Description

Introduction

This special evaluation study reviews ADB assistance portfolio of rural road associated projects from 1996 to 2007; differentiates inclusive growth and inclusive development through a literature review; and presents case studies from Nepal, Philippines, and Viet Nam. Inclusive development deals with improving the lives of all members of society, particularly the poor, marginalized, and vulnerable groups. The evaluation addresses four specific questions:

1. What are the key economic, environmental, institutional, and social contributions to inclusive development that resulted from rural roads?
2. What are the key constraints to inclusive development through rural roads?
3. How sustainable are the mechanisms for the operation and maintenance (O&M) of rural roads?
4. What supporting measures and policies are needed to fully capture potential for inclusive development of rural road-associated projects?

Summary of findings

Below are some of the findings from the evaluation:

• Assistance for rural roads has largely been through explicit road development projects, rural infrastructure projects, or integrated projects in which rural roads were a component of a package of development interventions.

• The project roads improved access for geographically disadvantaged people to major roads and markets; catalyzed opportunities for enhancing production, employment and marketing; and helped increase household income and expenditure.

• Improved access due to project roads has made the rural people, including disadvantaged groups, significantly mobile, and has increased access to social services such as education and health. While roads facilitated travel to school and saved time, there was no evidence that improved roads had increased school enrolments.

• Not all rural roads were designed to contribute to inclusive development. However, a proportion of the portfolio had some components related to inclusive development.

• There were attempts to focus on creating opportunities that would make the rural poor share in, and contribute to, growth of local economy to a large extent. While these initiatives were considered important from the perspective of inclusive development, the size and scale of interventions of other enabling factors and their sequencing were inadequate. In most cases, the add-on components were only piloted but hardly scaled up; as a result, their contribution to inclusive development remained limited.

• In most of the road corridors, both backward and forward linkages are weak, and very little progress was achieved in adding value to agricultural production. The disadvantaged households tend to be small producers of agricultural commodities, and are reluctant to travel far to sell their produce because of prohibitive transport costs.

Key challenges

• low participation of local stakeholders, particularly of disadvantaged groups, in all stages of the project cycle and hence a low level of ownership of the process and infrastructure;
• inadequate attention paid to appropriate sequencing and inclusion of project components;
• control of traffic volume due to the dominance of transport entrepreneurs in the road corridors;
• local governance, security threats, and political interference in business operations
• low economic base of goods and services produced locally;
• identification of disadvantaged groups and targeting for their needs; and
• weak backward and forward linkages to enhance economic opportunities.

Main lessons

Some of the main lessons include:

• Rural roads may be necessary but not sufficient for inclusive development. Adequate enabling investments and support services are required. Targeted intervention is needed for disadvantaged groups, which may require investments in improving foot trails, bridges, and culverts along with the provision of roads.

• Road safety measures are often overlooked in rural road-associated project designs. Preventing accidents is as important for rural roads as for provincial roads or highways.

• Rural roads have significant implications for disadvantaged groups; therefore, the project design and monitoring framework should contain specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound indicators to report progress (i) on inclusive development encompassing access to and use, and (ii) of disadvantaged groups in exploiting economic, social, institutional, and environmental opportunities.

• Projects need to have a well-defined sustainability framework in which arrangements for infrastructure maintenance; mechanism for removal of barriers to road usage; and capacity development for local civil, nongovernment, and government organizations is strengthened to ensure sustainability and enhancement of project benefits.

Recommendations

ADB assistance to rural roads in supporting inclusive development is rated partly successful based on progress made in providing access to disadvantaged groups into mainstream socioeconomic development. The evaluation makes three specific recommendations:

• Rural roads may be necessary, but not sufficient, condition for inclusive development. Promote inclusive development in rural road-associated projects' design.
• Sustainability of project benefits must be ensured. Emphasize both access and use of rural roads and the role of local governments, communities, and private sector
• Progress toward inclusive development is necessary to demonstrate development effectiveness of rural road-associated projects. Strengthen results monitoring and evaluation systems in rural road-associated projects.

Contents

• Executive Summary
• I. Introduction
• II. Methodology and Data
• III. Assistance for Rural Roads
• IV. Project Case Studies
• V. Performance Assessment of Case Study Roads in Addressing Inclusive Development
• VI. Lessons and Recommendations
• Appendixes
• Supplementary Appendixes