Poverty Alleviation, Nepal

1 introduction horizontal linie 1.1 background and scope of study poverty alleviation has been the most fundamental objective of danish development assistance since the late 1970s. however, there is very little documentation regarding the manner in which this objective has been applied at the strategic level and at country, programme and project levels. the evaluations which have been carried out over the last decade have only to a limited extent focused on the impact of past assistance on poverty. danida has therefore felt the "need for better documentation of the poverty reach and the povertyreducing impact of various types of intervention and assistance strategies" and the terms of reference for the current evaluation state that an evaluation of the poverty alleviation impact of danish development assistance should be carried out, "to document past experiences, establish present status and learn lessons on how to apply most effectively and efficiently the poverty alleviation objective in future development assistance." the evaluation is divided into three phases: a preparatory phase, a country programme evaluation phase and an overall poverty alleviation phase. its overall objective is to provide evidence on the extent to which: - poverty alleviation has been conceptualised and operationalised in the implementation of danida's development assistance; - the poverty perspective has been taken into account in defining the objectives of specific danida activities at the strategic, country, programme and project level; - danida's development assistance has had measurable effects and impacts on poverty. phase i was initiated in late 1994 with a desk study, which was to suggest an approach and methodology for the overall evaluation. as this evaluation is expected to include several country studies, it was decided that the nepal country programme evaluation, which was scheduled to take place in 1995, should be undertaken from the perspective of the poverty alleviation objective. the nepal country study was to be used as a test case for refinement or revision of the approach and methodology for country programme evaluations. thus the tor state that the objective of the evaluation is to undertake an evaluation of danida's country programme in nepal against the overall objective of poverty alleviation. in this respect the evaluation study has the dual purpose of contributing to the ongoing evaluation of the poverty alleviation effects of danish development assistance, and at the same time serving as a country programme evaluation. against this background, the evaluation has to: - develop a format for this type of evaluation (an approach and methodology) which could be used in future programme evaluations against the poverty alleviation objective. - apply this format to the existing danish bilateral aid programme in nepal as part of the ongoing danida evaluation programme and for separate publication as an evaluation report. - test this format with the nepal study as a case and assess the way in which such programme evaluations can form part of studies to be undertaken in the ongoing overall evaluation of the poverty alleviation objective for danish development assistance. (see appendix 1 and 2 for the complete terms of reference.) besides being scheduled for a country programme evaluation, nepal was chosen as the first case for a country poverty alleviation evaluation for various reasons. first of all, it is one of the poorest

countries among danida's programme countries; secondly, the danida programme in the country is relatively new, and can therefore be expected to reflect current programme planning and design considerations, which can be expected to be of more relevance to future planning compared to a portfolio of relatively old projects. thirdly, the programme contains a broad range of very different sectors of interventions which are relevant for danida's future sector programme approach. however, the choice of nepal also has some important drawbacks. selecting a relatively new programme country means that interventions may have started relatively recently, and therefore the available documentation of effects and impact will be rather limited; few reviews and evaluations will be available. at the same time, two of the interventions date back several years before nepal was chosen as a programme country, and the documentation on effects and impact of these interventions is very limited, which means that the present country evaluation has to base its assessment mainly on material which can be collected during the limited stay in nepal. furthermore, the terrain of the country is not easily accessible, which means that field travel is extremely time consuming even to cover short distances outside the main transport network. 1.2 approach to country programme evaluation the evaluation has focused on three main components: 1. country focus: the country poverty profile and processes, and government policies and programmes to alleviate poverty 2. programme focus: the danida country programme strategy and contents, both in relation to the poverty profile and processes, as well as in relation to the role and operation of foreign aid in nepal. 3. intervention focus: individual programme interventions in relation to their impact on poverty alleviation. at the country level, the important issues are to identify the context-specific dimensions of poverty, their prevailing causes and the perspectives for poverty reduction. the aim is to provide a comprehensive poverty profile for nepal, and the main questions, addressed in chapter 2, therefore become: - who are the poor in nepal, what causes their poverty and what is the scope for interventions? the country level further deals with the macro-economic framework and the policies and programmes of the government in relation to poverty alleviation. here the main questions, discussed in chapter 3, become: - what does the government do in order to reduce poverty, and how effective are these efforts? chapter 4 discusses the question: - what is the role of foreign aid in poverty alleviation in nepal? in chapter 5 the focus is on the danida country programme in nepal, analysing the strategy, content and implementation of the programme. the basic questions here are: - how relevant is danida's programme in relation to the poverty profile of the country, and how does it relate to government strategies and programmes for poverty alleviation? the impact of the individual interventions is reported in chapter 6 in relation to the question:

- how effective are the individual interventions seen in relation to the poverty alleviation objective? in the concluding chapter 7, the answers to the above questions are summarised and discussed in an operational perspective, looking into the possibilities and trade-offs of strengthening the poverty alleviating focus in a programme perspective. this discussion also assesses the implications of focusing on the poverty alleviation objective for other danida objectives. volume ii contains the findings of a supporting pra study, which focused on people's perceptions of poverty and how danida's projects have affected them. 1.3 limitations the resources allocated to conduct the study comprised: # a 6 day preparatory visit to nepal; # 23 days of field study in nepal by five development associates team members, preceded by 3 days of preparation; # field support by a team from new era, kathmandu and other local consultants. the new era team was responsible for the micro-level participatory study, with support from development associates. while the tasks tended to expand during the preparatory phase, resources for the study did not. it was therefore agreed that limitations had to be made in relation to the coverage of the study. most of these were identified before the actual field work, while others were only finally defined during the course of the field work. the main limitations of the study are: 1. the study is only concerned with rural poverty, and it does not cover urban poverty problems at any significant level; 2. danish ngos' activities in nepal are not covered; 3. support from the embassy grant is covered as a desk study without investigations at institutional and field level; 4. study of impact at village level mainly focuses on interventions in dairy development and community forestry; 5. analysis of interventions do not cover either design and implementation issues or the technical aspects of the projects to the extent normally required in a conventional project evaluation; 6. the institutional analysis and assessment is limited to an assessment of the institutional framework and the main actors operating in various functions, and does not cover the capacity and capabilities of individual institutions relevant in a sector or project perspective; 7. field work on people's perception of poverty and project impact is limited to "rapid roadside assessment" covering a few locations, mainly due to the difficult terrain; 8. the pra field studies were limited to the hills, and do not cover any villages in the terai or in the mountains. even with these serious limitations, staff and time resources were extremely limited to perform the remaining tasks. therefore, during the field work it was often necessary to make choices, following lines of investigations which appeared to be more promising for the overall analysis while leaving other issues aside. cost-effectiveness is an extremely important issue in the assessment of poverty alleviating interventions. however, time available for the programme evaluation was not

sufficient to collect the needed information and figures to make a sufficiently comprehensive analysis of this aspect. it is also clear that given the focus on poverty alleviation, the assessment does not always go into an in-depth analysis of other objectives of the programme or the individual interventions. the present country programme evaluation therefore does not necessarily provide a comprehensive conventional evaluation of programme and projects in relation to their stated objectives. 1.4 methodology the evaluation framework was developed in the preceeding desk phase. the causal relations linking the individual intervention to poverty alleviation were developed for each of the projects and used as an analytical framework in the analysis and asessment of the project's impact on poverty alleviation (c.f. the introduction to chapter 6 for a more detailed explanation). the overall assessment is based on information and analyses at three different levels: macro, meso and micro. the macro-level work involved interviews at the national level of government, the royal danish embassy, the donor community and other institutions represented in kathmandu, and collection and scrutinisation of secondary literature on policies, poverty programmes etc. the meso-level work involved discussions at central, regional, district and village levels, while at the micro-level a participatory study was carried out in four sites in tanahun and ilam districts. these two districts were selected so as to have one each from the eastern and western side of the country, where both community forestry and dairy development interventions had been in progress for some time. sunsari district was added for meso-level purposes because, along with tanahun, it was one of the ten districts where the dalan pilot local development fund was in operation (ilam was not covered by this fund). all three districts were part of the basic and primary education project (bpep) area; while tanahun had also been part of the primary education project, which was one of the fore- runners of the bpep, ilam and sunsari had only been included since this financial year. at the central level, team members started with project workshops with senior staff and advisers in danida-supported projects, on their definitions of poverty and the effects of project interventions in relation to poverty alleviation. this was followed up to a limited extent with further discussions after the field work. at regional level, discussions were held with trainers and advisers in the regional forestry training centres and with the authorities in the milk supply schemes in pokhara and biratnagar, as well as with the department of livestock services. much of the available time was, however, spent at district level, with the relevant authorities in the forestry, education, livestock and dairy departments, and the district development committees (ddc) and village development committees (vdc) in tanahun, sunsari and ilam districts. team members met the district forest officers and selected rangers and forest guards in all three districts, the district education officers and bpep coordinators in all three districts as well as some resource persons, school teachers, supervisors, non-formal education facilitators and pupils, and other villagers in tanahun and sunsari districts. similarly, the ddc chairmen and some ddc members, and the local development officers were met in all three districts, while in tanahun and sunsari, discussions were also held with the projectappointed village development consultants and selected vdcs, vdc secretaries and villagers. in addition to discussing the poverty reduction effects of their own work, district and lower level staff were also asked about the relationship between poverty and education, community forestry and

democracy and about the relationship between the line agencies and the ddcs/vdcs. the director of livestock services, personnel at milk chilling and milk collection centres, members of milk producers associations/milk producers cooperative societies and milk suppliers were met in tanahun and ilam (cf. appendix 4). the participatory study was carried out in ward 1 of ghasikuwa vdc and 4 villages of khairenitar vdc in tanahun district, and wards 4 and 7 of barbote vdc in ilam. they were selected such that they were both covered by the dairy scheme as well as had community forestry plots which had been handed over to user groups. the study had two aims: to determine people's definitions of poverty at the individual and community levels, and to know how community forestry, dairy development, democracy and education had affected them. a number of participatory rural appraisal methods were used, including time-lines, ethno-histories, trend diagrams, transects, seasonal calendars, mapping, ranking exercises and semi-structured and focus group interviews. case studies of approximately 30 individuals or households were also carried out to get life stories and socio-economic data, as well as two rapid, small-scale surveys of teashop owners to assess aspects of milk supply and sale. care was taken to ensure that information was collected from both male and female informants. (please see volume ii, chapter 2 for a detailed description of the methodology.) the study should be seen as illustrative and not representative of the operation and effects of programme interventions. throughout the evaluation, findings were shared between the mission members working on the participatory study in the villages and the memebers working with the authorities and project staff, to ensure that new important issues raised were addressed at all levels. this was done in order to make a comprehensive analysis and crosscheck information. the evaluation mission would like to express its thanks to the embassy, project staff, government officials, representatives of the donor agencies, district development committees, village development committees and villagers met for their kind support and valuable information which highly facilitated the work of the mission. the report contains the views of the mission which do not necessarily correspond with the views of danida and the nepalese authorities.