ASIRP was a national project with an institutional focus rather than project led technical and social interventions.

The project largely achieved everything that was within its control. Some outputs are dependent on responses in other stakeholders and donors.

ASIRP was a project within one line agency (DAE) of MoA and given the design would always find the ability to stimulate change at the macro level in other Ministries of GOB very difficult.

In achieving outputs the project successfully developed innovative strategic models for extension, new structures and integrated processes for implementation the National Agricultural Extension Policy (NAEP) but most of these were not sustained beyond EoP.

Three projects, SHABGE, Go-Interfish and LMP were merged in 2003 to form the RLP. The programme “largely achieved” its purpose of improving livelihood security of poor men and women.

The different tools and indicators used by the projects that make up the RLP show that participating households experience a substantial increase in productive assets, food security, improved coping strategies and diversification of livelihood options for the 167,572 FFS participants, 62 % of whom were women.

The programme has made significant advances in developing empowered groups, Community Based Organisations (CBOs) from their original Farmer Field Schools (FFS).

The FFS initially evolved from homestead gardening and rice-fish farming to more diversified livelihoods options but still mainly focusing on agricultural production.

Further advances have resulted in community driven approaches involving larger CBOs embracing wider livelihood and societal well-being activities (e.g. sanitation, markets, access to services, issues relating to rights, dowry, early marriage, CBO development etc.) and these have become more inclusive of more marginalized households individuals within the communities.

The programme will most likely lead to future major advances in strengthening social and economic empowerment processes of community groups.

Good progress on the implementation of core field activities through the PNGOs and Department of Fisheries/local government officers.

The NGOs have been successful in extending the primary community groups to clusters and, in some cases forming potentially influential apex bodies.

Fisheries production had increased, and all CBOs had accumulated savings (to varying degrees) and some had plans for entrepreneurial developments using the accumulated funds.

The CBO networking process has been fully implemented with full project support. But, we still do not know after 8 years of CBFM 1 sites and three years of CBFM 2 whether the institutional and social arrangements will survive severance from the project.

It is considered that, even with full delivery on all three Outputs, achieving a new and operational policy formulation process (Project Purpose) is beyond the reach of this project (perhaps any single project). CBFM2 is therefore set with a new purpose to deliver a new approach which influences policy formulation.

Although project implementation is progressing satisfactory the project remains rated by the World Bank Implementation review missions as ‘Unsatisfactory”. However with the proposed extension to 2006 there is renewed optimism that many of the project key performance indicators will be achieved.

The extension and training component has already been successfully achieved training over 200,000 farmers; performance for the open water fisheries management component remains mixed due to the complex nature of managing this resource involving many stakeholders and vested interests.

Shrimp component had faced significant delays but some polder development is on-going.

Institutional strengthening component has developed several comprehensive strategies although implementation during the project period is uncertain..

Original purpose and all outputs pertaining to training DoF staff and poor men and women farmers (108,000) were “substantially achieved.

The direct benefits received by farmers (both women and men) under the project have been widespread and tangible in terms of capital assets gains.

These benefits have been biased towards the poor, although it is still questionable how far the landless very poor could benefit from such approaches.

The addition of extremely challenging additional institutional targets at the Mid Term Review was entirely justified in principle, but in reality left insufficient time for achieving a sustainable product.

Without the fundamental institutional changes in place some of the project gains were lost at EoP. These losses include erosion of field approaches and dilution of the institutional changes (the Training Wing) and associated coherent strategies for HR development. It was concluded that further support would be needed to protect these gains.

The PETRRA project developed a range of technologies based directly on the needs and with the participation of resource poor farmers.

Work with partner organisations around practical issues of adoption or technology uptake as well as a successful, high profile publicity campaign has generated a strong combination of practical pro-poor technologies that are popular with organisations (NGO and GO) and in the political sphere.

This combination provides a good chance of success in purpose level achievement. The technologies through 45 sub-projects were successfully implemented using a competitive research funding regime within a very challenging institutional environment over a fairly short timescale.

Through its communications strategy and policy dialogue process the project was successful in reaching a very wide and extensive audience from grass-roots to senior Secretariat levels. Although information has reached these levels change may be slow.

Therefore, in the absence of a broader public sector reform agenda, project inspired change is unlikely to sustain once project funding ceases [Note: Adaptive, participatory research is still regarded as the remit of the small Adaptive Research Division (ARD) and is outside the mainstream of BRRI (Bangladesh Rice Research Institute) activities].

REFPI was successful at the purpose level in ‘strengthening capacity of GOB/NGO/private sector to carry out appropriate research and extension in farm power issues for the rural poor’; although the reviewers added that there was a need for more quantitative data to verify this statement.

REFPI was also successful in demonstrating that well managed competitive research facilities can work to benefit moderately poor farmers.

Forming linkages and fostering relationships between research organizations, NGO and private entrepreneur improves overall research project success when careful selection is made for comparative strengths and a win-win scenario is engendered (e.g. successful research for the researcher, NGO engages in capacity building with potential to provide credit for new ventures and private entrepreneur realizes product development and profit making business).

Although the capacity of the BAU on research and extension was enhanced, despite the best efforts of the management staff, it did not succeed in having a significant long-term impact at the policy level and many significant initiatives started were not sustained..

The project purpose, of developing human resources, skills, and knowledge for poverty sensitive aquatic research development has been largely achieved with respect to the current fisheries faculty.

Still unclear is the extent to which these capacities will become institutionally embedded within the departments. However, output ratings were impeded because of the dependence on substantial institutional changes taking place.

These risks fell largely outside the scope of the project logframe, and the relatively low score ratings did not reflect inadequacies of project performance, but the importance of these larger institutional uncertainties.

The review mission reported that project achievements were in three areas i) The project identified priority outcome areas for research, and has provided support to a large number of research areas in each outcome area. At EoP twelve technologies were at the point of being ready for initial promotion in the field; ii) Teaching quality has been improved in the fisheries departments and have incorporated a course on livelihoods concepts into their curricula; iii) A competitive grant system for poverty sensitive research engaging a wide range partners can be successfully managed by university departments.

However, experience from SUFER shows that “if research moves outside of narrow disciplinary focus, researchers need to be provided with extensive background to understand the social, economic, environmental factors which condition livelihoods.

A critical aspect of this process is defining the boundaries of livelihoods approach understanding needed by researchers in technical fields. This must be determined to understand degree of collaboration with Social scientists, achievement of livelihoods training objectives and identifying training gap and guide mentoring proposed for future faculty members.