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 – background
Why 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
Official
request
開発調査
Design
Q&A
from JICA
調査団
JICA
bidding
process
2007
First
contact
JICA-GoP
2009
The project
started
2006
2005
End of
the
project
Approval
2008
Elections
The
government
changed
Bimonthly, high level meetings
Two international seminars
4 Donor Coordination meetings
More than 1000 people involve
in 5 time meetings along 2
prefectures (18 municipalities)
2012
Sectorial
Projects
Started
Constraints at March 2008
The government changed, … and ideology as well.
Did not change
Changes
Before:
2003 – 2008: Rigth-Center wing
•
Acceptable degree of coordination between
the government and the private sector.
•
Against subsidies.
•
Pro market
•
Efficiency oriented
•
Top-Down / Bottom-Up type approach
•
•
•
•
•
•
After
2008-2009: Left wing
•
Less 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 population
•
Social oriented (Subsidy ok, market forces not ok
•
Apparent Bottom-Up type approach
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.
• New president request: “The project must be participative, should be
built from the bottom to the top, and must be focus on poor people”
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 CHANGE
Incentives were the keystone
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.
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.
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 it
Second Axiom: Overcoming the constraint requires identifying the linkages and hierarchy among the causes. to properly
prioritize actions
Third 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
Approach
Since 1950 until now
VS.
TA
Approach
Based on
Since 2010
- Hope
- People's will
- Trust
1.
The sectors are the objective instead the
person.
1.
The objectives are focused to solve human
problems with human (integrated) perspective.
2.
The power is in the hands of few and the
goals have owners.
2.
The tools to coordinate the popular will keeps the
neutrality and reasonability of the process
3.
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.
3.
The balance of power between the sectors is
obligatory and the sectors which are not
participating are out of “the game”
4.
4.
The lack of connections keeps the status
quo and the situation never evolves.
To establish connections between dimensions,
sectors and objectives promotes an impartial and
balanced development because of a successful
coordination mechanism.
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.
Second Part
• To describe how a negotiation, consensus and
priority mechanism can be used to add
people’s utilities.
Causal Structure
Bargain, priorities and consensus.
Rural Development
Economic
Dimension
Social
Dimension
Institutional
Dimension
Environment
Dimension
Human
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 steps
-
Start with people's perceptions (what do
they think are the constraints that impede
achieving their objectives)
1
Meetings.
-
Learn from previous experiences of
development projects in the territory
2
Evaluations.
-
Assess and advance the understanding
from the two previous steps by using
statistical information generated by base
line surveys and other sources.
3
Contrasting 1 and 2. Database
creation.
4
Feedback mechanisms .
-
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.
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
Overall Goal
Achieve the necessary conditions in order to freely build their destiny
Main objective
To promote human capacity building to excert individual freedom
Specific objectives
1. To adecuate the Curriculum to the local needs. To adequate the Curriculum for
elementary and basic school fitted to local needs.
2. Work oriented continous training.
3. To strength the horizontal and vertical social capital.
4. Public stackholders coordination. Promote joint activities among public stackeholders.
Expected results
1. The elementary and superior school citizenship study and recognize the potencials and
limitations of their own territory in order to take their own desitions.
2. Available resources are efficiently used to improve their income, nutrition and health
3. Producer’s asociations are strenghten and coordinated.
4. Coordination between central and local government is improved by institutional
mechanisms.
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).