Mid-term review of FADCANIC Sustainable Agroforestry Development Program (SAD) - Phase II, Nicaragua

The Project
Main objectives of the Phase II of the program are to:

• increase Sustainable Agroforestry Centers' capacity to generate and disseminate appropriate techniques for natural resource management
• contribute to territorial zoning
• manage local environmental agendas
• increase the coverage of the local financial credit-systems
• contribute to institutional strengthening of the executing agency FADCANIC

The objectives are to be pursued within a framework of participatory action and gender equity methodology. The program has a budget of NOK 9.0 million for (2004-2007) and it targets 2600 families (about 15,000 persons) in 75 rural communities living in 5 municipalities located in the Autonomous South Atlantic Region of Nicaragua

Interesting Findings
• Assessment of the outputs in relation to the objectives confirms that the program has advanced satisfactorily towards its objectives during the period under review.
• The program implementation has been in accordance with the plans, and costs incurred are low as compared to similar interventions in the area.
• Stakeholder interviews confirm that the program has been highly relevant for a wide range of actors and organizations in the region. In addition, the analysis indicates a high degree of convergence between the program outputs and the local indicators for rural development.

Concerns remain in the following areas:

• The program faces serious difficulties with respect to dissemination of the successful agroforestry initiatives in the communities. The critical issue is the local agroforestry networks' weakness to pursue the present and future goals of sustainable agroforestry in the communities and the region.

Comments from Evaluation Department, Oslo

The results of this evaluation should be interpreted keeping in view that the target-region for this program was impacted by "Beta" - a category II hurricane; a year after the start of the program, and that the program executing agency received a supplementary grant for rehabilitation activities in the program zones affected by the hurricane.

It is reasonable to expect that the results reported in this evaluation would have been affected both by the hurricane and the supplementary grant- a substantial grant equal to nearly half of the programs' initial budget. The evaluation reported in this review provides limited insight if any on the likely impacts of either the hurricane, or the impact of supplementary financing on the program results.

A separate evaluation report entitled "Final review of Sustainable Agroforestry Development- Rehabilitation program after Hurricane Beta", ref. NIC 05/024, Feb. 2007 has been prepared for the supplementary financing. The evaluation touches on the use of SAD II personnel for the rehabilitation project, however it is difficult to draw any definite conclusions about cross-project effects between the two interventions.