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Real Time Evaluation of

the FAO Emergency and Rehabilitation Operations in Response to the Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami

Report of the Second Mission

Final version

Olivier Cossée Rudolf Hermes

Salem Mezhoud

March 2006

Real-Time Evaluation of the FAO Tsunami Response Final Report of the Second Mission

Abbreviations ADB Asian Development Bank ARC American Red Cross BA Beneficiary Assessment BMPT Badan Musiawarakan Petani Tambak (tambak farmers organization),

Indonesia BRR Badan Rehabilitasi dan Rekonstruksi (Rehabilitation and Reconstruction

Agency for Aceh and Nias), Indonesia CBO Community-Based Organization CCRF Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries CEYNOR Originally stood for Ceylan Norway Development Foundation (now a

state-owned boatyard company in Sri Lanka) CFW Cash-For-Work DAE Department of Agricultural Extension, Thailand DFAR Department of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, Sri Lanka DfID UK Department for International Development DKP Dinas Kelautan dan Perikanan, Indonesia DLD Department of Livestock Development, Thailand DOA Department of Agriculture, Sri Lanka DoF Department of Fisheries, Thailand ERCU Emergency and Rehabilitation Coordination Unit CHARM Coastal Habitats and Resources Management (EU project in Thailand) FAO Food and Agriculture Organization FAOR FAO Representative FRP Fiber-reinforced Plastic GOI Government of Indonesia GTZ Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit, Germany HORDI Horticultural Research and Training Institute, Sri Lanka HQ FAO Headquarters ICAM Integrated Coastal Area Management INGO International Non-Governmental Organization InWEnt Internationale Weiterbildung und Entwicklung (Capacity Building

International), Germany JIU Joint Inspection Unit LoA Letter of Agreement LSP Livelihood Support Programme LTTE Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Sri Lanka MAL Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Irrigation and Lands, Sri Lanka MDGs Millennium Development Goals MFAR Ministries of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Development, Sri Lanka MMAF Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries, Indonesia MoA Ministry of Agriculture, Sri Lanka and Indonesia MOAC Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives, Thailand NAD Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam, Indonesia NGO Non-Governmental Organization PRA Participatory Rural Assessment RAP FAO Regional Office for Asia-Pacific RGT Royal Government of Thailand SAN Save the Andaman Network SLA Sustainable Livelihoods Approach UNDP United Nations Development Programme WWF Worldwide Fund for Nature


Table of Content Executive Summary ......................................................................................................................1 A. RTE Concept and Missions ....................................................................................................12

1. RTE Concept .....................................................................................................................12 2. The RTE of the FAO Tsunami Response ..........................................................................12 3. Focus and Methodology of the Second Mission ................................................................13 4. Objective and Structure of the Report................................................................................15

B. Findings by Country ................................................................................................................16

1. Thailand .............................................................................................................................16 1.1. Context ....................................................................................................................16 1.2. The FAO Response.................................................................................................16 1.3. Evaluation Findings .................................................................................................17

2. Sri Lanka............................................................................................................................19 2.1. Context ....................................................................................................................19 2.2. The FAO Response.................................................................................................20 2.2. Evaluation Findings .................................................................................................23

3. Indonesia ...........................................................................................................................26 3.1. Context ....................................................................................................................26 3.2. The FAO Response.................................................................................................27 3.3. Evaluation Findings .................................................................................................29

C. Findings by Sector ..................................................................................................................35

1. Agriculture..........................................................................................................................35 1.1. Overview..................................................................................................................35 1.2. Activities...................................................................................................................35 1.3. Transition to development .......................................................................................36

2. Fisheries ............................................................................................................................36 2.1. Overview..................................................................................................................36 2.2. Activities...................................................................................................................37 2.3. Transition to development .......................................................................................38

3. Forestry..............................................................................................................................38 D. Cross-Cutting Issues ..............................................................................................................40

1. Emergency Preparedness and Operational Capacity of FAO............................................40 1.1. Problem statement...................................................................................................40 1.2. Past evaluations on the subject ...............................................................................40 1.3. RTE analysis............................................................................................................41 1.4. Current initiatives .....................................................................................................42

2. Institutional “Disconnect”....................................................................................................43 3. “Input Bias”.........................................................................................................................44


4. Beneficiary Selection and Satisfaction...............................................................................46 4.1. Problem statement...................................................................................................46 4.2. Beneficiary selection in the three sampled countries...............................................47 4.3. Beneficiary selection in the two main sectors ..........................................................48 4.4. Gender balance in beneficiary selection..................................................................48

5. Preliminary Indications of Impact .......................................................................................49 6. Sustainable Livelihoods Approach.....................................................................................50

6.1. Livelihoods approach(es) in Aceh............................................................................50 6.2. Sustainable Livelihoods Approach – the concept ....................................................51 6.3. FAO and livelihoods.................................................................................................52

E. Recommendations ..................................................................................................................53

1. General Recommendations ...............................................................................................53 1.1. Streamlining operational modalities for emergencies ..............................................53 1.2. Continue to fight the “input bias”..............................................................................54 1.3. Spread inputs or assets equitably to as many beneficiaries as possible.................54 1.4. Pay more attention to inputs specifications .............................................................55 1.5. Integrate the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach in careful, practical ways .............55 1.6. Better prepare the transition between TCE and Technical Departments ................56

2. Sector-Specific Recommendations....................................................................................56 2.1. Agriculture................................................................................................................56 2.2. Fisheries ..................................................................................................................57 2.3. Forestry....................................................................................................................57

3. Country-Specific Recommendations..................................................................................59 3.1. Thailand...................................................................................................................59 3.2. Sri Lanka..................................................................................................................59 3.3. Indonesia .................................................................................................................60

Annexes: Annex 1: Terms of Reference Annex 2: Itinerary Annex 3: Persons Interviewed Annex 4: Donors’ Contributions to the FAO Tsunami Response Annex 5: List of Projects of the FAO Tsunami Response


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Executive Summary The unprecedented emergency caused by the December 2004 Tsunami in South and Southeast Asia provoked an equally unprecedented response from the International Community and the UN. The magnitude of the support mobilized calls for particular attention to ensure efficient and effective use of resources. FAO decided to experiment with a new evaluation approach called “Real Time Evaluation”, consisting of a series of light, interactive evaluative exercises. Based on a short desk study of the FAO tsunami response, PBEE and TCE selected a sample of three countries (Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand) and planned to send to this sample three evaluation missions staged at the beginning, middle and end of the response. The first mission took place in May 2005. It mainly focused on operational procedures, operations and disaster preparedness, damage assessments and programme planning. The second mission was conducted in November-December 2005, and coincided with the end of field surveys conducted by national consultants and surveyors under a methodology called Beneficiary Assessments. The third mission, originally planned for early 2006, might be postponed to June 2006. The second RTE mission, which is the subject of the present report, mainly focused on beneficiary selection, beneficiary satisfaction and preliminary indications of impact. It also revisited some of the issues raised by the first RTE mission (lack of operational readiness of the Organization, bias towards input delivery, notion of “disconnect” between FAO departments). In addition, the Livelihood Support Programme supported the hiring of a livelihoods specialist to review ways and means of integrating the sustainable livelihoods approach in the tsunami response, and more generally in FAO emergency operations.

Findings by Country

Thailand The effects of the tsunami were less severe in Thailand than in the two other countries. FAO allocated some US$3 million to its response in Thailand, in view of the respective needs of more severely affected countries and of the Royal Government of Thailand’s financial assistance to affected communities. Managed by the FAO Regional Office for Asia-Pacific, the response benefited from a good operational set up, minimal security problems and travel limitations, and well developed transport and banking infrastructures. The Regional Office worked closely with the Government, both to help the Government define its own response to the tsunami and to implement activities funded by FAO. All the conditions for a good and rapid response were in place: excellent operational know-how, successful mobilization of national expertise, high level of financial and procurement authority of the Regional Office, and a comparatively small programme. All the procurements were managed locally. The beneficiary selection process, involving non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and decentralised governmental services working together at the district and village levels, was adequate and rapid. The five month period extending from the day the tsunami struck to the first deliveries of inputs (May 2005) must thus be considered as a strict minimum “lead time” from disaster to delivery for an FAO emergency operation, including damage assessments, project preparation and resource mobilization, procurement, beneficiary selection and distribution. There is a clear transition, over the course of 2005, from early projects chiefly concerned with asset replacement to more developmental projects and resource management activities. FAO is now moving towards a more development-oriented role, through a series of studies and capacity building initiatives aimed at promoting responsible fisheries.


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In the agricultural sector, the asset replacement assistance provided some 1,300 farmers with rice and watermelon seeds, coconut, oil palm and cashew seedlings, gypsum and organic fertilizer for the reclamation of saline land, chemical fertilizer, animal feed concentrate, hay and mineral blocks. At the time of the second RTE mission, the programme had procured and was delivering small boat engines and accessories to cooperatives on credit basis, as well as hydroponic net houses to promote the production of pesticide-free vegetables for the local tourism industry. Two additional projects, yet to be approved at the time of the mission, will study mangroves and promote their protection, and strengthen the capacity of the Department of Fisheries to collect data on asset replacement programmes of all partners in order to avoid the creation of an excessive fishing capacity which could deplete fish stocks. In the fisheries sector, the response assisted over 1,800 beneficiaries through the distribution of fish cages, fish cage nets, fingerlings, fish traps, shrimp gill nets and planks of wood for boat repair. Agricultural inputs were deemed very useful by interviewed beneficiaries. The feed saved some buffaloes’ lives and the fertilizer and gypsum combination seems to have had a positive effect on salinity. Coconuts and oil palms were much appreciated. The picture is less bright on the fisheries side, with many distributed items having specification problems. The main issue was that the procured sea bass fingerlings were significantly smaller than normally practiced in the area. This, added to long transport and a lack of acclimatisation, led to high mortality rates. Some shrimp gill nets were also unusable owing to the direction of the mesh. The planned assessments of the fishing effort offer an ideal opportunity to strengthen and deepen the policy dialogue between FAO and the relevant authorities of the Government to promote responsible fisheries. FAO in Thailand is now well set to help facilitate the increased cooperation between all stakeholders, including that between the Government and NGOs, towards greater resource user participation in fisheries management.

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka was devastated by the tsunami. Twelve of the country’s fourteen coastal districts were severely affected. The disaster claimed over 30,000 lives and affected more than 212,000 coastal families. The damage to infrastructures and economic activities was extensive. The disaster almost paralyzed the fishing industry. Out of a total 29,700 fishing boats before the tsunami, it is estimated that 19,000 boats and the corresponding engines and fishing gear have been destroyed or damaged. Many fishing harbours, fish landings and the local boat repair shops have also been destroyed. The agricultural sector was the second most affected by the disaster. Seawater came 2-3 kilometres inland, destroying crops, home gardens, and irrigation and drainage structures. The FAO tsunami response in Sri Lanka benefited from an experienced international and national staff, a large budget (US$20 million at the time of the second mission) and the existence in the country of a pre-tsunami emergency programme supporting farmers affected by the civil war, which allowed for limited re-orientation of already purchased seed and fertilizer to tsunami-affected areas. The programme suffered temporarily from the absence of an FAO Representative. The agricultural input distribution for the yala season (February-March) was particularly timely. Seed purchased at district level was added to other inputs already in stock prior to the tsunami and distributed through the Ministry of Agriculture’s decentralised services. For the maha season (October-November), agricultural inputs (mainly paddy seed, fertilizer, fruit trees and hoes) were distributed by FAO staff with support from the MoA and farmers’ associations. So far the programme has benefited approximately 11,000 families. Various other materials have also been procured and delivered to district-level agricultural and veterinary services.


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Interviewed beneficiaries of the agricultural distributions were very satisfied. However, coastal irrigation and drainage infrastructures are still in dire need of rehabilitation. The effects of the tsunami on soil salinity were surveyed in March and electric conductivity meters were handed out to district MoA staff, although they were only sporadically used. FAO recently secured funding for further studies of soil salinity levels. In the fisheries sector, the Government of Sri Lanka appointed the parastatal CEYNOR to implement boat and engine repairs. FAO had little choice but to work with them, except in areas controlled by the Tamil Tigers, where it chose to entrust its boat repairs to AJ Fishing, a private company. CEYNOR started its boat repair programme in February 2005, before the signature of any contract with FAO. CEYNOR reports that they benefited approximately 10,000 boat owners and fishers through the repair of 2,355 boats and 1,176 engines. Small boats and engines were given priority during the first quarter of 2005. The repair of larger engines was delayed by the difficulties in procuring spare parts. CEYNOR then resorted to purchasing spare parts on their own, again without proper contractual arrangement, and at the time of the mission it was asking FAO to support the incurred costs. Under the pressure of time, CEYNOR often resorted to distributing repair material to boat owners rather than effecting the repairs themselves. The quality of some of these repairs made by boat owners may be sub-standard. The quality of the engine repairs has overall been fair. . The quality of the fishing gear distributed appears good. The mission concludes that FAO should have from the onset established a strong monitoring system for the CEYNOR contract, with which it could have verified independently the quality of the work performed and the satisfaction of beneficiaries. In addition, some 500 fishers benefited from gill nets and outboard engines distributed in Jaffna, Galle, and Tangalle through a Government voucher system which tended to spread the assistance to a large number of fishers. The efforts of the Emergency and Rehabilitation Coordination Unit (ERCU) towards monitoring the number of boats being replaced or repaired at the district and sub-district levels were appreciated by all partners and later emulated by the Indonesia and Thailand FAO programmes. FAO also recently supported the development of a strategy for the rehabilitation and development of the fisheries sector and this strategy now needs to be published and “marketed” to donors. Harbours, landing sites and anchorages largely remain to be rehabilitated. FAO is bringing a consultant to work on a master plan. Fish-handling, marketing and processing is another promising area of work. FAO is currently distributing motorcycles with cold boxes to facilitate fish marketing, and a naval architect has been hired to review and propose improvements to national boat designs.

Indonesia Of all the countries hit by the tsunami, Indonesia was the closest to the epicentre. The North of Sumatra and the Simeulue and Nias islands suffered from both the earthquake and the tsunami. The dead and missing toll was estimated at 170,000, with another 400,000 displaced. The damage was very severe along unprotected sections of the West coast, where entire coastal resources and livelihood support systems were wiped out, including agricultural land and livestock, wild habitats, roads and other infrastructure. Many of the feeder and drainage channels were also destroyed or severely silted. Along the East Coast, the damage to fisheries, fish and shrimp ponds, crops, irrigation and drainage systems and livestock was more localized. Forty percent of the fishing fleet was lost together with much of the supporting infrastructure: landing centres, ice plants, markets, processing sheds, and transport to market.


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One of the first FAO operations was the development of a rehabilitation and reconstruction strategy, much appreciated by the Government. Since then, FAO has been working closely with the Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Agency for Aceh and Nias (BRR), line ministries and NGOs and has provided technical and policy guidance to plan and coordinate rehabilitation efforts in the agriculture and fisheries sectors. In September, FAO financed a survey of the number of boats being constructed in Aceh. This helped draw attention to the risks of creating an excess fishing capacity and led FAO to cancel most of its intended boat building programme. In its input delivery programme, the FAO response in Indonesia was compounded by all sorts of administrative and logistical difficulties described in the first RTE report. In August and September 2005, the agricultural programme managed to deliver an impressive amount of fertilizer, rice seed and tractors to some 12,000 beneficiaries on the East coast, and was at the time of the mission extending the distribution of various agricultural inputs (paddy seeds, fertiliser, fruit trees) and implements (hand tractors, threshers, water pumps and reapers) to additional households on the West coasts. Some technical problems faced by this operation are described in the body of the report, notably the low survival rates of paddy seeds in some locations on the East Coast. FAO also supported a cash-for-work programme in Aceh Besar where 300 labourers were employed to clear debris and rehabilitate paddy fields, but the operation was not successful. Strategic orientations envisaged for future FAO assistance (technical support to Dinas and NGOs; rehabilitation of drainage and irrigation systems; work on local seed systems) look strong and appropriate. The cattle replacement project being prepared at the time of the mission appears interesting and well planned though it will likely pose significant implementation challenges. In the fisheries sector, the first asset replacement activity was the distribution of fishing gear kits on Nias Island in June and July 2005. After a long period spent arguing internally about the right implementation modality for boat building, FAO has now signed contracts with eight NGOs for the construction of 210 small boats. The conscious FAO decision to donate only small boats is supported by the mission, since beneficiary selection is risky for donation of larger boats. The wood has been procured and dried and boat building started in December. At the time of the mission, more fishing gears as well as inboard boat engines were set to be distributed to beneficiaries of the boats built under the programme. The donated gears were found of good quality but delivered irregularly in separate batches. FAO is also assisting about 189 primary beneficiaries, 30 % of whom are women, through the distribution of small-scale fish drying units and sheds and is procuring 200 fish boxes and 21 motorcycles to re-establish links with markets. Two small fish markets were also built near Banda Aceh. The delays in selecting the implementation modality for the boat building programme allowed the technical staff to focus on providing quality assurance and technical assistance to the boat building programmes of NGOs. FAO has trained forty-two boat builders and has published brochures to promote good boat building practices and ensure that safe, high quality boats are delivered to fishers. The courses and brochures were well received and appreciated by NGOs and government institutions. Progress has been minimal in the aquaculture sector. Early assessments made it clear that the entire “market chain” for aquaculture needed to be addressed, and this was later confirmed in a workshop on aquaculture rehabilitation in July. A programme for fish pond rehabilitation combining CFW, material inputs and advisory services was in preparation at the time of the mission. Much remains to be done, including by FAO, to rehabilitate the fisheries and aquaculture sectors in Indonesia. The FAO tsunami response programme in Indonesia was the only one among the three programmes to have allocated significant financial resources to the forestry sector. Achievements in this sector are further detailed in the following section.


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Findings by Sector

Agriculture By and large, the distributions of agricultural inputs implemented under the tsunami response have been well implemented and reasonably successful. The beneficiaries interviewed by the international mission and by the Beneficiary Assessments were satisfied with the programme. There seems to have been no reported beneficiary selection problems. It should be stressed that the agricultural programme was in all countries smaller than the fisheries programme, and that is was easier to implement as FAO enjoys a long-standing experience in agricultural emergency operations, in contrast with the fisheries sector. However, little attention was devoted to the rehabilitation of community infrastructures damaged by the tsunami, such as irrigation and drainage systems. The mission would also like to stress that the effects of the tsunami on soil salinity have been under-studied for a variety of reasons including a lack of identified funding for such studies and poor follow-up after the departure of the concerned consultants. FAO provided normative products but did not do enough to empirically assess the evolution of the situation on the ground. The lack of, or insufficient funding for, project components devoted to capacity building, training and policy advisory services constitutes another significant weakness of the agricultural response so far, a few positive initiatives in Sri Lanka notwithstanding. A number of ideas have been proposed and some of them funded to further sustain the rehabilitation of the sector, including the re-establishment of sustainable seed supply systems, the rehabilitation of small-scale drainage and irrigation structures, and the provision of practical, field-based training and technical support to NGOs undertaking agriculture rehabilitation projects without the required expertise.

Fisheries The fisheries sector suffered the largest destruction, with the entire value chain being affected, from fish production and capture to the supporting, processing and marketing infrastructure. It accounts for the largest part of FAO relief operations in terms of number of staff mobilized and budget. This was the first significant FAO experience in a “fisheries emergency”, and it explains some of the delays experienced. Moreover, supply of rather complex fishing paraphernalia, some of which have to be built or assembled, cannot be expected to be as speedy as the supply of “off-the-shelf” agricultural items. The number of actors (NGOs, governmental institutions, bilateral and multilateral agencies and donors) involved in the fisheries sector was far greater than in the agricultural sector and as a consequence, there was a greater need for coordination, but also more scope for competition between aid providers e.g. when procuring inputs or recruiting national staff. To make the situation even more complex, fisheries in all three affected countries is facing the issue of resource limitation and risks of overfishing. FAO placed emphasis on the replacement of individually owned production assets such as fishing boats and gears. As in agriculture, less attention was devoted initially to the repair or replacement of other segments of the value chain, such as the fish landing, processing and marketing infrastructure. But in contrast to the agriculture sector, there was in the fisheries sector a clearer recognition of the value of “software” activities such as capacity building, coordination and policy advice in all three countries. In general, the coordinating role and the advisory and capacity building activities of FAO, whenever made available, were highly appreciated. Obviously, the respective emphasis on software vs. hardware varies according to countries.


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A key difference between the three sample countries lies in the sort of technology used to construct fishing boats. While in Indonesia and Thailand the industry is based on traditional wooden boats, in Sri Lanka fishers have adopted fiber-reinforced plastic. Small damages made to the hull of FRP boats can be patched relatively easily, whereas wooden boats are more difficult to repair. Another key difference is that boat builders in Sri Lanka are legal, commercial entities, while most boat builders in Aceh are artisans from the informal sector. Finally, in Sri Lanka the implementation modality was decided very early on by the Government, while in the case of Indonesia there was a long debate within FAO on which partner to select for the boat building activities. These differences explain why the Sri Lankan and Indonesian programmes have been progressing at different speeds. Interesting pathways for a transition to development have been explored, including evaluation of fishing effort and capacity, registration of fishers and boats, definition of new boat designs, and re-establishment of the broader value chain in capture fisheries and aquaculture.

Forestry In Indonesia, FAO hired a timber specialist to calculate the amount of timber required for the reconstruction of damaged houses in the Aceh province and advise the Government about how to source timber for reconstruction. The consultant report identified and evaluated a number of options, including wood imports and local sourcing from plantation forests. The mission finds it regrettable that this report was not shared with the Government and other actors in its full extent. As a result, the debate about how to source timber for reconstruction in Aceh has been going on without much FAO contribution so far. FAO is losing ground to other actors in this area.

Cross-Cutting Issues

Emergency Preparedness of FAO There is a growing consensus that the FAO administrative processes and resources of the Organization are not appropriate for the fast-paced emergency arena and that a thorough revision is long overdue. The issue has been discussed in quite a number of evaluation reports in the past. The general thrust of their recommendations has been that more procurement, financial and staff management authority should be given to the field. It must be realized, however, that not all field offices may have the necessary competences and skills in financial management, accounting, procurement, transport, storage or staff management to take on additional responsibilities. Appropriate administrative staff need to be hired and trained. However there appears to be no standard training module on FAO administrative procedures and good practices that TCE or AF could use to train field staff at the onset of an emergency operation. The first RTE report pointed at the low operational readiness of TCE as a unit and recommended that TCE should give more emphasis to logistical issues and competences. TCE undertook a business review in May 2005, resulting in the drafting of an FAO Vision for Rehabilitation Programmes in Emergency Contexts. This process has been halted, hopefully only temporarily, due to current FAO reforms. The Director General’s reform proposal itself placed a great deal of emphasis on the need to streamline FAO’s administrative procedures and processes. An Inter-Departmental Working Group has been set up to streamline administrative procedures and a Procurement Working Group was set up to recommend adjustments to the FAO operation manual. It should be recalled that the RTE mandate does not actually cover administrative procedures per se and is limited to operational processes. Because the first RTE mission had already reviewed this issue in great length, the second mission did not include an operations specialist. In this


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context, the mission opted to summarise a number of simple, practical recommendations made in previous evaluation reports, that could help solve some of the most pressing and already identified operational problems. A next step could be to study a representative sample of tsunami projects and identify operational bottlenecks in their implementation, in order to be in a position to identify further areas of improvement in the third RTE report.

Institutional Disconnect The grave disconnect between the various FAO services and departments involved in the tsunami response, much discussed in the first RTE report, has not been sufficiently addressed. Mistrust between technical departments and TCE continues to weaken the capacity of the Organization to think strategically and act coherently. A transition between TCE and technical departments, the Regional Office and Country Offices is bound to happen in 2006. FAO technical departments and regional and national offices are poised to inherit an important, highly visible field programme with a number of long term projects. This desirable transition has been reasonably well prepared in terms of programme formulation but its practical and logistical dimensions should be organised in a more orderly, concerted and collaborative manner to avoid losing field assets, partners and institutional memory.

“Input Bias” The first RTE mission identified a bias towards the delivery of physical inputs, and mentioned that technical departments tended to attribute this bias to TCE. The second mission would like to qualify this diagnosis. The FAO tsunami response allocated a much larger share of its budget to the provision of technical assistance and policy support than was the case in previous FAO emergency operations. Moreover, the FAO tsunami response has displayed a bias towards helping individual producers recover some of their physical production assets, at the expense of capacity building or coordination, but also at the expense of community infrastructures and other segments of the value chain such as support services or marketing, even when these were severely affected by the tsunami. Defined as such, the “input bias” applied to all sectors and countries, including where TCE was not in charge. There is some logic to restoring production assets at the onset of an emergency response – there would be little sense in trying to provide training or advice to a fisher who lost his boat and nets without replacing his assets first – but the “input bias” is perceived as a problem in FAO for a number of objective reasons: FAO is not very good at procuring, storing, transporting and distributing physical items in large quantities; and finding the right input specifications have sometimes been problematic. These weaknesses would need to be removed if FAO is to continue providing physical assistance in emergencies. It should be stressed that in Indonesia, advisory and training services were successfully developed in the fisheries sector when the objectives of the boat replacement programme were greatly reduced, illustrating the fact that technical staff can provide a broader array of services than just production inputs when they are not fully absorbed by procurement and contracting.

Beneficiary Selection and Satisfaction While different approaches to beneficiary selection were used in the affected areas, in all cases the role of the local government and customary structures was preponderant. The most frequent process was to have a list of beneficiaries prepared by the village headman or the lowest level administrative echelon, and have this list verified by an NGO. This process was found reasonably successful in most cases.


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A recurrent issue is that the asset replacement programmes implemented by TCE tend to pursue two diverging objectives: rebuild the economy rapidly and efficiently, which calls for helping good, established asset managers; and help the most vulnerable segment of society overcome the disaster. In practice, distributing production inputs to individuals in replacement of their lost assets lends itself to helping the richer segments of society, i.e. those who had those assets in the first place before the disaster. The mission believes that FAO should reach conceptual clarity on what it tries to achieve in emergency projects, and would argue that the Millennium Development Goals call for trying to help the poor at least on a par with better-off people, even if this means at times donating assets to people who may not have possessed them before the disaster. The important thing is that beneficiary selection be perceived as fair locally, at the village level where it has the greatest potential of creating tensions. In spite of a few isolated cases of inequitable distribution, both the poorer and relatively better-off segments of coastal populations seemed to have received assistance from the FAO tsunami response. A striking fact was that in the agricultural sector, most communities met by the mission in the three countries indicated that some form of redistribution to a wider group of beneficiaries had taken place after the “official” distribution. Interviewed communities explained that they did so in order to avoid the social tensions that would always result from a distribution to selected members of the community. As a result, FAO may have many more beneficiaries than it knows of, each benefiting less than intended. This type of community redistributions was only rarely witnessed in the fisheries sector. Satisfaction was high among benefiting farming communities, while interviewed fisher folks in all three countries tended to be more argumentative. One reason is that expectations for assistance were much greater among fishers than among farmers because the fishery sector was much more severely affected by the tsunami. On the other hand FAO is more experienced with running emergency programmes in the agricultural sector than in the fisheries sector, and may therefore have been more efficient in the former than in the latter.

Preliminary Indications of Impact The second RTE mission came too soon to be able to study impact in any serious manner, but could collect a few indications of what the impact of the programme could be. In Thailand, the impact is positive overall, notably in agriculture. However, there are mixed feelings among those who received assistance for aquaculture, as sea bass seedlings either died or escaped from the cages due to their excessively small size. In Sri Lanka, the agricultural inputs have allowed for the early resumption of agriculture and horticulture production. When asked what sort of support they are looking for in the future, farming households overwhelmingly proposed salinity control measures and the rehabilitation of irrigation and drainage structures. Fishers who had their boats repaired and received fishing gear could resume fishing, though many fishers received only one of the three necessary assets (boat, engine and/or fishing gear) or not enough gears to fish effectively. Even then, the mission met with fishers who had joined forces with other beneficiaries to complement their assets and resume fishing. In Indonesia, the impacts of the programme are uneven. The agricultural input distributions did not always result in successful crops due to prevalent salinity problems. The construction of boats, delivery of fishing gears and rehabilitation of aquaculture ponds were much delayed and are not expected to have an impact before well into 2006. The boat building trainings must have had a positive impact on the quality of boats built by trained boat builders within the NGO community.

Sustainable Livelihoods Approach The mission was asked to look at ways to integrate a livelihoods approach into the tsunami recovery operations. It did so with the help of a livelihoods specialist joining the team in the Indonesia mission, thanks to financial assistance from the LSP.


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Most international NGOs and UN agencies in Aceh seem concerned with livelihoods and many have a livelihoods component in their programmes. The most significant forms of livelihood support have been in the form of income-generating activities, cash grants, micro-finance and cash-for-work. However, for all the talk about sustainable livelihoods in Aceh, there is much unclarity as per what the concept means and a dearth of useful literature describing livelihoods in the province. The staff in the FAO office in Banda Aceh is concerned about the complexities that the approach could imply if applied indiscriminately. The RTE feels that it should observe caution in its recommendations towards the applicability of the sustainable livelihoods approach in emergency programmes and towards methodologies to be used in mainstreaming the concept. Some basic stipulations can nevertheless be made and are included in the following section.

Main recommendations This summary retains the most general recommendations – addressed to everyone involved in the tsunami response in FAO – as well as sector-specific recommendations mainly addressed to the concerned Technical Departments and RAP. Country-specific recommendations, already communicated to the concerned Country Offices at the end of each field visit, are recorded at the end of the report.

Streamline operational modalities for emergencies: • Set up of a proper administrative training programme and beef up logistical capacities in the

field. • Modernize bids assessment by using value-for-money procurement. • Facilitate advance payments and allow the signing of several LoAs with the same

organization at a given time. • Increase significantly the spending and procurement authority of Country Offices (FAO

Representations and ERCUs) and generalize impress accounts in emergency operations. • Improve HQ service orientation in relation with field offices. • Beef up monitoring procedures to provide ex post control and facilitate information

management. • Do not attempt the undoable: When faced with a new emergency, the Organization should

normally not attempt to “catch the next crop” if the planting season for that next crop is less than 6 months away, and should instead focus on catching the subsequent cropping season.

Continue to fight the “input bias”:

The bias towards inputs to individual producers can be valid during the first year of an emergency operation, but there is much demand from communities, governments, NGOs and sister UN agencies for FAO to provide a broader range of services, such as: • Damage, capacity and resource assessments, analysis of livelihoods and value-chains; • Rehabilitation of small-scale common-use infrastructures and reconstruction of entire value

chains rather than just the production segment; • Coordination services to governments, NGOs and donor; • Policy advice on pressing (and sometimes politically risky) reconstruction issues; and • Practical, hands-on and demand-driven capacity building of NGOs and governments, over

and beyond the specific needs of the FAO input distribution programmes.


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Spread assets to as many beneficiaries as possible: In the visited villages, communities often decided to spread the distributed quantities to many beneficiaries. Rather than try and enforce beneficiary selection criteria defined at HQ, FAO should follow their example: • When physically possible as not all inputs are dividable; • Among mandated target groups (farmers, fishers, etc.); • Focusing geographically on priority areas and those not covered by other actors; and • In a participatory way (as tensions created by a distribution are likely to be high at the village

level, this is where targeting decisions should be taken in order to be perceived as equitable by the community).

Pay more attention to inputs specifications:

• As a technical agency, FAO should recognise the importance of beneficiaries’ technical and

economic requirements, adherence to which often makes the difference between a usable and a non-usable item.

• The best way to make sure that delivered items fit beneficiaries’ requirements is through a mechanism such as the seed fairs and seed vouchers schemes, whereby the beneficiaries themselves chose the inputs they want.

• If FAO cannot do the above, it should as a minimum find ways to involve representatives of beneficiaries groups in the specification and choice of inputs.

Integrate the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach in careful, practical ways:

• Promote an understanding of the concept as precise as possible, e.g. through workshops or

brochures, without imposing it from the top in order to avoid the risks of tokenism. • Study the context of FAO’s interventions better, focusing on people’s livelihoods and

identifying the “haves” and the “have nots”. • During the needs assessment phase, survey non-destroyed assets and infrastructures and

not only destroyed ones, as existing assets and infrastructure could become important building blocks for a rehabilitation strategy.

• Adopt a participatory approach in programme formulation and in beneficiary selection. • Study and try to repair entire value-chains rather than just food production. Promote

cross-sectoral action selectively, focusing on precise and pressing issues that can only be successfully addressed this way such as the green belt issue in Indonesia. This cautionary remark on the danger of overly complex and multi-sectoral approaches applies to Integrated Coastal Area Management (ICAM) as well.

Better prepare the forthcoming transition between TCE and Technical Departments, the Regional Office and Country Offices:

• Technical Departments, the Regional Office and FAO Representations in country should

urgently consult with TCE and set up one or several cross-departmental transition teams to prepare for a professional and orderly transition from an emergency programme mainly operated by TCE to a long-term development programme managed by the regular, development-oriented units of the Organization.

Recommendations specific to the agriculture sector:

• In Sri Lanka and Indonesia, soil salinity remains a critical, if localized, problem. FAO should

monitor salinity levels more regularly than it did in 2005 to help identify areas with persistent


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salinity problems. In Thailand, it could be a good idea to use the salinity testers being procured to set up a simple protocol to assess the impact of gypsum and organic fertilizer on soil salinity, in comparison to the sole effect of monsoon rains.

• In Sri Lanka and Indonesia, the programme should expand its focus to include the rehabilitation of small-scale irrigation and drainage systems through cash-for-work or mechanised approaches as appropriate. If resources cannot be identified for this purpose, the role of FAO may be in providing technical assistance and coordination channels to other organizations undertaking physical rehabilitation. In Indonesia, FAO could usefully team up with the Asian Development Bank on this subject, as well as on salinity testing.

• The input distribution programmes in Thailand and Sri Lanka have already been discontinued, and appropriately so. In Indonesia, there is still a need to support the reconstruction of sustainable (commercial) seed and input provision systems. This work should start with a diagnosis of local (including traditional and commercial) varieties and seed supply systems.

Recommendations specific to the fisheries sector:

• It is recommended to avoid distributing fish seeds, or to do so with extreme precautions and

using local procurements from the same area, thus avoiding long transport. • As in the agricultural sector, more attention should be paid to the restoration of key support

infrastructure such as landing sites, ice plants and marketing channels. The role of FAO may be in the physical rehabilitation of the infrastructure or in the provision of technical assistance and coordination channels to other organizations undertaking physical rehabilitation.

• The socio-economics of the sector in the affected countries have not been studied in much depth. Over and beyond surveys of the fishing capacity, there is much demand in Indonesia and Sri Lanka for value chain and livelihoods analyses that could inform the decision of all actors engaged in the reconstruction of the sector.

• Pathways to developmental work abound, with value addition throughout improved post-harvest practices and the restoration of the entire value chain, boat registration and safety at sea being the most promising. Rapid assessments of fish stocks could help support responsible fisheries management.

• Modest initiatives have been taken by FAO to promote ICAM in tsunami-affected regions in Thailand and Sri Lanka. ICAM initiatives should be piloted carefully and focused on key issues such as the green belt in Indonesia. ICAM, like the SLA, can be easily misunderstood. It does not mean a coastal resource management plan authored by an external consultant for circulation to all involved. Rather, it means that all the concerned stakeholders and resource users are brought around the negotiating table for them to agree on regulations and approaches to manage shared coastal resources.

Recommendations specific to the forestry sector:

• The Organization should address policy issues within its mandate with neutral, fact-based,

and socially and environmentally appropriate advice, recognising that providing policy advice in such conditions entails some political risks.


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A. RTE Concept and Missions 1. RTE Concept The unprecedented emergency caused by the December 2004 Tsunami in South and Southeast Asia provoked an equally unprecedented response from the International Community and the UN. The magnitude of the support mobilized calls for particular attention to ensure efficient and effective use of resources. FAO decided to experiment with a new evaluation approach called “Real Time Evaluation”, a still evolving concept which entails the following principles: • Consists of a series of light, interactive evaluative exercises, the first one coming in rapidly

after the onset of an emergency;

• Provides immediate, quick-and-dirty feedback to country teams so as to promote rapid uptake of recommendations;

• Focus “à la carte”, flexibly adapted to emerging issues. The rationale for using this tool for evaluating the FAO tsunami response stemmed from the following considerations: • The volume of funds involved and the diversity of sources require adequate disbursement,

reporting and management procedures, as well as rapid and effective supervisory mechanisms;

• The size and complexity of operations in the seven affected countries call for responses tailored to local circumstances and needs, as the extent and depth of damage differ;

• A history of political conflict in some of the affected areas necessitates a politically sensitive approach;

• The wide range of partners and stakeholders intervening simultaneously in the same areas and sectors requires effective coordination mechanisms;

• The changing character of the intervention over time – initial high intensity of humanitarian operations followed by rehabilitation programmes, with a longer term perspective of reconstruction and development – highlight the need for adequate guidance and review for successful transition from relief/emergency to recovery/development; and last, but not least;

• The worldwide attention focused on the efficiency and transparency of UN operations call for timely feedback on the use of resources made available.

2. The RTE of the FAO Tsunami Response Based on a short desk study of the FAO tsunami response, PBEE and TCE selected a sample of three countries (Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand) where most of the tsunami assistance is being provided, and planned to field to this sample area three missions by international staff and consultants, staged at the beginning, middle and end of the response. In addition to conducting their own document reviews and interviews with a wide array of stakeholders including donors, partners, government representatives and beneficiaries, these international missions were to train and supervise national consultants and surveyors undertaking field visits on their own, using a methodology called Beneficiary Assessments which combines individual interviews and focus groups interviews of beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries alike.


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The first international mission took place in May 2005. It mainly focused on operational procedures, operations and disaster preparedness, damage assessments and programme planning, and started preparations for the Beneficiary Assessments (BA). Its main findings could be summarized as follows: • FAO is not adequately prepared to rapidly set up disaster recovery operations, and should

develop a cadre of long-term, experienced coordinators and a roaster of experts, should approach logistics more professionally and should store logistical and communication equipment for rapid deployment to new disaster-stricken regions (“office in a box” concept);

• The processes for procurement, staffing and financial management proved cumbersome and time-consuming, especially in view of the size of the FAO Tsunami response;

• A strong input delivery bias is apparent in the response, attributed to TCE by Technical Departments; and

• Project design rarely benefited from damage assessments (notion of “disconnect” between FAO Departments).1

The second mission, originally planned for August-September 2005, was conducted in November and December 2005. It was composed of Olivier Cossée (PBEE Evaluation Officer), Rudolf Hermes (Fisheries Expert), and Salem Mezhoud (Sociologist and Livelihoods Specialist). It came during, or quickly followed in the case of Thailand, the three BA exercises conducted by national consultants in the three sample countries.2 The third mission, originally planned for early 2006, might be postponed to June 2006. This would leave 6 months between the second and the third mission, i.e. similar to the 5 months between the first and the second mission, and would coincide with the end of the UN flash appeal. Experience has shown that the process of writing and finalizing evaluation reports takes time, as does the process of implementing evaluation recommendations. 3. Focus and Methodology of the Second Mission The second mission, which is the subject of the present report, mainly focused on beneficiary selection, beneficiary satisfaction and preliminary indications of impact. However and in trying to ensure continuity in the whole RTE exercise, the second mission revisited some of the issues raised by the 1st mission, following up and tracing when possible the effects of the strengths and weaknesses identified earlier on. Another topic addressed by the second mission was the issue of how to integrate the sustainable livelihoods approach (SLA) in the tsunami response and more generally in emergency operations of FAO. In doing so, it received financial support from the DfID-funded Livelihood Support Programme to hire a livelihoods specialist for the third leg of the mission in Indonesia. The itinerary and the persons met are presented in Annexes 2 and 3. The area visited is crudely mapped in Figure 1. 1 Real Time Evaluation of the FAO Emergency and Rehabilitation Operations in Response to the Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami – First Report, B. Bultemeier, F, Grunewald, R. Hermes and S. Kolberg, FAO/PBEE, September 2005. 2 See i) Interim Report - Beneficiary Assessment in the Context of the Real Time Evaluation of FAO Operation in Response to the Tsunami Emergency in Thailand, by Kanjapat Korsieporn; ii) Real Time Evaluation of FAO Operations to the Tsunami Emergency - Beneficiary Assessment in Sri Lanka, Interim Report, by Nimal Ranaweera; and iii) Draft Report on Beneficiaries Assessment in Indonesia, by Aceng Hidayat.


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The mission could cover a great deal of ground in the south of the affected region in Thailand, visiting provincial and district authorities as well as beneficiaries in eleven villages in the provinces of Phang-Nga, Phuket, Krabi and Satun, while the BA took place in eight villages of the Krabi, Phang-Nga and Ranong provinces. The RTE has therefore been able to cover the entire tsunami-affected area of Thailand. In Sri Lanka, the South and West coasts were extensively covered by the second mission (Kalutara, Galle, Matara and Hambantota districts, beneficiaries interviewed in eight villages or small towns). The East coast suffered from a series of attacks and security incidents which made it impossible to non-essential UN internationals to visit, though the local consultants and surveyors undertaking the BA could cover significant ground there in the districts of Ampara, Batticaloa, and Trincomalee, as well as in the South (districts of Galle, Matara and Hambantota) in a total of twelve villages or small towns. The North was not covered by any RTE exercise so far due to security limitations. It seems unlikely that the third mission could travel there, but arrangements could perhaps be made for national consultants to cover the LTTE-held North. In Indonesia, the BA field visits covered five districts on the North-East and South coasts of Aceh province (Aceh Besar, Aceh Jaya, Pidie, Bireuen, Aceh Utara, for a total of seven locations) while the international mission covered only three districts (Aceh Besar, Pidie, Bireuen on the East coast) and five villages. The team intended to fly to Simeulue and Nias Islands but was unfortunately unable to do so owing to air transport limitations and the simultaneous occurrence of the agricultural workshop which the mission wanted to attend. It should be noted that Nias and Simeulue were not visited by the first mission either and will need to be given priority in the third mission. The same applies in part to the South-West coast, less studied by the RTE overall than

Areas Covered by the Second RTE Mission

Covered by the international mission

Not covered

Covered by the Beneficiary Assessment

Yala National Park


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the North-East coast because more activities had been implemented in the North-East at the time of the second mission. In each of the three countries, the BA involved a two-stage process. The first stage consisted of a document review and interviews with FAO and implementation partners to collect background information concerning the extent of the damage caused by the tsunami, the areas of activity for the FAO response, the items delivered, and the beneficiary selection process. The second stage was the BA sensu stricto, i.e. a field survey using focus group discussions and qualitative, open-ended household interviews to collect from beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries their perceptions about the quality and adequacy of the support provided. In the selection of areas for interview purposes, due consideration was given to sampling a variety of inputs or items delivered, a cross-section of implementing partners, and, in Sri Lanka, the various cultural groups such as Tamil, Muslim (Moor) and Sinhalese. Interviewed beneficiaries were selected randomly from the lists provided by the Emergency and Rehabilitation Coordination Unit (ERCU) and implementing partners. 4. Objective and Structure of the Report The present report, based on three country “aide mémoire” handed out to country teams at the end or shortly after the end of each country visits and on the three Beneficiary Assessments draft reports, was drafted after the presentation of the main mission conclusions and recommendations at HQ on 14 December 2005 and circulated in field offices and HQ. The current version integrates comments elicited from concerned FAO Departments and staff in February and March 2006. Section B describes findings by country, and basically consists of a summary of the country aide mémoire. Section C views the FAO tsunami response from the sectoral angle, and compares the achievements and constraints encountered in the three main sectors of intervention (fisheries, agriculture and forestry). Section D tries to draw from preceding sections an analysis of cross-cutting issues, including beneficiary selection, beneficiary satisfaction and preliminary indications of impact, drawing lessons from the comparative analysis of the three countries and the three sectors. It also revisits some of the issues raised during the first RTE mission such as the lack of emergency preparedness of FAO and its “operational disconnect”, explores further the notion of input bias, and explore ways and means of applying the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach in the tsunami response. Section E concludes the report with a series of recommendations addressed to various departments and units within FAO. Annexes present the RTE Terms of reference, the itinerary and persons interviewed in the second mission, and the lists of projects and donors who funded the FAO tsunami response.


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B. Findings by Country 1. Thailand

1.1. Context The loss of life and the magnitude of the damage brought by the tsunami to the fisheries, agricultural and forestry resources were less severe in Thailand than in the other two countries of the sample. Over 5,000 people died, and nearly 3,000 are still considered missing. 1,300 ha of land were covered by sea water, of which 800 ha were damaged. Some 1,200 farmers were affected. Many have lost much of their tools, equipments and livestock. 5,000 farmers have lost or had damage to their animals. In the fisheries sector, approximately 1,200 large vessels and 4,000 small fishing boats were damaged or wrecked, together with the corresponding fishing gear. Damage to aquaculture floating cages has been considerable with a total of about 1.1 million square metres of fish cages and 30 ha of shrimp ponds damaged and a number of hatcheries destroyed. Some 3,000 fisheries households were affected. 8 harbours were severely damaged, as well as approximately 5.9 sq km of coral reef and 300 ha of mangroves.

1.2. The FAO Response In view of the respective needs of other, more severely affected countries and of the Royal Government of Thailand (RGT) financial assistance to affected farmers and fisher folks, FAO allocated a comparatively small amount of financial resources to its tsunami response programme in Thailand, with some US$3 million approved so far. The programme was from the start managed by the RAP Thai Affairs Section in Bangkok, which benefited from the presence of an experienced FAOR and a higher spending authority at RAP level than was available to FAORs in Sri Lanka and Indonesia. Security problems and travel limitations were minimal, another positive factor compared with Sri Lanka and Indonesia. Contrary to Indonesia, the well developed transport and banking infrastructures were not affected. The RAP Thai Affairs Section worked with the RGT right from the start of the response, when conducting damage assessment in January. Through its contribution to the damage assessment, FAO has helped the RGT define its own response to the tsunami. In turn, the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives (MOAC) provincial structure jointly implemented activities funded by FAO. This strong relationship with the RGT has been maintained throughout the year. A Steering Committee on Agricultural and Fishery Tsunami Relief Project in Thailand was established and guided the programme, with a membership from various organizations (various Departments of MOAC, FAO/RAP, UNDP). The programme has moved from a first generation of projects implemented in spring 2005 and chiefly concerned with asset replacement, to gradually more ambitious developmental projects over the course of the year. In the fisheries sector, the 3 “first generation” projects (TCP/THA/3004, OSRO/THA/501/JPN and 502/JPN) assisted over 1,800 beneficiaries through the distribution of 800 fish cages and 328 fish cage nets, 180,000 fish fingerlings (sea bass and grouper species), 18,000 fish traps (crab, squid and fish traps), 3,320 shrimp gill nets and 408 planks of wood for boat repair. In the agricultural sector, the asset replacement assistance under the first generation projects amounted to the following: 356 kg of rice and watermelon seeds; 15,000 fruit seedlings (coconut, oil palm and cashew); 247 tons of gypsum for the reclamation of land affected by the intrusion of sea water and the resulting soil salinity3; 1,052 tons of organic fertilizer; 46 tons of chemical fertilizer; 42 tons of concentrate feed, 135 tons of hay and 1,500 pieces of mineral blocks for animals (cattle, buffalo and sheep). These inputs benefited some 1,300 farmers, often with substantive quantities distributed to each beneficiary in good conditions. 3 Gypsum improves soil structure and helps the leaching of sodium by irrigation or rain water.


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At the time of the second RTE mission, the programme had procured and was delivering small boat engines and accessories to groups of beneficiaries (including some “sea gypsies”) organized in cooperatives some years ago under the auspices of a CBO (Association of Southern Fisherfolks, which is part of Save the Andaman Network (SAN) and supported by the EU CHARM project). The engines are provided on credit basis, with the individual beneficiaries having to pay them back to a cooperative account over a three-year period. This somewhat more sophisticated assistance is provided under a project (THA/05/002). Another project under this category (OSRO/THA/504/CHA) is chiefly concerned with further distribution of gypsum, fertilizers and tree seedlings to complement earlier projects, and the provision of hydroponic net houses to promote the production of pesticide-free vegetables (or horticultural production using less pesticides), mainly for the local tourism industry. In this, FAO is complementing a larger RGT initiative. The supplier is supposed to provide a two-day introductory course to hydroponic production (one day training and one day field trip). Two additional projects were yet to be approved at the time of the mission. One (THA/05/001) focuses on a study of mangroves and the promotion of their protection, while the other (not given a code yet) is intended to strengthen the capacity of the DoF to collect data on asset replacement programmes by all agencies and NGOs providing tsunami emergency relief, in order to coordinate the provision of fishing assets and avoid or minimize the creation of an excessive fishing capacity which could lead to a depletion of fish stocks. These projects constitute a significant step forward from the earlier, more input driven project approaches towards sustainable management of habitats and natural resources.

1.3. Evaluation Findings

Overview The programme was well implemented and displayed a high degree of coherence. There is a clear transition from input delivery to more developmental and resource management issues and activities. Most of the programme was funded through local contacts and all the procurements were effected locally by the Thai Affairs Section of RAP. Given the favourable conditions under which the programme was implemented (excellent operational know-how, successful mobilization of national expertise, higher level of financial and procurement authority of the ADG, and a comparatively small programme), the five month period extending from the day the tsunami struck to the time of the first deliveries of inputs (May 2005) has to be considered as a strict minimum “lead time” from disaster to delivery for an FAO emergency operation. This “lead time” includes damage assessments, project preparation and resource mobilization, procurement, beneficiary selection and distribution. The local procurements took from 1 to 3 months. Some inputs, such as wood for boat repair, were much in demand and this delayed procurement. Inputs were transported to the Tambon or village level, sometimes with some difficulty (fish seed). The cooperation with the RGT has tended to be more intense with the MOAC provincial technical units and with their International Relationship Unit (MOAC’s focal point to FAO), than with technical units within DOF, DAE or DLD, at least during initial emergency operations. Province Governors and technical staff were largely associated with the programme implementation at the local level.

Agriculture Agricultural inputs were deemed very useful by interviewed beneficiaries and government technical staff at provincial level. The feed saved the lives of some buffaloes, and more could have been distributed. The fertilizer and gypsum combination seems to have an effect on desalinization, although this effect has not yet been demonstrated experimentally. Coconuts and


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oil palms were much appreciated. “Blanket” quantities were distributed (same quantity for everybody, i.e. for 2 rai4 although some people have more land and some have less) but this was corrected by the beneficiaries themselves, with some redistributing inputs among themselves at the village level and others storing their surplus fertilizer for the following season.

Fisheries The picture is less bright on the fisheries side, with nearly all items having some problems, some minor and others quite significant:

• The wood for boat repair was appropriate; plank size did not matter much as boat builders could use the wood in various ways. Here again there was some redistribution among fishers as needs varied. It should be noted that the programme tried unsuccessfully to procure 11m -long planks in what was a tight wood market at the time, with the result that distributions were delayed and limited to only one province, as NGOs had distributed wood in other areas in the meantime.

• Swimming crab traps were adequate, though the mesh size (2.5 cm, i.e. the currently legal mesh size) is such that it tends to deplete the resource. The Government is considering increasing the minimum mesh size to 2.5 inches.

• Squid traps were built with an inappropriate wooden frame (round rattan is preferred by fishers). Fishers rectified the situation by themselves.

• Fish cages were good, the mesh size was not a real problem in and by itself, but became one in conjunction with smaller-than-specified fingerlings.

• Fingerlings procured were often smaller than specified (5-6 inches) and significantly smaller than normally practiced in the area (7 inches). This added to a long transport and a lack of acclimatising on arrival led to high mortality rates and escapes from the cages.

• Shrimp gill nets were unusable at least in some provinces because of the direction of the mesh.

• Fish traps target juveniles of grouper species caught in the wild for fish cage culture. This practice does not conform with responsible fisheries principles and FAO should probably not encourage it without putting proper safeguards in place.

Beneficiary Selection in Thailand

The mission concludes that there was an adequate beneficiary selection process. During the early projects, village selection was based on the FAO/MOAC’s needs assessment and on Government priorities, taking into consideration the severity of damages, the urgency of assistance, and the balanced distribution of assistance to different provinces and districts which had similar problems and urgency. The selection of individual beneficiaries at the village level was based on RGT’s post-tsunami lists of affected people. NGO involvement was clearly not central with some extent of rubber-stamping of lists elaborated by the village headmen and provincial governments. It should be stressed that originally, the RGT was somewhat reluctant to involve NGOs in their FAO/Government implemented projects. In no case did the NGO checks of beneficiary lists lead to changes in the lists. However, this NGO involvement may have prevented selection problems (watchdog function) and prepared more active participation of NGOs in the second round of projects. The projects currently being implemented distribute more costly items and are more developmental in nature. THA/05/002 is particularly interesting. Chiefly concerned at present with the procurement and distribution of small boat engines and accessories to groups of fishers organized in cooperatives, this project also allocates modest resources to a “soft component”, yet

4 1 rai = 0.16 hectare.


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to be implemented, composed of a resource management action plan based on a fishing capacity study and a stakeholder analysis in the villages concerned by the engines distribution. The fishers’ groups met by the team seemed to be very cohesive, highly motivated and highly aware of the need to regulate the fishing effort to protect resources. The involvement of the NGO (Federation of Southern Fisherfolks) is much more significant (beneficiary selection, motivation, training, awareness raising) in this project than in “first generation” projects. The Federation of Southern Fisherfolks is well established and very active and seems to work in good harmony with local government officers.

Future Prospects Third-generation projects complete the transition to a more classic developmental role for FAO, by funding a series of studies and capacity building initiatives aimed at promoting responsible fisheries principles (overall assessment of fishing capacity in all Tsunami-affected provinces; mangrove study; awareness raising activities; design of an integrated coastal land use plan; etc.). These later projects, yet to be implemented, will also complement and refine the damage assessments carried out soon after the tsunami. FAO in Thailand is now well set to provide a useful input in facilitating the increased cooperation between all stakeholders, including that between the Government and NGOs. This is indispensable in relation to the issue of boat supply information but also beyond, towards greater resource user participation in fisheries management. The two planned assessments of fishing effort or capacity (a “local” one under THA/05/002 and a broader one under OSRO/THA/505/CHA) offer an ideal opportunity to strengthen and deepen the policy dialogue with the relevant authorities of the RGT for the purpose of designing and drafting legislation or administrative issuances aimed at the promotion of responsible fisheries (e.g. effort limitations, gear regulations) and, above all, of ecosystem-based approaches in coastal fisheries management. 2. Sri Lanka

2.1. Context

Sri Lanka was devastated by the tsunami along 68% of its 1,770 km costal belt. Twelve of the fourteen coastal districts were severely affected. Only in the North-Western region was the damage minimal. The disaster has claimed over 30,000 lives and affected more than 212,000 coastal families. In addition, a large number of people have been displaced. The damage to infrastructure and economic activities was extensive. The fisheries sector was the most severely affected. The disaster almost paralyzed the industry and the livelihoods of communities which depended on it. Thousands of fishers and their family members were among the victims. Out of a total 29,700 fishing boats before the tsunami, an estimated 19,000 boats were destroyed or damaged. Fishing implements – such as outboard motors, insulated boxes, fishing gear and nets – also have been destroyed. Most of the damaged boats have been washed ashore by the powerful waves and are lying scattered on the adjoining coastal lands. Many of the large fishing harbours and small boat landings have been destroyed. The damage to marine structures and service facilities, and equipment of the harbours (including shore structures, dredgers and heavy mechanical equipment, ice plants, buildings, breakwater boulders, boat repair yards and pumps) is enormous. Many of these components are beyond repair. The tsunami has destroyed most of the local boat repair shops in the affected villages. The agricultural sector was the second hardest hit by the disaster. Seawater came 2-3 kilometres inland, flooding about 9,670 ha of agricultural lands and home-gardens and resulting in the


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destruction of irrigation and drainage structures, complete damage to most salt sensitive crops and fruit trees on paddy fields and small home gardens, and the salinization of soils, wells and groundwater. 9,000 farming families were affected.

2.2. The FAO Response In Sri Lanka, the FAO tsunami response benefited from large donor support (some US$20 million at the time of the second mission). Another “positive” factor for the FAO tsunami response in Sri Lanka was the existence of a pre-tsunami FAO emergency programme, designed to support farmers affected by the civil war in the North of the country. This allowed for limited re-orientation of already purchased seed and fertilizer to tsunami-affected areas and farmers. After a brief, one-month period during which the FAOR who was scheduled to leave the country stayed on to help shape the response, the FAO tsunami operation in Sri Lanka suffered temporarily from the absence of an FAO Representative. This post has now been filled. The country office can therefore operate more smoothly from an administrative standpoint and benefits from a stronger presence in UN coordination circles. The posting of an FAOR also helped re-enforce links with the Government. The ERCU has been headed continuously since March 2005 by an experienced coordinator and this has certainly been an asset. Finally and in spite of difficulties in getting early consultancies approved by the Government, the ERCU was able to mobilise experienced international and national staff, many of the latter being retired officials of the Department of Fisheries (DOF) and other government offices. The agricultural input procurements for the yala season (February-March) were particularly timely and have benefited from a long-standing TCE presence resulting from the northern conflict. The goods were distributed through the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Land and Irrigation (MALLI, later broken up in several ministries including the Ministry of Agriculture = MoA). For the maha season (October-November), the distribution of agricultural inputs was managed by FAO staff in most districts with support from the MoA and farmers’ associations. In the North under LTTE control, the logistics involved unloading and reloading all trucks twice at the border with the government- controlled South, in the presence of Sri Lanka Army personnel and LTTE forces. The FAO programme has so far delivered over 282 tonnes of paddy seeds and 1,177 tonnes of fertilizer as well as thousands of fruit trees and livestock to tsunami-affected farmers and 9,250 hoes, allowing for the cultivation of over 5,600 Acres of paddy as well as 1,650 Acres of other crops, for approximately 11,000 families. Various other materials have also been procured and delivered: 270 sprayers, 65 water pumps, 27 conductivity meters and 10 pH metres; in addition, three solar refrigerators were delivered to three veterinary offices in the North-East (Mulativu) to store vaccines. Rice threshers are to be distributed shortly, as a way to respond to the scarcity / high cost of labour in the agricultural sector. The fisheries sector received the largest share of the programme funding. Implementing partners report that the programme benefited approximately 10,000 boat owners and fishers through the repair of 2,355 boats and 1,176 engines by the parastatal CEYNOR, and some 500 fishers by the distribution of 11,236 gill nets and 484 outboard engines in Jaffna, Galle, and Tangalle.5 The nets and engines are distributed through a Government voucher system: each fisherman owning a one-day boat or smaller received a Rs 40,000 voucher for their lost fishing gear early in 2005, to be redeemed against the equivalent value in fishing gear provided by donors or by the Government at a later stage. CEYNOR was the agency appointed by the Ministry of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (MFAR) to coordinate boat repairs. FAO had little choice but to work with them, except in LTTE-controlled 5 Many more gears are to be distributed shortly (early 2006).


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areas in the North and East where CEYNOR was not present and where FAO chose to entrust its boat repairs to AJ Fishing, a private company. CEYNOR started its boat repair programme very early in February 2005, before the signature of any contract with FAO and based solely on the verbal agreement to refund incurred expenditures. CEYNOR managed to repair a great number of boats of all sizes in a relatively short timeframe (see figure 1). It should be noted that small boats (wallams, orus) and outboard engines (usually fitted on small boats) were given priority during the first quarter of 2005. The repair of larger inboard engines was delayed by the difficulties in procuring spare parts in a manner compliant with FAO privileges6. Once it became clear that the contracts between FAO and spare parts providers would be very much delayed as a result of the tax dispute, CEYNOR resorted to purchasing spare parts on their own, again without any contractual arrangement with FAO, and at the time of the mission was asking FAO to support the incurred costs. The ERCU efforts towards monitoring the number of boats being replaced or repaired at the district and sub-district levels were appreciated by all partners (and later emulated by the Indonesia and Thailand FAO programmes), as were the broader coordination function of FAO in the fisheries and agricultural sectors through meetings set up at the national and district level. However, the relationship between the Government, aid agencies and NGOs remains quite competitive. Government officials and some NGOs do not attend coordination meetings. Various training activities have been organised as part of the FAO response to the tsunami emergency, a fact rare enough to be underlined here (Box 1). The Sri Lanka programme should also be commended for designing and implementing a multi-sectoral, livelihoods- oriented project (OSRO/SRL/505/ITA) which may constitute an interesting alternative to “input-driven” projects. The project aims at the development of 14 “model coastal communities” and promotes ICAM at the community level in the districts of Hambantota, Ampara and Batticaloa. The mission has reviewed some of the PRAs conducted in three villages and has found them promising. Four community nurseries have already been established in the Hambantota district thanks to this project.

6 The Government did not grant VAT exemption until the summer.

Box 1: Training provided under the Sri Lanka tsunami response: • A nutritional training in Jaffna, Kilinochi,

Mullaitivu, Trincomalee, Batticaloa and Ampara reached 2,000 beneficiaries, almost all women

• Thirty participants were trained on how to undertake participatory livelihoods analysis

• An in-service training programme was conducted for 43 Agriculture and Fisheries Instructors in Vavuniya to demonstrate how to enhance micronutrient, protein and energy intake for meals using local horticulture produce, rice and fish.

• 100 Ministry of Agriculture Officers were trained on salinity control and land rehabilitation in the Ampara district.

• Boat repairmen and engine mechanics involved in the boat repair programme were trained for 10 days.


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Boat Repairs

0

100

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Progress of the Boat and Engine Repair Programme in Sri Lanka

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*: Orus = Outrigger canoes Source: CEYNOR invoices


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Overview

The response in Sri Lanka forms a complex programme, with pluses and minuses. The overall vision is rather coherent and highly relevant, with a combination of input repair, new input distributions and projects charting a transition to development.

Agriculture Interviewed beneficiaries of the agricultural distributions were very satisfied with the assistance received. According to programme reports, FAO managed to assist all tsunami-affected farmers in Sri Lanka. In fact, one project (code 509) had to be aborted because there were no more tsunami-affected farmers to assist... The MALLI (now MoA) proved a reliable partner, fully decentralised at the district level and benefiting from a good network of extension workers (called Agricultural Instructors). One issue in the agricultural sector is that the effect of the tsunami on soil salinity was only cursorily surveyed in March 2005. EC meters were handed out to the partner institution HORDI (Horticultural Research and Training Institute) but were distributed to district MoA staff late. They were only sporadically used, with no recording or analysis of the data. It is fair to say that FAO could have organized a better data collection process to monitor salinity levels. Localised salinity remains a problem. Coastal irrigation and drainage systems have been severely impacted and are in dire need of rehabilitation. Poor drainage and the periodic invasion of high tides in drainage systems with damaged sea gates create a long-term salinity problem in many community irrigation systems. FAO Sri Lanka has submitted several project proposals for the rehabilitation of drainage/irrigation infrastructure, among which the project OSRO/SRL/512/CHA – Reclamation of agricultural land affected by salinity in Sri Lanka is the first to be funded. The project aims at monitoring soil and water salinity levels in the most affected districts so as to provide proper advice to farmers and rural communities in the management and/or prevention of salinity problems. However, there is still a great need to identify funding for the rehabilitation of small scale irrigation and drainage infrastructure damaged by the tsunami.

Fisheries In the fisheries sector, the boat repair operation was clearly relevant to the needs of the tsunami affected fishers. Many fiber-reinforced plastic (FRP) boats sustained varying degrees of damage from the tsunami and were indeed repairable. However, programme implementation has not been without its pitfalls. Interviews with beneficiaries indicated that CEYNOR, under the pressure of time, often resorted to distributing the mats and resin rather than effecting the repairs by themselves in their own boatyards. Boat owners were handed over the matt and resin on the basis of the job card, they were asked to do the repairs themselves and to bring receipts for labour costs to CEYNOR for future re-imbursement. CEYNOR then charged FAO for labour on all the repairs, both those they had indeed done themselves and those that had been done by the boat owners. The idea is that CEYNOR should then refund boat owners for the labour costs they had incurred, but it is unclear whether this has already happened. The mats and resin distributions were apparently quite disorderly. The material was handed over by FAO to CEYNOR in regular instalments as the resin is perishable, but the availability of the


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goods at distribution points was irregular and unpredictable. Boat owners had to keep workers on their payrolls as they waited for the material. The quality of some of these repairs made by boat owners may also be sub-standard. A number of cases of malpractice were reported to the mission from various sources (beneficiary assessment, interviewed boat owners, FAO marine engineers): beneficiaries forced to sign against quantities not received; favouritism in job sequence; non-genuine spare parts being used to refit some inboard engines; and resin that may have been diluted. Malpractice cases were by no means limited to CEYNOR. It seems that the huge influx of resources in the tight boat building and repair market of Sri Lanka has created all sorts of temptations. For instance, “fake” boats were constructed and sold to some NGOs (the so-called “papadam boats”, built with only two layers of mat instead of six and which broke down as soon as they were used). Many other boat builders sacrificed on quality. One frequently encountered problem was caused by the use of insufficient quantities of mat and too much resin, which made the boats brittle and breakable. The quality of the engine repairs seems to have been fair in general, though some interviewed beneficiaries mentioned that their engine was not working properly as a result of structural salt and rust corrosion (not repairable). The quality of the fishing gear distributed appears good, though it was reported that the mesh of the distributed gill net could be too elastic. In retrospect, going ahead with CEYNOR was probably a good thing to do, as it allowed for a rapid response. Many other donors and NGOs have contractual arrangements with CEYNOR for boat building or repair. However, the mission believes that FAO should have established a strong monitoring system from the outset, which would have allowed it to independently verify the quality of the work performed and the satisfaction of beneficiaries. The CEYNOR contract did not include a clause for the monitoring of beneficiary satisfaction and no other contract or system was arranged for that purpose. During the first half of the year, the boat repair material procured by FAO was not marked as such and could not be distinguished from CEYNOR’s own material, a situation resolved in July thanks to the insistence of the FAO marine engineers. The two FAO marine engineers started their technical inspections in March and they did their best to control the situation from a technical standpoint, visiting CEYNOR boat yards and controlling the quality of their repairs, but they did not systematically review beneficiary satisfaction. As a result of the insufficient control and monitoring mechanisms, some CEYNOR staff may have been tempted to cheat the system. The mission could not visit the North and East where AJ Fishing is repairing boats with assistance from FAO. The company enjoys a good reputation in Colombo.

Beneficiary Selection in Sri Lanka Overall and notwithstanding the implementation problems described above, it would appear that the beneficiary selection process, strongly influenced if not managed by the Government, produced satisfactory results. However, the absence of baseline data on which to base beneficiary selection in the fisheries sector must be underlined. Before the tsunami, boat registration was far from comprehensive. In this context, the Government clearly tried and reached out to as many beneficiaries as possible and gave assurances of forthcoming help by handing out vouchers. FAO followed this system and this was probably the right thing to do in the circumstances. Some interviewed beneficiaries argued that the Rs. 40,000 voucher amounted only to a small fraction (1/3 to 1/4) of what a fisher needs to go out fishing with an FRP boat. In practice though, the system tends to spread the nets distribution to a large number of beneficiaries, a positive thing


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from the point of view of equity. An FRP boat also needs 3 fishers on average, and provided those three have received their gear, they can pull it together to fish at full or almost full capacity. Each participating fisher thereby becomes entitled to a larger share of the catch than if he was simply a labourer and the whole gear belonged to the boat owner. The mission therefore supports the option of working through this Government voucher system. At the time of the mission, a recovery assessment of the entire fishing sector was being planned. It was conducted in November-December 2005 and concluded that “in all boat types except the beach seine crafts, the number of boats repaired is more than the number reported to have been damaged” and that “78% of the destroyed fishing fleet has been replaced”, with “balance pledges by NGOs and other donors [...] likely to result in an oversupply of approximately 2,100 FRP boats and 500 traditional crafts”. On the other hand, there would be a shortfall in the supply of multi-day boats and beach seine crafts. According to the assessment, many fishers who previously did not own boats as well as non-fishers have received new boats, and there may still be some boat owners whose lost boats have not been compensated. The assessment also tried to collect data on repaired and new engines and the total quantity of fishing gear delivered with the boats. It appears that availability of fishing gears currently represents the main weakness in the recovery of the fishing sector. Overall and as a result of various shortcomings (lack of gear, lack of engine, poor boat design), a significant part of the boats repaired or provided so far are not being used for fishing. For instance, 18.5 % of all FRP boats and 14.7 % of all traditional crafts repaired and replaced so far would be unusable because of faulty design or poor repair, and about half of all FRP boats delivered or repaired would not be operating owing to the absence of an outboard engine. It should be noted that interviewed farmers were all quite positive about the assistance received. Farming communities often decided to redistribute amongst themselves and throughout the village the input kits distributed by FAO and the Ministry, so as to reach a better degree of equity at the community level. As a result, FAO has probably many more beneficiaries than it is aware of, though each benefited less.

Future Prospects In the agricultural sector, FAO is now prepared to study and measure salinity levels in the most affected districts thanks to project OSRO/SRL/512/CHA. The ERCU team is currently spending a great deal of time and efforts checking the beneficiary lists for the upcoming distribution of fishing gears, a commendable effort likely to result in fairer distributions. Another recent development is the support provided by FAO to the development of a strategy and a plan of action for the rehabilitation and development of the entire fisheries sector. The strategy now needs to be published and “marketed” to donors by the Government and FAO. Harbours, landing sites and anchorages largely remain to be rehabilitated, and FAO is bringing a consultant to work on a master plan. Fish-handling, marketing and processing is another area where many donors are showing interest. FAO is currently distributing motorcycles with cold boxes to facilitate fish marketing, and a naval architect has been hired to review national boat designs and propose improvements to multi-day boats and one-day boats. These designs have not been reviewed since the 1970’s, when safety at sea and food safety were not the important concerns they are today. Experts recommend to improve the stability of the multi-day boats and enhance their fish holds to conserve the catch in better and cooler conditions in order to produce fish of better quality. A new design approved by national authorities would be timely as donors and NGOs are exploring the possibility to support offshore fishing with larger boats.


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In contrast with the Indonesia programme, the FAO fisheries programme in Sri Lanka has not yet provided technical assistance or quality assurance to the NGO community. The district coordination meetings seems to be working but were mainly used so far to collect data from NGOs rather than as a vehicle for technical assistance, advisory services and debates. It should also be noted that although extensive legislation exists for regulating fisheries including bans on the use of some of the commonly used gear, these are not enforced, resulting in severe stock depletion and habitat destruction. Currently in Sri Lanka, the major problems come from the widespread use of explosives and the small mesh size used by mini-purse seines. Gill nets and drift nets are responsible for a lot of by-catch of dolphins and turtles while bottom set nets have caused extensive habitat destruction on coral reefs7. FAO could usefully explore the ways and means to improve fishing practices and promote less disruptive practices, in partnership with fishers organizations, the government and interested partners and donors, starting in the 14 “model coastal communities” supported by project OSRO/SRL/505/ITA. 3. Indonesia

3.1. Context Of all countries hit by the tsunami, Indonesia was the closest to the epicentre. The country, and most particularly the North of Sumatra and the Simeulue and Nias islands, suffered from both the earthquake and the tsunami. The dead and missing toll was estimated by the Indonesian Red Cross as of 18 June 2005 at 170,000 in NAD, with 400,000 displaced persons. 116,880 homes were completely destroyed. Economic losses from the earthquake and resultant tsunami were severe, particularly on the West Coast where entire coastal resources and livelihood support systems were wiped out, including wild habitats (coral reefs, mangroves), roads (the main road from Banda Aceh to Meulaboh was destroyed in many sections) and other infrastructure, agricultural land and livestock. Along the East Coast, the damage was less severe. Roads and power were not dramatically affected, although there are pockets of severe damage, particularly to fish and shrimp ponds, irrigation and drainage systems, and livestock. Current estimates indicate that a total of nearly 40,000 hectares of agricultural land were affected by the tsunami. The damage was very severe along unprotected sections of the coastline and extended as far as six kilometres inland up river systems on the West coast. Loss of livestock and rice growing areas was severe, with debris and layers of sediment of variable thickness, kind and origin deposited. Many of the feeder and drainage channels in rice growing areas were also destroyed or severely silted. Infrastructure damage to fisheries and aquaculture was also significant. Survivors in the fishing communities lost a large proportion of their productive assets (boats, gear and processing equipment). Forty percent of the fleet was lost together with much of the supporting infrastructure: landing centres, ice plants, markets, processing sheds, and transport to market. Aquaculture, which used to be thriving in Aceh8, was also much impacted. There was extensive physical damage to ponds, dykes, water gates, farmer huts and related machinery. Debris and silt has caused heavy sedimentation in ponds and irrigation canals. On 28 March 2005, a second major earthquake claimed 500 more lives on Nias Island. 7 IUCN Sri Lanka Country Office. 8 The main farming system is the brackish water pond (locally known as a tambak) producing mainly milkfish (Chanos chanos) and shrimp (Penaeus monodon and other species).


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One year after the tsunami, most displaced households are still in camps or residing in host communities. Relocation of affected communities away from the coastal areas is considered in some cases.

3.2. The FAO Response Among the first operations were the development by FAO-TCI, the Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries (MMAF) and the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) of two reconstruction strategies for the fisheries and agriculture sectors in Aceh and Nias. These sector reconstruction strategies were drafted in close consultation with ADB, the World Bank and, in the case of the agriculture strategy, IFAD. Both formed the basis for subsequent GOI reconstruction strategies published in English and Bahasa Indonesia. This assistance in strategy development was much appreciated by interviewed GOI officials. In the agriculture sector, FAO has distributed through national and international NGOs packages of fertilizer and rice seed to some 12,000 beneficiaries on the East coast (Pidie, Bireuen and Aceh Utara) in August and September, and is currently extending the distribution of various agricultural inputs to additional households on the west coasts (Aceh Besar, Aceh Jaya, Aceh Barat and Nagan Raya). Depending on the needs, benefiting households either receive inputs to cultivate half a hectare of paddy (20 kg of rice seed and 150 kg of fertilizer), or a mix of groundnut, soybean and/or maize seed and 50 kg of fertilizer, or packages consisting of six varieties of vegetable seed, tools and 20 kg of fertilizer. In parallel, 770 hand tractors, 150 threshers, 300 water pumps and 50 reapers have been or are being provided to the same communities, on a group ownership basis. A total of 147 hand tractor operators have been trained by the equipment supplier so far. FAO also supported a cash-for-work (CFW) programme in Aceh Besar where 300 labourers were employed to clear debris and rehabilitate paddy fields, in partnership with a farmers cooperative. In the fisheries sector, the first asset replacement activity was the distribution by the Japanese NGO LIFE of 518 fishing gear kits on Nias Island in June and July 2005 (various sizes of nets, lines, leads, hooks, floats, etc.). More fishing gears have been ordered and are being delivered for distribution to beneficiaries of the boats built under the programme (mono- and multi-filament nets, bottom or drift longlines and trolling lines). About 920 inboard boat engines are also being procured to complement the ongoing boat building assistance. During the first half of 2005, a debate took place between FI and fisheries experts in Banda Aceh, who wanted to entrust the boat building programme to the traditional Panglima Laot9, and administrative services in HQ who resisted such a move because the Panglima Laot was not a registered entity. Ultimately it was decided to contract boat building to local and international NGOs. The second RTE mission supports this decision – consistent with the well-established TCE practice of working mainly through local or international NGOs to deliver its emergency programmes – and believes that the Panglima Laot structure offers an interesting social resource that FAO could use for beneficiary selection, conflict resolution, common resource management, lobbying, awareness raising and information dissemination, but that it should not be given too big an economic role as this may negatively affect their traditional role e.g. in conflict resolution.

9 The Panglima Laot (“admirals of the sea”) is a customary law organization, a guild of fishers and boat owners dating back to the Aceh Kingdom (before the Dutch colonization) when it was a sort of Ministry of Fisheries. Its objectives are to lobby for fishers, solve conflicts among their members, enforce traditional resource management regulations, and social activities such as the promotion of education for fishers’ children. Other similar “adat” (traditional) organizations exist in Aceh for farmers (Keujruen Blang) and woodcutters (Pawang Utang), and one was recently created by fish farmers (BMPT). These latter organizations are reputedly less well structured than the Panglima Laot.


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At the time of the mission, FAO had signed six contracts with NGOs in Aceh Besar, Aceh Barat, Aceh Utara, Pidie and Simeulue (island) for the construction of 175 small boats. The wood was procured and drying in boat yards. Two contracts were being prepared for 35 additional boats. Boat building itself is reported to have started in December 2005. In the aquaculture sub-sector and following a very detailed damage assessment conducted in March 200510, a workshop on aquaculture rehabilitation was organized by FAO and BRR on 19-21 July 2005, drawing about seventy people from local government services and the donor and NGO communities. The workshop concluded that very little progress had been made by all actors in the rehabilitation of the aquaculture sub-sector11, due to a number of factors such as land tenure uncertainties and the so-called “green belt” proposal to let the sea shore free of dwellings and plant it with mangroves, coconuts or other tress able to protect settlement areas from future tsunamis. Tambaks are typically along the sea shore. FAO is also assisting about 189 beneficiary groups, 30 percent of which are led by women, through the distribution of small-scale fish processing units and processing sheds to the Aceh Besar district on the North-East and South-West coast, and Pidie, Bireuen and Aceh Utara districts on the east coast. About 1,512 individuals, 60 percent of whom are women, will ultimately benefit from employment in these fish processing units. FAO is also procuring 21 traditional motorcycles complete with pannier baskets and ice boxes to replace their loss so that coastal communities can re-establish links with the trading community. Two small fish markets were built near Banda Aceh, one with an adjacent jetty currently under construction. Some 200 insulated fibreglass fish boxes are in the process of being distributed to the fishers, fish traders and fish processors around Banda Aceh and Simeulue. The boxes delivered originally were second-hand. The programme later managed to secure a supply of new fish boxes. Following a spate of sub-standard boats being constructed and delivered by some bilateral donors, NGOs and Dinas Sosial, FAO has implemented training courses and published brochures to promote good boat building practices and ensure that safe, high quality boats are delivered to fishers. Forty-two boat builders, including representatives of the DKP and the local fisher association, Panglima Laot, have received training through two boat building sessions in Aceh Utara on the east coast and Nagan Raya on the west coast. Ten boats produced during the boat-building trainings have been delivered to fishers. FAO is working closely with the Government of Indonesia, line ministries and NGOs in providing technical and policy guidance to plan and coordinate rehabilitation efforts in the agriculture and fisheries sectors. As a result, the Government of Indonesia was able to develop a rehabilitation and reconstruction strategy in Aceh and Nias for agriculture, fisheries and forestry. FAO is also working closely with the Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Agency for Aceh and Nias (BRR12) to help coordinate humanitarian efforts in the region.

10 An assessment of the impacts of the 26th December 2004 earthquake and tsunami on aquaculture in the Provinces of Aceh and North Sumatra, Indonesia, by Michael Phillips and Agus Budhiman, FAO - March 2005. 11 In November 2005, BRR estimated that only 1,200 ha of tambaks had so far been rehabilitated against a total affected area of 14,500 ha (minutes of the Fisheries and Aquaculture Working Group, 18 November 2005). 12 The BRR (Badan Rehabilitasi dan Rekonstruksi) was established by the Government of Indonesia on April 16, 2005, and its mandate is to restore livelihoods and strengthen communities in Aceh and Nias by designing and overseeing a coordinated, community-driven reconstruction and development program implemented according to the highest professional standards.


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Overview The response in Indonesia was compounded by all sorts of administrative and logistical difficulties already described in the first RTE report. This resulted in a somewhat slow and fragmented response. The ERCU in Banda Aceh has had a high turnover of staff and consultants. Many of the international staff with whom the second mission interacted have already left Banda Aceh or will leave shortly, and there tends to be a high degree of frustration among the international consultants who worked in Aceh. Besides, the office appears to be in need of additional national staff of sufficient quality and experience. Payments to consultants, implementing partners and suppliers remain a major problem, but one which can hopefully be solved at least in part by the new impress account, though the $100,000 / month cap could prove insufficient given the size of the programme. The local team and focal points at HQ spent relentless efforts to try and find suitable implementation modalities that could be approved by FAO support services (human resource, finance, procurement) and would work well locally. The results of this effort have been slow to emerge. One year after the disaster, FAO has not provided any physical support to the aquaculture sector and has only constructed ten boats... An attempt to use the cash-for-work (CFW) modality to clean up paddy fields resulted in a demonstration of beneficiaries in Banda Aceh, protesting against late FAO payments (Box 2). The community later proposed to discontinue the work. FAO had some success at NGOs coordination and played a very useful advisory role in the fisheries sector and, more recently, in the agriculture sector. The Organization was nominated lead organization for the fisheries and agriculture sectors by the Governor of Aceh in February 2005. The efforts with BRR and the Dinas to coordinate the fisheries and agricultural sectors are a valid contribution to the post-tsunami reconstruction effort, not to be under-valued. At the same time, these efforts have had their limits: few NGOs come to the meetings and these therefore often become FAO-Government meetings; the original agriculture sector working group has been discontinued; BRR is slow and not keeping advisors in the loops of their planning and budgeting processes; and there is limited coordination at the district level.

Agriculture The agriculture team managed to deliver an impressive amount of inputs. Some of the technical problems faced by the operation are well known by the staff (late occurrence of the first seed distribution and current fertilizer distribution; hand tractors with incorrect ploughing tool). These issues are presently being addressed by the ERCU or by the beneficiaries themselves. As in Sri Lanka, there was a lack of attention given to community-based resources and infrastructure such as irrigation and drainage systems, severally affected by the tsunami. A good brochure was published on salinity but the follow up on this issue has been minimal. Distributed EC meters were rarely used by the recipient Dinas. Recent salinity measurements by the Indonesian SPFS13 and by the ADB14 indicate persistent salinity problems in areas with a poor or damaged drainage system. On the West coast, poor drainage can be compounded by a significant subsidence of the terrain due to the earthquakes. Some paddy fields may have to be

13 Summary Results of Soil Salinity Survey on Tsunami Affected Areas in Birueun and Aceh Utara (One Year Aftermath), S. Imai (SPFS Indonesia) January 2006. 14 Soil and Land Reclamation Scenarios, in Annual Report 2005, Agriculture Sector of ETESP, and Data Assessment and Soil Reclamation for Pidie, Birueun and Aceh Besar Kabupaten, Earthquake and Tsunami Emergency Support Project (ETESP), ADB, undated.


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permanently abandoned to mangrove or transformed into fish pounds. Lampaya, where the CFW operation took place, seems to be a case in point. The cleared area was flooded at the time of the second mission.

Box 2: T-Shirts For Work The following story is meant to illustrate how decisions made on purely administrative grounds, however justified from a procedural standpoint, may be perceived as insensitive locally, can result in substantial hardship for the people FAO is trying to help, and may entail significant risks to the Organization’s reputation and assets in the field.

On July 15, 2005, a Letter of Agreement worth US$97,635 was signed between FAO and the Meuseuraya Agro Cooperative in Lampaya village, Lhoknga sub-district, to pay for the clearing of debris brought by the tsunami on 238 hectares of paddy fields and irrigation channels. This was the first experience of FAO Agriculture with the “cash-for-work” modality in Indonesia, a modality quite popular amongst aid agencies operating in the Aceh province as it is meant to provide a means of livelihoods to tsunami-struck farmers while clearing their own fields.

The first payment was received by the cooperative on 11 August, one month after signing the LOA, and the work started soon after. The second payment was expected by the start of Ramadan, but received only 21 days later. The third payment was expected for Idul Fitri (Eid El Fitr, starting on November 3rd in 2005), an important Muslim holiday marking the end of Ramadan and not unlike Christmas in that the family head is supposed to bring home gifts for the children and meat for a good meal. The progress report was deemed incomplete by FAO and the payment withheld. The report was ultimately finalized and the payment received by the cooperative on 18 November, two weeks after Idul Fitri.

On November 8th, FAO was informed that hundreds of beneficiaries were coming to the FAO office in Banda Aceh to protest and demand the funds. The Officer in Charge, Peter Flewwelling, sought assistance from UNDSS and developed a security plan. Alfizar, FAO national agronomist, managed to calm down the protesters and only three representatives came to the office to discuss the problem. They were quite upset as they believed FAO had let them down twice in payments at critical times. Peter was trying to calm them down, when he remembered that the office had just received hundreds of T-shirts marked with EU and FAO labels. “We’re sorry we can’t pay you, he said feeling quite ashamed, but you’re lucky: we just got the T-shirts!” Desperate to bring something back home for the holiday, the protestors accepted the offer. And this is how the children in Lampaya all received the same T-shirt on Idul Fitri.

Persistent – if localised – salinity problems seem to have reduced the impact of the agricultural distributions in the East coast. The mission studied in some detail the issue of why some of the distributed seed apparently did not grow in farmers’ fields on the East coast. Lack of germination power proved unlikely to be the cause because the seed seems to have germinated well in nursery, but died when transplanted. Interviewed farmers mentioned localised salinity problems as the main reason and the mission views this explanation as the most probable. The mission first hypothesized that the variety distributed on the North-East coast (IR 64), though largely cultivated in the province, was not salinity tolerant, but according to IRRI it would be moderately tolerant to salinity15. This moderate tolerance apparently did not suffice in some fields in Aceh. More recent seed distributions have used a larger group of a locally cultivated variety and this certainly constitutes a positive step. 15 G. Gregorio (IRRI), personal communication.


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Fisheries

The first asset replacement operation, the distribution of fishing gear in Nias Island, went reasonably well, though the fact that the gear was handed out to the NGO (LIFE) in two different shipments created some problems. The NGO distributed the two shipments separately. While the first distribution went smoothly, there was significant tension during the second distribution. The second shipment consisted of different gears from the first one, and was to be handed out to the same beneficiaries as the first one in order to complete the delivery. Some community members insisted that the second instalment should be given to other people who hadn’t benefited the first time, for reasons of equity. The NGO finally managed to distribute the second batch as planned, i.e. to the same beneficiaries as the first distribution. According to LIFE, in general the donated gears were found of good quality and suitability, but some beneficiaries complained that the donated nets were too deep, sinking “deeper than the area where fish exists” and hence “too heavy to load on boat”.16 The mission could not travel to Nias and is not in a position to verify this assertion. More fishing gear and boat engines are being delivered in the Aceh province to complement the boat building programme. One interviewed NGO partner was puzzled about the contents of the gear package – the first dispatch did not include boat safety accessories and included a considerable amount of gloves. Safety equipment is apparently arriving in another instalment. The need for boat replacement is clear, and indeed it is so large (initially set at over 10,000, the estimated number of new boats required was later reduced to 6,500) that it will probably take more than 3 years to fill, if local traditional designs and skills must be used. This should not come as a justification for the delays in the FAO boat building programme, but it is clear that the programme could not have built thousands of boats in a few months, as skilled local boat builders are scarce along the coast. There is also the acknowledgement that many survivors had more urgent needs than going back fishing (e.g. need for shelter) and other opportunities for making a living (CFW, food aid, present construction boom). There will be a need for a longer reconstruction period. As in the area of shelter, there will be the case of “temporary” or “transitional” boats, and people will need to be moved out of these again to reduce or eliminate risks. This realization that it is physically impossible to reconstruct the NAD fisheries sector in a few months mirrors a similar insight by the BRR that the reconstruction of the Aceh province will probably extend well into 2009 (see Figure 2). Many organizations in Aceh are faced with the same problem of being unable to physically complete their reconstruction objectives and to spend their significant financial resources during the very short time span initially allocated for this work in their programme documents. The conscious FAO decision to donate only small boats is supported by the mission, since beneficiary selection for the donation of larger boats is risky. Small boats already venture far offshore (approx. 60 nm) to fish tunas and sharks with longlines. Offshore fishing should be supported to tap into resources which are perceived as under-utilized17, but the economic feasibility of at least one of the fishing systems to be supported (trolling line with outboard engines) requires close monitoring of catch per unit effort and fishing cost.

16 Final Report on the Distribution of Fishing Gears to 519 victims of Tsunami and Earthquake in North Sumatra Province and Nias Island (OSRO/INS/502/JPN), LIFE, undated. 17 The ERCU is planning for the distribution of drift longline and vertical longline.


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The delays in finding the right operational modality in the fisheries sector allowed for attention to be given to the issues of a) boat quantity, and b) boat quality and good building practices. On the former, a survey of the number of boats being constructed was commissioned by FAO to the Panglima Laot. The results helped raise the BRR’s and other partners’ awareness of the risks of overfishing and led FAO to cancel most of its intended boat building programme in order not to build up the fishing capacity inconsiderately. On the latter point, the two training courses conducted and the brochures produced could be considered a rare positive feature in FAO emergency programmes. The courses and brochures were well received and appreciated by NGOs and government institutions. Two master boat builders interviewed by the mission commented highly on the training, explaining that they would increasingly use some of the techniques they had learned. Nevertheless, they pointed at the trade-off between boat weight and cost on the one hand and durability and safety on the other to explain why they may not reinforce their boat to the full extent recommended in the FAO guidelines.

Progress has been minimal in the aquaculture sub-sector. The early assessments made it clear that the entire “market chain” for aquaculture needed to be addressed, and this was later confirmed in the rather successful July workshop on aquaculture rehabilitation. So far, attempts at implementing cash for work activities to clean up tambaks and canals have failed to be approved at HQ, and the emphasis shifted to the provision of advisory services, but compared with the capture fisheries (boat building) in a less forceful or practical way. A new attempt at a tambak rehabilitation programme combining CFW, equipment, inputs and advisory services was in preparation at the time of the evaluation mission. It is hoped that the CFW operation will be better

Figure 2: Likely Sequencing of Emergency and Recovery Activities According to the BRR

Source: Aceh and Nias one Year after the Tsunami, the Recovery Effort and Way Forward, BRR, December 2005.


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planned and managed than in the case of Lampaya and that the impress account newly set up for the Banda Aceh office will allow timely payments. The distribution of fish drying equipment seems to be a success and has supported many women entrepreneurs and labourers. It should be noted that the distributed fish drying racks, stoves, etc. were selected with the help of beneficiary representatives. The importance of the post-harvest or fish processing sub-sector in value-addition should be fully recognized. So far, post-harvest activities or interventions were approached from capture fisheries, but with generally limited involvement (temporary market structures, fish drying racks and insulated boxes).

Forestry The FAO tsunami response programme in Indonesia was the only one among the three programmes to have allocated significant financial resources to the forestry sector, through the fielding of a timber specialist to advise the Government on how to source timber for reconstruction. The report proposed and quantified a number of options and provided what the mission considered practical, economically and ecologically sound advice. However the report recommendations were deemed politically risky and were only communicated to the Government in a very trimmed-down version. This consultancy also produced guidelines for the sourcing and treatment of imported wood.

Beneficiary Selection in Indonesia The way beneficiary selection was approached differed widely. Different projects pursued different approaches. In agriculture distributions, farmers often re-distributed amongst themselves the inputs, dividing the packages as necessary to avoid social tension (in some case even giving their share of urea to aquaculture farmers). Idem with tractors, often owned by the whole village rather than a small group of thirty farmers as was the initial intention. As a result FAO has more beneficiaries than it thinks (but benefiting less). Most of the incidents in Nias island proceeded from the same logic. Some community members assumed that the second fishing gear distribution should have benefited those who could not be reached by the first distribution, instead of being given to the same beneficiaries as the first distribution. In the boat building sector, the idea was from the start to replace only small boats, as big boats could prove unfairly distributed. It should be noted that this choice is probably not the most effective from a purely economic point of view (restoring the sector) but is more equitable. In fish processing, the mission witnessed one case of probably unfair distribution (though economically efficient). The use of the Panglima Laot in beneficiary selection is supported by the RTE mission, as the organization’s mandate is in conflict resolution, lobbying or advocacy, and in community-based approaches to resource management. The institution should be well placed to select beneficiaries, collect data on boats and fishing effort management, and disseminate messages on safety-at-sea. The mission considers however that the Panglima Laot should not be over-used, and that entrusting them with an economic role may put this very useful social resource at risk.

Future Prospects The challenges FAO faced and is still facing in Indonesia are huge but the team has been very dedicated and hard working. After a long debate between the respective offices of the FAOR and the ERCU, the issue of the national staff salary scale has now been solved and that should help the office overcome the loss of some key international staff and perform more efficiently in the months to come.


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In 2006, the FAO fisheries rehabilitation programme will need to deliver the boats under contract, and is considering, in cooperation with the GOI, the setting up of a team of boat quality inspectors and the reconstruction of small fish landing sites. Aquaculture should receive more attention than in 2005 with a new attempt at rehabilitating tambacs. FAO may also wish to participate in the rehabilitation of aquaculture support services, such as hatcheries or the Ujung Batee aquaculture research station in Banda Aceh, for the rehabilitation of which the GOI has been approaching a number of donors. Finally, the idea of a coastal master plan identifying the green belt area and areas left to tambaks or paddy fields was supported in the March 2005 FAO-GOI damage assessment of the aquaculture sub-sector and resurfaced during the July 2005 aquaculture workshop, in the context of the review of constraints to the rehabilitation of the sector. The RTE mission believes that supporting the development of such a master plan through bottom-up planning could be a good way for FAO to try and apply the ICAM approach in a rehabilitation context. In the agriculture sector, one significant development is that funding from IFIs is finally coming into play. The ADB, with its Earthquake and Tsunami Emergency Support Project (ETESP) combining agricultural input distributions, rehabilitation of irrigation and drainage structures and Farmers Field Schools, is becoming a key player in post-tsunami recovery in the agricultural sector. The debt moratorium money, to be channelled through BRR in 2006, is expected to represent a massive injection of cash in the province, mainly channelled through local governments (Dinas), who would probably need all the technical assistance they can get. Another development worth noting is that more and more partners are supporting the resettlement of affected communities further inland. The rationale is that many paddy fields and tambaks along the South-West coast cannot be rehabilitated because of land subsidence. At the same time, progress in the conflict resolution process in Aceh means that the hinterland is now much safer than it used to be. Hence the idea of developing new irrigation schemes inland. FAO could perhaps provide technical assistance to NGOs such as OXFAM which are moving in that area. Strategic orientations for FAO assistance, put forward in the context of the Agriculture Workshop at the time of the mission, look very strong and appropriate: technical support to Dinas and NGOs; rehabilitation of drainage and irrigation systems; work on local seed systems could move the emphasis from stop-gap distribution of agro-inputs to re-building sustainable input provision systems. In addition, the cattle replacement project, modelled after a similar project in Kosovo, appears interesting and well planned though it will likely pose significant implementation challenges.


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C. Findings by Sector 1. Agriculture

1.1. Overview By and large, the distributions of agricultural inputs implemented under the tsunami response have been well implemented and reasonably successful. All the beneficiaries interviewed by the international mission and by the BA were satisfied with the programme. No beneficiary selection problems have been reported. It should be stressed that the agricultural programme was in all countries smaller than the fisheries programme, and that is was easier to implement as FAO enjoys a long-standing experience in agricultural emergency operations, in contrast with the fisheries sector. Non-FAO actors also followed the same trend and focused most of their assistance on the fisheries sector. As a result there were fewer actors implementing agricultural programmes than fisheries programmes, and hence less competition between actors, notably in input procurement and recruitment of national staff. The expectations for asset replacement also tended to be much lower among farmers than among fisher folks. All these factors could explain the difference observed between the two sectors in the reaction and attitude of the interviewed beneficiaries.

1.2. Activities The activities under the sector mainly consisted in the distribution of agricultural inputs (seed, fertilizer, tree seedlings and tools) to individual farmers, while larger items such as farm machinery (single-axel tractors, threshers) were typically handed out to groups of farmers who elected an operator. This sort of “input bias” was already highlighted by the first RTE mission, and was witnessed in the three countries in the sample. In contrast, little attention was devoted to the rehabilitation of community infrastructures damaged by the tsunami, such as irrigation and drainage systems. Many community-managed coastal irrigation and drainage structures have been severely impacted by the tsunami (destroyed and/or heavily silted) and are in dire need of rehabilitation in Indonesia and Sri Lanka. The mission would like to stress that the effects of the tsunami on soil salinity have been under-studied for a variety of reasons including a lack of identified funding for such studies, notably in Indonesia, and poor follow-up after the departure of salinity consultants (e.g. manuals and EC meters not distributed for a long time in Sri Lanka). FAO provided useful normative products (e.g. the leaflet on “20 Things to Know about the Impact of Salt Water on Agricultural Land in Aceh Province”) but did not do enough to empirically assess the evolution of the situation. The tsunami deposited salts on the surface of the agricultural land it flooded. FAO rightly predicted that this form of salinization posed little problem as it would be washed away by monsoon rains. But another, more indirect salinization effect of the tsunami has perhaps not been given enough attention. As explained above, the tsunami damaged and silted many coastal drainage channels. The resulting poor drainage makes it impossible for the deposited salt to be washed away. Periodic high tides sometimes penetrate upstream through drainage systems whose sea gates have been destroyed. High tides also tend to raise the water table under the fields with resulting salt infiltration from below. Farmers cannot control these infiltrations of saline water through irrigation (as they certainly did before the tsunami) because drainage is blocked or poor. These processes created a long-term salinity problem in many community irrigation


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systems in the tsunami-affected regions of Sri Lanka and Indonesia, and should be further studied to identify reclamation strategies and priorities.18 The lack of, or insufficient funding for, project components devoted to capacity building, training and policy advisory services constitutes another significant weakness of the agricultural response so far, a few initiatives in Sri Lanka notwithstanding. In Indonesia and Thailand, the training for tractors and net houses was a two-day affair performed by the suppliers as part of their contractual obligations. Tractor operators and net house farmers will likely need much more training if they are to manage their new assets properly. This relative neglect for the “software” dimension of the programme can again be interpreted in terms of “input bias”.

1.3. Transition to development A number of ideas have been proposed and some of them have already been funded to help sustain beyond the immediate reconstruction phase the recovery of the agriculture sector in the countries struck by the tsunami. One such project concept is to support the re-establishment of a local and sustainable supply of seeds in the Aceh province.19 This project could start with a diagnosis of local (including traditional) seed supply systems and varieties. The provision of good quality seed is often less of an issue than the identification of adapted genetic material. This calls for proper variety trials, in controlled environment and farmers’ fields as was the case in a similar programme in Afghanistan. Another idea for the immediate future is to help rehabilitate damaged drainage and irrigation structures and thus help solve remaining salinity issues. The provision of practical, field-based training and technical support on a variety of subjects would be another idea, as some NGOs are undertaking agriculture rehabilitation projects without the required experience or expertise. 2. Fisheries

2.1. Overview The FAO response in the fisheries sector faced many more challenges than in the agriculture sector. The fisheries sector suffered the largest destruction caused by the tsunami, with the entire value chain being affected, from production activities (capture fisheries and fish farming) to the supporting fisheries and post-harvest processing and marketing infrastructure.20 Correspondingly, emergency relief to the devastated fisheries sector was by far the largest part of FAO relief operations in terms of number of staff mobilized and the size of the financial assistance. On the other hand, compared with numerous emergency operations in support of agricultural activities in the past, there was no or very little experience in fisheries emergencies (with the exception of assistance provided to hurricane victims in the Caribbean region). In comparison to the agricultural sector, the number of actors, from local and international NGOs to academic or governmental institutions, bilateral and multilateral agencies and donors, involved in the fisheries sector was far greater. As a consequence, there is a more considerable need and opportunity for information exchange, coordination and collaboration, but also more scope for

18 On the West coast of Aceh, poor drainage can be further compounded by a significant subsidence of the terrain caused by the earthquakes. Some irrigated paddy fields may have to be abandoned as a result. 19 Proposal put forth as part of the agriculture strategy development and in the context of the recent Agriculture Workshop in Banda Aceh. 20 This applies to a much larger degree to Sri Lanka and Indonesia than to Thailand.


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competition between aid providers, such as, for example, when procuring similar inputs or recruiting good national staff. It should be stressed that fisheries input supplies can be more difficult to procure and distribute than other emergency relief goods such as food, water, medicine, or even seed and fertilizer. Supply of rather complex fishing paraphernalia, some of which have to be built or assembled and cannot be purchased ready-made from suppliers, cannot be expected to be as speedy as the supply of “off-the-shelf” items. Boat building demands strong quality assurance mechanisms to avoid putting fishers’ life at risk. Some of these fisheries inputs must be considered high value items (boats and engines) that will tend to be in high demand, and they therefore require careful beneficiary selection modalities. To make the situation even more complex, fisheries in all three affected countries – in particular marine capture fisheries but also, to some extent, and more indirectly aquaculture which is based on input supply from the wild for seeds or feeds, and which sometimes occupies public land for fish farms – are facing the issue of resource limitation. In a de-facto open access situation there is clearly the danger of excess fishing capacity with overfishing as a result (the tragedy of the commons).

2.2. Activities The early relief measures of FAO, following on the early participation in damage and needs assessments, placed clear emphasis on the replacement of individually owned production assets such as fishing boats and gears. As in agriculture, less attention was devoted initially to the repair or replacement of other segments of the value chain, such as the fish landing, processing and marketing infrastructure. But in contrast with what was observed in the agriculture sector, there was in the fisheries sector a clear recognition of the importance of “software” activities such as capacity building, coordination and policy advice in all three countries, setting in earlier in Sri Lanka (database of boat distributions and repair programmes at district level), then in Indonesia (survey of boat replacement programmes, training on quality boat building) and later in Thailand (fishing capacity studies, mangrove study). In general, the advisory and capacity building activities of FAO, whenever offered and made available, were highly appreciated. The same applies to the coordinating role assumed by FAO in response to the large number of actors active in assisting the sector. Obviously, the respective emphasis on software vs. hardware varies according to countries. As procurement and contracting proved quite laborious in Indonesia, the procurement and delivery of individual production assets took staff time away from “software” activities, at least initially. Later on, the delays in implementation of boat construction activities were turned partly into an opportunity to address more comprehensively issues of boat building quality and boat safety. This advisory service, which included formal and practical training measures in Indonesia, was of good quality and was highly appreciated. A key difference between the three sample countries lies in the sort of technology used to construct fishing boats. While in Indonesia and Thailand the industry is based on traditional wooden boats of various sizes and shapes, in Sri Lanka fishers have adopted fiber-reinforced plastic (FRP) since the 1970’s even for their most traditional boat types (small catamarans called orus). One of the advantages of the FRP technology over traditional boat carpentry is in reparability: small damages made to the hull of FRP boats can be patched up relatively easily. Wooden boats are more difficult to repair. Hence the (perfectly appropriate) difference in approach and emphasis between the FAO boat programmes in the three countries. In Sri Lanka the programme focused on boat repair with the provision of mats and resin. In Indonesia the selected option was to replace damaged or lost boats with new ones built with traditional designs


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and techniques. In Thailand, where boats suffered less damage than in Indonesia, the programme distributed planks of wood for beneficiaries to repair their boats themselves. Another key difference is that boat builders in Sri Lanka are legal, commercial entities, while most boat builders in Aceh are artisans and belong to the informal sector. These differences in technology and formalization of boat building are important reasons for explaining why the Sri Lankan and Indonesian programmes have been progressing at different speeds. Another reason is that in Sri Lanka, the implementation modality was decided very early on by the Government, while in the case of Indonesia there was a long debate within FAO on which partner to select for the boat building activities.

2.3. Transition to development In response to the real threat of replaced and rebuilt fishing capacity exceeding the limits of the fish stocks and aquatic resources FAO also developed advisory services regarding the registration of fishers and fishing boats in Indonesia and Sri Lanka, based on surveys of fishing capacity. These measures are an interesting pathway from reconstruction to development aimed at better and more sustainable management of the fisheries resources. Another interesting pathway for a transition to development resides in the definition of new boat designs, an avenue being explored both in Sri Lanka and Indonesia. The re-establishment of support and marketing channels in the sector could be yet another domain where the immediate tsunami response could evolve towards a more long-term programme. Very little has been done on this front so far by FAO21, apart from the construction of two small fish markets in Indonesia. 3. Forestry The amount of financial resources allocated to the forestry sector in the FAO tsunami response was rather modest: one project (OSRO/GLO/502/FIN) worth US$3,776,100. The project funded a timber specialist to calculate the amount of timber required (about 1 million m3 of round wood) for the reconstruction of destroyed houses in the Aceh province in Indonesia and advise the Indonesian Government about how to source timber for reconstruction. After months of editing, the consultant’s report, which identified and evaluated a number of options, including wood imports and local sourcing from plantation forests, was finally released to the GOI in a very trimmed-down version. It would appear that the report was deemed too risky politically to be released. The debate about how to source timber for reconstruction has been going on within the GOI (BRR would like to import all reconstruction wood while the Ministry of Forestry promotes the use of local timber) and between the GOI and other organizations (WWF and Greenomics and their “Timber for Aceh” programme), but without much FAO contribution or valued-added so far. A case in point is the list of legal wood suppliers that FAO disseminates. This list is based on information already publicly available and not verified by FAO. It would appear that FAO is losing ground to other actors. The World Bank has plans to set up a Timber Advisory Facility with three international experts. Meanwhile, reconstruction goes on. There is a “construction boom” in Banda Aceh. Sawmills seem to be doing quite well, and part of the wood they use may be the product of illegal logging. 21 Other actors are increasingly involved in the construction of landing sites and the provision of ice plants in Indonesia and Sri Lanka.


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Another interesting development in the sector has been the “Green Coast” Programme. Funded by the BRR and implemented by Wetlands International, it aims to rehabilitate 800 hectares per year of damaged wetlands and mangroves in the Aceh province. These issues (timber for reconstruction, green belt) are significant policy issues where FAO would be expected to contribute practical, economically and ecologically sensible advice. But to do so, the Organization must accept some degree of political risk. FAO is bringing in a mangrove specialist in Aceh, and it is hoped that he will contribute to the ongoing debate on the “green belt”. One question for the future is whether the Finland project (OSRO/GLO/502/FIN) should fund activities at the grassroots level in addition to technical assistance, and whether it should do so on its own or piggy-back on existing NGO projects or other FAO interventions. The latter would appear more efficient to the mission.


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D. Cross-Cutting Issues 1. Emergency Preparedness and Operational Capacity of FAO The first RTE mission reviewed this issue in some detail and it was not the intention of the second mission to revisit it. However, the mission was requested by FAO field staff to revisit the issue with a view to highlight the effect that low emergency preparedness and operational capacity may have had on the delivery of inputs and the impact of the programme and to help identify practical ways of making progress.

1.1. Problem statement The issue could be summarized as follows: the FAO administrative system was basically designed decades ago for head office operations. Updates have been few and far between. As FAO entered the domain of emergency operations fairly recently (mid-90s), the Organization has had to approach emergencies with administrative processes and resources that were not suited for the fast-paced emergency arena. Today, the FAO emergency operations represent by some accounts about a third of the Organization’s overall financial resources, and there is a broad consensus that a thorough revision of its administrative processes is long overdue. In spite of the fact that none of the members of that second mission had any particular expertise in administration or logistics, the present report has tried to illustrate some of the consequences for FAO’s beneficiaries of slow and inflexible operational arrangements (e.g. the cash-for-work conundrum in Indonesia). One aspect that may be worthy of further emphasis is that most emergency operations take place in a very competitive environment. The tsunami catastrophe generated a massive influx of private and public funds. The organizations to which these funds have been entrusted are trying to use them in implementing successful, visible programmes, and in order to do that, they often perceive it as necessary to compete with one another for such scarce resources as replacement assets (boats, fishing gear), qualified national staff (boat builders, agronomists, administrators, programme managers, etc...) and even beneficiaries. In Sri Lanka, some NGOs theorized this sort of competition between aid providers and called it “competitive compassion”. In such an environment, only the most agile organizations are likely to thrive. Only they will be in a position to hire sufficient national staff, secure advantageous deals with suppliers to provide inputs such as boats or fishing gear, or to establish their field presence. Slow, bureaucratic organizations are likely to find it very difficult to set up credible programmes and will sooner or later be pushed out of the emergency arena. For all sorts of reasons including its legitimate insistence on technical quality, FAO may never be as quick-paced and flexible as most NGOs, but its present performance is clearly not satisfactory in this regard.

1.2. Past evaluations on the subject The issue of the adequacy (or lack thereof) of FAO administrative procedures and operational processes to meet the needs of emergency operations has been discussed in quite a number of evaluation reports. The general thrust of their recommendations is that more procurement, financial and staff management authority should be given to the field. Here is a comprehensive list of evaluation reports issued by PBEE in recent years that highlighted the issue:

• Evaluation of SIDA Supported Projects: Synthesis Report - 2001. • Thematic Evaluation of Strategy A.3: Preparedness for, and effective and sustainable

response to, Food and Agricultural Emergencies - 2002.


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• Evaluation of the FAO Response to the Continuing Crisis in Southern Africa - 2003. • Evaluation of FAO Post-Conflict Programme in Afghanistan - 2003. • Mid-Term Review of the Emergency Agriculture Input Distribution Programme in

Afghanistan - 2003. • Independent Evaluation of FAO’s Decentralization - 2004. • Multilateral Evaluation of the 2003-05 Desert Locust Campaign - 2005.

Besides, a number of audit reports from AUD, External Auditors and JIU have also addressed the same broad issue in the past22. In the context of the FAO tsunami response, two recent audit reports23 have recommended a reform of the FAO procurement and payments processes to better suit the emergency context. Both reports reviewed local procurement processes (usually managed by a procurement mission from HQ) and found that suppliers’ response to the tenders were very limited. AUD 406 points out that some suppliers may not want to work with FAO anymore as a result of a history of late payments, while AUD 306 stresses insufficient prior market research to identify enough potential suppliers.

1.3. RTE analysis It must be realized, however, that not all ERCUs may have the necessary competences and skills in financial management, accounting, procurement, transport, storage or staff management. ERCUs are often running short of good administrative staff, in particular when, in a very competitive environment such as Aceh, the capacity to hire experienced national administrators is constrained by the low FAO salary and consultancy scale for national staff, and this is a root problem well illustrated by the Indonesian office. Other human resource management issues limit the capacity of FAO to staff its field units, such as the limitations placed on hiring consultants and short-term staff. Field staff would also need to be trained. However there appears to be no standard training module on FAO administrative procedures and good practices that TCE or AF could use to train field staff, for instance at the onset of an emergency operation. Recommendations from PBEE to lighten the administrative regulations and decentralize operations may also come at variance with those of the Internal Auditors or of FAO management, who often emphasized strict compliance with rules and regulations. Sometimes these PBEE recommendations were based on insufficient evidence of where the problem(s) really was (were), and may have assumed wrongly that it was a mere question of administrative procedures. The issue is in fact much larger. Testimonies from the field point at the broader matter of perceptions and management culture. According to some, many HQ staff perceive field staff not as the front troops of the Organization valiantly fighting the scourge of food insecurity in difficult terrain, and hence worthy of all the rear’s support and admiration, but as “the enemy within”, a caricature of course, meaning “short term consultants whose loyalty to the Organization remains to be proven”. It is probably fair to say that the level of trust between FAO HQ and field offices could be higher. Along the same line, field staff also point at a lack of service-orientation at HQ, e.g. HQ sometimes rejects a proposal from the field without proposing an alternative approach, and it then becomes incumbent on the field to come up with an alternative that may again be rejected by HQ, etc.

22 For instance AUD 1101, AUD 3103 or AUD 2605. See also the Report on Procurement Practices within the United Nations System – JIU 2004. The mission did not review this documentation as it did not pertain specifically to the tsunami response. 23 AUD 406 in Indonesia and AUD 306 in the Maldives. Another recent audit report (not yet numbered) studied the tsunami response in Sri Lanka and dealt mainly with poor compliance with rules and regulations, notably by CEYNOR.


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Over and beyond FAO’s administrative processes, the first RTE report pointed at the low operational readiness of TCE as a unit. The report recommended that TCE should give more emphasis to logistical issues and competences , and that it should store logistical and communication equipment for rapid deployment. In other words, the issue is not only about how administrative units could serve the emergency programme better. It also hinges upon the capacity of TCE to organize and structure its own working arrangements better. A mention should be made here of the security regulations in the field. There is a general feeling among the UN community in Aceh that the situation is far safer than the security level in place indicates and that this unduly high security level seriously hampers programme implementation (Box 3).

1.4. Current initiatives Well aware of the extent of the problem, TCE undertook in spring 2005 a business review resulting in the drafting of a FAO Vision for Rehabilitation Programmes in Emergency Contexts24 and of a Plan of Action. The Plan of Action lists no less than 53 recommendations under four chapters, one of which (chapter 4) is entirely devoted to improving FAO’s operational capacity. This process has been halted, hopefully only temporarily, as a result of the current drive to reform FAO. It should be stressed that the Director General’s reform proposal25 itself placed a great deal of emphasis on the need to streamline FAO’s administrative procedures and processes. An Inter-Departmental Working Group has been set up to streamline administrative procedures, and

24 TCE, July 2005. 25 Programme of Work and Budget 2006-2007 - Supplement - Reform proposals, FAO Conference Document C 2005/3 Sup.1.

Box 3: Security Regulations

The tsunami has created an unprecedented situation for humanitarian assistance. Not only have countries like Sri Lanka and Indonesia been subjected to a natural disaster, but this has happened in a context of civil conflicts. In Indonesia, the conflict in Aceh has taken a turn to the better with a peace agreement in place and seemingly upheld by both parties. Interestingly, many consider the tsunami as a key factor in reaching the peace agreement. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the situation in Sri Lanka.

Technically, this unusual situation calls for the UN to carefully establish appropriate security phases to take into account progress in conflict resolution and facilitate reconstruction activities. Security phases contain an inbuilt control of the type of activities (emergency, reconstruction or development) that can take place and of the categories of staff allowed in the field. A high security phase seriously constrains the capacity of UN agencies to implement reconstruction and development activities.

There is a general feeling among the UN community that the situation in Aceh is far safer than the security level in place (phase 3) indicates and that this seriously hampers programme implementation. Instead, however, of lobbying their agencies to make a concerted request to obtain a lower phase, many choose to either ignore it or not to conform to its requirements.


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a Procurement Working Group was set up with a mandate to recommend precise adjustments to the FAO operation manual section on same. In this context, the issue for the RTE is: can yet another evaluation report on FAO administrative processes add value and promote purposeful action, or will it rather add to the confusion? Staff members in the field pointed at some limited improvements in the period between the first and second RTE missions (most notably the establishment of an impress account in Banda Aceh) but stressed that in their opinion the RTE had little to do with such improvements. It should be recalled that the RTE mandate does not actually cover administrative procedures per se and is limited to operational processes. A simple way forward may be to study a representative sample of projects and identify operational bottlenecks in their implementation, in order to be in a position to identify areas of improvement and practical recommendations in the third RTE report. 2. Institutional “Disconnect” Based on its interviews in the field and at HQ, the mission is compelled to conclude that the grave disconnect between HQ and field offices and between various HQ services, departments and offices involved in the tsunami response, much discussed in the first RTE report, has not been sufficiently addressed as of the end of 2005. Some progress has been achieved. In agriculture and forestry, technical backstopping has been decentralized to RAP and country offices expressed satisfaction at getting faster backstopping as a result. However, interviewed staff often found the exchange of information between different services at HQ insufficient. Missions from various technical services still land in the field without much prior notice to local FAO staff and leave without formally briefing them. Project concepts are sometimes designed and donors approached in isolation. Mistrust between technical departments and TCE, underlined by sharp differences in professional culture and demographics between the staff of the concerned units, continues to weaken the capacity of the Organization to think strategically and act coherently. The Organization often boasts a comparative advantage in being able to draw from different technical disciplines in agriculture, fisheries and forestry, and in being able to tie emergency assistance with longer-term rehabilitation and development. However, this comparative advantage cannot be realized if FAO departments act as competitors rather than as allies, and in fact in such circumstances, FAO is probably at a disadvantage compared with smaller and more cohesive organizations. The case of the formulation of the American Red Cross (ARC) project is instructive in this regard: FAO was selected in part thanks to its assumed capacity to link emergency, rehabilitation and development, but found it hard to come up with a coherent proposal to this effect. A related issue is the lack of a conceptual framework accepted by all FAO units about the so-called emergency-rehabilitation-development continuum, a framework that would define the respective roles of TCE and Technical Departments in ensuring such a continuum. A transition between TCE, the main budget holder under the emergency and reconstruction phase (2005-2006), and technical departments, RAP and FAORs is bound to happen in 2006 because of the end of the period covered by the UN flash appeal, the decrease in emergency funding and TCE’s own regulations. FAO technical departments and regional and national offices are poised to inherit an important, highly visible field programme with a number of long term projects and viable project concepts. To some extent this transition has already started with a few GCP projects coming into life. The mission believes that such a transition is obviously a natural and desirable evolution, and that it has been reasonably well prepared on the conceptual (project concept) plane. Programme design as a whole has been more context-specific and more diversified than in past FAO emergency operations. Projects often include clearly identified exit


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strategies for emergency assistance and pathways to development assistance, as previous sections of this report have tried to illustrate. However, the mission would like to stress that the practical dimensions of this transition should be organised in a more orderly, concerted and collaborative manner. The risks if the institutional disconnect were allowed to persist throughout the transition phase could be the following:

• Loss of part or totality of the current field assets and presence. All it would take is a few weeks without being able to pay the rent, honour salaries and engage partners. In an environment such as Aceh, the landlord will quickly find another tenant, national staff will look for other opportunities and partners could find support from elsewhere. Similarly, cars, office equipment purchased under the emergency programme could only be retained by FAO if there is no breakdown in its local presence; otherwise they will have to be donated to the Government;

• Loss of institutional memory; and • Insufficient follow up of projects initiated during the emergency and reconstruction phase,

leading to reduced impact. 3. “Input Bias” The first RTE mission identified in the FAO response a bias towards the delivery of physical inputs, and mentioned that Technical Departments tended to attribute this bias to TCE. The second mission confirms the diagnosis of an “input bias”, but would like to offer a caveat and a qualification. The caveat is that the FAO tsunami response has allocated a much large share of its budget to the provision of technical assistance and policy support than did previous FAO emergency operations. The qualification is that the FAO tsunami response has displayed a bias towards (or preference for) helping individual producers recover some of their physical production assets, at the expense of “software” activities such as capacity building and training, advisory function or coordination, but also at the expense of community infrastructures and other segments of the value chain such as support services or marketing, even when these were severely affected as was the case with the irrigation and drainage systems in the agriculture sector and with landing sites, markets and cold chain facilities in the fisheries sector. Defined as such, the “input bias” applied to all sectors and countries, including Thailand where TCE was not in charge of the programme. It was even a tendency in the forestry sector in Indonesia, where the question, at the time of the second RTE visit, was to decide upon what to do to help communities at the grassroots level. It may very well be that TCE is more inclined than Technical Departments to distribute physical inputs. However, the “input bias” is due to other factors as well:

• Donors’ insistence that a significant part of their budget be allocated to physical assets; • The FAO Director General’s strong emphasis on input delivery at the onset of the

response; and, last but not least • Demand from governments and beneficiaries themselves. Important productive assets

have indeed been lost, and assets must first be replaced before advice can be heard. There would be little sense in trying to provide training or advice to a fisher who lost his boat and nets without first replacing his assets. Of course, training and advice can and must be provided when assets have or are being replaced, if only to make sure that the donated items are used properly (e.g. training of tractor operators, promotion of responsible fisheries).


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As for the relative lack of attention given to support systems and values chains, it may be due to the perception that the rehabilitation of small, village-level infrastructures is technically more challenging and requires more time than the delivery of individual production inputs. Inside the Organization, the “input bias” is perceived as a problem for a number of objective reasons:

• The main one is that FAO is not very good at logistics in general and therefore often finds it difficult to procure, store, transport and distribute physical items in large quantities in time. This frequent weakness in logistics was highlighted in the first RTE report and may result from the relative novelty of these emergency operations for FAO.

• Perhaps as a consequence of the point above, initially FAO tended to send few administrative staff to the field and relied on subject matter specialists to manage the asset replacement programme. Such technical specialists were understandingly not aware of the numerous financial, contracting and procurement rules of the Organization and tended to be “sucked into” a lengthy and largely inefficient search for appropriate delivery mechanisms, at the expense of their normal duties such as the provision of technical assistance.

• Input specifications and adequacy to beneficiaries’ requirements have often been a problem. Some weaknesses were identified by the second RTE Mission in the selection of appropriate fishing gear in Thailand and Indonesia and in the distributed ploughing equipment in Indonesia. It must be recognized that finding the right input specifications is much more complicated in capture fisheries than, say, in food aid delivery. A further complicating factor is that the type of fishing gear used by fishers can vary significantly within a given country. In most cases, the beneficiaries adapted the donated equipment themselves (sometimes at significant cost). This being said, the mission is of the opinion that the local fishing techniques and technico-economic requirements of would-be beneficiaries have been insufficiently studied in Indonesia and Thailand. The case of Sri Lanka where the gears were found largely adequate illustrates the importance of working with seasoned international and national staff with a good grasp of local fishing techniques.

The observations above apply to a degree or another to all countries in the sample, but seem to bear particular relevance in the case of Indonesia. In Aceh, advisory and training services were successfully developed in the fisheries sector when the objectives of the boat replacement programme were greatly reduced, thus illustrating the fact that technical staff can provide a broader array of services than just production inputs when they are not fully absorbed in procurement and contracting. The mission concludes that the right balance between software and hardware needs to be determined on a case-by-case manner, based on pragmatic considerations such as what sort of assistance other actors are providing in quantity and quality in each particular country or response, and taking into account donors’ and recipient governments’ interest in physical and technical assistance in emergency responses. If FAO were to discontinue all input delivery operations, it could run the risk of losing significant donor resources and, most importantly, of being viewed as irrelevant by the very governmental and non-governmental partners it is trying to support and influence. Conversely, focusing too narrowly on the delivery of physical inputs at the expense of coordination, technical assistance and training, tends to position FAO on a segment where it is not particularly efficient and to reduce the impact it can have on the quality of the operations run by other partners.


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4. Beneficiary Selection and Satisfaction

4.1. Problem statement It should be recognized at the outset that the main TCE approach of distributing production inputs to individuals in replacement of lost assets lends itself to helping the richer segments of society, i.e. those who owned those assets in the first place before the tsunami (land owners, boat owners, etc.). This has also proven a problem in previous FAO emergency operations. It should be stressed that supporting the rehabilitation of common property goods such as irrigation systems or fish landing sites would probably be less prone to this sort of side effects, as such infrastructure tends to benefit a wider group of people. When distributing individual production assets, the cost of the asset is also a factor: the costlier the item, the more potentially unfair its distribution will be. Another aspect of the problem is that such asset replacement programmes typically pursue two distinct and at time conflicting objectives:

1. Rebuild the economy rapidly and efficiently, which calls for helping good, established asset managers, i.e. richer segments of society; and

2. Help the most vulnerable segment of society overcome the disaster, under the assumption that the better-off can take care of themselves.

In practice, these diverging objectives are often weaved into a seemingly coherent statement in project documents. As an illustration, here is the beneficiary section of the project document for OSRO/SRL/510/SPA:

“The primary targeted beneficiaries are poor coastal fishers in affected regions who lost their production assets, i.e. the means to support their livelihood, and who are unlikely to meet their immediate food needs of their families without assistance.” [emphasis added]

Chances are that those people who lost production assets were, more often than not, the better-of segments of society in those coastal villages, and the formulation above is a bit of a paradox. The mission believes that FAO should reach conceptual clarity on what it tries to achieve in emergency projects, and would argue that the Millennium Development Goals to which the Organization has subscribed require an attempt to reach out to the poor and to include them in its programmes at least on a par with better-off people, even if at times this would mean donating to the poor assets that they may not have possessed before the disaster. The important thing is not whether standard eligibility criteria have been fulfilled to satisfy project planners, but whether the beneficiary selection is perceived as fair locally, at the village level where it has the greatest potential for creating tensions. The goal should be to try and recapitalise communities and individuals who lost their means of livelihoods, without specifying too narrowly the profile of intended beneficiaries. In most cases, targeting decisions are best left at the community level, in a process facilitated by local government and/or NGO staff. In any case, FAO is currently not in a position to monitor the degree of compliance with its rather detailed beneficiary selection criteria, as this would call for an M&E system far costlier and more elaborate (involving teams of monitors independent from the NGOs distributing the inputs) than what is currently available. For instance, the following criteria were developed for the seed, fertilizer and tractors distribution of OISCA on the North-East coast:

• farmers located in the tsunami-affected area without seed or with difficulties accessing seed and other inputs;

• farmers stricken by the tsunami and who have lost more than half of their production; • marginal groups affected by the tsunami: resettled internally displaced persons (IDPs)

with access to land, returning refugees, widows, elderly persons and orphans;


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• farmers must be willing to put in their own labour and equipment as required into planting and growing the supplied seed;

• farmers must be farming in a secure area; • farmers with access to not less than 0.5 ha of land.

Monitoring compliance with the above criteria would imply that FAO assess accurately and independently the amount of production farmers have lost in the tsunami, their capacity to access seed, their acreage, etc. It could of course be done, but at a significant cost.

4.2. Beneficiary selection in the three sampled countries Different approaches to targeting or beneficiary selection were chosen in the affected areas, in line with damage and needs assessments, the respective policies of government partners, and at times the inclinations of the FAO staff dealing with each particular project in Indonesia. In all cases, the role of the local government and customary structures was preponderant in beneficiary selection. The most frequent process was to have the list prepared by the village headman or the lowest level of the administrative structure, sometime based on damage assessment lists (Thailand, Sri Lanka), and have this list verified by a non-governmental implementing partner, either a local or international NGO. This process seems to have worked well in most cases. In Thailand, all affected areas / provinces were covered by the FAO response, and the same was at least attempted in Sri Lanka, while in Indonesia only few and smaller focal areas were selected from the considerable expanse of coastline affected. In spite of the relatively large volume of operations, this concentration in Indonesia was necessary given the huge scale of the damage. Both the poorer and relatively better-off segments of coastal populations seemed to have received assets more or less equally, particularly in Thailand. In Sri Lanka, assistance to boat repair was provided to both small and large (day- and multi-day) boats, while the replacement of fishing gear concentrates on small or artisanal fishers only. The mission did come across anecdotal evidence of favouritism to wealthier and better connected boat owners, but in general the response in Sri Lanka was quite egalitarian. This was clearly a result of the Government drive to reach as many beneficiaries as possible.26 The Government decided to use a voucher system and to place a relatively low cap on the amount of assets that would be replaced. This system tended to thinly spread the asset replacement programmes of FAO and other actors who abided by it over a large number of beneficiaries, in practice even benefiting fishers who had not owned boats or fishing gears before the tsunami. As explained in the Sri Lanka section of this report, the likely impact of this policy is that the fish catch may tend to be spread more evenly amongst fishers, as catch distribution heavily depends on the share of capital (boat, gears) owned by each fisher. In Indonesia, assistance in the field of boat building and repair (including quality control and training on building skills) is focused exclusively on smaller (5-12 m) boats, and this applies also to the provision of fishing gears. With regard to the replacement of lost fish processing equipment (e.g. fish drying racks and accessories) the assistance is provided to the better established fish processors with a focus on kick-starting the economy in this sector.

26 The fact that 2005 was an election year and that the assistance to tsunami affected communities was a highly politicized issue may have played a role in this decision.


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4.3. Beneficiary selection in the two main sectors The most striking fact to report is that in the agricultural sector, many if not all of the communities met by the mission and BA in the three countries indicated that some form of community redistribution had taken place after the “official” distribution. Farming communities have often shared the predefined packages throughout the entire village, or in any case with a larger group of beneficiaries than intended by the programme. The following cases can be given as examples: • Thailand: coconut trees, fertiliser • Sri Lanka: seeds and fertiliser • Indonesia: seed, fertiliser and tractors, with an extreme case of fertiliser shared between

paddy farmers and fish farmers to fertilize fish and shrimp ponds. Interviewed communities explained that they did so in order to avoid the social tensions that would always result from a distribution to selected members of the community, or in some cases, to take care of the discrepancies between the standard package offered and the variety of land areas cropped by beneficiaries. As a result of these redistributions, FAO may have many more beneficiaries than it is aware of in the agricultural sector, but each of them has benefited less than was intended. The case of the hand-tractors distributed in Indonesia is interesting in this regard. The FAO projects funding this particular initiative forecasted that each tractor would be distributed to a group of 30 farmers, who would then select a tractor operator. The tractors were supposed to become private property of the selected operators after a few years. In contrast, most benefiting communities allocated the tractor to the entire village (often including fish pond farmers) and they insist that the tractors remain a community asset forever. FAO in any case lacks leverage to impose its point of view on communities, and it is dubious whether it should even try. This type of community redistributions, which testifies to strong social cohesion, was only rarely witnessed in the fisheries sector. The mission came across only one such case in a village of Thailand, where planks for boat building and repair had been redistributed among community members according to their varied needs. The mission concludes that these input redistributions among villagers are a positive thing as long as they are voluntary and help correct disparities between the supply and the demand for assets. The fact that they happened much more frequently in the agricultural sector may be due to stronger social cohesion among farmers than among fishers, as the latter compete for the same resource (fish) while the former are bound to help one another or cooperate at times, e.g. to set up, manage and maintain irrigation systems. Generally speaking, satisfaction was high amongst benefiting farming communities, while interviewed fishers in all three countries tended to be more argumentative. This contrast between the two sectors can be attributed to a variety of factors. One is the simple fact that expectations for assistance were much higher among fishers than among farmers because the fishery sector was much harder hit by the tsunami. Another is that FAO is more experienced in running emergency programmes in the agricultural sector than in the fisheries sector, and may therefore have “got it right” more often in agriculture than in fisheries.

4.4. Gender balance in beneficiary selection The first RTE report underlined that, with most of the focus on repairing and replacing boats and gears for fishers, women’s livelihoods had not received the attention they deserve. There has been progress on this front, with a number of recent projects addressing mostly or partly activities where women tend to be leaders, most notably the distribution of processing equipment in Aceh,


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of which about 30% direct beneficiaries are women. A number of small activities have also been taking place in Sri Lanka (support to the establishment of tree nurseries, nutritional training) that were directed specifically at women. Finally, the mission is glad to report that it met with many female beneficiaries in the agricultural sector in the three visited countries, including members of female farmer groups, and concludes that gender balance in beneficiary selection has been given due consideration by FAO and its governmental and non-governmental partners in the agricultural sector. 5. Preliminary Indications of Impact The second RTE mission came too soon to be able to study impact in any serious manner, but it was able to collect a few indications of what the impact of the programme could be: • In Thailand, the positive effect of the soil reclamation inputs (gypsum, organic fertiliser) on

soil salinity was confirmed by interviewed beneficiaries. The distributed 300 kg of animal feed per beneficiary allowed for 10 buffaloes to be fed for a period of one month to one month and a half in the three-month dry season when much grass had been burnt by the salt. The RGT relayed FAO’s assistance to cover the rest of the dry season with hay from Saratina Farm. Farmers would have liked to receive more feed and less or no mineral blocks. Engine distribution under a revolving fund scheme had just started at the time of the second RTE mission and fishers in at least one location planned to use proceeds not for additional loans to procure new engines, but for the cleaning and management of a marine protected area. However, there are mixed feelings among those who received assistance for aquaculture (fish cage farming) operations, as small sea bass seedlings either died or escaped from the cages due to their excessively small size.

• In Sri Lanka, the agricultural inputs have allowed for the early resumption of agriculture and horticulture production. When asked what sort of support they are looking for in the future, farming households interviewed in the BA spontaneously and overwhelmingly proposed salinity control measures and the rehabilitation of irrigation and drainage structures. Fishers had their boats (hulls + engines, though engine repair was somewhat delayed) repaired and received fishing gear at least in some places. The early CEYNOR intervention allowed for a quick reconstruction of the sector and fishing activities, but the fact that they often distributed repair material to boat owners for them to organise the repairs gives rise to doubts about the quality of some repairs. Some of the “repaired” boats will need further repairs soon. Many fishers received only one of the three necessary assets (boat, engine and/or fishing gear) or not enough gears to fish effectively, yet this does not necessarily mean they cannot fish, as the mission met with fishers who had joined forces with other beneficiaries to complement their assets and resume fishing.27

• In Indonesia, the impacts of the programme are more variable. The agricultural input distributions did not always result in successful crops because of the prevalent salinity problems. The construction of boats, delivery of fishing gears and rehabilitation of aquaculture ponds were much delayed and are not expected to have an impact before well into 2006. Advisory services in the fisheries and agriculture sector helped inform the BRR policies and the boat building trainings, combined with much emphasis given to boat quality in various coordination fora, had a positive impact on the quality of boats built by trained boat builders within the NGO community.

27 It should be noted that both the focus group discussions and household interviews of the BA indicate a difference in the degree of beneficiary satisfaction between the East and South for boats, engines and fishing gears, with the East being more satisfied than the South. This may be due in part to differences in the effectiveness of the respective CEYNOR personnel, and in part to enumerator’s bias: in view of the language requirements, the enumerators were not the same in the South and East.


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The issue of incorrect input specifications has been highlighted above. In a limited number of cases (e.g. shrimp gill nets in Thailand) this has led to the input being largely unusable. In a majority of cases, however, the recipients adapted the concerned inputs, sometimes significantly correcting the design (e.g. ploughing blade in Indonesia, squid traps and engines in Thailand) in order to use the distributed items. Some of these alterations are costlier than others, and the cost is generally borne by the recipient. In all three countries of the sample, much has been said about the likely negative impact on fish stocks of an excessive fishing capacity that could be created by the great number of gear distributions and boat building programmes that followed the tsunami. FAO has funded surveys and created databases to analyse the geographic distribution of boat building activities by NGOs and donors, and through such recovery surveys has helped highlight this risk of over-fishing. The most recent recovery assessment in Sri Lanka indicates that there are already more boats in the country than before the tsunami, and this sort of input should therefore no longer be distributed. In Indonesia, overall maximum targets for new boat construction have been issued by FAO (6,000) and the BRR (10,000). The mission would like to point out that little is known about the effective use made by fishers of the observed excess capacity. As highlighted by the recovery assessment in Sri Lanka (see p. Error! Bookmark not defined.), one may not necessarily assume a linear relationship between fishing capacity and fishing effort. Donated boats and gear have first to be used effectively by their beneficiaries before they translate into an actual fishing effort. For this to happen, the donated items need to be of sufficient quality. In Sri Lanka, it is estimated that from 15 to 20% of all small boats (FRP and traditional crafts) repaired and replaced so far are unusable because of faulty design or poor repair. The mission observed a large number of idle, sometimes seemingly abandoned small boats along the South and West coasts. In Banda Aceh, the Panglima Laot Provincial Office estimates that 20 % of all newly constructed small boats will never be used because of poor balance, that another 40 % will be used for about 2 years before being discarded, and that only about 40 % will get used for a longer time. In order to strengthen its analysis and advisory efforts in capture fisheries, FAO may wish to systematically include use rates for repaired or donated items as an explicit variable in its fishing capacity surveys. 6. Sustainable Livelihoods Approach The mission was asked to look at ways to integrate a livelihoods approach into the tsunami recovery operations. It did so with the help of a livelihoods specialist joining the team in the Indonesia mission, thanks to financial assistance from the DfID-funded LSP.

6.1. Livelihoods approach(es) in Aceh “If 2005 was the year of shelter, 2006 will be the year of livelihoods”. This statement by an OCHA official seemed to sum up accurately the trend prevailing in Aceh among UN agencies, NGOs and national and international institutions. Most organizations seem concerned with livelihoods and many have a livelihoods component in their programmes. UNORC is setting up its office in Banda Aceh and is looking for a Livelihoods Advisor. The BRR data indicate that livelihoods support was the biggest “sector” of assistance from NGOs and donors at the end of 2005. A Livelihoods Recovery Working Group has been set up and it disseminates information about livelihoods among a large number of members at a weekly meeting chaired by UNDP. FAO staff often attend these meetings. In general both the necessity of incorporating livelihoods in programming and the importance of livelihoods in recovery are acknowledged and this is seemingly backed by concrete action in the form of programmes. After closer scrutiny, however, a number of flaws appear.


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With the exception of a small number of organizations (Oxfam, Care, Save the Children) the majority of actors are not well aware of what the concept of Sustainable Livelihoods Approach means and do not apply it as a comprehensive system for the preservation of livelihoods. Both within the FAO office and outside, among other organizations, this lack of awareness of the concept has led to misunderstandings. For all the talk about SLA in Aceh, there is a dearth of useful literature describing livelihoods in the province and there is no compilation of existing reports and studies. There is a strong demand from NGOs and donors for such types of analyses, and this is an area where FAO could usefully contribute. The most significant forms of livelihood support have been in the form of cash grants, micro-finance and “cash for work”. Direct infusion of cash into disaster affected societies is a new initiative which aims partly at giving people more empowerment by enabling them to make their own choices. In Aceh several organizations have implemented cash projects. They include Mercy Corps, Save the Children, the British Red Cross, the Swiss Development Corporation (SDC), Oxfam, and International Relief & Development. FAO has also implemented cash-for-work projects in Indonesia with some difficulties described above. The lack of coordination and strategy in the implementation of these livelihoods projects was pointed out in a recent report to the British Disaster Emergency Committee.28 The London-based think tank Overseas Development Institute (ODI) is conducting a DfID funded research programme on cash interventions to assess their effectiveness and usefulness and document their impact (as against in-kind interventions) on inflation, the local market forces, and livelihoods.29 A number of NGOs including Oxfam, CARE, World Vision, Mercy Corps, are also planning evaluations of their livelihood programmes.

6.2. Sustainable Livelihoods Approach – the concept The concept developed in the 1980s and further refined in the 1990s was used in recent years by a number of organizations throughout the world, and most notably by the British Department for International Development (DfID) to deal with some of the most acute problems in developing countries. In its present acceptation, the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach seeks to achieve poverty reduction by looking at the problem from the point of view of the poor, and the very poor. This should take place in parallel with general economic recovery (or growth). It should not be blurred by economic prosperity. A prosperous economy can accommodate poverty and either accommodate or lead to the existence of a number of poor people. A livelihood is defined as comprising “the capabilities, assets (including both material and social resources) and activities required for a means of living. A livelihood is sustainable when it can cope with and recover from stresses and shocks and maintain or enhance its capabilities and assets.”30 Some of the main features of the approach are:

• It is people centred • Its is responsive • It is dynamic

28 Tony Vaux et al. Independent Evaluation of the DEC Tsunami Crisis Response. Report to the DEC Board. December 2005. 29 ODI/UNDP Cash Learning Project Workshop in Aceh, Indonesia, to share experience and learning for cash interventions. Workshop Report, June 16th and 17th 2005. 30 Chambers & Conway, 1992.


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• Its application is multi-level (micro, meso, macro) • It is conducted in partnerships • It is meant to be sustainable • It is holistic in its outlook • It is environmentally sound

These features are in evolution. They are not seen as a definitive system but rather as a continuously improving approach. It should be borne in mind that it is experimental and not scientifically proven or fool proof. The approach obviously does not guarantee impact. In addition, it does not determine precise areas of intervention, and does not help determine precise methodology for intervention. Practitioners may find the framework useful, for example, to put their own projects in context and for understanding the various forces that may impact on, and give new directions to, their projects. The framework underlines the context of vulnerability in which people live. This context defines the factors (trends, shocks, and seasonality) which affect the availability of assets. The framework identifies five separate types of assets (the asset pentagon) which determine livelihoods. They are the human, social, physical, natural and financial capital. These assets change constantly. They combine differently to either improve livelihoods or force towards marginalization. They play a key role in determining livelihood outcomes.

6.3. FAO and livelihoods FAO HQ has taken the SLA on board with varying degrees of enthusiasm. FAO has published a number of documents on the concept of SLA and a few examples of its application. This is understandable, given that the SLA approach was conceived in a rural context. Within the FAO office there is a multitude of opinions concerning livelihoods, of which the three most representative are summarised here: • “FAO is not and should not be in the business of livelihoods.” • “FAO should be dealing with livelihoods, but this should be done as part of a programme

designed in the field or with close collaboration with field staff and relevant authorities. It should not be imposed from HQ in the form of a ready-made project document, or as an effort to rewrite all existing programmes and their implementation arrangements with a SLA spin while they are still being implemented.”

• “FAO should deal with livelihoods; this is essential to programming and activities, but livelihoods should constitute a separate livelihoods project which would link up to existing sectoral projects.”

The RTE feels that it should observe caution in its recommendations both towards the applicability of SLA in emergency programmes and towards methodologies to be used in mainstreaming the concept. Some basic stipulations can nevertheless be made to ensure successful programming with a livelihoods perspective, some of which are already taken on board. These recommendations are included in the following section.


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E. Recommendations This section is divided into three sub-sections according to the various levels to which the recommendations are addressed. General recommendations are basically addressed to everyone involved in the tsunami response in FAO. Sector-specific recommendations tend to focus on those issues that the respective technical officers in HQ and RAP should take into consideration. Finally, country-specific recommendations are chiefly addressed to the respective staff in FAOR and ERCU Offices. 1. General Recommendations

1.1. Streamlining operational modalities for emergencies Some of the changes that need to be brought to the regulatory framework are already well known, and should be considered urgently: • Beef up administrative capacities in the field: If FAO needs to decentralize its administrative

processes, it ensues that it needs to invest in administrative skills at the national (FAOR and ERCU) level. This implies the following necessary steps: a more flexible national salary/consultancy scale should be adopted, the constraints placed over the hiring of short-term staff (compulsory breaks in particular) should be lifted, and a proper field staff training programme should be set up in administrative processes and other domains.

• Modernize bids assessment: in procurement, a common issue has been the use of either time or cost as the so-called prime factor in awarding bids. A more flexible and widely used approach is now being considered, called value-for-money procurement (i.e. multi-criteria evaluation of bids) which would allow for a variety of criteria to be weighted, including the track record of the bidders with FAO. This approach should be tested / adopted as soon as possible.

• Adjust LoA regulations: allow advance payments for LoAs and suppliers; permit the signing of several LoAs with the same organization at a given time.

• Increase significantly FAOR and ERCU spending and procurement authority and generalize impress accounts in emergency operations.

• Improve HQ service orientation in relation with field offices: In their correspondence with programme staff and whenever administrative staff at HQ do not sanction a particular proposal emanating from the field, they should always propose alternative solutions. More generally, a culture of service orientation may need to be reinforced at HQ.

• Beef up monitoring procedures to provide ex post control and facilitate information management; develop, include and enforce standard monitoring and reporting mechanisms in emergency operations; survey beneficiary satisfaction through third-party enumerators e.g. from local universities (post-distribution surveys should not be performed by implementing partners as that leads to conflict of interest). Stronger reporting and monitoring processes would also help the Organization improve its reporting to donors by providing the required data on implementation progress and on outcomes at the beneficiaries’ level.

• Do not attempt the undoable: in contrast with life-saving agencies like WFP distributing food, or Médecins Sans Frontières setting up emergency health outposts, FAO cannot pre-position or store items for distributions because the sort of items it distributes (seeds, tools, gears etc.) are likely to change from one crisis to another. Thus FAO is rarely in a position to react to an emergency in less than five to six months from the time the disaster struck to the first distribution. When faced with a new emergency, the Organization should normally not attempt to “catch the next crop” if the planting season for that next crop is less than 6 months away, and should instead focus on catching the subsequent cropping season.


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The modest steps proposed above may help in the short term but they may not resolve all bottlenecks and restore the operational capacity of FAO to a competitive level. Depending on the extent and outcome of the current FAO reform process, there may be a need for a more extensive reform based on clearly identified resources and managerial commitment to accept a certain level of risk when implementing emergency programmes. It should be stressed that the input risks (risks of embezzlement) involved in relaxing ex-ante controls over procurement or contracting pale in comparison with the considerable outcome risks that FAO is currently taking with its lengthy contracting and payment processes (resulting in a poor reputation of the Organization at the field level) and late delivery of assistance (leading to reduced usefulness of the delivered inputs).

1.2. Continue to fight the “input bias” The right balance between software and hardware needs to be determined on a case-by-case manner, based on an analysis of what sort of assistance other actors are providing in quantity and quality in each particular context, and giving consideration to donors’ and recipient governments’ interest in physical and technical assistance in emergency responses. While the FAO tsunami response has managed to offer a wider array of services than previous FAO emergency operations, there is room for additional emphasis on a broader range of services: • Damage assessments and analysis of livelihoods and value-chains; • Rehabilitation of small-scale common-use infrastructures (medium to large systems are

better left to larger and richer organizations such as ADB), and reconstruction of entire value chains rather than just the production segment; this is particularly important in the tsunami response because of the major devastation brought to the coastal areas;

• Coordination services to governments, NGOs and donor; • Policy advice on pressing (and sometimes politically risky) reconstruction issues; and • Practical, hands-on and demand-driven capacity building of NGOs and governments, over

and beyond the specific needs of the FAO input distribution programmes.

1.3. Spread inputs or assets equitably to as many beneficiaries as possible The MDGs call for helping more people with small quantities, rather than a few people with big quantities. In other words, FAO would be well advised not to target its assistance too narrowly on groups and criteria defined at HQ. In the visited villages, communities often decided to (re)distribute small quantities to many villagers, and FAO should be following their example: • When physically possible as not all inputs are dividable: boats or cows are hard to cut in

pieces; • Among mandated target groups (farmers, fishers, etc., as there is little point in giving a fishing

net to someone who never fished in his life); • Focusing geographically on priority areas and those not covered by other actors providing

similar assistance; and • In a participatory way at the district and village levels; as tensions created by a targeted

distribution are likely to be high at the village level, this is were targeting decisions should be taken in order to be perceived as equitable by the community; FAO should not discourage community redistributions of inputs as long as these are voluntary.

The general practice of having village headmen, CBOs and/or local government officials draft a beneficiaries list later checked by an independent NGO is supported as a best practice. It does take time, however, and there is a need to start the targeting process quite early during project implementation.


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1.4. Pay more attention to inputs specifications

• As a technical agency, FAO should better recognise the importance of beneficiaries’

technical and economic requirements (as opposed to mere preferences), adherence to which often makes the difference between a usable and a non-usable item. Even when beneficiaries will be able to adapt the equipment to their needs by modifying part of the structure or design, the cost of these alterations will in most cases be borne by them, thus tapping into household resources that could probably be put to a better use in the aftermath of a disaster.

• The mission believes that the best way to make sure that delivered items fit beneficiaries’ requirements is through a mechanism such as the seed fairs and seed vouchers schemes, whereby the beneficiaries themselves chose the inputs they want. However, these sorts of voucher- or cash-based delivery systems could entail risks in that beneficiaries could procure ecologically damaging fishing gear.31 Some control over the types of gears to be provided under such systems may therefore need to be maintained.

• If FAO cannot do the above owing to regulations or operational limitations, it should as a minimum find ways to involve representatives of beneficiary groups in the specification and choice of inputs, as was already done for fish processing equipment in Indonesia (a similar process is envisaged for the cattle replacement project).

• Another key factor in getting the specifications right is to identify the right national or international staff to draft the specifications. Grassroots, practical experience with fishers and farmers is invaluable here, as even very qualified scientists or specialists may lack the sort of intimate knowledge of local fishing techniques and farming systems required to understand fishers’ or farmers’ requirements.

1.5. Integrate the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach in careful, practical ways

• Promote an understanding of the concept as precise as possible, without imposing it from

above. Adopting the SLA is somewhat similar to gender mainstreaming. There is no formula for it but it necessitates a change of attitude. Well meaning initiatives without clear understanding of the requirements and purposes of the SLA can easily lead to tokenism and programme failure. It may be necessary to provide field staff with a simplified document describing and explaining the SLA. Such a document should contain the core principles and essentials methods of the approach and suggest ways and means of implementing it in project formulation and implementation.

• Study the context of FAO’s interventions better. Steps should be taken at the outset of an emergency programme (assessment phase) to quickly and cursorily study the socio-economic context, the social and cultural profiles of the beneficiaries, social stratification and power relations within the community, local economic forces and value chains, division of labour and gender specific activities, even taboos or interdicts which may hinder or enhance the programme. An important dimension is the ownership of assets within the community as this will often dictate the direction of beneficiary selection as well as the type, quality and quantity of inputs. An effort should be made to identify and separate if necessary the “haves” and the “have nots”.

• Adopt a participatory approach in programme formulation and in beneficiary selection. As much as possible programmes should be developed in consultation with the beneficiaries and the concerned government. Their opinion should be respected and integrated into the design of the programme.

31 Cash-based transfers – and alternatives – in tsunami recovery programmes” by L. Adams, Tsunami Cash Learning Project (HPG/ODI) in Humanitarian Exchange no. 32.


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• Keep opportunities in mind. During the needs assessment phase, survey non-destroyed assets and infrastructures and not only destroyed ones, as existing assets and infrastructure could become important building blocks for a rehabilitation strategy. Sometimes disasters are also an opportunity to introduce positive changes (“building back better”). The improvements in boat design introduced by FAO into traditional boat building in Indonesia are a positive step in that direction.

• Adopt a more holistic and programmatic outlook. Study and try to repair entire value-chains rather than just food production. Promote cross-sectoral action, focusing on precise and pressing issues that can only be successfully addressed this way such as the green belt issue in Indonesia. It should be stressed that, as Integrated Rural Development before it, SLA has often stumbled upon excessive complexity and multi-sectorality. The key is that the synergies tapped by working cross-sectorally should offset the additional cost and complexity entailed by such an approach. The mangrove study project in Thailand (THA/05/001) and the multi-sectoral livelihoods-oriented project in Sri Lanka (OSRO/SRL/505/ITA) constitute interesting steps in this direction, and interestingly, both make reference to ICAM, a concept which is not without similarities with the SLA.

1.6. Better prepare the forthcoming transition between TCE and Technical

Departments, RAP and Country Offices • Technical departments, RAP and FAO representations should urgently consult with TCE and

set up one or several (e.g. by country) cross-departmental transition teams, with a mandate to prepare for a professional and orderly transition from an emergency programme mainly operated by TCE to a long-term development programme managed by the regular, development-oriented units of the Organization. Such teams should develop or advance project concepts based on already identified pathways to development, identify or cultivate donors and partners in a coherent way, identify likely follow up activities to consolidate the impact of emergency projects, list the assets that constitute the FAO field presence (staff, premises, equipment), and ensure that these assets are retained during the transition rather than being lost to other organizations. These transition teams should also go to the field together so as to gain first-hand knowledge of FAO projects and assets, and meet with the most important donors and partners together.

2. Sector-Specific Recommendations

2.1. Agriculture • FAO should monitor salinity levels more regularly than it did in 2005, using the EC meters it

distributed and by the same process training local government staff and extension workers on the use of the EC meters and on soil sampling procedures. This monitoring should help identify those areas with persistent salinity problems and allow a diagnosis of the cause of the problem, as intended in project OSRO/SRL/512/CHA. In Thailand, it could be a good idea to use the salinity testers being procured to set up a simple protocol to assess the impact of gypsum and organic fertilizer on soil salinity, in comparison to the sole effect of monsoon rains (as already recommended by the first RTE report).

• The FAO tsunami response should expand its focus to include the rehabilitation of those small-scale damaged irrigation and drainage systems that can be salvaged (taking due consideration of subsidence), through cash-for-work or mechanised approaches as appropriate. Resources are apparently identified in Indonesia for this purpose, and the same should be done in Sri Lanka. If resources cannot be identified for this purpose, the role of FAO may be in providing technical assistance and coordination channels to other


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organizations undertaking physical rehabilitation. In Indonesia, FAO could usefully team up or at least coordinate with ADB on this subject, as well as on salinity testing.

• The input distribution programmes in Thailand and Sri Lanka have already been discontinued, and appropriately so. In Indonesia, there is still a need to support the reconstruction of sustainable (commercial) seed and input provision systems. This work should start with a diagnosis of local (including traditional and commercial) varieties and of seed supply systems. The provision of good quality seed is often less of an issue than the identification of adapted genetic material. This would call for proper variety trials screening locally available and candidate varieties, including salinity tolerant varieties.

2.2. Fisheries

• The socio-economics of the sector in the affected countries have not been studied in much

depth. Over and beyond the already well advanced and recognized surveys of the fishing capacity (number of boats destroyed, new, repaired), there is much demand in Indonesia and Sri Lanka for value chain and livelihoods analyses that could inform the decision of all actors engaged in the reconstruction of the sector. Some fishing techniques seem more profitable than others. Opportunities exist for the future that need to be studied and highlighted to guide reconstruction and investment choices.

• Fish seed appear much more difficult to distribute than plant seed in an emergency context. In the future, it is recommended to avoid distributing fish seeds, or to do so with extreme precaution, using as much as possible local procurements from the same area and thus avoiding long transport.

• As in the agricultural sector, more attention should be paid to the restoration of key support infrastructure such as landing sites, ice plants and marketing channels. The role of FAO may be in the physical rehabilitation of the infrastructure or in the provision of technical assistance and coordination channels to other organizations undertaking physical rehabilitation.

• Pathways to developmental work abound, with value addition throughout improved post-harvest practices and the restoration of the entire value chain, boat registration (and hence monitoring of the fishing effort) and safety at sea being the most promising. FAO should also support the implementation, and disseminate the results, of rapid resource assessments which generate information on fish stocks and exploitation status, in order to support fisheries management and to promote responsible fisheries according to its own CCRF.

• The cautionary remarks issued above on SLA and the danger of overly complex and multi-sectoral approaches apply to ICAM as well. ICAM initiatives should be piloted carefully and focussed on key issues such as the green belt in Indonesia. The mission would also like to point out that ICAM, like SLA, can be easily misunderstood. It does not entail that a coastal resource management plan should be authored by an external consultant for circulation to all involved. Rather, it means a participatory approach in which all the concerned stakeholders are brought together around the negotiating table in order to agree on regulations and approaches for the management of shared coastal resources. It is less about planning than about good governance, and as such it requires long term commitment.

2.3. Forestry

• FAO should address policy issues within its mandate in Aceh (sourcing timber for

reconstruction, negotiating the green belt at the district level). In general it should be stressed that providing policy advice in such conditions (massive reconstruction needs, strongly politicized debate, crisis resolution backdrop) entails political risks. However, the mission believes it is the duty of UN organisations to provide neutral, fact-based, and socially and environmentally appropriate advice to governments in such situations, and that there could


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have been a good opportunity for FAO to play the role of an honest broker on timber sourcing in Indonesia.


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3. Country-Specific Recommendations

3.1. Thailand • Some of the project documents include insufficient “software” such as policy dialogue or

capacity building activities. For instance, OSRO/THA/504/CHA, undertaken in cooperation with a Government distribution of net houses, doesn’t budget any training activity on top of the two-day supplier training. The Team takes note of the fact that follow-up on-the-job training and technical advisory services are committed by the Agriculture Extension Services of MOAC, but would like to recommend that FAO identify a national, well-qualified backstopping institute, considering that the objective of developing horticultural crops with little pesticide use is rather ambitious. Attention is drawn to the fact that the AGPC Horticultural Crop Group has considerable experience with soil-less and pesticide-free cultures and may be able to help in providing backstopping and/or in identifying a local backstopping partner.

• The awareness-raising component of THA/05/001 should not only cover the information content, but also the design of the respective media messages and the effective dissemination in order to achieve impact. Its budget may need to be raised significantly.

• In THA/05/002, the resource management issues discussed with one group of beneficiaries during the evaluation mission deserve further consideration, in particular in relation to and building upon the fishing capacity study and stakeholder analysis yet to be conducted. FAO could play a key role in scaling up or at least keeping alive the local resource management experiments promoted by the CHARM project and the Save the Andaman Network (SAN) when the CHARM project comes to an end by December 2006.

• The integrated coastal management plan envisaged as an output of THA/05/001 would likely require a considerably longer time-frame than presently foreseen. It should be viewed as a long-term undertaking, and will require inputs from all other coastal resources and resource uses, and should be developed in a more participatory fashion (stronger involvement of the resource users and other local stakeholders).

3.2. Sri Lanka

• Set up a strong monitoring system to verify that the two payments still to be effected to

CEYNOR for boat repairs are indeed used in part to refund boat owners for the repair costs they supported. This monitoring system could for instance consist in checking one in every five or ten CEYNOR’s beneficiaries, randomly selected based on the job cards. Putting CEYNOR and the Ministry of Fisheries on notice that FAO will conduct such random verification could have a positive effect in and by itself.

• The ERCU’s current efforts to check beneficiary lists for the upcoming distribution of fishing gear needs to be capped by the systematic and prolonged presence of FAO personnel at hand-over points during the distribution itself, in order to ensure that the distributions take place fairly and in an organized way. These fishing gear distributions should be organized in collaboration with landing site committees, for added legitimacy.

• On the longer term, some capacity building activities may be appropriate in the area of post harvest and value chains. Many NGOs and donors are distributing cold boxes or setting up ice factories, etc., but the quality gains and value addition are likely to remain small if fishers and fish handlers do not learn how to better handle high-value fish (e.g. tuna) both at sea (multi-day boats) and at landing site.

• A survey of community irrigation and drainage structures in need of repair would appear advisable for raising donors’ and NGOs’ awareness of the matter and for preparing FAO rehabilitation projects. The project OSRO/SRL/512/CHA could also include in its salinity monitoring a sample of community irrigation and drainage schemes that have been damaged and later repaired, in an attempt to measure the impact of good drainage on salinity levels.


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3.3. Indonesia

• As a matter of urgency, try and provide the rotary system to each and every tractor-benefiting

village. Ensure proper hands-on training of tractor operators. • Review logistical bottlenecks and improve communications with implementing NGOs during

distributions. • Seek to provide training and technical support to NGOs and local governments on demand,

as these are often entrusted with vast financial resources but have little technical knowledge. Such training should be focussed on crucial reconstruction issues, practical, field-based and not academic (the boat building trainings make for a good example here).

• The Panglima Laot structure offers an invaluable social asset for beneficiary selection, and is widely used. It should continue to be used in the area of its mandate: conflict resolution, common resource management, lobbying and information dissemination. However this resource, if over-used, will tend to deplete itself: don’t give them an economic role as this economic role of Panglima Laot or its representatives may negatively affect and diminish their traditional role. Beware of entrusting too much financial resources to them (including to the NGOs and companies formed by PL secretaries or chairmen), and check their beneficiary selection, as many NGOs already do, including a few FAO partners.

• Strengthen beneficiary selection procedures and local negotiations, in ways that are perceived fair locally. Request independent NGOs verification of lists of beneficiaries elaborated by Panglima Laots and village headmen, and build this into the LoAs with NGOs.

• Try and promote the participation of NGOs in Working Groups: encourage NGOs to present their own papers; resist from coming in large numbers (too large an FAO presence may discourage others from participating and talking); make sure that minutes are well shared and proofed by participants so that they are perceived as a fair representation of open debates. This may call for a clearer distinction between the Working Group and the Steering Committee in Fisheries. Try and revive the Ag. WG, on the basis of the dynamic created by the recent workshop.

• Find cost-effective ways of sharing information more systematically and transparently inside the office, e.g. a quick-paced weekly staff meeting where each section reports on what has been done the previous week and what is planned for the next. Avoid lengthy theoretical discussions at these meetings; keep them action-oriented and business-like. Identified complex issues should be dealt with in smaller meetings.

• Set up a simple monitoring system centralising key information for donor and HQ reporting. Develop and share a few synthetic documents updated monthly or bi-monthly to facilitate management and information sharing: an LoA tracking sheet (e.g. as in agriculture), maps of programme activities, and a synthesis of the overall budget.

• Lobby other UN agencies in Banda Aceh to make a concerted request to UNDSS to lower the security level to Phase II.


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ANNEXES


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Annex 1:

Terms of Reference for a Real Time Evaluation of FAO Operations in Response to the Tsunami Emergency

Background

The unprecedented emergency caused by the December 2004 Tsunami in South Asia provoked an equally unprecedented response from the International Community and the UN. As a first response, FAO committed US$ 1.5 million from its own limited resources to needs assessments and early recovery in Indonesia, Maldives, Sri Lanka, and Thailand and mobilized 35 experts within one month. Through the UN Flash Appeal, FAO appealed on 6 January for US$ 26.5 million for six countries – Indonesia, Maldives, Myanmar, Seychelles, Somalia, and Sri Lanka – and for US$ 2.5 million for regional activities in partnership with UNDP and UNEP. As of 9 February, funds approved for FAO amount to US$ 31.1 million including US$ 12.5 million in cash received. Three donors - Germany, Norway, and United Kingdom - made commitments to FAO’s newly established Special Fund for Emergency and Rehabilitation Activities (SFERA). FAO’s assistance is focused on the agriculture and fisheries sectors; regarding the latter, the Group of 77 and the European Commissioner for Fisheries have called upon FAO to take the lead in coordinating rehabilitation of the fisheries sector in the region. FAO’s intervention strategy follows a flexible, step-wise response: • Needs and damage assessment in the agriculture and fisheries sectors; • Short-term rehabilitation activities including input delivery (such as fishing gear, boat repair

kits, replacement boats, irrigation pumps, soil salinity testing equipment, seeds, fertilizers, hand tractors tools, and other agricultural inputs) and repair contracts/casual labour (e.g. for rehabilitation of harbours, anchorages, fish storage and processing facilities, repair of irrigation and drainage infrastructure) and cash for work (land clearing, etc.);

• Technical assistance to facilitate coordination of the rehabilitation efforts and provide technical/strategic guidance

• Formulation of rehabilitation and recovery strategies and programmes; By February 2005, FAO had fielded numerous missions to the region and had 70 international and regional experts deployed across Indonesia, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Thailand and Myanmar. These included fisheries specialists, agronomists, experts in salinity issues, in horticulture, irrigation and water management, and property rights. Rationale for the RTE The magnitude of the support mobilized calls for particular attention to ensure efficient and effective use of resources by FAO. More specifically, the reasons for a Real Time Evaluation (RTE) of FAO operations stem from the following considerations: • The volume of funds involved and the diversity of sources require adequate disbursement,

reporting and management procedures, as well as rapid and effective supervisory mechanisms;


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• The size and complexity of operations in the seven affected countries call for responses tailored to local specific circumstances and needs, as the extent and depth of damage differ;

• A history of political conflict in some of the affected areas necessitates a politically sensitive approach;

• The wide range of partners and stakeholders intervening simultaneously in the same areas and sectors requires effective coordination mechanisms;

• The changing character of the intervention over time – initial high intensity of humanitarian operations followed by rehabilitation programmes, with a longer term perspective of reconstruction and development – highlight the need for adequate guidance and review for successful transition from relief/emergency to recovery/development; and last, but not least;

• The worldwide attention focused on the efficiency and transparency of UN operations call for timely feedback on the use of resources made available.

Purpose of the RTE The RTE is to serve multiple purposes: 1. Provision of immediate feedback and guidance to FAO management on strategic and

operational achievements (what works well) and constraints (what doesn’t work well) in order to improve impact, timeliness, coverage, appropriateness, sequencing and consistency of operations;

2. Promoting accountability to populations affected, Governments, donors and other stakeholders on the use of resources to reinforce participation, transparency, and communication;

3. Identification of gaps or unintended outcomes, with a view to improving the FAO strategy and programme’s approach, orientation, coherence and coordination; and

4. Drawing lessons on FAO’s capacity to respond timely and adequately to a sudden natural disaster and to support livelihood recovery and development efforts in the agriculture, fisheries and forestry sector.

Scope of the RTE Generally, the RTE will provide ongoing and timely assessments of FAO’s Tsunami response vis-à-vis the Organization’s mandates as (i) UN lead agency for emergency response, recovery and development of the agriculture, forestry and fisheries sectors, and (ii) implementation agency entrusted by some donors with direct livelihood protection operations. In this context, the RTE will review processes such as strategic and operational programming, information flows, management issues (including disbursements and procurement arrangements), internal coordination as well as external coordination and support to transition planning, assess FAO’s advocacy work and partnerships32, and analyse the Tsunami Relief Operations’ actual and potential impact. Furthermore, in reviewing FAO’s operations, the RTE will consider recommendations made and lessons learned of recent evaluations carried out on emergency operations and will pay attention to the extent to which these recommendations and lessons have been taken into account in the planning, programming and management of the Tsunami related operations. More specifically, the RTE will include assessments of the following: • Accuracy and comprehensiveness of needs assessments and targeting;

32 To the extent possible, including an assessment of partner organizations’ capacities.


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• Relevance of Tsunami Relief operations to needs of the affected populations (including consideration of alternative approaches, such as cash transfers);

• Adequacy of (international and national) human and financial resources mobilized; • Realism in the design and planning of operations; • Efficiency of operations 33 : timeliness, cost-effectiveness (including consideration of

outsourcing and delegation arrangements), internal coordination and backstopping mechanisms (including roles and responsibilities of FAO HQ and regional and national decentralized offices);

• Coordination and complementarities with all those involved in the provision of assistance in the agriculture and fisheries sector (including avoidance of duplication, and harmonization of approaches);

• Technical, social, economic and political soundness and feasibility of strategies, programmes and projects;

• Quantity and quality of inputs and services (including technical assistance) delivered, and outputs produced;

• Actual and potential effects and impact at three levels of beneficiaries/stakeholders34: o Directly affected populations, including smallholders, artisanal fisher folk, as well as

small agri-businesses in agriculture, forestry and fisheries (with specific attention to gender aspects and the conditions of most vulnerable groups);

o Service providers, including local and regional staff of line ministries, humanitarian, Non Governmental and Community Based Organizations, UN agencies, and other FAO partners;

o Decision-makers (national Governments, UN agencies, other humanitarian /NGO organizations, and donors).

Process and Methodology FAO’s RTE is meant to be part of an international coordination effort for inter-sectoral, inter-agency evaluations of Tsunami assistance initiated by ALNAP and OCHA. The scope, the approach and the methodology of the RTE may be adjusted if opportunities for evaluation collaboration occur. The RTE process will be participatory and iterative. Attention will be given to ensuring the ownership of its results by the main stakeholders (see section on reporting/information dissemination/RTE interface below) and to providing immediate feedback to FAO management and others on the on-going assistance. Openness, transparency and constructive criticism will be part of the process. Participatory in the context of the FAO RTE means that views, feedback and suggestions for improvement will be collected from the three groups of beneficiaries/stakeholders mentioned above. Staff’s views and feedback will be particularly important for the assessment of internal processes and for integrating the evaluation results into management processes. The evaluation questions and approaches to be used by the mission will be defined in more detail before the actual field work. Inputs from FAO colleagues, partners and stakeholders are expressly requested so as to guide the mission’s work, and make its approach more representative. It is expected that some issues raised in the ongoing TCE review/visioning process could also be considered as key questions for the RTE. The RTE will be carried out over approximately a one year time-span and will consist of three stages to assess FAO’s role and response at different points in time: post-inception, mid-term, 33 Issues such as admin/finance rules and processes will be taken into account, but are expected to be dealt with by dedicated, separate missions. 34 N.B. This will be difficult at beneficiaries’ level: the RTE main mission can do it only indirectly. It is suggested to include national beneficiary assessments (on a case study basis) in the three major countries concerned.


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final. Each round will include a desk review, field visits to countries, in-country reporting and feedback mechanisms (such as reports, workshops, bulletins, and telephone conferences). The RTE will make use of a number of tools, including document analysis, interviews, field visits, SWOT analysis with stakeholders, focus groups discussion, beneficiaries impact assessment, etc. according to circumstances. For the beneficiary impact assessment, the RTE will commission national Beneficiary Assessment studies to feed into the evaluation. All stages of the RTE will include internal FAO briefing and debriefing sessions, as well as briefing and debriefing sessions with partners and decision makers at the national level. Stage 1 of the RTE will have a dual purpose: it will be a scoping exercise for the RTE mission while at the same time providing timely and pertinent feedback to FAO management and main donors/partners and stakeholders. The focus will be on operational aspects of the emergency phase (bullet points 1 to 6 under Scope above), but also include an initial review of strategic initiatives developed for the post-emergency phase. An internal report covering the mission’s conclusions and recommendations will be prepared following the field work. Stage 2 will have the following objectives: (i) to analyse strengths and weaknesses of FAO’s response, including management and coordination processes; (ii) to formulate – based on consultations with FAO colleagues and main stakeholders – operational as well as strategic recommendations, and (iii) to strengthen – through an extension of the consultative process, the ownership of findings and recommendations of the RTE. In addition to extensive FAO-internal briefing and debriefing sessions, a regional partner workshop will be organized. An interim report for wider circulation will be prepared following the workshop. Stage 3 will consolidate the RTE findings and recommendations, and concentrate on the lessons learned as well as the assessment of outputs, effects and impact. Also stage 3 will feature a regional workshop; in addition, a final report will be prepared to include lessons learned on FAO’s efficiency and effectiveness in its response to the emergency and on its role and capacity as leading agency in the coordination of the agriculture fisheries and forestry sectors. Provision will also be made for internal and external feedback on the RTE process and methodology and for the formulation of suggestions for future RTEs. RTE stages 2 and 3 will pay specific attention to the implementation of agreed recommendations and adjustments made. At the end of each stage (and if needed, also in between), the issues to be addressed by the RTE at the next stage will be revisited, and if necessary adjusted and fine-tuned to allow for an adequate response to changed circumstances and to address eventual requests for information received from stakeholders35. Team Composition The RTE team36 will be composed of: • One PBEE (Evaluation Service) staff member who will particularly focus on institutional

and learning aspects of the evaluation and will ensure continuity over the evaluation period; • One international consultant with experience in emergency and rehabilitation operations

with a good knowledge of FAO; • One international consultant with experience in fisheries;

35 Due to changing circumstances in the field and the flexible nature of the RTE, additional missions cannot be ruled out. The need for this should be considered at the time of the second workshop. 36 The mission composition will vary according to the stages of the RTE: the composition defined here applies to the first RTE mission starting in May 2005.


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• One rural livelihoods and gender officer (TCEO - Emergency Operation Services, Sri Lanka) who will particularly look at the integration of gender considerations into project implementation, and beneficiary analysis; and

• National consultants37 (one in each country) recruited in Thailand, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka, appointed if possible in agreement with the respective governments.

Reporting, information dissemination, and interface with stakeholders The RTE will deal with four categories of stakeholders: (1) the directly affected populations, (2) regional and local service providers/partners, (3) decision-makers and partners at national and regional level (national Governments, UN agencies, other humanitarian/NGO organizations, donors) and (4) FAO management and staff (field, regional and HQ staff). The mission itself will be able to provide only limited feedback to the directly affected populations: to the extent possible, the mission’s field visits will be organized in such a way as to provide the maximum interface with affected populations and their representatives. (The beneficiary assessment missions are expected to complement this effort.) Regional and local service providers are expected to give and receive feedback during briefing and debriefing sessions with the mission, and again through interaction with the beneficiary assessment team. Decision-makers at the national and regional level (national Governments, UN agencies, other humanitarian/NGO organizations, and donors) will be met at briefing and debriefing sessions, and will also be invited to the workshops supported by the RTE. Within FAO, the mission will interact with staff and management in FAO HQ and regional and national decentralized offices. (An eventual link to the high-level Tsunami Committee still needs to be decided) Within FAO HQ, the Technical Departments concerned (AG, FI and FO) as well as TC Department are expected to nominate members (departmental focal points, or specific nominees) for an RTE Committee to review and guide the process. Governments (in all affected countries) will be invited to nominate focal points to interact with the RTE. It is suggested that the RTE be given some flexibility concerning information products prepared by the mission. The choice of information products and channels of communication will depend on the intended audiences. Careful attention will be paid to distinguish between internal working documents intended for FAO, and those reports, bulletins, presentations etc. produced for a wider audience. For information products in the latter category, it is suggested to allow for their circulation in the public domain (accompanied by an appropriate disclaimer). At the end of each mission, there will be a report submitted to FAO Higher Management (proposed circulation: addressed to Director of TCE, with copies to ADG, TC, FAORs concerned, ADG, RAP, and Focal Points in Technical Departments). The interim report (at the end of Stage 2) as well as the final report (end of Stage 3) will be circulated to a wider audience, including the Inter-agency and Donor Evaluation Coalition. Timetable and Itinerary Three missions, with durations of up to five weeks, will take place in three countries: Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand. Indonesia and Sri Lanka have been selected for the volume of operations involved and Bangkok for being a regional hub (but also field operations will be reviewed). The 37 Also to coordinate the national beneficiary impact assessment studies. These national consultants should be kept on a retainer in order to participate not only in country missions, but also so as to provide some continuity of feedback in between missions.


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first mission will take place in May 2005. A field visit to Maldives is envisaged in order to assess the situation in one of the small island states affected. Further details regarding the dates of country visits will follow as soon as the mission composition has been confirmed, and logistical arrangements clarified.


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Annex 2: Itinerary Mon 24 - Fri 28 Oct Rome, meetings with PBEE, TCE, AG, FI, FO

Sat 29 Oct Departure for Bangkok

Sun 30 Oct Arrival in Bangkok

Mon 31 Oct FAO RAP Office briefing, meeting with Beneficiary Assessment team in Thailand

Tue 01 Nov Bangkok, meeting with government and partner institutions

Wed 02 Nov Flight Bangkok - Phuket in the morning, field visits in Phang Nga

Thu 03 Nov Field visits in Phuket

Fri 04 Nov Field visits in Krabi and Trang

Sat 05 Nov Field visits in Satun; return to Bangkok in the evening

Sun 06 Nov Flight BKK - Colombo

Mon 07 Nov Colombo, meetings with FAO Rep, ERCU, government and partner institutions

Tue 08 Nov Meeting with partner institutions and Sri Lanka Beneficiary Assessment team

Wed 09 Nov Field visits, Kalutara

Thu 10 Nov Field visits, Galle

Fri 11 Nov Field visits, Tangalle. Meeting with the FAO Tangalle Office.

Sat 12 Nov Field visits (Dondra, Dikwella, Weligama)

Sun 13 Nov Travel back to Colombo

Mon 14 Nov Meetings with partner institutions, government and donors in Colombo

Tue 15 Nov Debriefing with FAO / ERCU in Colombo

Wed 16 Nov Flight Colombo - Bangkok - Jakarta

Thu 17 Nov Jakarta, meeting with FAO Rep, government, UN orgs.

Fri 18 Nov Flight Jakarta - Banda Aceh

Sat 19 Nov Meeting with ERCU office and partner institutions

Sun 20 Nov Meeting with ERCU office and partner institutions

Mon 21 Nov Meeting with Beneficiary Assessment team


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Tue 22 - Wed 23 Nov

More meeting with partners in Banda Aceh; attendance to the FAO Agriculture Consolidation Workshop and the GTZ Coastal Management Workshop.

Thu 24 Nov Meetings in Banda Aceh

Fri 25 Nov Field trip on North-East Coast: Pidie - Panta Raja

Sat 26 Nov Field trip on North-East Coast: Bireuen

Sun 27 Nov Drive back to Banda Aceh

Mon 28 Nov Meetings in Banda Aceh

Tue 29 Nov Meetings in Banda Aceh

Wed 30 Nov Debriefing with FAO Banda Aceh in morning, leave for JKT in the afternoon

Thu 01 Dec Debriefing with FAO Rep in morning; meeting with JICA and Japan Embassy in afternoon

Fri 02 Dec Report writing

Sat 03 Dec Flight Jakarta - Bangkok

Sun 04 Dec Bangkok - Rome

Mon 05 - Tue 13 Dec Report writing and follow up meetings in Rome

Wed 14 Dec Debriefing with HQ and with RAP by video-conference


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Annex 3: Persons Interviewed FAO Rome: Fernanda Guerrieri Chief TCEO Cristina Amaral Senior Operations Officer TCEO Mariano Gosi Agronomist TCEO Alexander Jones Tsunami Operations Coordinator TCEO Andrew Sobey Administration Officer TCEO Victoria Sun Operations Officer TCEO Sanna Lisa Taivalmaa Development Economist TCEO Laura Jane Tiberi Operations Officer TCEO Mirela Hasibra Operations Officer TCEO Sylvie Wabbes-Candotti Agronomist TCEO Richard China Senior Economist TCER Patrick Jacqueson Programme Officer TCER Erminio Sacco Emergency and Transition Strategy Officer TCER Regina Gambino Procurement Strategy & Monitoring Officer AFSP Catherine Meier Special Legal Adviser AFSP David Baugh Senior Finance Officer AFFC Pedro Andreo Andreo Internal Auditor AUD Bernd Bultemeier Evaluation Officer PBEE Daniel Renault Senior Officer - Irrigation System AGLW Florence Egal Nutrition Officer ESNP Lahsen Ababouch Chief FIIU Lena Westlund Fisheries Consultant FIIT Marc Nolting Fish Farming and Aquaculture Consultant FIIT Dominique Greboval Senior Fishery Planning Officer FIPP Rolf Willmann Senior Fishery Planning Officer FIPP Nick Parsons Director GIID Marta Bruno Rural Socio-Economist SDAR Dalia Mattioni Food and Nutrition Economist TCID Thailand: Royal Government of Thailand: Waraporn Prompoj Chief, International Coop. Group, Fisheries Dprt - MOAC Duanghathai Danviwat National FAO Committee, MOAC MOAC Steering Committee Kanok Katikarn Inspector General, MOAC Chamaiporn Tanomsridejchai Foreign Relations Officer, DOAE/MOAC Atchara Somsuay Plan and Policy Analyst, DOAE/MOAC Thongarg Dhandang Plan and Policy Analyst, DOAE/MOAC Kasem Prasutsangehan Plan and Policy Analyst, FARD/MOAC Nuttharon Kaewwichit Director, Phang Nga Provincial MOAC Raweewan Yinguansiri Chief of Livestock Office, Phang Nga Provincial MOAC Suwannee Srinak Livestock Officer, Phang Nga Provincial MOAC Apichat Kanjanaopas Chief of Extension Office, Phang Nga Provincial MOAC Kasem Phatsung Extension Officer, Phang Nga Provincial MOAC Apichart Khanom Assistant Director, Satun Provincial MOAC


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Charoen Omanee Dprt of Fisheries, Satun Provincial MOAC Thanastanee Sawatdirak Director, Phuket Provincial MOAC Sompong Pean Tong Phuket Provincial MOAC Supakit Indopala Phuket Provincial MOAC Issara Bujayarut Phuket Provincial MOAC Manoch Charungkettikajon Tai Muang Learning Center – DOAE/MOAC Augchara Nopparat Tai Muang Learning Center – DOAE/MOAC Sakarind Tunsakul Tai Muang Learning Center – DOAE/MOAC Piyaporn Natrug Tai Muang Learning Center – DOAE/MOAC Thapacha Tavaroj Tai Muang Learning Center – DOAE/MOAC Taluengsak Junechum Tai Muang Learning Center – DOAE/MOAC Jarupa Rodtook Tai Muang Learning Center – DOAE/MOAC Sontaya Junetayong Tai Muang Learning Center – DOAE/MOAC FAO RAP Office: He Changchui Assistant Director General/Regional Representative Hiroyuki Konuma Deputy Regional Representative Yuji Niino Land Management Officer Suzan Braatz Senior Forestry Officer Masakazu Kashio Forest Resources Officer David Dawe Senior Food Systems Economist David Brown Senior Food System Economist Derek Staples Senior Fishery Officer Thierry Facon Senior Water Management Officer Simon Funge-Smith Aquaculture Officer Peter Ooi Regional Coordinator, Ag. Recovery and Emergency Yuji Niino Land Management Officer Buddy Hla Chief, MSU Hideko Tsuji Programme Officer (Thai Affairs Section) Kayo Torii Programme Officer (Thai Affairs Section) Tienpati Supajii Assistant (Thai Affairs Section) FAO National Consultants: Kungwan Juntarashote National Consultant – Fisheries; Director of the Coastal

Development Center, Kasetsart University Apinan Kamnalrut National Consultant – Agriculture Sakul Supongpan National Consultant – Fisheries Other Partners: Joana Merlin-Scholtes UN Resident Coordinator/UNDP Resident Representative Håkan Björkman Deputy Resident Representative, UNDP David Hollister Disaster recovery Advisor, UNDP Barbara Orlandini Manager, Inter Agency Support Unit Pete Bueno Director General, NACA Hassanai Kongkeo Special Adviser, NACA Yves Henocque Co-Director, CHARM Sanchai Tandavanitj Co-Director, CHARM Tanu Nabnian Save the Andaman Network/CHARM Parkpoom Witantiratiwat Save the Andaman Network/Federation of Southern Fisherfolks Jonqrak Save the Andaman Network/Federation of Southern Fisherfolks


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Communities, fishers and farmers in:

Village Sub-district District Province

Ban Tha Theng Na Tuey Thai Muang Phang-Nga Ban Kaolak Lum Kaen Thai Muang Phang-Nga Ban Phalay - Muang Phuket Ban Bor Rae Wichit Muang Phuket Ban Morgan Maikao Thalang Phuket - Tao Kao Kram Ao Luk Krabi - Khon Klan Thung Wa Satun - Paknam La Ngu Satun Ka Beng Laemson La Ngu Satun Sri Lanka: Government of Sri Lanka: L.K. Hathurusinghe Director/Projects, Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock G. Piyasena Director, Dprt of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, Ministry of

Fisheries H.S.G. Fernando Director, Dprt of Ocean Resources, Ministry of Fisheries Indhra Kaushal Rajapaksa Director, Livelihoods Dprt, TAFREN Bandula Abeygunawardena Finance Manager, Cey-Nor Foundation Ltd Ratnatilaka Assistant Director, Fisheries Dprt, Kalutara District FAO: Pote Chumsri FAO Representative Premalal Kuruppuarachchi Assistant FAO Representative (Programme) Mona Chaya Emergency and Rehabilitation Coordinator - Tsunami Serge Tissot Emergency Programme Officer Giuseppe Simeon Emergency Programme Officer Giuseppe de Bac Horticulture Expert Claude Fernando Fisheries Consultant Leslie Joseph Fisheries Development and Management Consultant Kamalsiri Nissanga Boat Repair Programme Coordinator Raymond Patrick Marine Engineer R.R.D. Warnadasa Marine Engineer Cyril Binduhewa Fishing Gear Specialist Sydney Jayawardene Fishing Gear Assistant Samantha Rathnayake Programme Assistant Chamila Livera District Officer, Galle Nuwan De Silva Assistant District Officer, Galle Saverio Frazzoli Area Coordinator, FAO Tangalle Office Veronica Grazioli Volunteer from Italian Protezione Civile, FAO Tangalle Office H.R.C. Fernando National Project Officer, FAO Tangalle Office Sarath Amarasekera Deputy National Project Officer, FAO Tangalle Office H.A.B. Rodrigo District Officer, FAO Tangalle Office Other Partners: Paolo Bononi Office Coordinator, Italian Cooperation


73

Roland Steurer Director, GTZ Peter Seibert Consultant, GTZ Erik Brede Counsellor, Royal Norwegian Embassy Vidya Perera Senior Advisor, Royal Norwegian Embassy Lars Engvall Project Implementation Consultant, ADB Gunnar Album Tsunami Rehabilitation Project, Coastal Campaign/A.J. Fishing Christin Lidzba Program Manager, CBM (German NGO) Communities, fishers and farmers in:

Locality District Province

Galle harbour Galle Southern Province Yatlegeh Galle " Tangalle harbour Tangalle " Ambalantota Ambantota " Dondra harbour Matara " Dikwella Matara " Weligama Matara " Indonesia: Government of Indonesia: Mappaona Director, Bureau of Planning, MoA Pamela Fadhilah Head of Planning Resources, Bureau of Planning, MoA Zainul Arifin Panglima Polem Head, Food Crops and Horticultura Dinas, NAD Iskandar Ahmad Head, Dinas Kelautan dan Perikanan, NAD Fadhli Usman Reporting Officer, Dinas Pertanian in Jenieb, Pidie Rafiani M. Yusuf Community Empowerment Officer, Camat Office in Jenieb, Pidie FAO: Man Ho So FAO Representative Benni Sormin Assistant FAO Representative Bart Dominicus Emergency Coordinator Christophe Charbon Agronomist Henry Franks Senior Technical Advisor for BRR Peter Flewwelling Chief Technical Officer - Fisheries Michael Savins Master Boat Builder Michael Phillips Aquaculture Specialist Arun Padiyar Consultant – Aquaculture Yudha Fahrimal Consultant – Livestock Alfizar Agronomist Akmal Syukri National Consultant – Fisheries Mulia Nurhasan Consultant – Small Scale Fish Processing Angus Graham Programme Officer Priya Gujadhur Reporting and Information Officer Erkan Ozcelik Operation Officer Ronald Dijk Land and Water Management Specialist (Meulaboh Office) John Stevens Consultant – Agriculture George Kuru Consultant – Forestry Hasan Yudie Sastra Consultant – Agriculture Machinery


74

Timothy Nolan Liaison Officer Other Partners: Reyko Niimi Deputy Resident Coordinator, UNORC-Jakarta Enayet Madani Deputy Head of Office, UNORC-Banda Aceh Samsudin Berlian Information and Advocacy Officer, UNORC Simon Field Team Leader (Livelihoods), UNDP Lyndal Meehan Coordinator, Livelihoods Network, UNDP Cheikh Dia Technical advisor to BRR, French Cooperation Robert Rice Economic Revitalization Officer, BRR H.T. Bustama Chairman, Panglima Laot organization Adli Abdullah General Secretary, Panglima Laot Montaki Finance Officer, Panglima Laot Dafitzal Secretary, Lhok Kuala Panglima Laot Dewan Anshari Chief, Bintany Kejora Cooperative Aurélia Balpe Livelihoods Coordinator, Internat. Federation of the Red Cross Günther Kohl Project Leader, GTZ Hendri Regional Project Manager, GTZ Barbara Jung Social Development, GTZ Fahmiwti Coordinator Banda Aceh, GTZ Hitoshi Oikawa First Secretary – Agriculture, Japan Embassy Keiichi Kato Resident representative, JICA Dinur Krismasari Program Officer, JICA Dominique de Juriew Food Security Coordinator, ACF Patrick Cherubini Consultant – Fisheries, Triangle Pierre Gildas Fleury Fisheries Programme Manager, ACTED Chaidir Abdurrahman Project Coordinator for Aceh, OISCA Fauzan Misri Assistant Coordinator, Aceh Province, OISCA Zamah Syari Ali Coordinator, Aceh Utara district, OISCA Sarbini Abdullah Coordinator, Bireuen district, OISCA Giuseppe Busolacci Gruppo di Volontario Civile Flavia Pugliese Gruppo di Volontario Civile Cathy McWilliam Project Officer, Legal, IDLO Lesley Adams Research Ass., Tsunami Cash Learning Project, ODI Martin Foth Programme Officer, Coastal Management, InWEnt Shekhar Anand Livelihoods Advisor, Oxfam Eric G. Karlzen Economic Recovery Manager, World Vision Johan Kieft ACD Strategy & Programme Development, CARE International Marthen Malo Operations Manager, CARE International Grégoire Poisson CARE International Sasha Muench Financial Access Program Manager, Mercy Corps Communities, fishers and farmers in:

Village Sub-District (Kecamatan) District (Kabupaten) Province

Ulhee Lheu Meuraxa Aceh Besar Aceh Pante Raja Pante Raja Pidie " Ujung Pi Ganda Pura Bireuen " Cot Blumpang Baro Jeunib Bireun " Teupin Keupala Jeunib Bireun "


75

Annex 4: Donors’ Contributions to the FAO Tsunami Response

Source: FAO Field Programme Management Information System (FPMIS) Last updated: 16 February 2006

Data based on Financial Year: 2005

Donor Total Budget as per FPMIS

(US$)

European Commission 12,219,130

Italy 9,398,520

Norway 7,614,769

Belgium 5,768,416

Japan 5,016,972

OCHA 4,900,111

Finland 3,776,100

Germany 2,873,615

Spain 2,399,050

UNDP 2,387,100

Sweden 1,655,844

FAO 1,490,219

United Kingdom 1,113,000

China Peoples' Republic 900,000

Canada 809,454

Conad Supermarket, Italy 240,000

Ireland 186,255

Church of God in Christ (African-American Religious Organization) 150,000

Peoples' Democratic Republic of Lao and private donations 100,000

United States of America 100,000

American Red Cross (ARC) 72,496

Grand Total 63,171,051


76

Annex 5: List of Projects of the FAO Tsunami Response

Source: FAO Field Programme Management Information System (FPMIS) Last updated: 16 February 2006

Data based on Financial Year: 2005

Project Symbol Donor Project Title (and UN flash appeal profile reference)

Total Budget (FPMIS)

EOD Original NTE

Revised NTE

Lead Technical

Unit

Project Objectives

SFERA COORDINATION AND ERCU SUPPORT OSRO/GLO/402/MUL BABY09

United Kingdom

Establishment of FAO Emergency and Rehabilitation Coordination Units (ERCUs) in the Tsunami affected Countries through the Special Fund for Emergency and Rehabilitation Activities (SFERA)

$1,064,257 2005-02 2005-06 2005-12 TCEO FAO Emergency and Rehabilitation Coordination Units-ERCU set up and coordination support

OSRO/GLO/402/MUL BABY10

Norway Establishment of FAO Emergency and Rehabilitation Coordination Units (ERCUs) in the Tsunami affected Countries through the SFERA

$2,180,500 2005-01 2005-12 2006-06 TCEO FAO Emergency and Rehabilitation Coordination Units-ERCU set up and coordination support

OSRO/GLO/402/MUL-BABY08

Germany Establishment of FAO Emergency and Rehabilitation Coordination Units (ERCUs) in the Tsunami affected Countries through the SFERA

$147,000 2005-01 2005-06 2006-06 TCEO FAO Emergency and Rehabilitation Coordination Units-ERCU set up and coordination support

Sub-total Sfera ERCU support $3,391,757 SFERA NEEDS ASSESSMENT SUPPORT OSRO/GLO/403/MUL BABY07

Norway Assistance for communities affected by Tsunami

$95,685 2005-01 2005-06 2005-12 TCEO Rapid Deployment of Needs Assessment missions to the Tsunami affected Countries


Germany Emergency and Rehabilitation Needs Assessments in the Tsunami affected Countries through the SFERA



United Kingdom

Emergency and Rehabilitation Needs Assessments in the Tsunami affected Countries through the SFERA



Norway Emergency and Rehabilitation Needs Assessments in the Tsunami affected Countries through the SFERA


Sub-total Sfera Needs Assessment support $711,743 SFERA SECTORAL OR THEMATIC SUPPORT AND OTHER TSUNAMI GCP OSRO/GLO/501/MUL Canada Technical Assistance and fisheries coordination $809,454 2005-05 2005-06 2005-12 FIIT Provide a clear budget to Fisheries Technical


77



EOD Original NTE

Revised NTE

Lead Technical

Unit

Project Objectives

BABY01 activities in response to Indian Ocean Flash Appeal

Divisions for their technical coordination and back up of activities within FAO tsunami emergency and early rehabilitation programme.

OSRO/GLO/502/FIN Finland Forestry Programme for Early Rehabilitation in Asian Tsunami Affected Country

$3,776,100 2005-06 2006-12 FODO Help restore the livelihoods of the people in the tsunami-affected areas and to contribute to an improved and more secure future for them through forest rehabilitation and reforestation.

OSRO/GLO/503/NOR Norway Technical Assistance Coordination Activities $319,500 2005-01 2005-12 2006-06 AGLW Provide a clear budget to Technical Divisions for their technical coordination and back up of activities within FAO tsunami emergency and early rehabilitation programme.

GCP/INT/984/MUL Sweden Coordination and technical support unit to tsunami rehabilitation and reconstruction in fisheries and aquaculture

$1,655,844 2005-12 2007-12 FIIT Contribute to the development of sustainable livelihoods in the coastal communities affected by the tsunami and reduce their vulnerability to future natural disasters. This will be brought about by offering assistance for the preparation and implementation of medium and long-term fisheries and aquaculture rehabilitation and reconstruction programmes and activities, and through enhanced regional collaboration and coordination.

Sub-total Sfera Sectoral / thematic support $6,560,898 REGIONAL PROJECTS OSRO/RAS/501/BEL Belgium Rapid assessment of agriculture relief needs

and immediate provision of agricultural inputs to worst affected fisher and farmer groups in South East Asia

$120,000 2005-01 2005-09 FIIT Undertake an assessment and evaluation of needs and distribute limited agriculture inputs for the relief and rehabilitation of affected farmer and fisherfolk in the worst affected areas.

OSRO/RAS/503/CHA OCHA Regional co-ordination and information management on strategies for early recovery of agriculture in coastal regions

$800,000 2005-10 2006-06 RAPG Support governments of the tsunami-affected countries to coordinate, plan and implement agricultural rehabilitation activities in order to maximize its positive impact on the affected communities.

OSRO/RAS/504/LAO Peoples' Democratic Republic of

A rapid assessment of the status of the fisheries in tsunami affected areas of Indonesia and Sri Lanka

$100,000 2005-12 2006-06 FIIT Enhance knowledge of the impact of the tsunami on fisheries, habitats and marine resources and make this more accessible to


78



EOD Original NTE

Revised NTE

Lead Technical

Unit

Project Objectives

Lao and private donations

policy decision makers and for medium to long term sectoral planning.

OSRO/RAS/506/ARC American Red Cross (ARC)

ARC-FAO Inception Mission (Sri Lanka and Indonesia)

$72,496 2005-09 2005-12 FI Implement a joint FAO-ARC inception mission for the formulation of programme aiming at the sustainable rehabilitation and development of livelihoods of coastal communities affected by the earthquakes and tsunami in Indonesia and in Sri Lanka

Sub-total regional projects $1,092,496 SRI LANKA TCP/SRL/3004 FAO Emergency assistance to support the

rehabilitation in earthquake/tsunami-affected areas

$397,584 2005-01 2005-10 RAPI Assist the Government‘s efforts for a rapid re-establishment of sustainable income generating activities that were destroyed by the earthquake and tsunami. The project beneficiaries are the poor artisan fishing communities.

OSRO/SRL/501/BEL Belgium Assistance to Tsunami affected fisher folk households in Sri Lanka

$1,921,945 2005-01 2005-12 2006-06 FIIT Provide fisheries inputs and equipment for the relief and rehabilitation of affected fisherfolk in the worst affected areas.

OSRO/SRL/502/GER Germany Rehabilitation of the fishing sector in tsunami affected district of Hambotana, Sri Lanka

$124,145 2005-01 2005-12 FIIT Facilitate cooperation and collaboration between the Parties in the areas of mutual interest in Sri Lanka, particularly the Fisheries sector in the Hambantota District in the South of the country.

OSRO/SRL/503/JPN Japan Assistance for affected coastal communities in Sri Lanka (- TSU - REG/SRL-05/ER/I02- REGION -SRI LANKA)

$2,671,000 2005-01 2005-07 2005-12 FIIT Help poor artisanal fishing communities in the affected regions, comprising about 75 percent of the Sri Lankan coastline, who lost their production assets and subsequently the means to support their livelihoods.

OSRO/SRL/504/ITA Italy Integrated programme for the emergency rehabilitation of the fishery sector in the tsunami-affected districts Trincomalee, Matara, Galle and Hambantota, Sri Lanka

$3,770,100 2005-06 2006-01 2006-06 FIIT Assist the Government of Sri Lanka in its efforts for a rapid re-establishment of sustainable income generating activities that were destroyed by the tsunami. The project beneficiaries are the poor artisanal fishing communities.

OSRO/SRL/505/ITA Italy Emergency assistance for the rehabilitation of $5,628,420 2005-05 2007-04 FIIT Assist the Government of Sri Lanka in its


79



EOD Original NTE

Revised NTE

Lead Technical

Unit

Project Objectives

fisherfolk communities in the tsunami-affected districts of Trincomalee, Matara, Galle and Hambantota, Sri Lanka

efforts for a rapid re-establishment of sustainable income generating activities that were destroyed by the tsunami.

OSRO/SRL/506/NOR Norway Emergency assistance for the rehabilitation of fisherfolk communities in the tsunami-affected districts of Sri Lanka (TSU - REG/SRL-05/ER/I01- REGION - SRI LANKA)

$3,078,668 2005-03 2005-12 2006-06 FIIT Assist the Government of Sri Lanka in its efforts for a rapid re-establishment of sustainable income generating activities that were destroyed by the tsunami.

OSRO/SRL/507/EC European Commission

Emergency Assistance to Tsunami Affected Vulnerable Fishermen and Women in Sri Lanka

$5,100,420 2005-03 2006-02 2006-06 FIIT Enable fishers and women who have lost their boats and gear to resume fishing and thus provide for their families at the earliest opportunity.

OSRO/SRL/508/CHA OCHA Emergency assistance for the rehabilitation of Agricultural Communities in the tsunami-affected districts of Sri Lanka (TSU - SRL/REG- 05/ER/I03- REGION -SRI LANKA )

$1,274,200 2005-04 2005-12 2006-06 AGLW Assist the Government of Sri Lanka efforts to protect, rehabilitate and enhance the livelihoods of the tsunami affected coastal agricultural communities, in a sustainable manner.

OSRO/SRL/510/SPA Spain Emergency assistance to tsunami-affected fisher households in Sri Lanka

$599,050 2006-02 2007-01 FIIT Assist the Sri Lankan Government‘s efforts to achieve the early rehabilitation and recovery of sustainable livelihood and food security of tsunami-affected coastal communities in Sri Lanka.

OSRO/SRL/511/IRE Ireland Assistance to tsunami affected farmers in Sri Lanka (TSU-SRL/REG-05/ER/I03-region-Sri Lanka)

$186,255 2005-08 2006-09 RAPG Assist the Government of Sri Lanka to protect, rehabilitate and enhance the livelihoods of 600 farming families through the restoration of homestead gardens in the districts of Sri Lanka affected by Tsunami, in a sustainable manner.

OSRO/SRL/512/CHA OCHA Reclamation of Salinity affected Agricultural land in Sri Lanka

$203,398 2005-10 2006-06 RAPG Assist the Government to enhance the livelihoods of the coastal farming communities. It is also in line with the MoA 5-year plan to generate technologies allowing the expansion of agricultural production in presently uncultivated or marginal lands

Sub-total Sri Lanka $24,955,185 INDONESIA TCP/INS/3002 FAO Emergency assistance to support the

rehabilitation in earthquake/tsunami affected areas

$397,601 2005-01 2006-08 RAPI Assist the Government‘s efforts for a rapid re-establishment of sustainable income-generating activities that were


80



EOD Original NTE

Revised NTE

Lead Technical

Unit

Project Objectives

destroyed by the earthquake and tsunami. The project beneficiaries are the poor artisanal fishing communities.

OSRO/INS/501/BEL Belgium Emergency provision of essential inputs for the rapid restart of small scale food-crop production and fisheries activities within tsunami affected communities in Indonesia

$1,921,945 2005-01 2005-12 2006-06 AGLW Provide essential inputs and equipment for the relief and rehabilitation of affected coastal communities in the worst affected areas.

OSRO/INS/502/JPN Japan Japan/FAO Joint Emergency Assistance for Tsunami Affected Coastal Communities in Indonesia (TSU - IND-05/A02)

$786,178 2005-01 2005-07 2005-12 FIIT Assist at least 600 farm families to restart farming activities and restore homestead gardens through supply of farm inputs, services and appropriate technologies.

OSRO/INS/503/JPN Japan Japan/FAO joint emergency assistance to Tsunami affected rural communities in Indonesia (TSU - IND-05/A01)

$597,794 2005-01 2005-07 2005-12 AGLW Supporting the cleanup of agricultural land and irrigation/drainage infrastructure; Provide 25,000 most-affected farming families with essential agricultural inputs (rice seeds, hand tools etc.) necessary to rapidly re-start food production.

OSRO/INS/504/GER Germany Emergency assistance to support the rehabilitation of small-scale fisheries activities in earthquake/tsunami-afffected areas in Aceh, Northern Sumatra Coastline and in Nias Island, Indonesia(TSU - IND-05/A02)

$993,687 2005-01 2005-06 2006-06 FIIT Assist the Indonesia Government's efforts to protect, rehabilitate and enhance the livelihoods of the tsunami-earthquake affected coastal communities, in a sustainable manner.

OSRO/INS/507/NOR Norway Rehabilitation of fish processing capacity in Tsunami-affected areas of Indonesia (Naggroe Aceh Darussalam and Nias Island) (TSU - IND-05/A02)

$649,996 2005-03 2006-02 2006-06 FIIT Assist the Government of Indonesia’s efforts to protect, rehabilitate and enhance the livelihoods of the Tsunami-earthquake affected coastal communities, in a sustainable manner.

OSRO/INS/508/NOR Norway Support to the Coordination of Emergency Assistance for the Restart of Staple Food Production in Indonesia (TSU - IND-05/A03)

$400,000 2005-01 2005-12 2006-06 AGLW Assist the government and other actors in the coordination and technical guidance and strategic planning of agriculture rehabilitation activities.

OSRO/INS/509/EC European Commission

Emergency assistance for food security and restoration of livelihoods amongst tsunami affected farmers, fisher folks, women and other vulnerable groups in Indonesia (TSU - IND-05/A01)

$7,118,710 2005-03 2005-12 2006-06 AGLW Ensure the prompt resumption of agricultural and fishery production and of alternative income-generating activities for priority coastal, rural, vulnerable households affected by the tsunami and therefore reduce their dependency on food aid.


81



EOD Original NTE

Revised NTE

Lead Technical

Unit

Project Objectives

OSRO/INS/511/CPR China Peoples' Republic

Emergency in-kind assistance to fisheries communities in Indonesia (TSU - IND-05/A02)

$375,000 2005-08 2006-03 FIIT Contribute to FAO's interventions aimed at assisting the Government in its efforts to revive fishery livelihoods which were destroyed by the tsunami.

OSRO/INS/512/SPA Spain Emergency Assistance to Tsunami-affected Coastal Communities in Aceh and North Sumatra, Indonesia

$1,800,000 2005-11 2006-11 FIIU Assist the Indonesia Government's efforts to sustain the early rehabilitation and recovery of food security and sustainable livelihoods of tsunami-affected coastal communities in Indonesia at least at the pre-tsunami levels.

OSRO/INS/513/BEL Belgium Support to farmers in tsunami-affected areas through the provision of agricultural and livestock inputs

$1,188,496 2005-07 2006-06 AGAP Assist the Indonesia Government's efforts to safeguard the livelihoods of the tsunami-earthquake affected coastal communities and to enable them to resume their occupations.

OSRO/INS/514/CHA OCHA Support to FAO Rehabilitation Support and Coordination Unit (RSCU) in Aceh Province for the preparation and implementation of agriculture, fisheries and forestry based sustainable livelihoods recovery

$400,000 2005-10 2006-06 SDAR Assist the Indonesia Government's efforts to sustain the early rehabilitation and recovery of food security and sustainable livelihoods of tsunami-affected coastal communities in Indonesia at least at the pre-tsunami levels.

GCP /INS/076/GER Germany Rehabilitation of livelihoods in the fisheries sector affected by the tsunami and earthquake in Indonesia

$1,308,434 2006-01 2008-11 FIPD Re-establish sustainable livelihoods in the coastal communities affected by the tsunami.

Sub-total Indonesia $17,937,841 THAILAND TCP/THA/3004 FAO Emergency assistance to support the


$397,433 2005-01 2005-10 RAPI Assist the Government's efforts for a rapid re-establishment of sustainable income generating activities that were destroyed by the earthquake and tsunami. The project beneficiaries are the poor artisan fishing communities.

OSRO/THA/501/JPN Japan Joint Japan/FAO emergency assistance to support Tsunami affected coastal communities in Thailand

$162,000 2005-01 2005-07 2005-12 FIIT Assist the Government's efforts for a rapid re-establishment of sustainable income generating activities that were destroyed by the earthquake and tsunami. The project beneficiaries are the poor artisan fishing communities.

OSRO/THA/502/JPN Japan Japan/FAO joint emergency assistance for $77,000 2005-01 2005-07 2005-12 AGPS Assist the Government's efforts for a rapid


82



EOD Original NTE

Revised NTE

Lead Technical

Unit

Project Objectives

tsunami affected rural communities in Thailand re-establishment of sustainable income generating activities that were destroyed by the earthquake and tsunami. The project beneficiaries are the poor artisan fishing communities.

OSRO/THA/504/CHA OCHA Emergency assistance in support of Tsunami affected farmer communities in Southern Thailand (TSU - REG/THAI-05/A02)

$323,480 2005-05 2005-12 2006-06 AGLW Assist the Government's efforts for a rapid re establishment of sustainable income-generating activities that were destroyed by the earthquake and tsunami. The project beneficiaries are the poor farming communities.

OSRO/THA/505/CHA OCHA Emergency Assistance to the Tsunami-affected Fishing Communities in Southern Thailand (Strengthening the Coordination and Assessment of Fishing Resources and Inputs Provided by Tsunami Emergency Relief) - (REG/THAI-05/A01 )

$123,147 2005-09 2006-06 FIIT Establish sustainable livelihoods in the coastal communities affected by the tsunami and reduce their vulnerability to future natural disasters.

THA/05/001/01/12 UNDP In-depth assessment of mangroves and other coastal forests affected by the tsunami in Southern Thailand

$220,000 2005-05 2006-02 RAPO Assist the Thai Government’s efforts to rehabilitate the tsunami-affected coastal forests and economic tree crop plantations; and establish effective buffer zones with woody species along the coastal areas forests.

THA/05/002/01/12 UNDP Emergency assistance to the tsunami-affected fishing communities in Southern Thailand

$663,100 2005-05 2005-11 RAPI Assist the Government‘s efforts for a rapid re-establishment of sustainable income-generating activities that were destroyed by the earthquake and tsunami.

Sub-total Thailand $1,966,160 MALDIVES TCP/MDV/3002 FAO Emergency assistance to support the


$297,601 2005-01 2005-10 FIIT Assist the Government of Maldives in its efforts for a rapid re-establishment of sustainable income-generating activities that were destroyed by the tsunami. The project beneficiaries are the poor artisanal fishing communities.

OSRO/MDV/501/BEL Belgium Immediate provision of agricultural inputs to worst affected fisher and farmer groups in the Maldives

$80,000 2005-01 2005-06 AGST Provide agriculture inputs for the relief and rehabilitation of affected farmer and fishers in the worst affected areas.


83



EOD Original NTE

Revised NTE

Lead Technical

Unit

Project Objectives

OSRO/MDV/502/JPN Japan Assistance for affected coastal communities in Maldives ( - TSU - MDV-05/ER/I02)

$320,000 2005-01 2005-07 2005-12 FIIT Contribute to FAO support interventions aimed at assisting the Government of Maldives in its efforts for a rapid re-establishment of sustainable fisheries income-generating activities.

OSRO/MDV/503/JPN Japan Assistance for affected rural communities in Maldives (- TSU - MDV-05/ER/I02)

$403,000 2005-01 2007-07 2005-12 AGP ?

OSRO/MDV/504/CHA OCHA Rehabilitation of marine fisheries sector and agricultural infrastructure (TSU - MDV-05/ER/I02 )

$1,000,000 2005-05 2005-12 2006-06 AGP Assist the Government of Maldives efforts to protect, rehabilitate and enhance the livelihoods of the tsunami-affected coastal and rural communities, in a sustainable manner.

OSRO/MDV/505/CPR China Peoples' Republic

Emergency in-kind assistance to fisheries communities in Maldives

$275,000 2005-08 2006-03 FIIT Contribute to FAO support interventions aimed at assisting the Government in its efforts for a rapid re-establishment of sustainable income-generating activities in fisheries which were destroyed by the tsunami.

MDV/05/001/ /01/99 UNDP Replacement of farming inputs to farmers and home gardeners

$700,000 2005-08 2005-12 AGPS Assist the Government of Maldives efforts to protect, rehabilitate and enhance the livelihoods of the tsunami-affected coastal and rural communities, in a sustainable manner.

Sub-total Maldives $3,075,601 MYANMAR MYA/05/001/01/34 UNDP Emergency Assistance to Tsunami-affected

Fishing Communities, Fishers cum Farmers, and Homestead Gardeners

$804,000 2005-03 2006-04 FIIT Support Tsunami affected families through the provision of small-scale fishing crafts and gears; and provide agricultural inputs to resume normal livelihood activities.

Sub-total Myanmar $804,000 SEYCHELLES OSRO/SEY/501/CHA OCHA Emergency supply of outboard engines to

Tsunami affected artisanal fisher-folk in Seychelles (TSU - SEY-05/ER/I02)

$25,886 2005-05 2005-12 2006-06 FIIT Complement activities undertaken through other donations to assist the Government of the Republic of Seychelles to help restore the livelihood of artisanal fishers affected by the tsunami.

OSRO/SEY/502/BEL Belgium Emergency Assistance in Support of Fishery and Agriculture Livelihoods and Rehabilitation of the Environment in Tsunami Affected Areas of the Seychelles

$536,030 2005-06 2006-05 FIIT Complement activities undertaken through other donations to assist the Government of the Seychelles efforts to restore the livelihood of artisanal fisher-folks and farming families


84



EOD Original NTE

Revised NTE

Lead Technical

Unit

Project Objectives

affected by the Tsunami. OSRO/SEY/503/CPR China

Peoples' Republic

Emergency in-kind assistance to fisheries communities in Seychelles

$250,000 2005-08 2006-03 FIIT Assist the Government of Seychelles in restoring the livelihoods of small fishers and to re-establish the artisanal fisheries sector which has been badly affected by the tsunami.

OSRO/SEY/504/CHA OCHA Emergency Assistance for the Restoration of Livelihood of the Tsunami Affected Fishing and Farming Communities (TSU - SEY-05/ER/I02)

$325,000 2005-05 2006-06 FIIT Complement activities undertaken through other donations to assist the Government of the Seychelles efforts to restore the livelihood of artisanal fisher-folks and farming families affected by the Tsunami.

OSRO/SEY/505/USA United States of America

Emergency assistance to the vulnerable fishing communities affected by the Tsunami in the Seychelles Islands (TSU - SEY-05/ER/I02)

$100,000 2005-04 2005-12 FIIT Complement activities undertaken through other donations to assist the Government of the Seychelles efforts to restore the livelihood of artisanal fisher-folks affected by the Tsunami.

Sub-total Seychelles $1,236,916 SOMALIA GCP/SOM/046/GER Germany Rehabilitation of livelihoods in the fisheries

sector affected by the tsunami $137,349 2005-12 2006-11 FIIU Ensure a coordinated and sustainable

restoration of the small-scale fisheries post-harvest sub-sector, in Iscusuban, Bander Bayla, Eyl and Gara’ad Districts in Puntland State, Somalia.

OSRO/SOM/501/NOR Norway Post-Tsunami Rehabilitation of Fisheries Sector (TSU - SOM-05/A01)

$486,105 2005-04 2006-03 FIIT Address the needs of the affected population by ensuring the re-launch as soon as possible and the rehabilitation of the community-based fishing activities in order to restore the population livelihood highly dependent on such a source of income.

OSRO/SOM/505/CHA OCHA Support to fishing communities affected by tsunami (TSU - SOM-05/A01)

$425,000 2005-04 2006-06 FIIT Address the needs of the affected population by ensuring the re-launch as soon as possible and the rehabilitation of the community-based fishing activities in order to restore the population highly dependent on such a source of income.

OSRO/SOM/507/CND Conad Supermarket, Italy

Rehabilitation of livelihoods in the fisheries sector affected by the Tsunami

$240,000 2005-09 2006-05 FIIT Re-establish sustainable livelihoods in the coastal communities affected by the tsunami.


85



EOD Original NTE

Revised NTE

Lead Technical

Unit

Project Objectives

OSRO/SOM/508/CGC The Church of God in Christ (African/American Religious Organization)

Rehabilitation of livelihoods in the fisheries sector affected by the Tsunami

$150,000 2005-09 2006-04 FIIU Re-establish sustainable livelihoods in the coastal communities affected by the tsunami improving handling of post harvested fish. Areas of intervention: Iscusaban, Bandar Beyla, Eyl and Jariban Districts, North-Eastern Somali coast

Sub-total Somalia $1,438,454 Grand Total FAO tsunami response $63,171,051

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