Environment Impact Review
Chia Se, which stands for ‘partnership’ in Vietnamese, is a Sida-funded poverty alleviation programme that started in November 2003 and ended March 31, 2009. With an overall budget of USD 43.5 million it is fully harmonised with Vietnam’s Socio-Economic Development Plan (SEDP) for 2006-2010. It facilitates broad-based rural poverty alleviation allowing also marginalised groups of society and ethnic minorities to participate in Vietnams dymanic economic development. It supports decentralisation by making poverty alleviation a bottom-up and demand-driven process in three Provinces of Ha Giang, Yen Bai and Quang Tri, using poverty reduction tools such as Local Development Fund (LDF) and Local Planning for Management and Development (LPMD). The field activities have been funded through locally administered Local Development Funds, where villagers prioritised themselves on how to best alleviate poverty in their own area through several project cycles. 80% of funds have been used for Village Development Funds; In addition inter-village projects have been financed through Commune Development Funds (15%) and District Development Funds (5%).
According to villagers’ decisions and priorities, investments were primarily made in the following major sectors: Education, health and sanitation, secondary rural infrastructure, operations and maintenance and climate change proofing, income generation and production (added value chain), sustainable natural resources management, and social security. Within each sector a large number of area-specific different types of investments have been made.
A second Chia Se programme component supported policy making processes at central government level by capturing and consolidating lessons learnt from the field for more informed pro-poor decision making and planning.
The programme developed a complex monitoring and evaluation system that contains environmental monitoring aspects. Using this system on a continuous basis and through a large number of specific studies, the outcome, results and impact of ‘Chia Se’ have been carefully researched, evaluated and documented. This EIR is part of the comprehensive results follow-up exercises.