Action 2.1 Institutionalize CDD in planning and budgeting systems of LGUs
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In the medium term, the extent to which service delivery and governance innovations supported by CDD programs are sustained will depend on how well participatory processes are institutionalized into the regular planning and budgeting cycle of LGUs. Establishing a period of transition in which LGUs assume greater responsibility for program implementation, with national government’s role increasingly focused on capacity development, while at the same time continuing to provide financial support directly to communities – so they retain “the power of the purse” over such resources – would help to test municipalities’ commitment to CDD approaches. For example, in the KALAHI a pilot program has already been tested with encouraging results that demonstrate many ways in which municipalities are institutionalizing CDD approaches, including: the passing of municipal ordinances to institutionalize a CDD approach for local development planning; expanding the representation of stakeholders on local development councils; and, assigning dedicated municipal staff as community development specialists.
Action 2.2 Customize CDD approaches to address context-specific needs
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Customized CDD approaches that adjust and augment standard CDD approaches can have greater impact in targeting marginalized and vulnerable groups or areas. For example, indigenous people (IPs) often find it difficult to participate in regular development programs due to cultural norms, low rates of literacy, or a lack of information about program activities. Special training modules and design adjustments would enable CDD programs to provide space for IPs to participate on their own terms, and ensure their needs are properly taken into consideration. In conflict-affected areas, mistrust between community members may make activities that require collective action difficult to implement, so specific activities are needed to help build peaceful coexistence as a prerequisite for implementing CDD programs. In high disaster-risk areas and areas subject to climate change, communities may lack sufficient knowledge and information to fully appreciate the seriousness of the risk they face.
Action 2.3 Promote synergy and convergence
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The area-based focus of most CDD programs provides a basis for integrating multi-sectoral approaches designed to achieve broad-based development impact. Greater convergence of sectoral approaches that address local development needs in a more holistic way would open up opportunities for achieving greater synergy between relevant sectoral interventions. This approach is consistent with on-going efforts to develop an integrated framework for social protection (see Box 3).
Box 3: Exploring synergy in community- and household-based poverty reduction programs
The KALAHI CDD program and the Pantawid Pamilya Pilipino Program (4Ps) conditional cash transfer (CCT) program are complementary poverty reduction programs implemented by the Department of Social Welfare and Development. While CDD and CCT programs have demonstrated the success of their respective approaches in many countries, neither is able to comprehensively address the local development needs of communities and poor households. While the KALAHI supports broadbased community priorities, it may not effectively reach the poorer segments of the community, whereas the proxy means test used by the 4Ps ensures benefits are targeted to poorer households. Conversely, the specific focus on the 4Ps on improving education and health outcomes may leave important gaps in addressing the broader development needs of communities. The simultaneous presence of the KALAHI and 4Ps in the same area is therefore likely to lead to positive synergy and greater overall impact.
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Greater convergence among local development activities would also be possible by deepening the engagement between sector line agencies and the development of a nationwide CDD program to clearly define and agree upon options, on the one hand, for integrating stronger demand-driven approaches in sector planning processes at the community level, while on the other, engaging technical specialists from line agencies to enhance the quality and sustainability of CDD investments. Although many sector-based programs include community-focused activities, these are often viewed from a narrow sector perspective rather than as contributing to part of a broader local development agenda. At the same time, multi-sector CDD programs may miss out on opportunities to contribute to meeting sector-specific objectives (e.g., Millennium Development Goals), and without sufficient engagement with line agencies, CDD investments may lack sufficient technical quality to ensure their sustainability. Relevant sectoral programs that would benefit from and contribute to CDD approaches include: (a) the school-based management and school-building program of the Department of Education; (b) the Botika ng Barangay program of the Department of Health; (c) the rural power program of the Department of Energy that seeks to provide incentives to increase access to renewable energy; (d) expanding opportunities for the private and non-profit sectors to become more involved in CDD activities, e.g., through the use of output-based aid approaches to community-based water supply and sanitation, enhancing access to financial services for the poor through microfinance institutions and social enterprise organizations; (e) and, the incorporation of successful pilot initiatives supported by other development partners that have the potential for further scaling up, e.g., local resource-based approaches for infrastructure investment of the International Labor Organization, community-based disaster risk management initiatives supported by the European Commission.
Action 2.4 Assess impact
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Effective monitoring that engages stakeholders and rigorous evaluation are both essential given the multi-faceted design of CDD programs. Often at the cutting edge of applying innovative approaches to evaluation, many of the larger CDD programs have implemented long-term impact evaluations that help to establish causal relationships between program design and impact, and also randomized, experimental methods to test the effectiveness of different design features. Such evaluation studies are often complex to design and expensive to implement but are essential to measure and understand which parts of CDD programs are working well and those that need further improvement. International development partners can play an important role in supporting such initiatives and can help facilitate intellectual “north-south” partnership.
Annex 1: Community-Driven Development: What It Is and Why It Matters
By giving control over and responsibility for decisions and resources directly to communities, and promoting cooperation with local governments, community-driven development (CDD) has emerged as an important strategy for national governments to tackle diverse and often long-standing development challenges at the local level, which include: addressing service delivery bottlenecks in decentralization systems; supporting peace-building efforts in post-conflict situations; promoting better governance; and, enhancing the participation of marginalized and vulnerable groups in local development processes.
CDD approaches build on many of the principles that have been used for a long time by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as part of community organizing strategies to promote community empowerment. However, whereas NGO-implemented activities are generally limited in their scope of operations due to funding and capacity constraints, CDD programs overseen by national government agencies have demonstrated their potential for scaling up to cover entire regions and countries, thereby significantly enhancing their overall development impact.
CDD approaches have been increasingly used to support bottom-up, demand-side initiatives that give voice and resources to poor communities and other vulnerable and marginalized groups as part of decentralized planning and implementation systems. At the same time CDD programs develop the capacity of elected local governments to respond to and support community-prioritized needs. By providing an alternative entry point in the development process, they have been established as flexible instruments to unlock the latent potential of communities to capitalize on the opportunities presented through devolution of authority and resources to the local level.
CDD programs are delivering results. In East Asia, CDD programs have become ubiquitous across the region and are being implemented in both smaller, low-income countries (Cambodia, Lao PDR, Timor Leste) and to large, middle-income countries (China, Indonesia, Philippines). Based on evidence from reports and evaluations reviewed from 42 projects that utilize CDD approaches (in varying degrees), a 2007 World Bank report identified the following key findings that indicate the success of CDD programs across a range of objectives:
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CDD programs successfully involve communities in decision making and implementation much more broadly – particularly benefiting disadvantaged groups and women – than traditional, top-down approaches.
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CDD programs successfully target poor areas. Most CDD programs support public infrastructure that provide broader benefits all to members of the community. But additional support is needed to ensure that poor groups within communities benefit, especially where communities have a high level of inequality.
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CDD programs deliver smallscale infrastructure and services cost-effectively, and at good quality, mostly because local labor and materials are used, and because local contractors charge within agreed budgets.
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Operations and maintenance of CDD operations are better integrated in local governance systems, but CDD operations often fall short of actual established standards without sufficient support from external agencies, i.e., functioning infrastructure, active maintenance groups, active maintenance plans.
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CDD approaches raise the incomes of participant communities. Economic rates of return on CDD investments are high, and an impact evaluation from Indonesia suggests that the longer communities participate in CDD programs, the higher the rate of return.
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CDD approaches change the dynamics of how communities interact with local governments. Increased citizen participation changes local institutions by increasing the flow of information.
Community-Driven Development in Action: Brazil, and Indonesia
Large scale CDD programs in Brazil and Indonesia illustrate the range of approaches adopted to address different development challenges. CDD programs in Brazil and Indonesia have already been scaled up significantly. In Northeast Brazil, a rural development program that started in the 1970s was significantly re-designed to incorporate more devolved approaches working through participatory municipal councils. In Indonesia, the joint success of the Kecamatan Development Program (KDP) and Urban Poverty Program (UPP), led the Government to establish the National Program for Community Empowerment or Program Nasional Pemberdayaan Masyarakat (PNPM) as the policy and operational umbrella for all community empowerment programs in the country.
Brazil. The Rural Poverty Reduction Program in North East Brazil or Programa de Combate à Pobreza Rural (PCPR) currently targets 20 million rural inhabitants. The program operates on a large scale reaching almost 90 percent of the 1,685 municipalities in the Northeast and 38,000 community associations. The program has invested US$1.4 billion, with the majority of funds financing small scale infrastructure. A program evaluation found that 60 percent of new water and electricity connections between 1992 and 2003 in targeted areas were provided through the PCPR and cost 30 to 40 percent less than most traditional supply-driven programs at equal or better levels of quality. The evaluation also showed statistically significant improvements in health and housing conditions. Access to water and electricity had positive effects on health and reduced the cost of obtaining water. In the case of health, in particular, the evaluation shows statistically significant declines in infant mortality and in the incidence of various common diseases. The project encourages the participation of vulnerable and marginalized groups (including women and indigenous communities) and has created strong social capital in targeted communities. This has had positive implications for strengthening public governance at the local and municipal level. Institutional arrangements and the transparency of the operational mechanisms of the program promote social control of the public sector and minimize political interference, corruption and elite capture. Satisfaction with the project is high (90 percent) and the infrastructure put in place is sustainable, with 80 percent of projects still running three to five years after completion.
Indonesia. From 1998 to 2006, the KDP and the UPP reached more than 50,000 urban and rural villages and benefited more than 11 million families with significant achievements. An impact evaluation of the KDP showed that real per capita consumption gains were 11 percent higher among poor households and the number of households moving out of poverty in poor sub-districts was 9.2 percent higher in KDP areas compared with control areas. The evaluation showed that, as a result of KDP participation, vulnerable households near the poverty line were less at risk of falling into poverty and that the longer a sub-district received KDP funding the greater was the estimated impact on rural household expenditure. The KDP reduced unemployment by 1.5 percent in comparison with control areas. As of October 2009, the combined KDP/PNPM-Rural and UPP/PNPM-Urban Programs have built or rehabilitated over 62,000 kilometers of roads, 11,000 clean water supply units, 11,000 irrigation schemes, 6,500 kilometers of drainage, 17,500 village health posts, and 10,000 new schools. Also counted in addition to these projects are more than 30,000 other types of economically productive infrastructure activities. Some 90 million work-days have been created from KDP/PNPM-Rural and 20 million work-days from the UPP/PNPM-Urban.
Note prepared by:
Andrew N. Parker
EASPS
References:
North East Rural Poverty Reduction Program, Brazil
Coirolo, L. and J. Lammert (2008) Rural Poverty Reduction in Northeast Brazil – Achieving Results through Community Driven Development
Moving Out of Poverty in Northeast Brazil. IBRD Results. (March 2010)
Kecamatan Development Program, Indonesia
Voss, J. (2008), Impact Evaluation of the Second Phase of the Kecamatan Development Program in Indonesia.
Guggenheim, S., T. Wiranto, Y. Prasta and S. Wong (2004), Indonesia’s Kecamatan Development Program: A large scale use of community development to reduce poverty.
Empowering Indonesian Communities through Direct Participation in Developing Infrastructure and Service. IBRD Results (March 2010)
Results Profile: Indonesia’s Community-Driven Development http://go.worldbank.org/RYUSMQHOD0
KALAHI-CIDSS Program, Philippines
World Bank. 2005. Empowering the Poor – The KALAHI-CIDSS Community-Development Project. Manila.
Araral, E. and C. Holmemo. 2007. Measuring the Costs and Benefits of Community Driven Development: The KALAHI-CIDSS Project, Philippines. Social Development Paper No. 102.
Labonne, J. and R. Chase. 2009. “Who is at the Wheel When Communities Drive Development? Evidence from the Philippines”. World Development Vol. 37, No. 1, pp. 219–231.
CDD – General
Binswanger, H (2009), Accountability, Flow of Funds and Financing of Community-Driven Development: the Global Experience in International Conference on Community Driven Development and Rural Poverty Alleviation , Proceedings
World Bank. 2007. Enabling East Asian Communities to Drive Local Development: East Asia Regional CDD Flagship Report. Mimeo.
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REDUCED VULNERABILITIES
PHILIPPINES Discussion Note No. 17
Social Protection
Strengthening Social Protection in the Philippines
The Philippines has taken positive steps to consolidate its previously fragmented and poorly targeted social protection programs. An integral part of this reform program has been the successful launch of the Conditional Cash Transfer Program (4Ps), which takes advantage of the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction. These efforts must be sustained to adequately protect the poor and the vulnerable from risks and economic shocks. (While almost one-third of the population lives under the poverty line, nearly half remains vulnerable to falling into poverty or deeper into poverty.) To strengthen social protection, more work is required in the following priority areas:
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consolidation of core social protection programs and identification of coverage gaps as part of a comprehensive social protection policy,
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Improved targeting of social protection programs through use of the National Household Target System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR) as the single national targeting system,
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Strengthening of the 4Ps program administration and gradual expansion of the 4Ps to cover larger numbers of poor households.
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Phasing out of ineffective programs and redirecting the fiscal savings to the core social protection programs.
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The Philippines Today: Progress and Challenges
Figure 1: Estimated Poverty Incidence
in the Philippines
Source: NSCB (2008)
The Philippines is home to around 28 million poor people, equivalent to almost one-third of its total population. The poverty incidence in the Philippines is estimated at 32.9 percent in 2006, an increase from the 30 percent estimate in 2003. The level of poverty in 2006 puts the country back where it was six years earlier when poverty incidence among the population was 33 percent (Figure 1). The challenges in reducing poverty in the Philippines can be attributed to several factors: lack of a dynamic economic growth, high degree of income inequality and relatively large variations in access to infrastructure and social services across regions and island groups (World Bank, 2009a; Balisacan, 2007). In addition to the increasing poverty levels, the Philippines has also been slow in making progress towards achieving some key non-income MDG targets in the critical areas of education and health. In particular, universal primary education and targets for maternal and reproductive health are not likely to be achieved by 2015.23
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While around one-third of the population is poor, nearly half is vulnerable to economic shocks. The government estimated that 45 percent of Filipino households face the risk of falling into poverty or deeper into poverty and the proportion of vulnerable households is higher among the poor (91.6 percent) than the non-poor (27 percent) (NAPC & NSCB, 2006).24 Shocks that commonly throw Filipino households into poverty are those related to health (e.g., loss of family member, especially the household head), unemployment, natural disasters, civil unrest, and food prices (World Bank, 2001). Estimates show that the food and fuel crisis in 2008 may have increased the poverty incidence by 3.9 percentage points while the reduction in wages caused by the global economic crisis in 2008-2009 may have increased poverty incidence by 2.4 percentage points.25 Natural disasters caused by typhoons, floods, landslides can also cause severe damage to property and productive assets on which humans rely for their welfare, as evidenced by the destruction caused by typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng that hit the Philippines in September 2010 (Department of Finance, 2009).
Table 1:
Households’ Strategies to Cope with Economic Shocks (%)
Coping Strategies
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% distribution
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Reduce amount of food consumption
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28.0
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Replace consumption of food items with cheaper alternative
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23.2
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Seek additional jobs or other sources of income
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11.8
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Reduce expenses on transportation, gas, light, and water
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11.6
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Borrow money from relative and friends
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6.5
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Reduce expenses on health and medical care
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4.1
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Borrow money from financial institutions
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3.9
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Sell or pawn assets
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2.7
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Withdraw children from school or postpone enrollment
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2.6
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Transfer children to another school with lower fees
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2.2
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Send non-working family member to work
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1.9
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Reduce or use up savings
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1.4
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All households that reported coping strategies
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100.0
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Source: World Bank (2009b)
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In the absence of adequate public or private means of protection from economic shocks, households tend to under-invest in human capital. Without dependable assistance when in need, households resort to sub-optimal coping strategies that are bound to have long-lasting consequences, leading them into a vicious spiral of increased destitution. A survey on impacts of the global economic crisis showed that most households find ways to cope and a majority chooses to reduce household expenditures particularly for food by reducing the amount of food consumption or by replacing food items with cheaper alternatives, often of lower nutritional quality (Table 1). This coping strategy is particularly evident for poor households as food accounts for as much as 90 percent of total household expenditures.26 Others cope by seeking additional jobs or finding other sources of income to meet their basic needs, usually resorting to jobs that do not offer labor protection, while others borrow money from informal lenders (friends and relatives) and formal institutions, selling assets, and reducing household expenditures on health and medical care as well as on children’s education.
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