Programme area: PROSANESU targets all rural and peri-urban communities in the eleven municipalities on the island state of Nueva Esparta (the archipelago composed of Margarita, Coche and Cubagua islands); and ten municipalities along the Caribbean coast of Sucre. The total land area is 2,406 km², split roughly in half between the two states. The territories include arid, semiarid and transition areas as well as coastal and marine habitats with fragile, threatened or degraded natural resources.

Target group: PROSANESU will directly target about 55,000 of the poorest households, women and youth: 20,000 in Nueva Esparta and 35,000 in Sucre.

Programme objectives: The project objective is to reduce poverty and extreme poverty among the targeted communities, and to assure that basic needs can be met. 

Programme description: The project will achieve its objective through the following project components:

• Component 1 will strengthen the governance capacity of community-based Popular Power organizations, and their capacity to assume a primary role in both natural resource management through inter-community territorial alliances and economic diversification on a territorial level. It is designed to create the essential conditions for implementation of components 2 and 3.

• Component 2 aims to diversify income generating initiatives within the communal economic system that are compatible with sustainable natural resource use and which benefit, in particular, women and youth. The component will facilitate preparation and cofinancing of initiatives that contribute to the diversification and sustainability of livelihoods, have a viable plan for financial sustainability, are in accord with environmental regulations, and are aligned with the priorities identified in the territorial land and natural resource management plans prepared under component 1.

• Component 3 is designed to establish and support community-based microfinance organizations to enable families to more effectively mobilize savings, obtain credit, and manage risks. Access to financial services (savings, credit and microinsurance) for poor families is strategic given low and seasonally variable levels of income. The project will build upon and scale up the considerable prior and successful experience of Fundación de Capacitación e Innovación para Apoyar la Revolución Agraria (CIARA) and IFAD in support of this sector in Venezuela.

Important features

The project embodies an innovative strategy in connection with devolving responsibilities for natural resource management on a territorial level to Popular Power organizations. This process is part of a broader national initiative to reconstitute the institutional basis of grassroots participatory democracy in Venezuela. The project will facilitate the diversification of livelihoods traditionally based on artisanal fishing and small-scale agriculture and livestock operations. In the territorial planning process, with project facilitation, community and sector-based Popular Power organizations will express their historical and contemporary understanding of vulnerabilities rooted in environmental problems and their future vision of how to cope with these problems. Participatory maps and other instruments will serve as means to organize networks and form alliances capable of governing natural resource use and conservation. In this context, both newly formed and existing Popular Power organizations will be strengthened to assume a primary role in the governance process and to develop economic initiatives that will raise and diversify the sources of family income.

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Potential cofinanciers and domestic contribution

The total cost of the Project is US$68.8 million, with an IFAD contribution of US$7.0 million. The Corporación Andina de Fomento and the Spanish Food Security Cofinancing Facility Trust Fund will each contribute US$15.0 million. The Government of Venezuela will finance US$28.0 million. Beneficiary organizations are expected to contribute US$3,8 million.