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Lesson
Making use of water users groups. Although their autonomy was short-lived, WUGs functioned well using hydraulic boundaries. Project WUGs had their own bank accounts and stamp and the right to sign contracts. They received training in irrigation planning and management and financial management. Empowered water users became fully committed to the infrastructure that was crucial to their agriculture livelihood. It was acknowledged by the IMCs, the cooperatives, and even by DARDs that some WUGs constructed tertiary irrigation canals more quickly and/or at lower cost than PPMUs.

Project Number: 30292-023
Project Name: Central Region Water Resources Project
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
The need for adequate staff input and maintenance of project records. The project’s midterm review was undertaken 2 years late and almost at the end of the project period at appraisal. This absence of timely oversight and ADB’s poor curating of the project data and documents contributed to the project’s limited success. ADB’s business processes could be improved to retain key project financial and economic analyses records systematically in electronic format.

Project Number: 34023-013
Project Name: Plantation Development Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Need to understand the limitation of project modalities. The complexity of the PDP’s design was a weakness. As a general principle, projects should aim for simple, straightforward outputs and outcomes and involve uncomplicated implementation arrangements and a small number of implementing agencies if they hope to be successful. Projects must be designed in a way that makes it feasible for national staff (generally government officers) who often have limited resources and capabilities to manage and implement them.

Project Number: 34023-013
Project Name: Plantation Development Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Socioeconomic, institutional, and policy environment are important for project design. The failure of the project to achieve its intended impact, and limited achievement of expected outcomes shows that ADB needs to fully assess and understand all socioeconomic, institutional, and policy factors when it prepares and appraises projects. If these factors had been properly assessed in the case of the PDP, ADB could have lowered the outcome expectations. It could have adapted the design to match the capacity of the implementing agencies and stakeholders.

Project Number: 34023-013
Project Name: Plantation Development Project
Report Date:
Lesson
In moving forward with sector dialogue and preparation of new projects, competing needs should be continuously discussed particularly regarding the acceptable trade-off between staple food (rice) self-sufficiency (as a part of a national security plan) and its economic costs in terms of fiscal subsidy burden on the national and local budgets, as well as in terms of lower farm incomes.

Project Number: 32359-013
Project Name: Participatory Irrigation Sector Project
Report Date:
Lesson
A rigid and narrow scope of activities may not be optimal for projects that aim to support decentralization. Decentralization fosters more independent and bottom-up decision making by local governments and communities, and it is therefore better supported through projects that allow a broader and flexible menu of activities.

Project Number: 32359-013
Project Name: Participatory Irrigation Sector Project
Report Date:
Lesson
In addition to self-evaluation by line agencies and project offices, future projects should consider allowing more independent entities to gather key data (e.g., on yields and cropped areas, incomes, and farmers’ views on irrigation and extension service quality). This can be done by the local planning or finance agency, or an agency of the local parliament.

Project Number: 32359-013
Project Name: Participatory Irrigation Sector Project
Report Date:
Lesson
The focused intervention in water delivery needs to be implemented in conjunction with complementary projects or in appropriate (water-short) locations to ensure that higher-level project outcomes (e.g., increased yields and improved incomes) can be better realized.

Project Number: 32359-013
Project Name: Participatory Irrigation Sector Project
Report Date:
Lesson
ADB can improve client service and reduce administrative and paperwork burden. This can be done by simplifying project disbursement (ensuring sufficiently large imprest account replenishment thresholds and simpler cost-sharing arrangements). Efforts should be made to reduce report generation in future projects (e.g., by combining scheme assessments, simplifying the feasibility study format, and delegating feasibility review to the respective districts and provinces).

Project Number: 32359-013
Project Name: Participatory Irrigation Sector Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Continuing need for the project review process in ADB to allow a flexible project design if warranted, for example during this uncertain period in early 2000s for Indonesia. A more forthcoming discussion on risks and a flexible design at approval would have made it easier later to change the project scope and financing approach. This would have reduced the project implementation challenges and delays.

Project Number: 32359-013
Project Name: Participatory Irrigation Sector Project
Report Date:
Lesson
A clear mechanism should be identified on how voluntary land contributions are agreed upon and compensated, if necessary, among the members of beneficiary groups (e.g., WUAs). Further, these contributions should be accounted for as counterpart funds to the project.

Project Number: 32359-013
Project Name: Participatory Irrigation Sector Project
Report Date:
Lesson
As a part of the continuing institution building, agriculture sector indicators can be improved by including more service performance indicators for agencies.

Project Number: 32359-013
Project Name: Participatory Irrigation Sector Project
Report Date: