Appraisal of the Fish for Development project proposal for in-stitutional cooperation between Colombia and Norway.

Sammendrag

Vista Analyse and NIVA have made an appraisal of a proposed Fish for Development project in Colombia. The team believes that the project could be an important contribution to poverty reduction in Colombia, but that the plans seem too limited. We recommend changing the output structure and introducing new outputs and activities. In total, where our recommendations call for a larger project than the draft plans and budget. However, we conclude that the project is ready to start after including environmental agencies in both countries to the project group. We recommend starting with an inception phase where some parts of the original project plan can be executed, while other parts of the project undergo a new planning process. (...) Main recommendations The project should ensure participation from fishers, aquaculture producers and communities, aiming to include their knowledge and develop practices of co-management. Focusing on inland aquaculture, possibly also inland fisheries, would ensure the best scope for reaching the rural poor. However, Norwegian competence on freshwater aquaculture in general and especially in tropical waters is limited. Thus, we recommend including south-south cooperation in the project can be particularly useful for providing Colombia with relevant advice. The review team recommends that the FAO guidelines are included as a basis for developing policies and management practices that addresses the needs of small-scale fishers and aquaculture producers. The project should carry out an analysis of the sources and reasons for overfishing as well as destructive fishing practices. Support in finding better technology or practices will be important. The project should find mechanisms for assembling and sharing data from many stakeholders, and sup-port development of a database that includes both fishing/aquaculture and socioeconomic information. The proposed project is small in scope and would not be able to give the expected impact. The project should increase its scope and activities along the lines suggested in this report. This leads to that the budget should be increased, but gradually, as new activities are introduced. The project document reveals little information about environmental impacts of fishery and aquacul-ture. Introduction of invasive species should be avoided in the framework of the project. Environmental assessments, impact assessments and monitoring requirements should be key issues, and environmental agencies should be included on both sides (The Norwegian Environment Agency in Nor-way and the Colombian Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development). The project results framework must be finalized and include all relevant baselines and targets. On the other hand, the risk matrix is not clearly related to the design as stated in the results framework. The matrix should focus on a limited number of the main risks for project management, which should be continuously monitored. Project safeguards must meet NORAD standards on ”do no harm” and cross-cutting issues. The project should incorporate a local pilot project to try out in practice the theoretical learning achieved and as a way to measure local impact of any changes AUNAP or ICA would like to make. The pilot will contribute to collaboration between regional and central authorities, as well as universities. The review team finds that the project addresses important challenges and priorities in Colombian fish-eries and aquaculture management. We recommend that it starts up with an inception phase, allowing for necessary changes in project design and budget followed by an adjusted execution phase.