Poverty and Social Impact Assessment: The Case of Popular Participation

1
Poverty and Social Impact Assessment The Case of
Popular Participation

• By
• M. Adil Khan
• UN-DESA

2
Discussion Framework

• Some definitional Issues
• The Backdrop of Participatory Methods
• Insights from country practices
• Lessons learnt

3
Definitional Issues and their Substantive
Implications

• Definitions have implications on what to
  measure/assess and how, when etc. to measure
• As poverty is often defined from a variety of
  perspectives, it is inevitable that their
  measurements/assessments etc. entail more than
  one methodology some quantitative, some
  qualitative, some passive, some participatory.
• Social Impact Assessment also implies two
  important
• methodological connotations that both the
  content of the impact as well as the methodology
  of measuring the impact must be social in nature.

4
Backdrop of participatory methods

• Multi-dimensional perspectives of poverty
  indicate that not everything can be measured
  quantitatively and passively.
• Assessment of certain aspects of poverty such as
  accessibility, non-income issues of poverty
  including the assessment of political dimensions
  of poverty, social vulnerability etc. require
  application of participatory methods.
• Community-based poverty monitoring efforts help
  in understanding poverty reduction processes
  better, especially the macro-micro linkages.
• An appropriately structured PSIA and planning
  linkage has the capacity to empower poor and
  induce pro-poor policy change.

5
Insights from Country Practices

• Philippines participatory poverty monitoring by
  the SWS reveal that poor regard equally, if not
  more the non-income elements as the sources of
  poverty
• In 1993 by following both quantitative as well as
  participatory methods, Bangladesh produced two
  different HDRs, revealing information not
  captured through the former method but were
  crucial to understand causes of poverty in the
  country.
• In India, sub-national HDRs (some up to district
  level) produced through intense participatory
  processes are increasingly becoming powerful
  tools of planning and political accountability in
  poverty reduction.
• In Myanmar, UNDPs multi-stage poverty
  assessment, community -based programme planning,
  implementation and monitoring are making useful
  contributions in tackling the problems of poverty
  in the poorest of the poor villages in that
  country.

6
Lessons Learnt

• Participatory methods help deepening the
  understanding of both the causes of poverty as
  well as the impacts of policies and programmes on
  poverty.
• Participatory poverty monitoring becomes more
  effective and accountable when indicators, at
  least some of them are defined by the poor
  themselves.
• Participatory methods are no substitute to
  statistically-based methods, rather one
  complements the other, but the required synergy
  is missing.
• Participatory methods must be sustained and
  followed through with programme feedback to
  encourage continuous participation in the
  process.
• The role of the civil society organizations and
  NGOs in supplanting poverty monitoring through
  participatory data require proper recognition.

7
THANK YOU!

• M. Adil Khan
• Chief
• Socio-economic Governance and Management Branch
• UN-DESA
• E-mail khan4_at_un.org