A participatory process for developing a sustainable development strategy

Paper prepared  for  the OECD-DAC Project on Donor Developing Country  Dialogues on National Strategies for Sustainable Development

Brian T. B. Jones

Windhoek, January 2001

This paper describes and analyses the process undertaken by the Namibian Government to incorporate sustainable development issues in the process of formulating  National Development Plan 2 (NDP2) which covers the period 2001-2005.

Introduction

This paper describes and analyses the process undertaken by the Namibian Government to incorporate sustainable development issues in the process of formulating  National Development Plan 2 (NDP2) which covers the period 2001-2005.

In 1991 the then Ministry of Wildlife, Conservation and Tourism launched a process to develop a Green Plan for Namibia setting out a cross-sectoral and multi-disciplinary approach to “secure for present and future generations a safe and healthy environment and a prosperous economy” (Brown 1992, title page).  

About the same time, the government launched National Development Plan 1, which set out the country’s development objectives and strategies for the first five years after Independence from South Africa, which had been achieved in 1990.

However, these processes had not been linked and had taken place in parallel. When the formulation of NDP2 was being planned the government thought it more logical to integrate environment and sustainable development issues into the national planning process – thereby bringing the issues, concerns and recommendations contained in the Green Plan into mainstream economic and development thinking.

In order to achieve this integration, a project was established between the Ministry of Environment and Tourism (MET) and the National Planning Commission Secretariat (NPCS)  with funding support from DANCED.

Country Context

Namibia is a large country, situated in south western Africa, with a total land area of approximately 825 000 sq. km. It is the most arid country south of the Sahara, with average rainfall varying from above 600 mm in the north east to less than 25 mm in the Namib Desert to the west. Rainfall is erratic both temporally and spatially leading to large localised differences in precipitation and large fluctuations annually. Drought is a regular occurrence. Only 8% of the country receives more than 500 mm annually, the minimum considered necessary for dryland cropping (Byers 1997). There are no perennial rivers between the country's northern and southern borders.

Namibia's economy is heavily dependent on natural resources. Two-thirds of the 1,6 million population live in rural areas and are directly dependent upon the soil and living natural resources for their livelihoods (Brown 1997).  By far the highest proportion of the workforce is involved in subsistence agriculture (dryland cropping and/or livestock farming). Unemployment is estimated at around 20% with a further 40% estimated to be under-employed. Population growth is estimated at 3,2% a year (UNDP 1996). In  1995 per capita income was US $1 956, but income distribution is highly skewed between urban and rural households. The richest 10% of the population receive  65% of total income (Ibid).

Namibia gained independence from South Africa in 1990 and the legacy of apartheid and colonial rule is still evident in the wide gap between rich and poor, unequal access to land and natural resources, poor education, health and housing for the rural majority.  At independence from South Africa in 1990, 40,8% of the land had been allocated to black homelands which supported a population of about 1,2 million, while 43% had been allocated as freehold land to white commercial farmers. 13,6% was allocated to conservation and a small percentage was unallocated land.  The former black homelands are now recognised as communal lands to which rural residents have access for the use of the land and its natural resources (although communal land ownership is vested in the State). 

Early Sustainable Development Initiatives

The formulation of the Green Plan was the first attempt to initiate processes and actions that would link  environmental issues and development. The document set out key issues and strategies for ensuring environmental health, sustaining renewable natural resources, protecting biodiversity and ecosystems, and contributing to global environmental security. It also focused strongly on the promotion of environmentally responsible decision-making. The Green Plan addressed overall national development issues such as poverty and its links to environmental problems as a major threat to sustainable development.

The Green Plan was developed through a series of workshops at national level that included a wide range of participants from government, NGOs, academic institutions, and the private sector. These workshops identified key issues, problems, and strategies that gave direction to the individuals tasked with writing each chapter. The resulting Green Plan document was presented at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 by Namibia’s President, Sam Nujoma.

Although the Green Plan has served as a guide and reference for the analysis of environment/development issues in Namibia, it has not been implemented in a structured  and coherent way. The responsibility for implementation lay with line ministries that were not necessarily committed to the Green Plan agenda, although they had participated in its formulation. This lack of commitment was probably due to the fact that the lead agency in developing the Green Plan had been a line ministry itself, the Ministry of Wildlife, Conservation and Tourism (later to become the Ministry of Environment and Tourism). This ministry had no mandate to enforce compliance with strategies and action plans contained in the Green Plan. No process of monitoring was developed whereby implementation of the plan could be checked against its intentions.

Despite these implementation problems, Namibia has made considerable progress in implementing the overall approaches called for in the Green Plan. A number of programmes and projects address biodiversity conservation, desertification, community-based natural resources management, range management, water supply and demand, etc.

In recent years a specific programme was developed by the Directorate of Environmental Affairs in MET to develop an information and communication service for sustainable development in Namibia, supported by the Government of Finland. The programme supports sustainable development in Namibia by developing an effective environmental monitoring and information system and communication mechanisms to ensure the availability and utilisation of appropriate information in the national planning and decision-making processes (MET 1997).

The DANCED Project

The DANCED Project being implemented by the MET and the NPCS is designed to feed strategic inputs at key stages of the NDP2 process to introduce environmental and sustainability aspects into the national planning process.

The NDP2 process

The NDP2 process involves a series of formal stages intended to lead up to the formulation of Namibia's second 5-year national development plan. The NDP2 is intended to become effective on 1 May 2001.

The NPCS is mainly responsible for co-ordinating the NDP2 process, but contributions (i.e. draft chapters on sector development plans and cross-cutting concerns) are expected from the line Ministries, regional and local government authorities, and other government bodies.

The NDP2 process was initiated in the second half of 1999 with the preparation of a document, draft Policy Guidelines and Framework for NDPII, which outlines the policy agenda and the challenges for the NDP2. The draft Policy Guidelines were subsequently supplemented by draft Guidelines for the Preparation of Sector Chapters to NDPII.

The NPCS intends to complete the process of formulating NDP2 within a period of 10 months. In comparison, the first NDP (NDP1) required more than 2 years to complete even though it was almost entirely written by foreign experts.

Table 1 provides a brief account of developments in the NDPII process and the timetable for key NDPII stages.

The DANCED project

The project has been designed as a joint initiative of the Ministry of
Environment and Tourism and the NPCS.  It is a strategic alliance aimed at enabling the MET through its Directorate of Environmental Affairs (DEA) to play a key role in  ensuring that the environmental aspects of sustainable development are fully considered in the NDP2 process. These aspects were not well covered in NDP1. The alliance also ensures that the NPCS as the government agency  responsible for co-ordinating the NDP2 process is fully involved. The NPCS has the mandate to  insist on changes to chapters and can ensure that the issues identified by the DANCED project are in fact incorporated into the NDP2 document.

The project has been implemented by a Danish consulting firm, COWI and has been managed by a COWI development planner working closely with a Namibian team leader. The Head of the DEA has acted as overall Namibian project co-ordinator.

The project objective of strengthening and enhancing the national development planning process is to be achieved by promoting multi-stakeholder processes and generating strategic contributions to the NDP2 out of these consultative exercises. By project end, it is envisaged that sustainable development priorities and targets, with respect to their cross-cutting aspects as well as their sector-specific aspects, will be fully incorporated into the NDP2. The overall approach is depicted in Figure 1.

The development objective to which the Project will contribute is:

To promote and maintain the welfare of the people through the maintenance of ecosystems, essential ecological processes and biodiversity of Namibia and use of living natural resources on a sustainable basis for the benefit of all Namibians, both present and future.

The Project's immediate objective is:

The process of fully integrating environmental and sustainable development issues into the Namibian national development planning process enhanced.

The project design framework requires flexibility in project implementation taking into consideration the overall framework and timing of the NDP2 process. Table 2 shows an overview of the DANCED support to the NDP2 process. The DANCED interventions have been planned in five phases, four of which had been implemented by the end of September 2000:

Phase 1. Environmental Review of the Green Plan and NDP1

Two main activities took place during phase 1:

a) An environmental review of the Green Plan and NDP1. Consultants were hired to assess the overall incorporation of Green Plan principles/actions/initiatives into NDP1, and in overall terms assess the outcomes in terms of the achievement in the two plans objectives and contributions to sustainable development. The consultants were asked to comment on the effectiveness of the planning approaches for the Green Plan and NDP1 and to highlight lessons learned from the past planning experiences. b) Identification and analyse the 10 main threats to sustainable development in Namibia. A consultant was hired to investigate the root causes, the extent and what has been done in relation to the fundamental threats to sustainable development. As part of this process the aim was to prepare a popular version of the findings on the main threats. 

Phase 2. Development of a shared sustainable development vision for NDP2

Eighteen sector issues and options papers were prepared to identify the key sustainable development and cross-cutting issues in each major sector. These issues and options papers were used as background material for a series of  workshops which brought together related clusters of sectors to identify key cross-cutting issues and develop a cluster vision for sustainable development. The main clusters were:

a) Natural resources – Agriculture, water, land, wildlife, tourism, fisheries, forestry

b) Social  – Health, education,  labour, social services

c) Trade and Industry – Energy, industry, financial services, mining, trade

Table 2.  Project interventions to the NDPII process

An inter-cluster workshop was then held bringing together all the sectors to consolidate the identification of cross-cutting issues and to develop a sustainable development vision for Namibia. The results of these first phases of the project were captured in a document: Vision, Issues and Options for NDP2, the Results of a Participatory Process.  The aim was that line ministries would use the vision statements and identification of cross-cutting issues to guide the formulation of their sector chapters.

Phase 3. Drafting of MET chapters for NDP2

Originally, the project envisaged technical assistance to the MET for the drafting of all four of its chapters for NDP2. In mid-April, the Namibian Team Leader held discussions with the Directorates in the Ministry of Environment and Tourism on a workplan for drafting the MET chapters to NDP2, for forestry, wildlife, tourism and cross-cutting chapter on environment and sustainable natural resources management. The Directorates agreed that with the exception of the cross-cutting chapter, they would draft their own contributions

Phase 4. Assist DEA to screen draft NDP2 chapters with regard to sustainable development priorities and targets

This  phase of the project has consisted of technical assistance to the MET and NPCS in screening the draft chapters written by the line ministries. For this purpose consultants were engaged to review the chapters using the cross-cutting issues and vision statements identified and developed in the earlier stages. The format used for the screening process is contained in Annexe 2.

Phase 5. Assist the NPCS to consolidate the draft NDP2 with regard to sustainable development priorities and targets

As of the end of September 2000 the remaining inputs still required under this phase  were the following:

· TA to the NPCS in consolidating the draft NDP2  with regard to sustainable development issues (ensuring that the work of the reviewers and the earlier phases is indeed incorporated)

· Support to dialogues/roundtables/consultations on the draft NDP2 (focused discussions with key officials in the NPCS on specific issues and sectors)

· TA to identify and describe capacity constraints to natural resources management according to the NDP2 framework, and to outline possible remedial interventions through a consultative process.

Table 3 presents an overview of Project achievements.

Phase 1. Environmental review of the Green Plan and NDP1

Implementation of this phase was very much affected by the failure to find a Namibian consulting company to provide all the local inputs required by the Project. As a result of this failure, individual consultants were instead identified to form a core team for the environmental review. Faced with time constraints, the approach to the environmental review gave priority to the identification of the key issues and threats to sustainable development in Namibia, with a view towards having the paper ready as a discussions paper by the first Cluster Workshop on Natural Resources then scheduled in the early part of May.

Phase 1 has the following achievements to show:

• The document "Fundamental issues and threats to sustainable development in Namibia" was finalised in June, following the comments of a reference group convened in late April to review the draft paper and validate if the considered issues and threats represent the present knowledge and views of key resource persons in government and other sectors.
• The paper will subsequently be reproduced as a DEA Discussion Paper to reach a greater number of stakeholders.
• The executive summary of the paper was made available to participants of the Inter-Cluster Workshop held on 9 June. In addition, the considered fundamental issues and threats were presented at the Inter-Cluster Workshop. The popular version of the key issues and threats will be drafted and published inAugust. This will be of a format and presentation for general information, and will be targeted at government and non-government sectors and the general public in the regions and districts.

Table 3.  Overview of Project progress as of July 2000 (using the outcome and capacity building indicators proposed in the Project Document)

• A draft report on the environmental review of the Green Plan and NDP1 was completed in May. The main findings from this report and the considered fundamental issues and threats to sustainable development still have to be consolidated into a concise 10-15 page summary by the COWI Team Leader.

After the initial difficulty of getting a Namibian consulting company to provide the Project's entire local inputs, the Project resorted to other means of obtaining the best available consulting resources in Namibia. Knowledgeable people in the sector were approached for referrals to experts with relevant experience in the key aspects of strategic environmental assessments and process-oriented technical assistance.

An advertisement was also placed a local newspaper inviting companies, institutions and individual consultants to submit curricula vitae (CVs) for the various staffing needs of the Project. The Namibian Team Leader was identified through the advertisement.

Phase 2. Development of a shared sustainable development vision for NDPII The succeeding Project phases thus benefited from efforts in Phase 1 to reach the best available consulting resources in Namibia. Phase 2 engaged a combination of individual (freelance) consultants as well as Namibian consulting companies.

This Phase has the following achievements:

A total of 18 Sector Issues and Options Papers were prepared which served as inputs to the discussions in the 4 cluster workshops. The content of each sector paper includes:

Sector contribution to sustainable development: Using composite indicators, the importance of the sector to the national economy, and major environmental and sustainability implications of sector policies, plans and activities;

Key environmental issues and cross-cutting concerns that should be addressed in NDP2: recommendations on issues and concerns that need to be prioritised in NDP2; and Options to address the priority issues and concerns in NDP2.

The sector papers were compiled into a volume, "Compilation of Sector Issues and Options Papers" issued in June.

The high point of Phase 2 was the series of Cluster Workshops (4) and the culminating Inter-Cluster Workshop (ref. Table 2 and further in Table 5). These workshops served as venues for appreciation and discussion of cross-cutting environmental and sustainable development issues. The proceedings of these workshops will be compiled in a separate report volume.

The involvement and participation of relevant stakeholders was generally positive in the four cluster workshops and the succeeding inter-cluster workshop. The participants included some of the focal persons at the line Ministries responsible for drafting their Ministries' contributions to NDP2, the planners from the NPCS, as well as from the private and other non-governmental sectors. A number of the planners attended several workshops and their interest in the cross-sectoral approach being promoted and in sustainable development issues increased as the process developed.
The NPCS expressed interest to utilise this mechanism of consultative workshops in the subsequent stages of the NDP2 cycle.

It was however, a concern that the cluster workshops and the inter-cluster workshop took place during the time when line Ministries were already deep into preparations for drafting their respective NDPII chapter contributions. It had originally been envisaged that the DANCED project would only be responsible for organising the Natural Resources cluster workshop and the inter-cluster workshop and that the NPCS would organise the remaining three cluster workshops. Because of capacity constraints in the NPCS, the DANCED project undertook to organise all five workshops.  During the first cluster workshop, Natural Resources, it became clear that even within this group of sectors, there was no common understanding of the concept of sustainable development. In subsequent cluster workshops time was spent at the start developing a common understanding of sustainable development among participants.

The outcomes of this participatory consultative process were compiled into a paper, "Vision, Issues and Options for NDPII: The Results of a Participatory Process" issued in June. Copies of the paper were presented to the NPCS in the last week of June, with the agreement that these would be distributed to planners in the NPCS to inform and serve as reference in their review of draft NDPII chapters. The paper includes:

(i) the prioritised cross-cutting issues that need to be addressed in NDPII,

(ii) a shared vision for sustainable development for NDPII; and

(iii) proposed common strategies for addressing the priority cross-cutting issues.

Phase 3. Drafting of MET chapters for NDP2

The Namibian Team Leader assisted the DEA in  drafting the cross-cutting chapter on environment and sustainable resource management and this was completed in June.  The chapter was compiled by the Namibian Team Leader with inputs from the different programmes within the DEA and overall guidance from the Head of DEA who is also the National Project Coordinator for the DANCED support. The draft chapter was circulated to the other Directorates in the MET in July for comments prior to submission to the NPCS.  The chapter was screened by the NPCS in late September and a revised version based on comments received at the screening meeting was finalised by the end of September.

Phase 4. Assist DEA to screen draft NDP2 chapters with regard to sustainable development priorities and targets

This process was due to be undertaken in the period, July to August 2000. It was planned that  the screening analysis and consolidation work would:

• be informed and guided by the outcomes of the Inter-Cluster Workshop, compiled in a briefing paper, "Visions, Issues and Options for NDPII: The Results of a Participatory Process";
• see how well the draft chapters address the priority cross-cutting issues, and whether these are addressed in the sector priorities, and also whether the shared vision for sustainable development is reflected; and
• look for gaps (issues not dealt with), inconsistencies between chapters and areas where sectoral approaches are in conflict with each other.

Due to the large number of chapters, and limited resources of the DANCED project for this phase, the DAC/OECD project provided supplementary funding to ensure that a wider spread of chapters could be covered.  Chapters were prioritised for review, with greater attention being given to key sectoral chapters and major cross cutting chapters such as Poverty Reduction. The reviewers spent 1.5 days reviewing the chapters guided by the format attached in Annexe 2. They were then expected to attend the screening meeting held by the Screening Committee of the NPCS to present their comments and recommendations.

The screening process was delayed by the slow submission of chapters to the NPCS and ran into the second week of October. This delay hindered the DANCED and OECD/DAC inputs into this phase of the NDP2 process. It was difficult to stay abreast of almost daily changes in the schedule and impossible to keep consultants on standby in case the chapters they have reviewed will be screened at short notice. In some cases chapters were distributed to the screening committee only a day or two before the screening meeting. This made it impossible to mobilise reviewers to review the chapters and then be available to present their comments. 

Following the review of NDP2 chapters by the Screening Committee and DANCED reviewers, the NPCS held a national workshop with the following objectives:

i)To inform and involve relevant stakeholders in the broad review of the individual draft chapters of NDP2 on the basis of the agreed framework of development objectives, macroeconomic and financial setting for NDP2

ii)To seek effective contributions from the participants to further improve on the draft chapters to NDP2

The workshop was attended by government officials, particularly those tasked with drafting chapters, consultants advising line ministries, representatives of NGOs and CBOs. The workshop discussed the NDP2 framework chapters and the cross-cutting chapters in plenary and then broke into groups to discuss clusters of chapters. The DANCED Project was requested by the NPCS to provide facilitators for the four  group discussions: the natural resources cluster, the economic cluster, the social cluster and the public sector cluster. Because the process of accepting the comments of DANCED consultants on sector chapters had not been clear in the screening phase, it was decided to support the workshop as an additional opportunity for incorporating environmental and sustainable development issues in NDP2. The project also provided four Namibian consultants to participate in the group sessions, particularly with respect to environment and sustainable development issues.

Despite major time constraints a number of useful comments were made regarding most chapters and the workshop proved useful in further identifying key environmental sustainable development issues and links between sectors. All of the consultants asked to attend the working group sessions on behalf of the DANCED project were involved in the subsequent final review of chapters, providing useful continuity.  

Following the workshop there was another opportunity to carry out a final review of key NDP2 chapters. The DANCED project provided consultants to assist  a larger effort to consolidate NDP2 being coordinated by a team of EU consultants working in the NPCS. The DANCED consultants were asked to carry out the following:

i) Review the results of the screening work done previously by DANCED consultants, as well as other relevant project reports

ii)Write directly into the chapters any recommended revisions (whether additional text, changes in current information, drawing attention to missed priorities or strategies etc.).

iii)Write directly into the chapters any major environment or sustainable development issues that have been overlooked

iv)Discuss the proposed changes with the relevant authors/officials of the line ministries concerned and the NPCS with a view to reaching agreement to the changes proposed in the chapters

The consultants were allocated one day for chapters previously screened by DANCED consultants and 1,5 days for those chapters that had not been screened earlier. By January 23, 2001, the DANCED consultants had completed their final review of NDP2 Chapters

Conclusions

Project implementation

A number of positive aspects of project implementation can be identified:

·The alliance between the Ministry of Environment and Tourism (MET) and the NPCS has proved to be useful as a mechanism for including environment and sustainable development issues in NDP2.  The MET had a strong agenda reflected in the original Green Plan, but was unable to implement this agenda effectively (apart from activities within its own remit) because it had fairly low status in the government hierarchy of line ministries. Working closely with NPCS has given MET an opportunity to directly influence mainstream development planning.

·The use of consultants to carry out much of the work has enabled much to be achieved within a relatively short period of time.  Using consultants filled the capacity gap within the  DEA.

·The use of a Namibian team leader has  provided  the necessary continuity of liaison between the project and the DEA and the NPCS. This would have been difficult for the COWI development planner who was unable to be permanently based in Namibia for the duration of the project. The Namibian team leader was able to fill certain gaps such as facilitating two cluster workshops when suitable facilitators could not be found by the NPCS.

·The sector issues and options papers provided useful background papers for use by the sectors to identify major cross-cutting issues affecting sustainable development and to provide initial discussion points in the cluster workshops.

·The cluster workshops proved to be effective mechanisms for a) exposing a broad range of stakeholders to the concept of sustainable development and key cross-cutting issues; b) helping the different sectors to recognise the inter-relatedness of their activities with other sectors and c) stimulating ideas about how better co-operation and integration can be achieved.

• Although the project has made progress towards achieving its objectives, there were implementation problems that have reduced the impact of the project:

  · Although the project has been located within the Directorate of Environmental Affairs (DEA) in the Ministry of Environment and Tourism (MET), no DEA personnel, apart from the Director, have been involved in the process. This is largely because the DEA is a small directorate with few professional government staff. The DEA professional staff co-ordinate the management of a number of donor-funded programmes that are implemented by staff sourced from outside government. The result has been that the DEA has not built up strong links institutionally with the NPCS and little capacity has been built within the DEA for future collaboration of a similar nature in the formulation of national development plans.

  ·The high dependence upon the use of consultants to carry out a number of project activities has reduced the flexibility of the project to adapt to the scheduling problems experienced in the NDP2 process. Once the screening of draft NDP2 chapters slipped into September, the availability of key consultants, including the Namibian team leader, became reduced, because they had made other commitments based on the original scheduling of project interventions. During the crucial screening of chapters during September, the Namibian team leader has only been able to play a basic liaison and co-ordination role and not had the time to be more pro-active in dealing with some of the constraints.   

  ·Ultimately the DANCED project was too dependent upon the input of the other ministries and organisations (over which it had not control) for it to be fully able to ensure the achievements of its objectives.

Project Impact

The project appears to have made some impacts on the sustainability thinking within the National Planning Commission Secretariat (NPCS). An increased awareness of sustainable development issues and of cross-sectoral issues has been noticeable among the NPCS planners that attended the various cluster and inter-cluster workshops. Some of these planners were enthusiastic participants in the workshop processes. The planning adviser to the NPCS for the NDP2 process, Dr L. Chivuno believes that the planners now have the right background to be able better incorporate sustainable development issues in the overall national planning processes. This view is echoed by the Head of the DEA, Dr Peter Tarr. He believes the NPCS development planners have begun to see development in a broader context and to develop a better understanding  of the complexity of relationships between environmental, social, economic and institutional issues.

Dr Chivuno also believes that during the workshops, the participants from other government sectors began to realise the importance of discussing their sectors in relation to others and of working with other sectors to understand and address cross-sectoral issues. Dr Tarr views the workshops as the project activity with the highest value so far. He acknowledges that the DEA did not have the time and resources to provide sufficient support to the project in terms of direction and liaison with the NPCS.

Dr Chivuno has committed the NPCS to including the various cluster vision statements, the overall sustainable development vision statement and the major cross-cutting issues identified by the workshop process into the NDP2 chapter on National Development Objectives and Strategies. The process will also be extended to national budget preparation.

A National Strategy for Sustainable Development

Although the overt intention of integrating the Namibian Green Plan with NDP2 was not necessarily to develop a specific Sustainable Development Strategy for the country, to a large certain  this is what has been achieved.

NDP2 makes clear links between the four pillars of sustainable development: environment, economic development, social development and institutional development. The need to address development issues in an integrated way has begun to be accepted by officials in line ministries and other stakeholders.  Sustainable development has been adopted as a key national development objective; strategies to achieve sustainable development contained in NDP2 include efforts to explore the potential of alternative energy forms and community-based approaches to natural resource management. The importance of not only land reform and redistribution, but also wise land management is also recognised. There still remains much to be debated, however, on the full implications of “sustainable” development. A widely held view is that a developing country such as Namibia, with a highly skewed income distribution and resource allocation (largely a legacy of the apartheid era under south African rule), will inevitably have to make some   environmental sacrifices if it is to aim at the development levels of the First World. Indeed much of the foundation for the current level of development of the First World was established without regard to environment and sustainability issues. The definition of “sustainability” applied to development in Namibia is likely to remain somewhat different to that promoted by northern environmentalists and donors for some time to come. The difference interpretations of “sustainable development” applied by developed and developing countries was emphasised in the informal debates held by delegates to the Phuket Mid-term Review of the OECD-DAC Donor Developing country dialogue project. After hours and between sessions, there was a consensus that if building a dam for a hydro electricity scheme meant the destruction of the habitat of a rare and endemic toad, then so be it. The human lives that could be saved by generating electricity to hospitals and clinics, and the jobs that could be generated by industry dependent upon electricity were more important than the toad at this stage of a developing country’s evolution. An important challenge for the OECD-DAC dialogue on developing national sustainable development strategies is to promote a better understanding of perceptions of “sustainability” between the developed and developing countries. A rigid approach based on environmental and sustainability standards that the developed countries can now afford needs to be avoided. OECD-DAC needs to promote flexible approaches that are based on the realities faced by developing nations rather than some ideal state that in reality few, if any of the developed countries are achieving themselves.  

References

Brown, C. J. 1996. The Outlook for the Future. In: Namibia Environment. Vol. 1. Directorate of Environmental Affairs. Windhoek

Brown, C. J. (ed). 1992. Namibia’s Green Plan. Ministry of Environment and Tourism. Windhoek. 

Byers, B. A. 1997. Environmental threats and opportunities in Namibia: A comprehensive assessment. Research Discussion Paper No. 21. Directorate of Environmental Affairs. Windhoek.

DEA/DANCED. 2000. Environmental Review of the Namibian Green Plan and Inclusion of Environmental and Sustainable Development Aspects within Namibia’s  Second National Development Plan (NDPII). First Semi-Annual Progress Report January-July 2000. Directorate of Environmental Affairs, Ministry of Environment and Tourism (Namibia)/Danish Cooperation for Environment and Development (DANCED). 

MET. 1997. Information and communication Service for Sustainable Development in Namibia. Preliminary project document. Ministry of Environment and Tourism. Windhoek.

UNDP. 1996. Namibia. Human Development Report. UNDP. Windhoek.

Annotated format for screening NDP2 Chapters

DANCED Project, Environmental Review of the Namibian Green Plan and Inclusion of Environmental and Sustainable Development Aspects within Namibia’s Second National Development Plan (NDP2)

REVIEW OF DRAFT NDPII CHAPTERS
FOR SUSTAINABILITY AND ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES[1]

1.      Assessment of (i) coverage of environmental and sustainable development (E/SD) issues/concerns, and (ii) recognition of links to other sectors

Give an overall assessment of the chapter in terms of consistency and coherence of coverage of E/SD issues and concerns, as one reads through the objectives to strategies and on to priorities. Does the chapter strongly/adequately/consistently reflect on E/SD issues?

Does it recognise its importance/support role to key elements of national development? Bring out the cross-cutting issues that the chapter expressly responds to, and by what means?

Which cross-cutting issues that the chapter should rightfully address, have not been given enough attention? Briefly explain why the chapter should tackle such issues?

2.      Recommendations to strengthen the chapter's coverage of E/SD issues

Based on the assessment, recommend strategic changes to the chapter to strengthen E/SD coverage, through any of the following ways:

§         Pinpoint any inconsistency or conflict in the statement of objectives, and the identified strategies and subsequent priorities (programmes/projects).

§         Pinpoint any strategy or priority identified and outlined in the chapter that, based on past experience, is in conflict with E/SD principles

§         Cite other priorities "missed out" by the chapter that if included, could further improve coverage of key E/SD issues.

§         Looking beyond the sector, point out any strategy or priority outlined in the chapter that, on further reflection, may run counter to the main strategies for development in the other sectors.

The reviewer is encouraged to refer to (i) the Vision Paper, and (ii) the Summary Paper on SD Issues and Threats.

3.      Other recommendations to improve the chapter (optional)

§         Language/formulation suggestions

§         Others