BO Picar Community Investment in Rural Areas was a project aiming to fight rural poverty by providing access to basic infrastructure and services in rural Bolivia. Through this initiative, over 350,000 people were able to gain access to basic infrastructures and services.
Problems and Purpose
This initiative was created by the World Bank to provide access to infrastructure to poor and rural communities in Bolivia through the use of direct democracy to allocate funds and build new infrastructure. The initial goal was to provide access to infrastructure to an additional 100,000 residents of Bolivia. [1]
Background History and Context
Bolivia is one of the poorest countries in Latin America. At the time of the proposal of this initiative, 60% of the population lived in poverty, of which 38% lived in extreme poverty. Additionally, 30% of the population live in rural areas, most of them without access to basic infrastructure such as drinking water and electricity.
After extensive government reform in the past decades, reduction of poverty and increased access to infrastructure for rural communities became a priority. Thus the government enacted several development plans which ultimately led to the consideration of this democratic initiative as a means of reaching its infrastructure and poverty goals. [2]
Organizing, Supporting, and Funding Entities
The World Bank was responsible for funding and organizing this initiative, for setting up the initial infrastructure, and for selecting the communities that were reached by this initiative. The overall funding was 43 Million USD$.
The actual implementation of the project was led by the Ministry of Rural Development and Lands through its Empoderar coordination unit. This unit was strengthened with a Project Coordination Team (PCT) composed of: a project coordinator, financial management specialist, procurement specialist, accountant, social development specialist, rural infrastructure specialist, and Monitoring, Evaluation, and Planning Specialist.
At a regional level, the PCT coordinated two Regional Operating Units (ROU), one for Central Altiplano area, and another for the Valley area. Each ROU was comprised of a: Regional Coordinator, Social Development Specialist, Rural Infrastructure Specialist, and Environmentalist Specialist.
At the local level, facilitation and capacity building activities were led by local facilitators, community organizers, and NGOs.
All staff was selected through an open and merit-based process implemented through an independent entity, based on selection procedures acceptable to the World Bank. [3]
Participant Recruitment and Selection
This initiative was limited to the poorest socio-economic groups of Bolivia; the initial participating communities were chosen through an explicit and transparent set of criteria such as degree of vulnerability, density of vulnerable communities, spatial continuity, and complementarity with other programs and projects. Furthermore, a more detailed selection of communities was done using the World Food Program internal assessment called Vulnerability Assessment and Mapping (VAM)[4] which had the task of identifying the communities most at risk and those living below the poverty line. Special attention was given to the share of the community living in extreme poverty (at least 40%) and the size of the affected community (at least 20 families). [5]
In addition, key targets were created to ensure equal representation of men and women in this initiative, as well as a commitment to address the needs of rural indigenous people who are a marginalized group. [6]
Methods and Tools Used
This initiative mainly relied on community-driven development which focuses on empowering participating citizens and communities. In this form of CDD, the selected communities of Bolivia worked in conjunction with local municipalities in order to assess the needs of the local community with the aim of arriving at a sustainable solution.
In this form of participatory process, the communities were directly in charge of the outcome as they benefited from a direct transfer of funds by the World Bank. In order to make accurate decisions, PICAR used a process called participatory planning, whereby the selected communities diagnosed their own problems and set a relevant course of action, with the aid of local municipalities and community planners.
This approach was chosen by the World Bank as it hoped that local communities would be the best at diagnosing and solving their own community issues. [7]
What Went On: Process, Interaction, and Participation
Making use of participatory planning, affected families of selected communities along with a community planner and the local municipalities were empowered to self diagnose community problems. This was done through informal meetings whereby the aforementioned stakeholders produced a negative list whereby they identified non eligible activities with the aims of focusing on the truly impactful ones. In addition, communities were asked to determine the scope and scale of each initiative in order to maximize the benefits for the affected communities.
A decision-making council was formed at the municipal level which determined the affected communities, approved the selected projects, and deliberated the various decisions mentioned above. Citizens were not allowed in the council, however, the community planner represented the local interests of citizens.
Community Planners held workshops which encouraged community citizens to participate in identifying potential community wide problems. Training was also given to citizens with the aim of increasing their participation in sub projects. An example of this was Indigenous community citizens being trained to monitor, identify, and evaluate local necessities with an aim of empowering them in the proposition of sub-projects directly within their local community and in communicating them to the community planner.
Finally, communities could keep the council accountable as the selected projects and council information was made public, which led to greater accountability by citizens and saw their limited participation in this project increase. [8]
Influence, Outcomes, and Effects
The main objective of this initiative was to provide access to basic infrastructure and services to underprivileged communities in Bolivia. In this sense, this initiative was highly successful. The goal was set at helping 350,000 people and in the end over 360,000 people benefited directly from this initiative. In addition, this initiative was only meant to help 150,000 people initially however, due to successful implementation further investment was granted by The World Bank.[9]
In CDD, community and public involvement is important. Some big achievements were made in this initiative, one of which was that the communities through the aid of community planning mechanisms were able to manage their own project developments and guarantee the operation and management of their sub-projects beyond the project life cycle. According to an internal survey, 99% of sub-projects remained fully operational 12 months after completion.
In addition, 21,000 community committee members gained training (half of which were women) in the following areas: financial management, procurement, safeguards, sub-project management, and operation management. This contributed to greater education at a community level and promoted social growth.[10]
Finally, this initiative successfully promoted the inclusion of women and the indigenous population which were identified by the World Bank as being somewhat marginalized. 49.60% of all beneficiaries were women and 92% of all beneficiaries were indigenous. These were significant results as the initial targets were 45% - 85% respectively. Having achieved this goal promoted greater social equality and representation of overlooked communities.[11]
Overall effects from this initiative were that historically excluded populations saw their living conditions increase through the development of sub-projects targeting sanitation, roads, electrification, and productive and micro-irrigation infrastructure.
Furthermore, this initiative can be seen as a potential model as it improved certain areas such as overall crop yields and diversification in order to increase overall nutritional value of food and safety.[12]
Analysis and Lessons Learned
This section will evaluate the impact of this democratic initiative using the democratic goods framework introduced by Graham Smith: Inclusion, Considered Judgment, Popular Control, Transparency, Efficiency and Transferability.[13] This evaluation is based on reflection developed during the class "Reinventing Democracy" at Southampton University in the Spring of 2021, thus the main reference for this section will be the final essay submitted to the class. [14]
Inclusion was reached in this initiative as the main focus was to provide concrete infrastructural support to underprivileged sects of society such as the poor, indigenous populations, and women. In order to satisfy this criteria, the World Bank made representation requirement thresholds to ensure that these groups were addressed by the proposed projects.
Popular control was achieved at a local level whereby citizens were directly involved in identifying issues with social planners and developing and maintaining subprojects at a local level. This demonstrates the importance citizens had at a local level and the crucial involvement they had in relation to the sub project outcomes.
Considered Judgement was achieved, as through the help of NGOs and social planners, citizens were able to gain knowledge regarding the needs of the community and specific training necessary in making the individual sub projects run smoothly.
Transparency was achieved in two major ways, the first being that the local government was accountable to the World Bank, and therefore had to produce extensive progress reports regarding the initiative. Citizens also had an active role in identifying the local agenda which meant they were aware of the internal processes of the initiative and the outcomes thereof. Finally, all non participating citizens could see the results and access the reports.
Efficiency was achieved as the target of total beneficiaries was surpassed due to a successful overall implementation of sub-projects. In addition, as a result of this initiative, Bolivia became a reference in crop maintenance and yielding due to knowledge gained in the process. Finally, the benefited groups gained training and infrastructure needed to promote local economies and social welfare.
Transferability: This initiative could easily be replicated in similar countries where rural communities have poor access to infrastructure. This is further supported by the fact that The World Bank took an interest in this initiative, meaning it can use the expertise gained in future similar projects.
According to Mansuri and Rao (2012) the following have to be achieved in order to have a well thought out project: “Project designs and impact evaluations need to be informed by political and social analyses, in addition to economic analysis” and “there needs to be room for honest feedback to facilitate learning, instead of a tendency to rush to judgment coupled with a pervasive fear of failure.”. [15] Following the spirit of these guidelines, the initiative achieved these key points in several areas. The first area the initiative achieved this was through the use of the Vulnerability Assessment and Mapping whereby projects were chosen based on an assessment criteria that identified the neediest communities in Bolivia. In addition, regular impact reports were generated by the World Bank when proposing and evaluating existing sub projects. Active participants were also given specialized training in order to oversee local sub-projects and promote project evaluation and maintenance. Finally, the idea of potential failure was addressed as the World Bank used its prior knowledge in creating a comprehensive list of previous lessons learnt and following implementations regarding other projects.[16]
Overall, this initiative worked fairly well due to excellent planning, extensive monitoring of sub-projects and a highly structured design which promoted ease of communication between the different layers of stakeholders. These strengths can be seen throughout the duration of the initiative in the various documents published and the results obtained.
However, this initiative could have benefited from formal discussions at a local level rather than relying on a social planner. This means that perhaps some concerns were not addressed and somewhat hindered the public participation aspect of the community development.
See Also
References
[1] World Bank. 2021. Development Projects : BO PICAR Community Investment in Rural Areas - P107137. [online] Available at: <https://projects.worldbank.org/en/projects-operations/project-detail/P107137> [Accessed 22 May 2021].
[2] World Bank, Project Appraisal Document Bolivia, 2011, <https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/814231468227711564/pdf/598770PAD0P1071370IDA0R20110024901.pdf> [Accessed 22 May 2021].
[3] World Bank, Project Appraisal Document Bolivia, 2011, <https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en...> [Accessed 22 May 2021].
[4] World Food Program, Vulnerability Analysis and Mapping, 2018 ,<https://docs.wfp.org/api/documents/WFP-0000040024/download/> [Accessed 22 May 2021].
[5] World Bank, Project Appraisal Document Bolivia, 2011, <https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/814231468227711564/pdf/598770PAD0P1071370IDA0R20110024901.pdf> [Accessed 22 May 2021].
[6] World Bank, BO PICAR Community Investment in Rural Areas,<https://projects.worldbank.org/en/projects-operations/project-detail/P107137> [Accessed 22 May 2021].
[7] World Bank, Project Appraisal Document Bolivia, 2011, <https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en...> [Accessed 22 May 2021].
[8] World Bank, Project Appraisal Document Bolivia, 2011, <https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en...> [Accessed 22 May 2021].
[9] World Bank. 2021. Development Projects : BO PICAR Community Investment in Rural Areas - P107137. [online] Available at: <https://projects.worldbank.org/en/projects-operations/project-detail/P107137>[Accessed 22 May 2021].
[10] World Bank, Achieving Decentralization, Inclusion, and Empowerment in Bolivia Through Community-Driven Development, 2020,<https://www.worldbank.org/en/results/2020/10/15/achieving-decentralization-inclusion-and-empowerment-in-bolivia-through-community-driven-development>[Accessed 22 May 2021].
[11] World Bank. 2021. Development Projects : BO PICAR Community Investment in Rural Areas - P107137. [online] Available at: <https://projects.worldbank.org/en/projects-operations/project-detail/P107137> [Accessed 22 May 2021].
[12] World Bank, Achieving Decentralization, Inclusion, and Empowerment in Bolivia Through Community-Driven Development,2020,<https://www.worldbank.org/en/results/2020/10/15/achieving-decentralization...>[Accessed 22 May 2021].
[13] Smith, G. (2009). Democratic Innovations: Deigning Institutions for Citizen Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[14] Diogo Barroqueiro, 2021, Impact Evaluation Of Community Driven Development: Community Investment In Rural Areas Project in Bolivia, essay submitted as final assessment in the 2021 Reinventing Democracy Class at Southampton University.
[15] Ghazala Mansuri and Vijayendra Rao (2013). Localizing development : does participation work? : A World Bank Policy Research Report. [online] Washington (D.C.): World Bank, Cop. Available at: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/11859/978082138256 1.pdf?sequence=1 [Accessed 10 Mar. 2021]
[16] World Bank, Project Appraisal Document Bolivia, 2011, <https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en...> [Accessed 22 May 2021].
External Links
Vulnerability Analysis and Mapping: Food security analysis at the World Food Programme
Development Projects : BO PICAR Community Investment in Rural Areas - P107137 (worldbank.org)
Bolivia/WB: 100,000 Farmers to Benefit from Direct Community Investments (worldbank.org)
Bolivia: 350 Thousand Rural Inhabitants to Benefit from Direct Community Investments (worldbank.org)
World Bank Project Appraisal Document
