Poverty Analysis in Agricultural Water Operations, Phase 1: Review of World Bank Financed Projects (Water Working Notes No.16, May 2008)

 Focus of the review was on whether it is possible to improve the pro-poor impact of agricultural water management projects at the margin, whatever the development objective. With this caveat, the objectives of the review were: 1) to assess the quality and effectiveness of poverty analysis in the most recent Bank-financed agricultural water projects, 2) to evaluate their contribution to poverty reduction and its measurement; and 3) to recommend ways to improve pro-poor results of agricultural water projects and to prepare tools and methodologies that could help achieve this.

The review is being conducted in two phases. Phase one, the subject of the present report, was conducted in 2006-7 and covered the first and second objectives. Phase two, to begin in mid-2007, would be covering the third objective.

Table of Contents:

Executive Summary
Introduction

1.    Agricultural Water Development and Poverty Linkages
1.1    Growth, distribution and poverty reduction through agricultural water
1.2    Empirical findings on the impact of agricultural water on poverty reduction
1.3    Maximizing the impact of agricultural water on poverty reduction

2.    Poverty Analysis in Recent Bank-financed Agricultural Water Projects
2.1    Poverty analysis methodology for agricultural water operations
2.2    Macro and sector level poverty analysis
2.3    Project and farm level poverty analysis

3.    Poverty Reduction in Bank-financed Agricultural Water Projects
3.1    Poverty reduction in project design
3.2    Project risk and poverty reduction
3.3    Benefits and their distribution
3.4    Poverty reduction targets and monitoring

4.    The Challenge of Improving the Poverty Reduction Impact of Bank-financed Agricultural Water Projects
4.1    An opportunity missed
4.2    Improving the pro-poor design of agricultural water projects
4.3    Improving pro-poor targets and results measurement
4.4    Possible measures to improve pro-poor performance of agricultural water projects

Annexes
1.    Questionnare used for the project review
2.    The projects selected for review
 

Post Date : 02 Juli 2009