Milne Bay community-based marine and coastal and marine conservation project: terminal evaluation of Phase 1

This project is sound in concept and is relevant to local circumstances and official national and provincial development objectives. The full range of public and private sector interests in the Province seeks to have it continued. This call for an extension is all the more significant in the face of gross failures of management that brought most Project activities to a near halt more than twelve months before scheduled Project completion. There is irony in the fact that the Project start was so slow and yet the funds allocated for five years were expended before completion of the fourth year! A lengthy delay in the search for a CTA had not helped. Once his Inception Report had been approved in July 2004 it was stressed to the appointee, by both UNDP and Conservation International (CI), that implementation had to be accelerated or 'funds might be lost\ Accelerated it was; in a single year, 2005, the proportion of total Project funds spent was 58%. By October of that year Project funds were essentially exhausted.