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Lesson
The move of smallholder farmers toward commercialization requires tailored infrastructure. The NRSLLDP, through the VIF, supported CDD-related infrastructure (such as village meeting halls) at the provincial, district, and local levels. Livestock development and commercialization endeavors, on the other hand, will require new infrastructure to address impediments such as access to water, animal shelters, medicinal supplies, cold-chain, access roads, and market infrastructure.

Project Number: 35297-013
Project Name: Northern Region Sustainable Livelihoods Through Livestock Development Project (A Joint Evaluation)
Report Date:
Lesson
Sustainable access to savings and credit is essential. In the future, savings and credit instruments should be designed around actual farmer needs in terms of timing, amount, duration and repayment and collateral requirements. A key decision for IFAD, ADB, and the government will be to agree on a partner—for example, the Bank of Laos—to implement the rural finance component of the NSLCP transparently and professionally.

Project Number: 35297-013
Project Name: Northern Region Sustainable Livelihoods Through Livestock Development Project (A Joint Evaluation)
Report Date:
Lesson
LPGs can be a conduit to share experiences, exchange knowledge, and gain access to inputs and improved market opportunities and prices. Unfortunately, the NRSLLDP was rather short-sighted and did not seek to develop groups to access or provide benefits to farmers throughout the production chain (from inputs, to husbandry, to selling). The project also dropped the access-to-market component.

Project Number: 35297-013
Project Name: Northern Region Sustainable Livelihoods Through Livestock Development Project (A Joint Evaluation)
Report Date:
Lesson
The transition to commercial agriculture requires extensive training and empowerment of smallholder farmers. The NRSLLDP aimed to provide farmers with animals to be integrated into their semi-subsistence livelihoods. These additional animals were stores of wealth that were sold occasionally to smooth consumption (e.g., school fees) or support other investments (e.g., motorbikes). With a commercialized approach, the focus is on maximizing a stream of income over a sustained period. This will require substantial changes in the production, marketing, selling, and reinvesting cycle.

Project Number: 35297-013
Project Name: Northern Region Sustainable Livelihoods Through Livestock Development Project (A Joint Evaluation)
Report Date:
Lesson
The community-driven development approach is effective. Although it seems self-evident, this fundamental lesson is often overlooked and needs to be reiterated. Community involvement in planning and responsibility for O&M is a practical and cost-effective way of managing such small-scale systems. The government-enabled community ownership and capacity building approach employed by the project will be useful in other efforts to scale up agricultural development, for example in improving rural health, water supply and sanitation, and education.

Project Number: 34188-013
Project Name: Northern Community-Managed Irrigation Sector Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Sustainable O&M and water provision are crucial. Sustainable O&M that guarantees water provision is an incentive for farmers to remain members of WUAs. Farmers tend to withdraw from WUAs if their fields do not receive adequate water flows. Without water delivery to their fields, there was no incentive for farmers to work on land conversion and therefore some refused to invest their resources in converting undeveloped land to paddy fields, which would have increased the irrigated area under the project.

Project Number: 34188-013
Project Name: Northern Community-Managed Irrigation Sector Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Irrigation infrastructure should be built to last. Frequent damage to irrigation facilities caused by flooding and landslides is a big threat to the sustainability of infrastructure improvements. Considering the poor watershed management in the areas surrounding subprojects and incompatible land uses (e.g., hilly land corn farming above the irrigated rice fields), the construction of irrigation infrastructure needs to improve. Preventive and protective measures need to be taken to guard against recurring intense rainfalls and extreme weather events.

Project Number: 34188-013
Project Name: Northern Community-Managed Irrigation Sector Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Objective quantitative assessment of benefits and costs may help in the setting up a mechanism for fair distribution of costs across countries. The IEM economic analysis indicates that the net present value of the project for the Lao PDR could be made positive if higher grant elements were used in the financing by the PRC and Thailand.

Project Number: 34231-013
Project Name: Greater Mekong Subregion: Northern Economic Corridor Project in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic
Report Date:
Lesson
An agreement for collective maintenance is an essential element for the sustainability of subregional road projects, such as this project. A mechanism needs to be devised for the costs to be shared in proportion to the benefits received by the stakeholders.

Project Number: 34231-013
Project Name: Greater Mekong Subregion: Northern Economic Corridor Project in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic
Report Date:
Lesson
An effective project implementation entity is important when multiple financiers are involved, in order to ensure uniform standards in the construction of the project road. For the ADB-funded section of the road, the Lao PDR government could keep track of expenditures and verify if timelines and guidelines are followed. This was not the case with the PRC and Thailand financed sections. For example, the PRC used its own design standards for the road without conducting any dialogue with the Lao PDR government.

Project Number: 34231-013
Project Name: Greater Mekong Subregion: Northern Economic Corridor Project in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic
Report Date:
Lesson
Clear horizontal and vertical roles for urban sector agencies are important under a multisector approach. A multisector approach in the urban sector is readily implementable in the Lao PDR, because, for the most part, subsectors are within the mandate of the ministry responsible for urban development and its provincial branches. The approach can be enhanced further with the inclusion of urban transport in urban projects. This would not be difficult, given the mandate of MPWT/DPWT.

Project Number: 33432-013
Project Name: Vientiane Urban Infrastructure and Services Project
Report Date:
Lesson
A demand-driven community approach facilitates better implementation. The village area improvement experience highlights the importance of proactive communities during the design, implementation, and maintenance of projects. The use of similar principles may be replicated or expanded for a larger set of beneficiaries. An important lesson from the village area improvement program is its use of a demand-driven approach to development instead of the top-down, supply-driven activities of the past.

Project Number: 33432-013
Project Name: Vientiane Urban Infrastructure and Services Project
Report Date:
Lesson
A balanced approach to urban land use ensures success. A “bottom-up” approach to urban land use could help avoid a potential overload of infrastructure and service networks due to overcrowding, pollution, increased poverty, and environmental degradation. Building on the success of the village area improvement initiative, in particular (but also community participation initiatives in earlier ADB-supported urban projects), support for community planning could complement and support higher level urban and regional plans.

Project Number: 33432-013
Project Name: Vientiane Urban Infrastructure and Services Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Difficult decentralization reforms will benefit from a systematic sector-wide approach to change. While building toward common reform agenda goals, several ADB initiatives toward decentralized urban governance were not adequately linked. This long process would have benefited from a comprehensive reform framework based on institutional, political, and economic imperatives and a clear sector road map.

Project Number: 33432-013
Project Name: Vientiane Urban Infrastructure and Services Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Implementing urban institutional reform is complex. Careful attention must be paid to the following aspects of urban institutional reform: (i) its acceptance by all key stakeholders through a participatory process; (ii) a thorough understanding of local politics; (iii) realistic phasing, sequencing, and timing of its institutional and policy reform; and (iv) an appropriate balance between allocated resources and expectations of the stakeholders involved. A more open-ended policy dialogue may yet prove more helpful than the application of loan covenants.

Project Number: 33432-013
Project Name: Vientiane Urban Infrastructure and Services Project
Report Date: