Haiti - Resilient Productive Landscapes Project

Overview & Synopsis

Ratings for the Resilient Productive Landscapes Project for Haiti were as follows: outcomes were satisfactory, the Bank performance was satisfactory, and the monitoring and evaluation quality was substantial. Some lessons learned included: addressing a negative feedback loop between increasing agricultural production and environmental degradation requires a holistic, landscape-level, productive approach and close coordination between agricultural and environmental authorities. The RPL project experience provided a successful 'proof of concept' with regard to this holistic, landscape-level approach. A key lesson from the RPL project, which has been incorporated in the follow-on RPL II project, was the need for close coordination between MARNDR and MdE to promote a resilient landscapes approach that addressed intertwined human and ecological vulnerabilities. In this context, it is important not only to invest in increasing environmental resilience but also to create climate-smart economic opportunities for beneficiaries in the targeted areas, and to mobilize communities to participate in promoting watershed protection for their benefit. When a watershed approach is undertaken that involves addressing a range of constraints, it is important that all the activities financed contribute together to the broader goals of the project within the watershed. Since the RPL project's design was comprehensive and aimed to tackle multiple constraints simultaneously within a watershed, (related to agriculture, the environment and water resources), it was essential to ensure that project activities were chosen in a way that made the whole effort greater than the sum of its parts. A key selectivity lesson is, therefore, that project activities should not be determined simply based on their individual merits, but importantly on how they contribute together with other project activities to achieving the broader goals of the project within the watershed.