Bolivia, Country Strategic Outcome 2: Decentralized evaluation (2023-2025)

The Strategic Outcome 2 (SO2) of WFP Bolivia’s 2023–2027 Country Strategic Plan aimed to strengthen climate resilience and food security for vulnerable communities—particularly smallholder subsistence producers and Indigenous peoples—through sustainable livelihoods and improved access to markets. 

The context is marked by high climate vulnerability and entrenched rural poverty, with water scarcity identified as the central constraint in Oruro, where the intervention concentrated. SO2 operated mainly through (i) conditional cash-based transfers (CBT) for climate-affected households and (ii) the Urus Project, which developed water-related infrastructure and productive assets, alongside capacity strengthening and limited market-linkage support. 

Overall, the evaluation concludes that SO2 was relevant and aligned with beneficiary needs and national and WFP priorities. The Urus water-access achievements are highly significant, though design and implementation could have been better tailored to the challenging context. CBT played an important role in protecting consumption after climate shocks, but its contribution to longer-term resilience is unclear unless it is redesigned or repositioned as emergency response outside SO2. 

To strengthen impact going forward, the evaluation recommends:

• reconceptualizing CBT so it is linked to behavior change and sustainable livelihoods rather than perceived as recurrent aid;
• improving integrated planning for new themes/areas including robust community context and risk analysis;
• strengthening internal and external communication of results, commitments and learning;
• building strategic partnerships to support long-term operability and maintenance of assets, with a focus on youth and women; 
• strengthening women’s economic empowerment through culturally appropriate financial training and sensitization that makes women’s roles in resource management more explicit.