Sustainability

Learning note

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This Note relates to KSF5: Risks and Sustainability
Version: January 2008

Core issues

Livelihoods are sustainable when they are resilient in the face of external shocks and stresses, do not depend on unsustainable external support, maintain the long-term productivity of natural resources and do not undermine or compromise the livelihoods of others, such as: 

  • Measures to ensure that livelihood benefits to the rural poor are sustainable should be integral to the design of all types of project components and outputs, whether these aim to create new physical assets, disseminate new practices, strengthen institutions, enhance social capital, empower communities, reform policies, or introduce new modes of operation such as demand-driven project implementation.
  • Measures to ensure sustainability will be specific to each type of output: but whatever their nature it should be clear how each output will contribute to achieving sustainable livelihood improvements. In the rare cases where short-term needs overshadow sustainability concerns (e.g. post-conflict) this should be justified.
  • The momentum of poverty alleviation should be sustained both during and after loan disbursement. With this in mind, project components should each:
    • Include core sustainability measures among monitoring indicators in the Key Files, indicating when and by whom sustainability should be measured (see IFAD, 2002. Managing for Impact in Rural Development: A Guide for Project M&E, Section 5: Deciding what to Monitor and Evaluate).
    • Require project management and supervising Co-operating Institutions (CIs) or IFAD missions to report on progress towards sustainability during disbursement.
    • Contain a clear exit strategy to sustain institutional, social, environmental and financial benefits after project disbursement ends.
    • Detail the longer term post-disbursement operation and maintenance responsibilities and sources of funding for all infrastructure investments.
    • Detail how financial and organisational responsibilities for project-funded institutions (e.g. rural finance) and services (e.g. village-level extensionists or para-vets) will evolve.
    • Estimate the government’s residual liability for recurrent expenditures after disbursement ends, suggesting fall-back or downsizing options if residual liabilities prove fiscally unsustainable, as appropriate.
    • Indicate how sustainability will be evaluated post-disbursement.
  • Where feasible, teams should try to ‘design round’ threats to sustainability avoiding, for instance, works with major post-project operation and maintenance (O&M) costs, or production practices that depend on inputs bought with scarce foreign exchange.

Key tasks for design and review

  • Review and reach agreements on who will take over key management, technical support and O&M operations once project-funded staff is no longer available. This should be done also for second or third phase IFAD investments or Flexible Lending Mechanism projects.
  • Define means to meet post-project financial liabilities or agree an exit strategy, thus ensuring that a requirement for a second phase project does not arise semi-automatically, simply in order to salvage the benefits of the original investment.
  • Avoid unsupported assumptions that the government is committed and able to automatically take over operation and maintenance – e.g. of roads – or that communities can/will undertake, and can afford the costs of, Operation and Maintenance.
  • Develop clear indicators and methodology to track sustainability during the disbursement period; include in logframes and Key Files; agree how and by whom sustainability will be monitored subsequently.
  • Give priority to consideration of the preferences or priorities of poor people in making fall-back choices on how to reshape post-project support, when project personnel and funds become more scarce.
  • Analyse trade-offs and possible conflicts between sustainability and the short term livelihood improvements or survival needs of the rural poor.
  • Take into account and plan for the accumulating impacts of significant longer-term trends such as rising input prices versus stagnant farm gate prices, progressive over-use of water and land resources, climate trends, or livelihood shifts of poor farmers out of agricultural production.

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