Community-based management of commons is now widely promoted, but the sustainability of project based institutions has been questioned. In Bangladesh since the mid-1990s many community-based organizations (CBOs) have been formed to manage fisheries and water, empower local communities, and achieve a fairer distribution of benefits. Assessment of 153 CBOs receiving limited facilitation to share lessons revealed that most improved the productivity of their commons and broadened their management activities. They also strengthened governance (transparency in financial management and elections of leaders), and empowerment of the poor including access to natural resources. CBOs involving a range of stakeholders managing larger diverse floodplains and rivers have sustained and improved their practices just as well as where smaller communities manage small, well-defined water bodies. CBOs were able to reduce local conflicts despite complex natural resource interactions, but the long-term future of these achievements depends on an enabling co-management policy.

For fisheries with multiple, competing objectives, identifying and applying reference points for management can present difficult trade-offs between long-term biological and shorter-term socioeconomic considerations. The term biological benchmarks is proposed to demarcate zones of population status based on conservation and production considerations. These scientifically derived benchmarks contrast with management reference points that generally require additional shorter-term socioeconomic information best obtained through public consultations. This paper illustrates the distinction between biological benchmarks and management reference points with a case study on Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.). In Canada, the management and assessment of wild Pacific salmon are guided by a major 2005 conservation policy, which calls for the identification of biological benchmarks to categorize status of demographically isolated populations, and decision-support tools, such as management reference points, to integrate biological information with appropriate social and economic information. In the Fraser River (British Columbia, Canada), the selection of management reference points for sockeye salmon (O. nerka) fisheries explicitly considered trade-offs between the probability of meeting long-term biological objectives on component populations and harvest objectives on population aggregates. Decisions about reference points were made in a consultative process that included extensive stakeholder engagement. Other agencies are urged to distinguish biological benchmarks from management reference points to ensure transparency in the relative influence of biological versus socioeconomic information in decision making.

Evaluation of legislation and procedures in place to help recover species at risk of extinction is an important component of conservation efforts. Despite its biological importance and key role in species protection and recovery legislation, identification of critical habitat is inconsistently applied. We analyzed data from 126 recovery strategies implemented under Canada’s nascent (2002) Species at Risk Act (SARA) to determine how lead agency, Federal Court rulings, and the proportion of independent team members influenced identification of critical habitat. Only 17% of strategies led by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans included critical habitat, compared with 63% of strategies led by Environment Canada, indicating that aquatic species at risk are much less likely to have critical habitat identified. A 50% increase in recovery strategies that identified critical habitat following precedent-setting court judgments suggests that legal action by nongovernmental organizations played a key role in the evolution of recovery policy for species at risk in Canada. The proportion of independent scientists on a recovery team was statistically unrelated to identification of critical habitat at a national scale, but case studies indicate that independent team members may play an important role in ensuring compliance and transparency during recovery planning.

The rural sector, defined here as the economic sector that falls under the scope of the Ministry of Agriculture and Water (MAH), the Ministry of Animal Resources (MRA), and the Ministry of the Environment and Sustainable Development (MEDD), is one of the pillars of the Burkina Faso economy. Although its contribution to GDP has decreased in recent times from 35 percent in 1999 to 30 percent in 2011 due to the development of the other sectors of the economy, agricultural activity still employs approximately 86 percent of Burkina Faso s labor force and is the main source of income for poorer populations. Consequently, the rural sector is among the primary beneficiaries of public expenditures by the Burkina Faso government and constitutes one of the pillars of the Strategy for Accelerated Growth and Sustainable Development (SCADD) adopted in 2010. The goals of this agriculture public expenditure review in Burkina Faso are as follows: draw lessons from the past in terms of budget execution in the agricultural sector in order to promote the design and implementation of public expenditure programs that are more efficient and more equitable and have a greater impact; initiate the implementation of the databases and methodology required to conduct similar reviews regularly and thus contribute to the institutionalization of the process; and contribute to establishing the conditions for increased support for the sector while encouraging the harmonization and alignment of support with respect for national strategies.

Ghana, like many other African countries, had made a commitment in 2003 to allocate at least ten percent of their national budgetary resources to develop the agricultural sector by 2008, following the adoption of the Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), with an aim towards realizing food security and poverty reduction. This Agriculture Public Expenditure Review (AgPER) for Ghana analyzes data on public spending from both government and donor sources to assess: 1) the alignment between expenditure patterns within the agricultural sector and stated policy priorities; and 2) the effectiveness of public spending by comparing spending against results. The outputs of the review include a comprehensive agricultural expenditure assessment to help provide a solid foundation for carrying out specialized studies, such as Public Expenditure Tracking Surveys (PETS), and the establishment of the levels and composition of public expenditure in the selected subsectors

Ghana, like many other African countries, had made a commitment in 2003 to allocate at least ten percent of their national budgetary resources to develop the agricultural sector by 2008, following the adoption of the Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), with an aim towards realizing food security and poverty reduction. This Agriculture Public Expenditure Review (AgPER) for Ghana analyzes data on public spending from both government and donor sources to assess: 1) the alignment between expenditure patterns within the agricultural sector and stated policy priorities; and 2) the effectiveness of public spending by comparing spending against results. The outputs of the review include a comprehensive agricultural expenditure assessment to help provide a solid foundation for carrying out specialized studies, such as Public Expenditure Tracking Surveys (PETS), and the establishment of the levels and composition of public expenditure in the selected subsectors | Le Ghana fait partie d’un groupe de pays africains qui se sont engagés en 2003 à Maputo, à allouer au moins 10 % de leurs ressources budgétaires nationales au développement du secteur agricole avant 2008. Cette initiative s’est avérée nécessaire après l’adoption du Programme détaillé de développement de l’agriculture africaine (PDDAA). Il était prévu qu’une augmentation des allocations destinées au secteur agricole d’au moins 10 % du budget national entraînerait une croissance annuelle de 6 % dans le secteur, engendrant une amélioration de la sécurité alimentaire et une réduction de la pauvreté. Une Revue des dépenses publiques agricoles (RDPA) analyse des données sur les dépenses publiques engagées par les pouvoirs publics et les bailleurs de fonds pour évaluer : i) la concordance entre la structure des dépenses au sein du secteur agricole et les priorités énoncées dans les politiques ; et ii) l’efficacité des dépenses publiques en comparant, si possible, les dépenses avec les résultats. Ce rapport comprend trois parties. Le Chapitre 1 fournit une introduction et une description détaillée du contexte de l’étude. Le Chapitre 2 donne un aperçu de la stratégie du secteur et de ses performances ainsi que de sa gouvernance institutionnelle et de sa gestion financière. Le Chapitre 3 présente les principaux résultats de la RDPA, à savoir une analyse des tendances au niveau des dépenses et des budgets sectoriels, ainsi que des performances réalisées pour les indicateurs prioritaires du METASIP en ce qui concerne sa première année de mise en œuvre.

The rural sector, defined here as the economic sector that falls under the scope of the Ministry of Agriculture and Water (MAH), the Ministry of Animal Resources (MRA), and the Ministry of the Environment and Sustainable Development (MEDD), is one of the pillars of the Burkina Faso economy. Although its contribution to GDP has decreased in recent times from 35 percent in 1999 to 30 percent in 2011 due to the development of the other sectors of the economy, agricultural activity still employs approximately 86 percent of Burkina Faso s labor force and is the main source of income for poorer populations. Consequently, the rural sector is among the primary beneficiaries of public expenditures by the Burkina Faso government and constitutes one of the pillars of the Strategy for Accelerated Growth and Sustainable Development (SCADD) adopted in 2010. The goals of this agriculture public expenditure review in Burkina Faso are as follows: draw lessons from the past in terms of budget execution in the agricultural sector in order to promote the design and implementation of public expenditure programs that are more efficient and more equitable and have a greater impact; initiate the implementation of the databases and methodology required to conduct similar reviews regularly and thus contribute to the institutionalization of the process; and contribute to establishing the conditions for increased support for the sector while encouraging the harmonization and alignment of support with respect for national strategies.