Missed Opportunities

4.5.2 Missed Opportunities

166. Despite the growing experience, CDD potential in ADB is still at an early stage. While the total number of projects with CDD features (28 out of 339 projects) is not negligible, CDD features are but a minimal component of most of the projects identified. Only 3% of the total projects (11 out of 339 projects) were qualified as strictly CDD projects, with only four out of these 11 projects involving all the five characteristics of a CDD project. Within the range of the four levels of community participation— information sharing, consultation, collaboration, and empowerment (see Figure 1)—ADB’s overall portfolio is still centered around the consultation to collaboration parts of the CBD continuum, with limited attempts at community empowerment. In addition, there are more sectors/contexts and countries where CDD can be potentially applied effectively, as explained below.

167. Empowerment Focus. As noted earlier, most CDD projects employ participatory planning and implementation. However, only 11 of the 28 CDD projects allow community control of resources and only 9 provide for participatory M&E by people in the community. This compares with the World Bank CDD portfolio in which more than half provided communities with control of resources. Thus, participatory methods currently employed do not yet generally reach the full extent of empowerment and do not receive the full benefits that can be derived from CDD projects. Considering that there is already quite advanced experience in the application of these features in CDD projects, particularly in the World Bank, it is evident that ADB is not yet picking up the lessons from best practice elsewhere.

168. The absence of empowering measures to community members in ADB projects could mean legitimizing corruption and elite capture. For example, a Special Evaluation Study on Effectiveness of Participatory Approaches (2004) by ADB’s Operations Evaluation Department (OED) points to a case where contractors feel accountable to local officials who sign contracts and pay their fees and not to the communities. Unless there is a social accountability mechanism installed to make the contractors accountable to communities, the service quality will not be ensured, not to mention the possible consequences of the contractor-local elite connection.

169. Emergency and Social Funds. The sectoral distribution of the World Bank CDD portfolio (Figure 4) seems quite similar to that of ADB (Figure 8). When it is mapped into the World Bank’s typology of CDD projects, ADB’s CDD portfolio is concentrated around single-sector projects (mostly in water and sanitation), multisector projects (which take up 36% of the projects and 42% of the portfolio), and livelihood and microfinance projects (the most commonly used method of allowing some form of community control over project financial resources). However, ADB has not used CDD in emergency loans that were approved to assist DMCs affected by the Asian tsunami of 2004 or other post-disaster

context, 106 despite two World Bank OED evaluations (2002 and 2005) that have established the effectiveness of CDD in emergency situations. ADB has also not established a social fund, while there

have been 10 years of experience in this at the World Bank and the IDB. This review, however, has not been able to identify the reasons.

170. Regional Application. ADB’s experience in CDD in the past five years has been concentrated in two subregions: South Asia (including Pakistan), and Southeast Asia. This may be due to the combination of many factors, such as staff skills, management support, and willingness of DMCs. However, there are countries, such as in Central Asia, where the World Bank has had CDD projects, (including the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and International Development Association), but

It was pointed out by Almud Weitz of the Indonesia Resident Mission that a grant project was approved as assistance to tsunami-affected areas in the country. Unfortunately, technical assistance and grant projects were not covered by this review due to time limitations. This is welcome information but the fact remains that ADB still has to explore lending for disaster response, which the World Bank has already practiced extensively.

ADB has not. ADB can further deepen its CDD experience in the countries and executing agencies with which it already has experience but should also expand it to other countries.