R4D Brazil

ELLA Spotlight on Organisations: Adaptation in Semi-Arid Regions

Thu, 17 May 2012 09:26 GMT

Document Type: Fact Sheet
Creator: Cesano, D.

Production Year: 2011

Citation: Cesano, D. ELLA Spotlight on Organisations: Adaptation in Semi-Arid Regions. ELLA, Practical Action Consulting, Lima, Peru (2011) 4 pp.

Summary: This selection describes key Brazilian and international organisations working on community-based adaptation (CBA) in semi-arid areas, focusing on the resources they offer to South Asian and Sub-Saharan African development actors.

ELLA Policy Brief: Implementing CCTs: Lessons from Latin America

Wed, 16 May 2012 07:25 GMT

Document Type: Briefing
Creator: Jaramillo, M.

Production Year: 2011

Citation: Jaramillo, M. ELLA Policy Brief: Implementing CCTs: Lessons from Latin America. ELLA, Practical Action Consulting, Lima, Peru (2011) 5 pp.

Summary:

CCT programmes have had proven success in improving education and health outcomes, but that success depends on the quality and adequacy of implementation. Effective implementation must take into account each country’s context and the opportunities - and limits - of its own institutional capacity. It must consider technical, operational and socio-political factors, as all of these can influence the programme’s effectiveness. This Brief presents four main steps in implementing a successful CCT programme, and in each, draws on the Latin American experience to highlight key issues policymakers should consider when creating an implementation strategy in other contexts.

Key Lessons:

The Latin American experience shows a core set of considerations countries should keep in mind as they decide how best to adapt implementation strategies to reflect their local context.
Within each of the four key implementation steps identified, different considerations become important, from available technology and financial systems, to quality of services and the structure of the conditionality. Capacity and availability of quality information are important to consider across all of the four steps.

ELLA Policy Brief: Gas Sector Investment Policy: The Latin American Experience

Wed, 16 May 2012 07:10 GMT

Document Type: Briefing
Creator: Damonte, G.

Production Year: 2011

Citation: Damonte, G. ELLA Policy Brief: Gas Sector Investment Policy: The Latin American Experience. ELLA, Practical Action Consulting, Lima, Peru (2011) 4 pp.

Summary:

This brief presents a concise overview of the Latin American gas industry, focusing on its policy experience and performance. In particular, it reviews the advantages and disadvantages of the region’s three different policy models: state-led, private, and state-private. It describes the evidence suggesting that in LA the state-private model has been most economically and politically successful. Finally, it discusses the focus on regional integration that is a particular feature of the Latin American case. The lessons learned will be useful for African and South Asian policymakers interested in boosting their own gas sectors.

Key Lessons:

The state-private model seems to have been the most successful, achieving a fair balance between economic needs and national political concerns.
Regional integration has been key to further developing the Latin American gas sector.

ELLA Policy Brief: An Integrated Approach to Improving Adaptive Capacity: The Adapta Sertão Experience

Wed, 16 May 2012 06:39 GMT

Document Type: Briefing
Creator: Cesano, D.

Production Year: 2011

Citation: Cesano, D. ELLA Policy Brief: An Integrated Approach to Improving Adaptive Capacity: The Adapta Sertão Experience. ELLA, Practical Action Consulting, Lima, Peru (2011) 6 pp.

Summary:

Community-based adaptation (CBA) is a fairly new approach where communities are empowered to find their own adaptation solutions, without relying excessively on government interventions that may be too slow to address their quickly changing needs. However, successful CBA is difficult to accomplish; attempts frequently fail to integrate action across public, private and civil society sectors. Though still at an early stage, the Adapta Sertão approach seems to be succeeding in identifying and overcoming key barriers through partnership building and diversified interventions to address the multiple needs of farmers in Brazil's semi-arid region. Development professionals with similar dilemmas in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa could take advantage of this Brief's reflexion on a successful pilot project that is rapidly expanding, as they consider how to improve adaptive capacity in their own countries.

Key Lessons:

Adapta Sertão shows how adaptive capacity in the semi-arid can be strengthened by changing farming methods and disseminating efficient and low-cost technologies starting from those which improve both water supply and use.
Public policies promoting access to technology and finance, commercialisation and technical assistance are fragmented. By using partnerships and establishing links between these policies through local actions, a systemic approach to climate change adaptation can be achieved.

ELLA Policy Brief: Improving Health and Education Through CCTs.

Wed, 16 May 2012 05:02 GMT

Document Type: Briefing
Creator: Jaramillo, M.

Production Year: 2011

Citation: Jaramillo, M. ELLA Policy Brief: Improving Health and Education Through CCTs. ELLA, Practical Action Consulting, Lima, Peru (2011) 5 pp.

Summary:

One of the worst characteristics of poverty is its tendency to self-perpetuate, with poor families often being forced to under-invest in their children's health and education. In Latin America, Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programmes have been effective in ensuring higher school attendance and greater health services use, both of which are valuable inputs for human capital development and future productivity. However, CCT evaluations have had a harder time identifying effects on health and education impacts. This brief describes how Latin American countries have used CCTs to improve health and education, the results achieved, and lessons learned for improving health and education in other settings.

Key Lessons:

CCTs have proven to be effective in increasing school attendance and access to health services.
However, it has been more difficult to identify improvements in education and health outcomes and long-term impacts.
Supply side interventions are important to assure that increasing service use has an impact on education and health outcomes.

ELLA Policy Brief: Oil Industry Investment Policies

Wed, 16 May 2012 04:41 GMT

Document Type: Briefing
Creator: Damonte, G.

Production Year: 2011

Citation: Damonte, G. ELLA Policy Brief: Oil Industry Investment Policies. ELLA, Practical Action Consulting, Lima, Peru (2011) 5 pp.

Summary:

This brief presents a concise overview of the context of the Latin American oil industry and its performance. It analyses the advantages and disadvantages of the three main investment models followed, focusing primarily on the policy experience of Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Peru, and Venezuela. Finally, it presents evidence and analysis suggesting that the state-private competitive model seems to have had the best performance in the current regional context.

Key Lessons:

The state-private model, with a dominant state role in an open market, seems to be the most economically successful and politically stable model in Latin America.
For this model to be successful, however, governments need to directly invest in the state oil company to improve its technical, financial and institutional performance.

ELLA Policy Brief: Designing an Effective CCT.

Wed, 16 May 2012 04:08 GMT

Document Type: Briefing
Creator: Jaramillo, M.

Production Year: 2011

Citation: Jaramillo, M. ELLA Policy Brief: Designing an Effective CCT. Practical Action Consulting, Lima, Peru (2011) 5 pp.

Summary:

Latin American countries have used specific CCT design elements – like amount of cash transfer or particular conditionalities like attending school or health check-ups – to foster investment in children’s development to reduce future poverty. But CCTs' effectiveness depends on the quality of the programme’s design, and in particular, the synergy between the chosen design and the desired objective. This brief analyses the most important CCT design elements from the Latin American experience - the target population, incentives and conditionalities, and entry and exit rules - to help other countries as they make design decisions to adapt CCTs to their own contexts.

Key Lessons:

Be specific about the problem to be solved and design the CCT accordingly. All design decisions must come back to the objective.
Good information is key, both about the local context and about families' constraints in investing in human capital. From there, creative use of design elements will help a CCT best reflect a country's specific experience and ultimately make it more successful.

ELLA Guide: Addressing the Urban Challenge in Integral and Inclusive Ways

Wed, 16 May 2012 02:42 GMT

Document Type: Briefing
Creator: del Valle, J.

Production Year: 2011

Citation: del Valle, J. ELLA Guide: Addressing the Urban Challenge in Integral and Inclusive Ways. ELLA, Practical Action Consulting, Lima, Peru (2011) 7 pp.

Summary:

Integrated urban environmental plans developed in different Latin American countries show how to reduce systemic challenges in urban areas. Overcoming multi-dimensional urban issues requires a holistic view that includes channels for popular participation, higher level government support and cross-sector collaboration. However, it does not exclude a deep understanding of specific local necessities: in Brazil, transportation was a priority; in Colombia, disaster risk reduction; and in Argentina, decentralisation of public services. A critical overview of achievements in these urban environmental governance processes is key for South Asian and African cities that will need to accommodate most of the world’s urban growth.

Key Lessons:

Good urban governance can limit environmental problems and the risks generated by unplanned and uncontrolled urban growth.
Urban environmental problems seem to be best addressed within integrated, long-term and locally-focused development plans involving multiple stakeholders.
Urban development programmes work when they have a strong social and equity dimension and include channels for participatory decision-making.

ELLA Guide: Improving Small Farmers' Adaptive Capacity in Semi-arid Regions

Wed, 16 May 2012 02:27 GMT

Document Type: Briefing
Creator: Cesano, D.; Obermaier, M.

Production Year: 2011

Citation: Cesano, D.; Obermaier, M. ELLA Guide: Improving Small Farmers' Adaptive Capacity in Semi-arid Regions. ELLA, Practical Action Consulting, Lima, Peru (2011) 7 pp.

Summary:

In Latin America, as in Africa and Asia, 15-25% of the population lives in semi-arid areas, mostly in small isolated rural communities that are often the most severely affected by, yet least equipped to cope with, the impacts of climate change. Strategies employed to build adaptive capacity in Brazil's semi-arid areas focused on improved water supply, management and use, while at the same time promoting access to technology and improved production techniques, all with a focus on knowledge sharing and multi-level collaboration. The lessons from Brazil's response will be useful for policymakers and community organisations in other semi-arid regions.

Key Lessons:

Brazil's successes were underpinned by integrating government policies and incentives, NGO projects and community participatory development (adaptation across scales).
Improving water access is insufficient without building capacity, introducing technology and providing technical assistance to enable communities to put water to its most productive use.

ELLA Guide: CCT programmes: An overview to the Latin American experience

Wed, 16 May 2012 02:06 GMT

Document Type: Briefing
Creator: Jaramillo, M.

Production Year: 2011

Citation: Jaramillo, M. ELLA Guide: CCT programmes: An overview to the Latin American experience. ELLA, Practical Action Consulting, Lima, Peru (2011) 7 pp.

Summary:

Born in Latin America, Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programmes target poor families, offering cash subsidies in exchange for a commitment by households to invest in the human capital of their children. Backed up by country examples, this guide provides an overview to CCT programmes in Latin America, including their history, objectives and use, evidence of their impact, and finally, the main lessons coming out of Latin America that can be useful for policymakers considering implementing CCTs in their own countries.

Key Lessons:

Although cash transfers help families confront short-term poverty, it is the establishment of conditionalities that motivate human capital investments - CCTs' principal innovation - that can help beneficiary households escape long-term poverty.
Latin American experience suggests that it is possible and indeed necessary to adapt the programmes to a country's particular context in order to be successful.
Including rigorous impact evaluations as part of CCT implementation is an effective way to assess programme effectiveness, make improvements and promote CCTs worldwide.