Assessing the Impact of Development Assistance in Fisheries and Aquaculture Global

Food and Agricultural Organisation FAO - Project Dates:

Description of Project:
This work built upon a previous review of fisheries development assistance based on a comprehensive database assembled by researchers at the College of William and Mary (USA) – ‘the universe of fisheries development assistance projects’. This database is the most complete inventory of development assistance data ever assembled spanning 30 years.

The previous review examined information in the database and produced a better understanding of the historical profile of development assistance delivery by the main multilateral and bilateral donors to the fisheries and aquaculture sectordonors, the main recipient countries and key areas of assistance. However, the analysis suffered from a lack of information on the impact of the development assistance.

Services Provided:
Poseidon was therefore asked to synthesize the findings of available impact assessments of fisheries development assistance projects/programmes. A wide range of donors and funders were approached to obtain impact/evaluation reports, including: ADB; AfDB; DFID; FAO; JICA; GTZ; NORAD, SIDA,; USAID, World Bank, OECD, IFAD, Kuwait Fund, JICA; GTZ; SIDA,; DFID; USAID; NORAD; CIDA; New Zealand Aid, Australian Aid, and major NGOs such as IUCN and WWF. Where available, recipient country ‘self-assessments’ of fisheries development assistance was also considered. These impact/evaluation assessments were archived and reviewed to examine both a) the extent of the impacts of projects by project type (i.e. increased production; infrastructure; human and institutional capacity building; science and knowledge; fishery management; trade; poverty and food security or other such major objectives), and b) key lessons learned as to ways of maximising project/programme impacts.