loans to households. In each activity, intensive facilitation was also provided. Within each administrative village, smaller natural villages competed for access to program grants through participatory processes Three international NGOs—Action Aid, Plan International, and World Vision—assisted in program training and local facilitation. A fourth NGO, Oxfam Hong Kong, also supported program design, monitoring, and evaluation. These NGOs provided facilitation in three counties, while in the fourth, the county officials provided the facilitation. The China CDD Pilot End Term Evaluation was carried out over the period September–October 2009. This evaluation coped with a paucity of impact data and was based primarily on a review of supervision documents, staff interviews, and a field visit.
Annex 3. Opening Remarks and Background Papers
Findings of the Evaluation The evaluation found that the project was highly relevant. The objectives of the project were highly relevant to Chinaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Eleventh Five Year Plan, its policies, and to government priorities to reduce poverty. Preliminary findings indicate that the project served to reach out to targeted populations of the poor in China. Participation among the poor in the CDD was much higher in CDD villages than non-CDD villages. Participation of female farmers and the gender inclusion in the project was high in community organizations, project planning, and implementation processes, and women were engaged as project functionaries. Additionally, women-owned and women-funded projects also reflected higher returns and profits in the village that was studied. For the PRC, there were several innovative aspects in the project design of the pilot. These included provision of funds/grants to villagers themselves to make decisions on what programs to fund, manage and implement. The main innovation under the CDD pilot was to give villagers greater influence and authority in local decision making. Another innovative aspect was the innovative approach to poverty alleviation. Unlike previous piecemeal approaches to poverty alleviation, this program explicitly links three major causal factors of poverty in rural Chinaâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;poor access to infrastructure and public services, little or no opportunity for households to improve their incomes, and limited incentives to address environmental issues or constraints. All participating villages were able to avail themselves of three corresponding windows for small-scale assistance, with villagers themselves establishing funding priorities. There were indications of quantitative and qualitative gains in the project villages. In the three components, targeting was carried out meaningfully; roads had been built; infrastructure inputs that had been provided were maintained by the communities themselves
within the cost of the project; communities were able to draw on water sources in their villages; communities carried out improvements to the environment; community funds were provided to community members; and hand pumps had been set up. In villages where funds were used for income generation activities, sustainable solutions were built in with good results that were maintained even after the project closed. Participation levels in the CDD villages were much higher than the non-CDD villages. Program implementation was generally effective. Given the problems in procuring endterm data, the team used the findings from the supervision missions and other evaluations to assess the projectâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s effectiveness. Supervision mission findings for the project from its inception to program implementation reflected several problems, including slow disbursement of counterpart funds; correct identification of poverty areas; identification of community facilitators; and lack of consensus among some project areas to funding of activities at the inception of the program. Supervision reports during the latter period of 2008 reflect enhanced efficiency in implementation. Program implementation in Baishui County was efficient and strong and far ahead of the other counties, according to supervision reports in mid-2007. Integrating various components and providing financial and technical resources together seemed to contribute to the effectiveness of program implementation. The program was successful in targeting the poor. Successful targeting of the poor with a systematic approach like that followed by the China CDD Pilot succeeded in overcoming obstacles to reach the poor. The participatory approach taken by the project to select and target villages and communities set the pace to ensure effective selection of the poor. In instances where targeting was not appropriate, the communities themselves filed complaints to the project managers so that this could be rectified early in the project phase.
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Initial data suggest the project was efficient. Assessing the efficiency of the project was difficult given the absence of information about economic rates of return, but initial data seem to indicate that the pilot was able to address efficiency in a comparative manner compared to non-CDD pilots. Comparison with non-CDD project areas also reflected greater attention to participation and social capital aspects of the interventions. In some cases the project was able to build social capital in the local government and the communities as well. Field visit observations raised questions as to whether the project could have measured benefits in a more systematic manner to measure impact for interventions. The pilot contributed to institutional enhancement and capacity building. Assessing institutional capacity enhancement and capacity building in the pilot presented challenges of its own kind. The China CDD experience seemed to suggest several differences in the manner in which county and provincial governments were handling institutional enhancement and capacity building components in the project. Although the project had not carried out a typical capacity needs assessment or mapped capacity components in the project, the discussions indicate that the pilot did contribute in some manner to changing the attitude of government officials and enabled the support of policy reforms for poverty alleviation projects at the community level in poverty endemic areas. Training inputs provided by the International NGO Plan International contributed in large measure to enhanced capacity of local government and community stakeholders alike. The project appears to be sustainable. The sustainability of the project could only be assessed in the context of the visit paid by the evaluation team to Baishui county and discussions with the stakeholders in the county. Sustainability of project functionality was reflected in a unique manner in Baishui county. The village had built sustainability adequately in the selection of the activities they chose for funding in the county.
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The coordinated presence of different stakeholders and technical inputs in horticulture, animal husbandry, and agriculture (along with NGO input) contributed greatly to ensuring the maintenance of funds and continued investments in the village activities. Building availability of resources and ensuring adequate maintenance of infrastructure in the activities themselves contributed greatly to maintaining the quality and flow of long-term services beyond project closure. Clear project processes on roles and responsibilities of project functionaries—coupled with frequent meetings and discussions with the communities themselves—also was a contributing factor in building sustainable mechanisms in the project, especially in the context of the county that was visited. Reform and institutional change in this instance seems to have been gradual, but the change was there to stay and was reflected in the sustainable manner in which the project managers handled implementation and future program inputs.
Lessons Learned There are several lessons learned from the China CDD that can be used for scaling up CDD operations elsewhere in PRC in other programs. f. NGO involvement in CDD projects must be carried out with great care and selection to achieve good results. The NGO (Plan International) that was engaged in Baishui county contributed both knowledge and skills in the county and in participatory processes, thereby contributing in great measure to project efficiency gains in the CDD pilot. g. The need to articulate simpler procedures and guidelines for community-level tools in order to enhance efficiency of disbursement and implementation procedures. Formulating tools and instruments for use by community-level program interventions requires great care and attention to breaking down program requirements into
Annex 3. Opening Remarks and Background Papers
simpler steps and tasks that can be easily understood by both project managers and communities themselves. The China CDD will need to rethink simplifying some of the tools in the field to allow for enhanced functioning. h. Integration of activities can contribute greatly to promoting economic development in CDD-type projects. Integrating several different kinds of program interventions and allowing the community to decide which interventions they could choose worked well and must be tried in other CDD programs as well. i. CDD projects in China will need to take into account gender differentials in the field given migration trends in villages. The results achieved and the participation of women—both in program implementation and as project functionaries— warrants attention and closer scrutiny. Women-headed households at the rural level contributed in large measure to this result and must be recognized. j. Integrating poverty-based approaches with household approaches will contribute greatly to poverty alleviation. Program interventions that combine both approaches can ensure inclusion of important components in design when the two are integrated, thereby ensuring that there are no gaps in program design. k. Ensuring the adequacy and frequency of training and technical inputs across sectors and thematic areas will contribute to effectiveness. Integrating program interventions also calls for ensuring the adequacy and frequency of training and technical inputs across sectors and thematic areas so there are no gaps during program implementation. County officials spoke to the need for upstream planning in this regard.
l. Financial and technical tools must be provided in an integrated manner to local governments to help ensure the effectiveness of project management. Capacity enhancement of project and local functionaries and knowledge sharing in the above areas needed to be provided in an integrated manner across the program intervention areas to enhance the effectiveness of project management and program delivery. m. Scaling up issues of similar programs in China would need to take into account the following: • Careful attention to targeting of the poor contributed in great measure to the success of the CDD pilot; this must be replicated. • Effects of migration patterns in rural areas. • Effects of women-only households in poor remote areas (since the men have migrated to urban areas in their pursuit for employment). • Additionally, to sustain success, quality standards, training, funding, evaluation, and management aspects need attention by both policy makers and implementers. • The success and factors that led to the efficiency and effectiveness of the CDD in Baishui county must be probed further, and articulated clearly so that other provinces could learn from the implementation success of the programs in the county. For project information, see http://web.worldbank.org/external/projects/main?pagePK=642 83627&piPK=73230&theSitePK=318950&menu PK=318983&Projectid=P085124
Annex 3. Opening Remarks and Background Papers
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Annex 4. International Conference on Community-Driven Development and Rural Poverty Alleviation Welcome Remarks Honorable guests: China State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development would like to extend its warmest welcome to all participants to the International Conference on Community-Driven Development and Rural Poverty Alleviation, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of establishment of the People’s Republic of China. The conference brings numbers of leading experts and scholars together from China and abroad, exchanging experiences and lessons of Community Driven Development Approach, studying ways of giving full play to farmers in rural development, and of increasing poor people’s capacity of self-development. It is our sincere expectation that this conference would promote the improvement of CDD approach, foster the application of CDD international experiences to China, meanwhile introduce China’s experiences to the world, and further strengthen the communication and cooperation among governments, donors and relevant organizations in poverty reduction, so as to make new contributions to the poverty alleviation in China and in the whole world.
114
Wish you good health and a pleasant stay in China!
Wish the conference a great success!
Annex 4. International Conference on Community-Driven Development and Rural Poverty Alleviation
International Conference on Community-Driven Development and Rural Poverty Alleviation Agenda
October 18-19, 2009
Date
Oct. 17
Program
Venue
Hotel Check in and Registration (All Day)
Beijing Henan Plaza Hotel 28 Huaweili Panjiayuan, Chaoyang District, Beijing, P.R. China 100021 Tel: 010 67751188
18:30pm
Banquet Hall on the 2nd Floor
Welcome Banquet
Oct. 18
Day One
Session 1
Opening Remarks
9:00-9:40
Chair: Mr. Zhang Lei, Director of International Cooperation and Social Mobilization Department, LGOP Mr. Fan Xiaojian, Director, State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development Mr. James Adams, Vice President of the World Bank Mr. Lawrence Greenwood, Vice President of Asian Development Bank His Excellency David Mulroney, Ambassador of Canada to China
4th Floor Conference Room
9:40-10:10
Group picture-taking & Tea Break
Lobby
Session 2
Keynote Speeches Chair: Mr. Fan Zengyu, Director of FCPMC, LGOP
10:10-11:10
1. Community-Driven Development and Poverty Alleviation & Development in Rural China — Mr.Zheng Wenkai, Deputy Director, State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and DevelopmentGlobal Perspectives on Community Driven Development — Mr. Cyprian Fisiy, Director, Social Development Department, the World Bank Chair: Ms. Magda Lovei, Sector Manager, the World Bank
11:10-12:10
3. CDD and Inclusive Growth —Mr. Bart Edes, Director for Poverty Reduction, Gender & Social Development, Asian Development Bank
Annex 4. International Conference on Community-Driven Development and Rural Poverty Alleviation
4th Floor Conference Room
4th Floor Conference Room
115
11:10-12:10
4. Reflecting on 25 Years of Rural Support Program Experience in South Asia — Mr. Shoaib Sultan Khan, Chairman, National Rural Support Programme, Pakistan
Session 3
CDD: International & Domestic Experiences and Lessons
4th Floor Conference Room
Thematic Topic 1: National Strategies for Financing and Budgeting for CDD Chair: Prof. Wen Tiejun, Renmin University, China
14:00-15:00
1. Republic of Indonesia: CDD as a National Program —Mr. Sujana Royat, Deputy to the Minister for Poverty Alleviation Coordination, Welfare, Republic of Indonesia — Ms. Camilla Holmemo, Poverty Reduction Specialist, ADB 2. China: Experience with Poor Rural Community Development Fund Pilots — Mr. Xu Hui, Director of Department of Planing & Financing, LGOP 3. Accountability, Flow of Funds and Financing of Community Driven Development — Mr. Hans Binswanger, South Africa
4thFloor Conference Room
Q&A (15 min.) Thematic Topic 2: CDD & Improved Public Services Delivery Chair: Mr. Tang Min, Deputy Secretary General, China Development Research Foundation
15:00-16:00
1. Morocco: Improving service delivery through Participatory Approach for the National Initiative for Human Development (INDH) — Mr. Mohamed Medouar, Senior Rural Development Specialist, World Bank — Mr. Souleimane El Hajjam, Deputy Director INDH, Ministry of Interior Rabat, Morocco 2. Participatory Governance. Experience of Aga Khan Development Organizations in Central and South Asia — Mr. Henri Suter, Regional Programme Advisor (Asia), Aga Khan Foundation Rural Development Program 3. Enhancing Public Service Delivery through CDD: the KALAHI-CHIDSS experience — Luwalhati Pablo, Under-secretary, Department of Social Welfare and Development, the Philippines
4thFloor Conference Room
Q&A (15 min.) Thematic Topic 3: CDD and Inclusion of Marginalized Groups: Practical Experiences and Implications in Poor and Ethnic Minority Areas 16:15-17:15
Chair: Mr. Wan Guanghua, Senior Poverty Reduction Specialist, ADB 1. Community Driven Development: ADB Country Experience in Pakistan and China — Ms. Betty Wilkinson, Senior Finance Specialist, ADB
116
Annex 4. International Conference on Community-Driven Development and Rural Poverty Alleviation
4th Floor Conference Room
16:15-17:15
2. Overview of Achievements and Challenges in Implementing CDD Projects in Pastoral Communities, The case of Pastoral Community Development Project in Ethiopia — Mr. Assefa Tewodros, Coordinator, Pastoral Community Development Program, Ethiopia — Piloting CDD with Ethnic Minorities in China — Mr. Wang Tiezhi, Counsel of Economy & Development Department from State Ethnic Affairs Commission, China
4th Floor Conference Room
Q&A (15 min.)
Oct. 19
Day Two Thematic topic 4: Environment Protection Elements In CDD Chair: Mr. John Leigh-Human Development Adviser
8:30-9:30
10:45-11:00
1. Mid Himalayan Watershed Development Project in Himalchal Pradesh — Mr.R.K.Kapoor, Chief Project Director, Mid-Himalayan Watershed Project, Himalachal Pradesh, India 2. The Achievement and Effectiveness of CDD Pilot in Haihe Water Resource and Water Environment Management Project — Mr. Li Yonggen, Deputy Director of GEF Haihe Project Office — Community Driven Conservation: Putting CDC in CDD? — Mr. Anthony Whitten, Senior Bio-Diversity Specialist, WB
4th Floor Conference Room
Tea Break Thematic Topic 6: Monitoring and Evaluation in CDD Chair: Mr. Hans Binswanger, South Africa
11:00-11:50
1. Monitoring and Evaluation for CDD Operations: Lessons Learned — Ms. Susan Wong, Senior Social Development Specialist, World Bank 2. Monitoring and Evaluating the Results of CDD Pilots in China — Mr. Liu Shengan, Division Chief, FCPMC LGOP
4thFloor Conference Room
Q&A (15 min.) Session 4:
Wrap-Up & Closing Closing Remarks
11:50-12:20
Chair: Mr. Xia Gengsheng, Deputy Director of FCPMC, LGOP Mr. Tan Weiping, International Cooperation and Social Mobilization Department, LGOP, China
Annex 4. International Conference on Community-Driven Development and Rural Poverty Alleviation
4thFloor Conference Room
117
Facilitated Workshop: International CDD Best Practices October 18-19, 2009
Time
Program
Venue
Opening Remarks: Mr. Cyprian Fisiy, Director, Social Development Department, World Bank Group One: Exchanging International Experience Facilitation Questions: What have we learned about the development and expansion of CDD? How can we continue to share CDD innovations and best practices?
13:30-15:00
Group Two: Improving Livelihoods: Is CDD Making a Difference? Facilitation Questions: What have we learned about improving livelihoods through CDD? How can livelihoods for the poor be further improved through CDD? What other methods need to complement the CDD approach? Group Three: Ideas for the Future Development of CDD in China Facilitation Questions:
4thFloor Conference Room
What have we learned about the piloting and expansion of CDD in China? How could Chinese CDD efforts be scaled up and further improved? Presentation of Group Recommendations by facilitators of three groups 15:00-16:00
118
Closing Remarks: Workshop Closure by Mr. Ede Ijjasz, Sector Manager, World Bank (Beijing)
Annex 4. International Conference on Community-Driven Development and Rural Poverty Alleviation
Annex 5. Participants List I. International No. Name
Country/Organization
Title
1
James Adams
The World Bank, Headquarter
Vice President - East Asia Region
2
Lawrence C. Greenwood, Jr.
Asian Development Bank
Vice-President
3
H. E. David Mulroney
Canadian Embassy in China
Ambassador
4
Luwalhati Pablo
Department of Social Welfare and Development, Philippines
Under-secretary
5
Sujana Royat
Poverty Reduction, Coordinating Ministry for Peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Welfare, Indonesia
Deputy to Minister
6
Cyprian Fisyi
Environment and Social Development Board, The World Bank
Director
7
Madga Lovei
The World Bank, Headquarter
Sector Manager
8
Ede Ijjasz
The World Bank, Beijing
Sector Manager
9
Sean Bradley
The World Bank, Headquarter
Senior Social Development Expert
10
Chaogang Wang
The World Bank, Headquarter
Senior Social Development Expert
11
Susan Wong
The World Bank, Headquarter
Senior Social Development Expert
12
Anthony J. Whitten
The World Bank, Headquarter
Senior Bio-Diversity Specialist
13
Gayane Minasyan
The World Bank, Headquarter
Environmental Economist
Annex 5. Participants list
119
120
No. Name
Country/Organization
Title
14
Carter Brandon
The World Bank, Beijing
Sector Coordinator/Lead Environment Specialist
15
Zhou Meixiang
The World Bank, Beijing
Social Development Specialist
16
Lin Zongcheng
The World Bank, Beijing
Social Development Specialist
17
Zhu Hua
The World Bank, Beijing
Officer
18
Zeng Lu
The World Bank, Beijing
Officer
19
Niu Zijing
The World Bank, Beijing
Officer
20
Andrew D. Goodland
The World Bank, Mongolia
Senior Agriculture Economist
21
Erdene-Ochir Badarch
The World Bank, Mongolia
Operations Officer
22
Son Thanh Vo
The World Bank, Vietnam
Rural Development Specialist
23
Daniel Mont
The World Bank, Vietnam
Senior Human Development Economist
24
Lan Thu Nguyen
The World Bank, Vietnam
Rural Operations Officer
25
Ambibola Adubi
The World Bank, Nigeria
Senior Agricultural Specialist
26
Edward William Bresnyan
The World Bank, Brazil
Senior Rural Development Specialist
27
Mohamed Medouar
The World Bank, Morocco
Senior Rural Development Specialist
28
John Victor Bottini
The World Bank, Indonesia
Senior Social Development Specialist
29
Mary Judd
The World Bank, Philippines
Senior Anthropologist
30
Maria Loreto Padua
The World Bank, Philippines
Senior Social Development Specialist
31
Daniel Gibson
The World Bank, Laos
Senior Social Scientist
32
Helene Monika Carlsson Rex
The World Bank, Laos
Senior Gender Specialist
33
Alice Carloni
The World Bank
Consultant
34
Jacomina de Regt
The World Bank
Consultant
35
Hans P. Binswanger-Mkhize
The World Bank
Consultant
36
Bart W. Ă&#x2030;des
Asian Development Bank, Regional and Sustainable Development Board
Division Director
Annex 5. Participants list
No. Name
Country/Organization
Title
37
Guanghua Wan
Asian Development Bank
Senior Poverty Expert
38
Betty Harriet Wilkinson
Asian Development Bank
Senior financial expert
39
Cliff Burkley
Asian Development Bank
Social Development Specialist
40
Camilla Holmemo
Asian Development Bank
Poverty Expert
41
Honey May Manzano Guerzon
Asian Development Bank
Senior Operations Assistant
42
Xiaofei Jiang
Asian Development Bank
Country Specialist
43
Markus Vorpahl
Agriculture, Environment, and Natural Resources Division, East Asia Regional Dept (EARD), ADB
Social Development Specialist
44
Robert Wihtol
ADB, Beijing
Country Director, ADB PRC Resident Mission
45
Celine Peyron Bista
ADB, Beijing
Social Sector Specialist, PRCM
46
Longyun Peng
ADB, Beijing
Senior Economics Officer, PRC Resident Mission
47
Haifang Wang
ADB, Beijing
Administrative Assistant, PRC Resident Mission
48
Tarik Khan
Canadian Embassy in China
Counsellor (Development)
49
Jane Lang
Canadian Embassy in China
First Secretary and Deputy Consul
50
Fahmeeda Wahab
Canadian Embassy in China
First Secretary
51
Betty Ann Chung
Canadian Embassy in China
First Secretary
52
Li Qingdong
Canadian Embassy in China
Officer
53
John Leigh
UK Department for International Development
Human Development Adviser
54
Ruel Guillergan Lucentales
Department of Social Welfare and Development, Philippines
Assistant Secretary
55
Phouangparisak Pravongviengkham
Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Laos
Director General of the Department of Planning
56
Souvannaphan Bounkhouang
Foundation for Poverty Alleviation of Laos
Officer
57
Phonevanh Outhavong
Investment Planning Department Planning Division
Officer
58
Souleimane El Hajjam
Ministry of Interior Rabat, Royaume du Maroc
Deputy Director
Annex 5. Participants list
121
No. Name
Country/Organization
Title
59
Akeju Olagbaju Mudashiru
Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources, Nigeria
Asst. Director
60
Bukar Tijani
Nigeria-FADAMA Project
Director General
61
Henri Suter
Aga Khan Foundation Rural Development Programme
Regional Programme Advisor (Asia)
62
Tom Kessinger
The Aga Khan Foundation
General Manager
63
Fayyaz Nurmohamed
Secretary AKDN Committee
General Manager
64
Amyn Ahamed
Secretary AKDN Project
Coordinator Special Projects
65
Khashtsetseg Adiya
Mongolia, Sustainable Livelihoods Project
Director
66
Tengis Purevdoo
Mongolia, Sustainable Livelihoods Project
Coordinator for the Community Initiatives Component (GoM)
67
Assefa Tewodros
The Development of Joint Projects in Pastoral Areas
Coordinator
68
Shanko Delelegn
Ethiopian Ministry of Federal Affairs
Director General
69
Budithi Rajshekhar
Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty, Andhra Pradesh, India
Additional Chief Executive Officer
70
R. K. Kapoor
Mid-Himalayan Watershed Project, India
Chief Project Director
71
Tonno Supranoto
Coordinating Ministry for Peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Welfare, Indonesia
Assistant to the Deputy, PNPM National Oversight Team Head of Working
122
Unit on RIS-PNPM, Directorate General of Cipta Karya
72
Panani Kesai
Ministry of Public Works, Indonesia
73
Bobby Ali Azhari
Directorate General of Cipta Karya, Ministry of Public Works, Indonesia
Head of PMU - PNPM urban
74
Prasetijono Widjojo, MJ, MA
Ministry of National Development Planning/National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas)
Deputy for Poverty, Manpower and Small Medium Enterprise
75
Shoaib Sultan Khan
National Rural Support Programme, Pakistan
Chairman
76
Daniel Nyankamawu
The Government of Ghana, Ministry of Local Government & Rural Development
Officer
77
B.M. Oppong
The Community Based Rural Development Project, Ghana
National Coordinator
Annex 5. Participants list
II. International (Based
in
China)
No. Name
Organization
Title
78
Shi Weilin
United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)
Programme Officer
79
Hana Brixi
United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)
Programme Officer
80
Bai Xiaojing
United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)
Programme Officer
81
Huang Jun
United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)
Programme Officer
82
Jeong-yeon Han
UNIFEM, China
Intern
83
Fu Rong
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
Programme Officer
84
Piero Cellarosi
IFAD
Project Researcher
85
Wang Weiqing
IFAD
Programme Officer
86
Mark Stephen Leighton
Plan International
Country Director
87
Graham Meadows
Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ)
Former Director-General
88
Thomas Bonschab
Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ)
Programme Director
89
He Jingjing
Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ)
Programme Assistant
90
Yun-Gil Jeong
Korea International Cooperation Agency
Resident Representative
91
Xia Lei
Korea International Cooperation Agency
Manager
92
Hiroyuki.Hayashi
Japan International Cooperation Agency
Chief Program Officer
93
Irene Bain
The Ford Foundation
Program Officer for Environment and Development
94
Ling Lin
World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
Deputy Conservation Director of Operations
95
Zhou Lulu
The Nature Conservancy (TNC)
Programme Officer
96
Michael Hermann
Humana People to People
Country Representative
Annex 5. Participants list
123
III. China
124
No.
Name
Unit/Organization
Title
97
Fan Xiaojian
The State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development (LGOP)
Director
98
Zheng Wenkai
The State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development (LGOP)
Deputy Director
99
Zhang Lei
Department of International Cooperation & Social Mobilization, LGOP
Director
100
Wang Xinhuai
Regional Department, National Development and Reform Commission
Counsel
101
Chu Liming
Department of Agriculture, Ministry of Finance
Deputy Director
102
Wang Tiezhi
Economic Development Department, State Ethnic Affairs Commission
Counsel
103
Zhang Xuejian
Department of Soil and Water Conservation, Ministry of Water Resources
Counsel
104
Liu Beihua
Development and Planning Department, Ministry of Agriculture
Deputy Director
105
Pan Muxu
Poverty Alleviation Office, Ministry of Commerce
Director General
106
Guo Xiangyu
Rural Youth Work Department of the Central Communist Youth League
Director
107
Si Shujie
Department of Administration and Personnel, LGOP
Director
108
Xu Hui
Department of Planning & Financing, LGOP
Director
109
Chen Jiuchang
Party Affairs Office, LGOP
Deputy Party Secretary
110
Tan Weiping
Department of International Cooperation & Social Mobilization, LGOP
Deputy Director
111
Wu Yongdong
Department of Policy and Regulation, LGOP
Division Director
112
Fan Zengyu
Foreign Capital Project Management Center (FCPMC)
Director General
113
Liu Yitao
Foreign Capital Project Management Center (FCPMC), LGOP
Deputy Director General
114
Xia Gengsheng
Foreign Capital Project Management Center (FCPMC), LGOP
Deputy Director General
115
Wu Zhong
International Poverty Reduction Center in China
Director General
116
Ren Tiemin
National Training Center for Officers in Poor Areas
Deputy Director General
117
Chen Changfei
Poverty Alleviation and Development Center in China
Deputy Director General
Annex 5. Participants list
No.
Name
Unit/Organization
Title
118
Liu Wenkui
China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation
Executive Deputy Secretary General
119
Song Jihua
Poverty Alleviation and Development Association in China
Deputy Secretary General
120
Xu Min
China Social Entrepreneur Foundation
Chief Planning Director
121
Tao Liang
The Construction Association of Revolutionary Areas of China
Deputy Chief
122
Jia Huaqiang
Economics Department of Central Party School
Member of School Discipline Inspection Committee, Professor
123
Wu Shulin
Regional Division, National Development and Reform Commission
Division Director
124
Xiao Jun
Foreign Capital Utilization Department, National Development and Reform Commission
Project officer
125
Yang Fan
Project Office of State Ethnic Affairs Commission
Deputy Chief
126
Sun Baoyin
Department of Grass-roots and Community Construction, Ministry of Civil Affairs
Officer
127
An Bo
International Department, Ministry of Finance
Deputy Division Director
128
Wu Fan
International Department, Ministry of Finance
Officer
129
Kang Bingjian
Department of International Cooperation, Ministry of Commerce
Division Director
130
Liu Xiang
Department of International Cooperation, Ministry of Commerce
Officer
131
Wang Bo
Environmental Planning Institute, Ministry of Environmental Protection
Senior Engineer
132
Liu Bin
Agricultural Development Office, Ministry of Water Resources
Division Director
133
Xin Feng
Foreign Aid Auditing Service Centre, National Audit Office
Division Director
134
Chen Daodong
World Bank Loan Project Management Center, State Forestry Administration
Chief Engineer
135
Chen Jinghua
World Bank Loan Project Management Center, State Forestry Administration
Division Director
136
Xu Xiaoqing
Rural Economy Research Department, The State Council Development Research Center
Deputy Director
137
Fan Xuezhi
Rural Economy Research Department, The State Council Development Research Center
Doctor
138
Du Weili
Development Department, All China Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Federation
Division Director
Annex 5. Participants list
125
126
No.
Name
Unit/Organization
Title
139
Tang Min
China Development Research Foundation
Deputy Secretary General
140
Wen Tiejun
School of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, Renmin University of China
Dean
141
Wang Sangui
School of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, Renmin University of China
Professor
142
Hu Angang
Center for China Study, Tsinghua University
Director
143
Wang Ming
NGO Research Center, Tsinghua University
Director
144
Cheng Enjiang
International Poverty Reduction Center in China
Professorial Fellow
145
Jian Xiaoying
School of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, China Agricultural University
Professor
146
Li Renqing
Rural Development Institute, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Rural Social Issue Reasearch Center
Secretary General/Deputy Researcher
147
Li Yonggen
Water Resources Division,Department of Water Conservancy, Hebei Province
Deputy Director General
148
Tong Rihui
Agriculture Department, Zhejiang Province
Division Director
149
Zhang Song
Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences
Researcher
150
Wang Hanyou
Shaanxi Provincial Poverty Alleviation & Development Office
Deputy Director General
151
Xu Yuehua
Shaanxi Provincial Poverty Alleviation & Development Office
Division Director
152
Su Guiding
Shaanxi Provincial FCPMC
Director General
153
Feng Youen
Poverty Alleviation Office of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region
Deputy Director General
154
Jin Yanping
Poverty Alleviation Office of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region
Division Director
155
Zhao Hong
Anhui Provincial Poverty Alleviation & Development Office
Standing Deputy Director General
156
Chen Xiande
Anhui Provincial Poverty Alleviation & Development Office
Division Director
157
Rao Zhenhua
Poverty and Immigration Office in Jiangxi Province
Party members, Deputy Director General
158
Xin Zhaochen
Poverty and Immigration Office in Jiangxi Province
Officer
159
Zhang Chengzhi
Henan Provincial Poverty Alleviation & Development Office
Director General
160
Wang Jizhang
Henan Provincial Poverty Alleviation & Development Office
Division Director
Annex 5. Participants list
No.
Name
Unit/Organization
Title
161
Wei Jun
Henan Provincial Poverty Alleviation & Development Office
Secretary
162
Lin Quanhua
Hubei Provincial Poverty Alleviation & Development Office
Deputy Director
163
Liu Lunyin
Hubei Provincial Poverty Alleviation & Development Office
Division Director
164
Mo Yanshi
Poverty Alleviation Office of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region
Deputy Director General
165
Li Fangzhen
Poverty Alleviation Office of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region
Deputy Director General
166
Feng Min
Poverty Alleviation Office of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region
Deputy Division Director
167
Ran Jianqiao
Chongqing Poverty Alleviation Office
Deputy Director General
168
Xu Haiqing
Chongqing Poverty Alleviation Office
Division Director
169
Zhao Xueqian
Sichuan Provincial Poverty Alleviation & Development Office
Director General
170
Li Jingping
Sichuan Provincial Poverty Alleviation & Development Office
Division Director
171
Liu Weijia
Sichuan Provincial FCPMC
Director General
172
Xiang Xinghua
Sichuan Provincial FCPMC
Deputy Director General
173
Ran Zhonghua
Nanchong City Poverty Alleviation & Development Office, Sichuan Province
Director General
174
Zhao Jiquan
Guizhou Provincial Poverty Alleviation & Development Office
Discipline Leader
175
He Zeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;an
Guizhou Provincial Poverty Alleviation & Development Office
Division Director
176
Wu Yongnian
Guizhou Provincial FCPMC
Director General
177
Zhou Shibin
Guizhou Provincial FCPMC
Deputy Division Director
178
Li Yunfeng
Guizhou Provincial FCPMC
Deputy Division Director
179
Ou Zhiming
Yunnan Provincial Poverty Alleviation & Development Office
Deputy Director General
180
Wang Shiping
Yunnan Provincial Poverty Alleviation & Development Office
Division Director
181
Wu Jianzhong
Yunnan Provincial FCPMC
Deputy Director
182
Su Yongjun
Yunnan Provincial FCPMC
Division Director
Annex 5. Participants list
127
128
No.
Name
Unit/Organization
Title
183
Zhang Lude
Shaanxi Provincial Poverty Alleviation & Development Office
Deputy Counsel
184
Xie Hu
Shaanxi Provincial FCPMC
Division Director
185
Liu Shejiao
Shaanxi Provincial FCPMC
Deputy Division Director
186
Li Feng
Gansu Provincial Poverty Alleviation & Development Office
Deputy Director General
187
Chen Hongli
Gansu Provincial Poverty Alleviation & Development Office
Division Director
188
Xue Yongdong
Gansu Provincial Poverty Alleviation & Development Office
Division Director
189
Ma Chonglin
Poverty Alleviation Office of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region
Deputy Director
190
Ma Zhenjiang
Poverty Alleviation Office of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region
Division Director
191
Zhao Guoming
Poverty Alleviation Office of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region
Party Secretary, Director
192
Chen Lei
Poverty Alleviation Office of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region
Director of the FCPMC
Annex 5. Participants list
Social Development Department Sustainable Development Network www.worldbank.org/socialdevelopment The World Bank 1818 H Street, NW Washington, DC 20433 USA
East Asia and Pacific Region Sustainable Development Department Social Development Unit www.worldbank.org/eap The World Bank 1818 H Street, NW Washington, DC 20433 USA