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Acknowledgements/Preface
This document was commissioned by the UK Department for International Developments Social Development Department. The authors would like to thank Robert Chambers, Arjan de Haan, Rosemary McGee and Caroline Robb for their very helpful comments. Sections 1 through to 3 have been prepared by Andy Norton (with help and comment from Bella Bird, Carrie Turk and Karen Brock); Section 4 was prepared by Bella Bird, Margaret Kakande and Carrie Turk; Annex 1 was primarily prepared by Karen Brock (supported by the work of the IDS participation group). Andy Norton.
ISBN 0 85003 520 1 Overseas Development Institute 2001 All rights reserved. Readers may quote or reproduce from this publication, but as copyright holder, ODI requests due acknowledgement. The Rough Guide name is a registered trademark of Rough Guides Ltd, used by permission of Rough Guides.
Contents
Section 1 Section 2 Objectives of this guide An introduction to Participatory Poverty Assessments concepts, origins and history
2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 What are Participatory Poverty Assessments? The story history and origins of PPAs The evolution of PPAs second generation approaches Ill-being, vulnerability, voice and exclusion the conceptual territory of PPAs Functions of PPAs points of engagement with the policy process Debates about PPAs critiques and questions
2.6.1 2.6.2 2.6.3 2.6.4 2.5.1 2.5.2 Knowledge dimensions enriching poverty information and analysis Process dimensions
5 6
6 7 9 12 13 15
16 16 17 17 13 14
The reliability of the information generated & the policy inferences drawn Ethical issues in participatory research for policy change Power and authority in the PPA process the filtering of messages Ways forward maintaining the integrity of the process
Section 3
18
18 19 23
23 26 31 32 34 36 41
31
3.5
Training Methods for fieldwork Sampling selecting research sights and participants Recording, analysis and dissemination Managing the process
41
Section 4
Case studies
4.1 The Uganda Participatory Poverty Assessment Process 4.1.1 Background
4.1.2 4.1.3 4.1.4 4.1.5 4.1.6 4.1.7 4.1.8 4.1.9
43
43
43 43 44 47 49 51 53 54 56
Origins of the Uganda Participatory Poverty Assessment Process (UPPAP) The design process The policy & institutional context UPPAP findings & policy responses Wider impacts Features of the implementation process Challenges Future directions Introduction Policy and institutional context The origins of the PPAs in Vietnam The design process Features of the implementation process Limitations of the design Findings and policy responses Wider impacts
4.2
58
58 59 60 62 63 69 70 73
76 79
Glossary of acronyms
DFID HEPR HIPC IFIs IMF I-PRSP MOLISA PEAP PLA PPA PRA PRS PRSP PWG SCF SDA SIDA UNDP Department for International Development (UK) Hunger Eradication and Poverty Reduction Programme (Vietnam) Highly Indebted Poor Countries (eligible for debt relief under HIPC initiative) International Financial Institutions (IMF, World Bank, Regional Development Banks) International Monetary Fund Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs (Vietnam) Poverty Eradication Action Plan (of Government of Uganda) Participatory Learning and Action Participatory Poverty Assessment Participatory Rural Appraisal Poverty Reduction Strategy Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper Poverty Working Group (Vietnam case study) Save the Children Fund Social Development Adviser Swedish International Development Agency United Nations Development Programme
Including a link to the formulation of public policy is important to make the definition meaningful in scope. A huge body of experience (beyond the scope of this paper) of assessing poverty to design action by community based organisations or NGOs is excluded.
Reflected in the preparation drafts of the Poverty Reduction guidelines for the DAC, and the draft of WDR 2000/01.
research.3 Attempts by policy analysts to identify causes of poverty (and policy actions that might address them) should also benefit from an understanding of what people in poor communities see as the causes of poverty and deprivation. Enhancing participation and accountability. Participatory practice aims to strengthen the degree of influence of people over decisions that affect their lives. In the case of a PPA it also seeks to give poor people an influence over policies and programmes designed for their ostensible benefit. Participation is a value in its own right expressing aspirations for enhanced agency, empowerment and autonomy, especially for those who are excluded, voiceless and marginalised. Enhancing policy effectiveness. Initiatives to address problems of poverty and deprivation are more likely to be effective if they address issues that the poor themselves consider important, through institutional channels that they value. The effectiveness of poverty reduction policy can also be enhanced through a PPA by the inclusion of a broad range of civil society actors in its formulation (research institutes, NGOs and local governments as well as participating communities). This offers the opportunity for strengthening the perceived legitimacy of the strategy, and thereby the level of stakeholder ownership and support.4 As much of the rest of this section will outline, practice in PPAs has been evolving. Early PPAs tended to be focused on producing texts for donor agency analysis while some more recent PPAs are focused on the policy process of the country concerned. Among the activities that can be included in PPA processes are the following: Review of existing analysis and research carried out in poor communities using participatory approaches Field research in poor communities involving travelling research teams engaged in participatory research at the community level Policy analysis using inputs from PPAs and other sources of information and analysis to influence policy development Training of NGO, research institutes, central/local level government staff in methods and approaches for engaging with people in poor communities for research, consultation, planning and action Creating new networks and relationships within processes of policy formulation and poverty assessment. Section 3 comprises the how to section of the manual and will go into more detail on operational aspects of PPAs. In looking at the potential benefits of this kind of exercise, however, it is useful to review something of the background and development of PPAs.
3 4
formed the basis of the poverty profile the section of the poverty assessment that outlined the demographic, social and economic characteristics of the poor. Country poverty assessments were carried out in all the borrower countries of the World Bank and formed a major part of the analytical work sponsored by the donor community in the early to mid-1990s. As the methodology and approach for poverty assessments was being developed a range of individuals and institutions argued for a broadening of the conceptual and methodological approach to the assessment of poverty. It was argued that a conventional money-metric poverty line analysis might be inadequate to capture a range of significant dimensions of deprivation. This critique focused on the following issues: The multi-dimensional quality of deprivation: A range of factors apart from low income and material want are significant in the experience of deprivation, including: social and physical isolation; powerlessness and lack of voice; low social status; and physical, bodily weakness. The unit of analysis: Questionnaire surveys of the type advocated by the Banks Poverty Reduction Handbook generally aggregate material at the level of the household. They are thus not strong instruments for analysing intra-household elements of poverty (differences by gender and age), or elements of poverty which might apply predominantly at the level of the community (such as poor access to infrastructure, or grazing lands and other common pool resources). Vulnerability and dynamic processes: A single poverty line exercise captures a snapshot in time according to the consumption measure. In the absence of other complementary quantitative or qualitative exercises it does not capture dynamic dimensions of change over time including seasonal variations in access to food, health status, income etc., and vulnerability to shocks of various kinds and the negative impacts of long-term trends. There was also a strong impetus to find a vehicle for including social analysis within the frameworks for analysing poverty used in poverty assessments, as well as economic analysis. These arguments came from various sources social development professionals within the World Bank, the donor community at large, the research community in development studies, and the countries where poverty assessments were to be carried out. To a large extent the Participatory Poverty Assessment became the vehicle for these various aspirations and critiques. It offered an operational method that could feed empirical material into the process of poverty assessment. It was also backed up by a powerful rationale outlined above that encompassed moral as well as technical arguments. Many of the issues PPAs raised have now become part of the mainstream position on the analysis and assessment of poverty. Quantitative methods (within the Bank and elsewhere) have evolved to take much more account of a broader view of poverty one which encompasses concerns with powerlessness, vulnerability and isolation as aspects of the causes and experience of poverty. Early PPAs were thus field research exercises, generally funded in whole or part by donor agencies other than the World Bank5 but with the intention of contributing to the analysis in a Bank-led country poverty assessment. By 1998 Robb was able to look back on the experience of PPAs within poverty assessments conducted by the World Bank.6 She found that 43 out of 98 country poverty assessments had included an exercise called a PPA although these varied considerably in terms of scale, ambition and quality. At one extreme there were very short exercises taking two to three weeks and geared to producing little more than illustrative case study boxes to lend a human face to a document. At the other extreme, some were large-scale field research exercises lasting up to eight months, with formal linkages to poverty monitoring systems and other parts of government.
These were mostly bilateral development agencies notably UK DFID, the Swedish International Development Agency, and Dutch development co-operation.
6 Robb (1999). Robbs thorough survey of the Bank experiences does not include PPAs conducted outside the World Bank in this period, which were outside the TOR for that study. For example, the Bengladesh PPA conducted in 1996 as a contribution to the UNDP Human Development Report, and the district level PPAs produced in Ghana by CEDEP with funding from Save the Children Fund UK (Dogbe 1998).
Despite the limited ambitions implied by the poverty assessment context, some PPAs did achieve broader impacts. Among the examples of process outcomes arising from the early PPAs are the following: Institutional development in civil society: In Zambia, the loose consultants network which carried out the fieldwork for the original Participatory Poverty Assessment constituted itself into an NGO (the Participatory Assessment Group) which continued to carry out participatory studies to contribute to policy development processes. The Centre for the Development of People in Ghana has developed a capacity for engaging in policy research and advocacy building on its involvement in the Ghana PPA.7 Integration into poverty monitoring systems: The Participatory Assessment Group was incorporated in the poverty monitoring system of the Zambian Government. Activities included carrying out follow up PPAs8, and studies on specific topics suggested by policy makers. On the whole, however, the first generation of PPAs were largely limited in conception to a focus on field research, according to agendas largely derived from donor agency concerns, and implemented as a one-off exercise. Their capacity to influence policy and process in the countries they were carried out was largely dependent on the quality of the dialogue with government established within the broader poverty assessment. To a large extent they reflected a weakness of the overall programme of country poverty assessments summarised in a range of studies and evaluations: that country level ownership of the process and conclusions of poverty assessments tended to be weak.9
7 8 9
Dogbe (1998) describes the process and outcomes of the Ghana PPA for CEDEP. Such as PAG 1995. IDS (1994), Hanmer et al, ISSAS (1996), Booth et al (1998)