This book succinctly describes how a large hydro dam in a poor country with weak capacity was successfully prepared by a truly global development and financial partnership, by turning the natural resource curse on its head and tapping the state of the art to mitigate environmental and social impacts.

The water resources of the Mekong river catchment area, from China, through Thailand, Cambodia and Laos to Vietnam, are increasingly contested. Governments, companies and banks are driving new investment in roads, dams, diversions, irrigation schemes, navigation facilities, power plants and other emblems of conventional "development." Their plans and interventions pose multiple burdens and risks to the livelihoods of millions of people dependent on wetlands, floodplains, fisheries and aquatic resources.

This evaluation examines the relevance and effectiveness of Poverty Reduction Support Credits (PRSCs), introduced by the Bank in early 2001 to support comprehensive growth, improve social conditions, and reduce poverty in IDA countries. PRSCs were intended to allow greater country-ownership, provide more predictable annual support, exhibit more flexible conditionality, and strengthen budget processes in a results-based framework. By September 2009, the Bank had approved 99 PRSCs totaling some $7.5 billion and representing 38% percent of IDA policy based lending. The evaluation finds that in terms of process, PRSCs were effective in easing conditionality, increasing country ownership and aid predictability, stimulating dialogue between central and sectoral ministries, and improving donor harmonization. In terms of content, PRSCs succeeded in emphasizing public sector management and pro-poor service delivery. Yet in terms of results, it is difficult to distinguish growth and poverty outcomes in countries with PRSCs from other better performing IDA countries. There is scope for further simplifying the language of conditionality and underpinning PRSCs with better pro-poor growth diagnostics. PRSCs can also strengthen their results frameworks and limit sector policy content in multi-sector DPLs to high-level or cross-cutting issues. Today, Bank policy has subsumed PRSCs under the broader mantle of Development Policy Lending and the rationale for a separate brand name although differences linger from the past. Since PRSCs and other policy-based lending have gradually converged in design, remaining differences compared to other Development Policy Loans should be clearly spelled out, or the separate PRSC brand name should be phased out.

This book is a history of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), a multilateral development bank established 50 years ago to serve Asia and the Pacific. Focusing on the region’s economic development, the evolution of the international development agenda, and the story of ADB itself, this book raises several key questions: What are the outstanding features of regional development to which ADB had to respond? How has the bank grown and evolved in changing circumstances? How did ADB’s successive leaders promote reforms while preserving continuity with the efforts of their predecessors? ADB has played an important role in the transformation of Asia and the Pacific the past 50 years. As ADB continues to evolve and adapt to the region’s changing development landscape, the experiences highlighted in this book can provide valuable insight on how best to serve Asia and the Pacific in the future.