Project Completion Report Validation Sunamganj Community Based Resource Management Project People's Republic of Bangladesh Date of validation by IOE: October 2016 I. Basic project data Approval (US$ 000’) Actual (US$ 000’) Region Asia and the Pacific Total project costs 34,285.00 31,505.35 IFAD loan and Country Bangladesh percentage of total 21,973.00 (64%) 27,243.21 (86.5%) Loan number 567-BD Borrower 4,464.00 (13%) 3,624.24 (11.5%) Type of project Agricultural Other institution, (subsector) Development TBD 7,545.00 (22%) 0 Financing type IFAD loan Cofinancier 2 0 Lending terms* HIGH_CON Cofinancier 3 0 Date of approval 12/09/2001 Cofinancier 4 0 Date of loan 303.00 637.90 signature 14/12/2001 Beneficiaries 637.90 (2%) (0.9%) (2%) Date of effectiveness 14/01/2003 Other sources 0 Number of Direct 135,000HH 143,032 total HH Loan 14/11/2001 beneficiaries (revised to 90,000 (direct: 93,619HH, amendment at MTR) indirect: 49,413HH) Loan closure extensions - Nigel Brett; Country Thomas Rath; programme Hubert Boirard managers (current) Loan closing date 30/09/2014 30/09/2014 Hoonae Kim Regional (current); director(s) Thomas Elhaut Mid-term review April 2007 IFAD loan The PCR reports two Project disbursement at figures: 97.99% and completion Adolfo Patron project completion 98.95%, GRIPS report reviewer Martinez (%) 100% Project completion report quality Fabrizio Felloni; Date of the project control panel Michael Carbon completion report 21/05/2014 Source: Appendix 4 of the Project Completion Report. * GRIPS, Investment Project Portfolio, Total Financing, Approved INVPR. II. Project outline 1. Introduction. The Sunamganj Community-Based Resource Management Project (SCBRMP) was designed under a flexible lending mechanism and was implemented in three phases: phase 1 from January 2003 to December 2007, phase 2 from January 2008 to December 2010, and phase 3 from January 2011 to March 2014. The project was approved by IFAD’s Executive Board on 12 September 2001 and the IFAD loan became effective on 14 January 2003. The project completion and closing date were set at 31 March 2014 and 30 September 2014 respectively. The Mid-term Review (MTR) of the project was carried out in 2007. The total project cost was initially estimated at US$34.29 million, but it was revised to US$26.74 million during the MTR and to US$31.86 million by the second phase review in 2010. The project targets were reduced during the MTR because, as mentioned in the MTR report, cofinancing through Department for International Development did not materialize as originally planned. 2. Project area. The Sunamganj district has an area of 3,768km2 and comprises around 2,820 villages. The region is located in a deep flood plain that remains inundated by monsoon rain water for more than six months a year. The situation is further exacerbated by flash floods caused by pre-monsoon rain in the Meghalaya basin of India. The project area suffers from poor communication, dependence on one crop (boro rice) and open water fishing, it has no control over natural resources, and very limited non- crop income opportunities, which makes life for the poor very challenging. Additionally, there is limited access to safe water, sanitation, primary education and health services, high incidence of diseases, very low literacy rates and very poor health conditions. 3. The project covered all 11 upazilas (sub-district) of the Sunamaganj district, covering various upazilas in different project implementation years. The SCBRMP project intensity of activities varied within the sub-districts according to: level of the poverty, opportunity for development of agriculture and livestock sectors, and feasible location opportunities for specific project interventions. (IFAD, 2014). 4. Project goal, objectives and components. The project aimed at increasing the assets and income of 135,000 households (revised to 90,000 at MTR). 5. The main objectives of the project where: (i) increase the assets and income of 90,000 households (revised from 135,000 at MTR) by developing self-managed grass-roots organizations to improve their access to primary resources, employment, self- employment and credit; and (ii) support the development of an institutional base to replicate the project approach in other areas of Bangladesh. 6. Components and activities: Component 1– Infrastructure development: The objective was to provide employment to the poorest population groups to mitigate seasonal food shortages, as household food stocks are low before planting1. The activities under this component were identified through the village organizations, prioritizing their infrastructure needs and facilitate processing their demands, the infrastructure projects identified, after project approval, were: (a) construction of community (village) roads to connect villages with mainstream road network; (b) construction of village protection walls to protect villages from wave action; (c) construction of multi-purpose village centers that served as: seed storage, flood shelter, trainings, meeting, social gathering and other activities; (d) building of submergible dam and buried pipes for the irrigation network; (e) installation of water sealed ring latrines to promote hygienic environment for the community; (f) installation of tube-wells and distribution of SONO water filters for Arsenic free drinking water; and (g) employment of rural poor in infrastructural construction and maintenance for increased income. 1 Report and Recommendation of the President for the Sunamaganj Community-Based Resource Management Project, IFAD, 2001 2 Component 2 – Community fisheries development: The major objective of this component was to provide the poor with access to benefits of fishery resources on a sustainable basis. The main activities were: (a) transfer of beels2 to poor fishers; (b) improvement of productivity of beels through various technology and management practices such as: re-excavation, establishment of fish sanctuaries, and set up of boundary pillars; (c) development of beel users groups (BUGs); and (d) plant saplings of swamp trees in and around some beels. Component 3 – Agriculture and livestock development: The objective of this component was to promote crop and livestock production to increase the income and enhance the scope of food security in the communities. The main activities where: (a) agriculture - identification of crops for field trails, demonstration of new or improved field crops and horticulture, participatory demonstrations trials, training and technology promotion; and (b) livestock - introduction on livestock to some upazilas, vaccination and de-warming campaigns, artificial insemination centers, and technical support and trainings. Component 4- Microfinance: The objective was to deliver savings and credit services at the village level, based on the South Asian Poverty Alleviation Project methodology, policies and procedures3. To do so, the project created credit organizations (COs), which are village-based saving and credit groups, as an institutional platform for savings development and credit mobilization, the programme also trained auditors and regularly audited the COs. The Bangladesh Krishi Bank (BKB) provided loans and facilitated credit within the CO members. Component 5- Institutional support: The objective was to develop a project management system and support the creation of a viable and sustainable institution to replicate the project. The institutional arrangements for the proposed project were based on three important considerations: (i) limitations in staffing of the ministries in Sunamganj; (ii) severe limitations in communications, which add to the cost of delivering services to beneficiaries; and (iii) the need for effective operational autonomy. To overcome these weaknesses, a project management unit was set up in Sunamganj, and project offices were set up in upazilas to coordinate project activities with the different government agencies. 7. Target group. At project design (2001), it was estimated that out of the 285,530 rural households (98 per cent of the Sunamgaj district total), 51 per cent had no land and were wage dependent and 35 per cent were small/marginal farmers owning less than 1 ha. The Project Completion Report (PCR) states that over 86 per cent of the area’s population constitutes the IFAD target group, hence, around 246,000 households were eligible to benefit from the project. 8. The project aimed at directly reducing poverty and improving living standards of 135,000 households, however, this number was reduced to 90,000 at MTR, given that “despite the efforts of Local Government Engineering Department (LGED) (implementing agency) and IFAD, it has not been possible to secure such co-financing, and this means it will be necessary to reduce the future cost of the project by reducing the target number of credit organizations from 4,500 to 3,000 covering only nine of the 11 upazilas of the district, and reduce the target number of water bodies from about 600 to 300” (IFAD, 2007). 2 A seasonally flooded permanent or semi-permanent water body located within a river floodplain and connected to the river by a natural system of drainage channels (or khals); equivalent to a lake and a very important fish habitat. 3 The objective of the South Asian Poverty Alleviation Project was to help the disenfranchised overcome their poverty through social mobilization at the grassroots level. The project resources were used to promote group formation, train village specialists and managers, provide seed