Rural Development Policy in Paraguay PowerPoint Presentation, PPT - DocSlides

Rural Development Policy in Paraguay A summary of 7 year experience in policy making process.

Rural

Development

Plan for

small Producers

in the eastern region of Paraguay

Andres Molina

Presentation Objectives

To describe the path followed by policy makers in order to tackle a very relevant issue in Paraguay with a different mechanism.

To describe how a negotiation, consensus and priority mechanism can be used to add people’s utilities.

To Introduce you to the Non Recipe Type cooperation that was tried to implement by the project.

First Part

To describe the path followed by policy makers in order to tackle a very relevant issue in Paraguay with a different mechanism.

Paraguayan Rural Sector at a glance

+/- 56% of the population.

+/- 29% of the GDP (direct) and around of 50% (indirect)

In 2008 the drought causes 8% decrement of the GDP and the financial crisis 0%.

Rural problem definition

Uncoordinated actions in different sectors acting in rural areas are producing negative impacts in country’s development, generating insecurity, uncertainty and low efficiency in public expenditures.

The lack of trust is a constant in all the Paraguayan citizen’s activities and mainly for the ones who lives in a rural environment.

Citizen and constituency participation is perceived as a perverse way to validate what the strongest members of the society wants.

Project Triggers – backgroundWhy the GoP requested the project?

Crisis:

Peasants without land, repeatedly invaded high productive lands. (81% of the land is in 10 % of the population hands).

Government acted as a fireman, not as a state policy developer

.

Adverse evidence raised by constituents: 800,000,000

USD available for rural development projects with low impact (coordination failure, market failure government failure

).

Opportunity

:

Strong

personal relation between

JICA (Japanese culture is respected),

Private Sector and Vice President of Paraguay. Trust in each other.

Initial Project Features:Main enforcing ideas – 2003 to 2008 Rigth-Center GoP

Develop the rural area of the eastern side of Paraguay in order to reach governance in this sector.

Make this statement clear for everyone: “Agriculture Development, land reform is just a portion of Rural Development. Land is only capital, land is not income”

Territorial and Inclusive approach as a mechanism to achieve

consensus, participation and empowerment.

Systemic changes to achieve collaborative behavior between government institutions.

Prioritize objectives, describe how to reach them.

Coordinate efforts and budget to reach the objectives and Increase the efficiency of International Cooperation in

the Rural Environment.

Process Summary

2005

2012

2009

First contact JICA-

GoP

Official request

開発調査

2006

Approval

2007

Design

Q&A from JICA

調査団

Elections

The government changed

JICA bidding process

The project started

End of the project

Bimonthly, high level meetings

Two international seminars4 Donor Coordination meetings More than 1000 people involve in 5 time meetings along 2 prefectures (18 municipalities)

Sectorial Projects Started

2008

Constraints at March 2008

Before:2003 – 2008: Rigth-Center wingAcceptable degree of coordination between the government and the private sector.Against subsidies.Pro marketEfficiency oriented Top-Down / Bottom-Up type approach

After2008-2009: Left wingLess chances to get a consensus: Message spread by the new president: “Rich people is bad people, soybean was blamed as a main responsible for pollution, migration and health respiratory diseases.”Land reform is the only way to bring justice to the rural poor populationSocial oriented (Subsidy ok, market forces not okApparent Bottom-Up type approach

New president request: “The project must be participative, should be built from the bottom to the top, and must be focus on poor people”

The government changed, … and ideology as well.

In the past, too many projects fail to achieve their objectives. From the beneficiaries point of view No trust in projects anymore.Low quality professionals in public institutions.Low implementation capacity in all levels.Low institutionalism (internal fights).No coordination between international cooperation actors.JICA’s slow motion behavior and excessively afraid of failure.

Changes

Did not change

Project Features

JAPAN AOD Project requested by the Government of Paraguay. Development Study type (Master Plan)

2 years implementation (April 2009 – March 2011) got a 6 month extension financed by the

GoJ

(JICA).

8 Pilot Projects at the community level

Japanese experts team: 12

Paraguayan counterparts: 16

4 Prefectures were targeted by the Government of Paraguay and 2 were selected bilaterally to start PP in order to reject or fail to reject the null hypothesis. (Evaluation will be done after the development study type ends)

JICA Budget 2,7 million USD

Paraguayan budget around 500,000 USD.

Stakeholders

GoJapan

JICA and Japanese

Consultant Company hired by JICA

.

GoParaguay

:

Leaders: Presidency and Ministry of Finance.

Members:

Central Government: Planning Bureau, Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock, Small Farmers Credit Institution, Land and Rural Welfare Institute Environment Secretariat, Ministry of Infrastructure.

Local Government: Prefectures and Municipalities

Private Sector: Paraguayan Agriculture Association, Paraguayan Industrial Union.

Donors (USAID, IADB, WB, IICA, UNDP, FAO) participated as observers and consultative board.

MINDSET CHANGE = MECHANISM CHANGEIncentives were the keystone

Integral (TA) look vs. Sectorial Look

Which means: Planning work is based on the big picture, direct and indirect connections and impacts.Implement the plan based on sectorial tactics.

REQUEST: “The project must be participative, should be built from the bottom to the top, and must be focus on poor people”

RESPONSE: We will develop a tool in order to let the Paraguayans to find their own path for their own territories.

What is a Territory

Area that faces the same problems to achieve development.

The borders can or can not matches the municipalities borders, which means two or more municipalities can work together to achieve their goals.

Why TA is necessary to achieve a Sustainable Rural Development in Paraguay?First Axiom: Achieving rural development requires overcoming the constraints (causes) that impedes itSecond Axiom: Overcoming the constraint requires identifying the linkages and hierarchy among the causes. to properly prioritize actionsThird Axiom: Properly identifying the linkages and hierarchy among the causes that impede rural development requires rising over the sectorial approach, which tend mislead the priorities by ignoring significant aspects of the reality.

Sectoral ApproachSince 1950 until now

Furthermore, the inequity is basically produced because of the divergences between dynamics The dynamics depends on the trigger factor which normally in Paraguay is pulled by the government with the support of International Cooperation.

The sectors are the objective instead the person. The power is in the hands of few and the goals have owners.The powerful sectors or goal's owners have not the will to coordinate between them because this decrease the personal power to control and manipulate the situation.The lack of connections keeps the status quo and the situation never evolves.

VS.

The objectives are focused to solve human problems with human (integrated) perspective.The tools to coordinate the popular will keeps the neutrality and reasonability of the processThe balance of power between the sectors is obligatory and the sectors which are not participating are out of “the game”To establish connections between dimensions, sectors and objectives promotes an impartial and balanced development because of a successful coordination mechanism.

TA ApproachSince 2010

Based on

- People's will

- Trust

- Hope

Second Part

To describe how a negotiation, consensus and priority mechanism can be used to add people’s utilities.

Causal StructureBargain, priorities and consensus.

Rural Development

EnvironmentDimension

HumanDimension

Institutional Dimension

Social Dimension

Economic Dimension

Objectives

Objectives

Objectives

Objectives

Objectives

Direct Causes

Indirect Causes

Strategic Lines

Action Lines (Projects)

Scarcity issues

Negotiation issues

Now then, how to proceed on properly identifying the linkages…?

The approach taken by JICA Paraguay, there are four stepsStart with people's perceptions (what do they think are the constraints that impede achieving their objectives)Learn from previous experiences of development projects in the territoryAssess and advance the understanding from the two previous steps by using statistical information generated by base line surveys and other sources.Establish a feedback mechanism that allows making decisions to achieve the rural developments goals based on the information generated by the monitoring and evaluation information system.

1

2

3

4

Meetings.

Evaluations.

Contrasting 1 and 2. Database creation.

Feedback mechanisms .

Third Part

To Introduce you to the Non Recipe Type cooperation that was tried to implement by the project.

Negotiation, Consensus and Priorities

This is the methodology that we

used

to negotiate, get a

consensus

and

set up

the

priorities between institutions, politicians,

technicians,

small farmers, merchants, priests …

This is an example of the obtained priorities for the territory of ABAI

Process Results

Mechanisms has been designed and are operative.

Beneficiaries increase their self-confidence and feel the started projects

(financed or not by JICA) as

their

own.

New projects

to be accepted by the community has

to fit in the causal

structure and priorities frame.

Central Government

officials started to coordinate activities with the local authorities.

Project Results

Final Report was presented and delivered to the

GoP

.

Methodology and database (organized following the causal structure)

2 New projects based on peoples utilities were approved and already started (5 years projects).