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5.
Activities Completed
5.1
Regional Workshop
A two-day
regional workshop was organised in July to share the experiences of Bangladesh,
Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and Thailand. Steve Bass of IIED and
Pete Shelley of DFID also attended the workshop.
The
July workshop in Kathmandu came out with the following Principles of Effective
NSSDs:
1. Agreed
terminology/definition
2. Provides
process for agreeing SD vision and goals
3. Focuses
on agreed national priorities
4. Links
local realities to these national priorities
5. Introduces
mechanisms to ensure sustainability
6. Understands changing
context and forces for/against sustainability
7. Simple readable
document is included in continuing communication programme
8. Encourages production/review
of compatible sector strategies (NSSD + sector strategies to learn from
each other)
9. Steered by influential,
high level, multisectoral body
10. Capitalises on
existing systems, process and structures
11. Active and continuous
processes of engaging stakeholders to build commitment and exercise responsibility
12. Based on principles
of social justices, equity and gender sensitivity, special attention to
involving marginalised groups
13. Mechanisms for
defining criteria and indicators, bench marks monitoring and review are
inbuilt
14. Continuous improvement
approach
15. Donors should
have long term commitment to local NSSDs
The Kathmandu Dialogue
agreed that:
a. These principles
apply to all countries. Specific criteria and indicators could be developed
for individual countries
b. Any process that
applies to these principles e.g. NCS, CDF etc could be recognised as
an NSSD
c. Further thoughts
are needed on possibility of devolution
Immediately
after the workshop a daylong planning meeting for Nepal NSSD framework
was organised with the participation of staff from UNDP, SCDP, DFID, IIED,
and IUCN. The proposed NSSD framework was later discussed and refined
in a meeting at NPC. Since then the NSSD steering committee has met several
times to discuss appropriate strategies and approaches for Nepal.
A separate
report on the proceedings of this workshop is prepared with detailed deliberation
of the dialogue.
5.2.
Status Review
After
entering into formal agreement with IIED, IUCN Nepal set up a nssd secretariat
initially with a full time coordinator and a secretary.
In a
meeting of nssd Steering Committee the following areas were identified
for status review:
- Land and Agriculture
- Forestry, Rangeland
and Biodiversity
- Tourism
- Health, Population,
Drinking Water and Sanitation
- Education
- Good Governance
/ Decentralisation
- Macroeconomic Policies,
Performance and Sustainable Issues
- Poverty Reduction
It was
decided to invite interested experts to conduct status review of the areas
identified through an advertisement in a national newspaper. The response
was good. Many individuals expressed their interest. After personal interviews
individuals selected were assigned tasks with specific guidelines. The
IIED prepared Topic Guides for Status Reviews and Dialogues was used as
the main basis for review.
A series
of discussions were held on draft reviews at the presence of as many expert
consultants as possible. The nssd Steering Committee members were also
invited to these discussion meetings. The experts first presented their
draft reports followed by queries, comments and suggestions. The experts
then finalised their reports by incorporating comments and suggestions
received.
A wealth
of information is generated in the eight status review papers. In addition,
a review of Sustainable Community Development Project (SCDP) in progress
in the six districts of Nepal under UNDP’s Capacity 21 initiative is included
as an example project.
The
status review is presented in two parts. Part I consists of summaries
of review for busy readers. Part II consists of the detailed review with
a list of references at the end of each review paper. In this section
only a brief account of the findings of review is given.
5.2.1.
Land and Agriculture
Both
the Agriculture Perspective Plan and the Ninth Plan provide a 20 years
perspective, strategy and priority for agriculture and related sectors.
Bulk of the past public expenditure to the agriculture sector has gone
to irrigation and subsidy on chemical fertilizer, while agriculture research
and extension have remained under funded. Administrative instability and
excessive dependence on donors are pointed out as impediments to agriculture
development. Issues related to sustainable development of agriculture
are addressed in the context of the country’s excessive dependence on
the country’s already overstitched natural resource base amidst a high
rate of population growth and predominance of literally stagnating subsistence
agriculture.
The
most common land classification is the division of the country into the
Tarai, Hill and the Mountain regions. Currently prevailing tenure types
are raikar and guthi and the government has initiated the process of converting
guthi lands into raikar. More than two-thirds of the total land holdings
are less than one hectare in size, and they own only 30 percent of the
total farm area. Land fragmentation is considered one of the structural
problems inhibiting agriculture modernisation. Since the policy related
to illegal encroachment is not strong, local residents are encouraged
to illegally occupy land and get registered later.
5.2.2.
Forestry, Rangeland and Biodiversity
Nepal’s
forest cover has declined from 5.5 million hectares (37% of land area)
to 4.27 million hectares (29%) from 1978/79 to 1990/91 in spite of the
successes of community forestry programmes and protected area system.
Protected area expansion is based upon rare and endangered biological
species and not upon ecological stability of the region. Nepal needs larger
proportion of its population in the countryside not only to safeguard
mountain environments but also to make wise use of its comparative advantages
including those of its geopolitical position. Nepal can provide a large
variety of products (farms/forests) than large quantities of a product.
Impact
assessments on biodiversity of certain old growth forests should be mandatory
before handing over the property to the community. The opportunity to
develop community and private forestry for sustainable development has
become more and more apparent. There is a need to develop common understanding
between and among the people and the government agencies.
5.2.3
Tourism
Tourism
in Nepal contributes 3.5 percent to GDP and 15 percent of total foreign
exchange earnings of the country. The Eighth and the Ninth Plans envisaged
policies for using tourism for poverty alleviation, establishing Nepal
as a premium destination on world tourism map and expand benefits from
it down to village level. Unfortunately, tourism in Nepal has been vulnerable
due to external factor and international media publicity of internal insurgency.
In spite of attempts to develop tourism in different parts of the country,
it remains confined largely to Kathmandu-Pokhara-Chitwan triangle. The
tourism industry is beset with such other problems as lack of forest,
unmanaged solid waste and revenue earned from tourism not being used for
development of tourist areas. Although some efforts are underway to correct
these deficiencies, they are not adequately addressing the problems.
5.2.4.
Health, Population and Drinking Water and Sanitation
As a
result of the past 45 years of planning and programming in health and
drinking water and sanitation areas, many improvements are realised. They
include increased life expectancy, eradication of malaria, reduction in
communicable diseases and increased access to health services, piped water
supply and modern sanitation facilities.
There
are many challenges, however, which are yet to be addressed. Health conditions
of women and children are still appallingly serious compared to those
of male population. The health facilities need to be substantially improved
with respect to supply of medicines, manning the health posts with qualified
manpower and providing quality services in a sustainable manner. The increasing
incidence of HIV/AIDS is posing a big challenge for its management. The
family planning needs are still unmet. Migration and urbanisation call
for special attention with respect to policy making and their implementation.
5.2.5.
Education
The
policy of making education free at school level has resulted in positive
impact on school enrollment. In 1998 over 70 percent of primary school
aged children were attending schools. Nepal’s experience with educational
strategies and policies has been rich. Some of the plans has a very high
level of participation of civil society. They tended to work more effectively.
Private sector has been playing increasingly important role in sharing
the burden of the government in providing education to the public.
Like
other sectors, education also is not free of problems and issues. A significant
percentage of school aged children is still out of school. High dropout
and repetition rates in public schools has resulted in a big wastage of
resources. The state of public where overwhelming majority of the children
study is miserably poor in terms of physical facilities, educational facilities,
quality of teachers and overall learning environment. The private sector
could play an important role in raising the status of education in the
country. Only a beginning is made in this direction.
5.2.6.
Good Governance
Governance
is viewed as the exercise of economic, political and administrative authority
to manage a country’s affairs at all levels. The recognition and credence
given to the civil societies and NGOs in mobilizing communities for resource
conservation, community forestry, leasehold forestry and micro-credit
and multitude of development initiatives were among the positive contributors
to development processes. Many of these initiatives ensured participation
of women and the disadvantaged people in all processes and gave ownership
to themselves that led to sustainable development, however limited in
scales.
The
lessons learned from the past two decades in sustainable development practices
showed that poor coordination and management by central government without
due respect to equity, local wisdom, their ownership, participation and
so on are not only indicators of poor governance but also the factors
that gave rise to Maoist movement, uprise of the nationality groups, draining
of youth and human resources from the country and general low esteem or
a sense of hopelessness among the citizens of the country.
5.2.7.
Macro Economic Policies, Performance and Sustainable Issues
In the
recent years, Nepal has maintained broad macro economic stability and
attained further improvement in the overall external balances. Economic
growth has accelerated while inflation subsided. Exports have grown significantly
and balance of payment is strongly in the country’s favour. Improved agriculture
production followed by low international commodity prices has resulted
in a marked deceleration in the inflation rate in the recent years.
Low
economic growth rate, growing unemployment and intensifying poverty culminating
into the vicious cycle of low income, low saving, low investment and low
growth have led the country to low level of equilibrium. The challenges
facing Nepal relate to addressing the long-standing constraints to significantly
higher growth, the key to poverty reduction in Nepal, while maintaining
economic stability.
5.2.8.
Poverty Reduction
The
hard fact is that Nepal is experiencing high and perpetuating incidence
of poverty. The reasons for it include feeble and annually fluctuating
growth rates, poor and expensive social service delivery and limited coverage
of successful targeted programmes. The causes of poverty lie at two levels:
implementation and management level and planning level. At the implementation
and management level there are implementations delays, insecure feeling
on the part of investors, unpredictable decision making of government
officials, inadequate legal framework, top down planning and decision
making, thin distribution of resources and poor monitoring. The sectoral
performance and planning level is characterised by low economic growth
rate, low agricultural productivity, low level of social and economic
infrastructure and unsustainable use of natural resources.
For
ensuring the desired results, first priority needs to go to improve the
implementation capability and enhance management strength. Towards this
direction, priorities should be given to enhance implementation capacity
of the government and its service delivery, to ensure competition and
promote private sector participation and to support decentralisation and
strengthen local government agencies. At the sectoral performance and
planning front agriculture development should be promoted, higher share
to the social priority sectors should be alloted, better accessibility
to the backward and inaccessible areas should be ensured and other sectoral
programmes including tourism, small, medium and micro-hydro power and
small and medium enterprises should be promoted.
5.2.9.
Sustainable Community Development Programme (SCDP)
The
fundamental principles of the SCDP approach to development are participation
of all stakeholders from national to local levels, integration of environmentally
sustainable socio-economic development into development plans and activities
and information sharing to ease adaptation/replication of the experience
of the Programme. Major achievements of SCDP can be seen in the areas
of poverty reduction, sustainable use and management of natural resources,
capacity building for sustainable development and policy formulation at
the national and local level.
5.3.
National and Local Level Dialogues
As planned,
two national level and five local level dialogues were held between December
2000 and January 2001. The first national level workshop was held in December
18th 2000 in Lalitpur. It was organised primarily to inform
about the objectives of nssd status review and dialogue initiatives. The
experts involved in status review presented their findings which was followed
by general discussions and group works on principal issues of sustainable
development. The participants were asked to give their opinion as to specific
development strategies that have yielded positive results and the reasons
for them. Likewise, they were asked to identify weak aspects of those
strategies.
Following
the national dialogue five regional level dialogues of two days each were
organised in Biratnagar, Kathmandu, Pokhara, Nepalgunj and Dhangadhi.
In each of these dialogue the participants were carefully selected to
represent line agencies, district and village level governments, NGOs,
women, educational institutions and agencies involved in sustainable development
activities in the region. These participants were asked to focus their
dialogue on issues pertaining to their own geographical region. As the
tendency was to emphasize negative factors, they were reminded to cite
positive examples also.
Just
like in the national dialogue, experts gave a brief presentation on findings
of the status review. Prior to this a brief inaugural ceremony was organised.
Following the presentations the participants were given ample time to
relate to the issues raised in status review with the situation in their
own areas. The first half of the second day was set aside for group discussion.
The participants divided themselves into four groups. The topics allocated
to them were as follows:
Group
A: Agriculture Sector
Group
B: Forestry (including tourism) Sector
Group
C: Social Sector (Education, health, population, drinking water and sanitation,
women’s and children’s status, social security etc.)
Group
D: Infrastructure (road, irrigation, drinking water, electricity, communication,
urban
development
etc.)
Poverty
alleviation, gender and governance issues were treated as cross cutting
issues in the dialogue.
After
group report presentations during the second half of the regional dialogues,
the participants had yet another opportunity to discuss on the problems
and issued raised.
The
deliberations of the first national and the five regional dialogues were
synthesised and presented in the final national workshop in Kathmandu
at the end of January 2001. They were
presented
also in the International Conference in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, in February
2001.
The
detailed account of the national and regional dialogues is given in a
separate document on Proceedings of National and Regional Level Dialogues.
The summary of issues raised in each dialogue is appended as Annex 1 under
seven broad headings. The main issues raised under each of these headings
are summarised in the following paragraphs.
5.3.1. Social Aspects
While
the participants in most development regions expressed some satisfaction
in the improvements made in health and education sectors, they stressed
the need for reforms in many fronts. They emphasized the need for overall
human resources and infrastructure development. They wanted to see increased
participation of women and disadvantaged groups in planning and implementation
of development activities affecting them. The participants saw strong
need for technical and vocational education. They wanted to see life related
non formal education given at the grass roots level. They wanted to see
the teachers receive additional facilities and training so that teaching
becomes more effective. With regard to health issues, concern for the
need for controlling epidemic in far west was explicitly expressed. The
need for promoting local health attendants by giving them further training
in primary health care was also emphasized. In every dialogue the need
for gender balance and equity in social and economical aspects was stressed.
5.3.2.
Policy
Participants
in all the regions agreed that Nepal has embarked upon good plans and
policies for sustainable development (SD) but most of them are not applied
in practice. At the same time they emphasized the need for making plans
and policies more people centred. They expressed their concern also for
the need for promoting income generating activities and increasing employment
opportunities. Participants in some regions pointed to the lack of land
use planning policy. Public participations in planning and implementation
of programs was considered inadequate. Displeasures were expressed in
ever increasing number of municipalities without taking appropriate planning
measures. Promotion of the buffer zone concept and increased afforestation
were considered as positive indicators.
5.3.3.
Natural Resources
Participants
in every location hailed community forestry as a landmark success in Nepal’s
natural resource management policy. At the same time concerns were expressed
about land fragmentation, deforestation, lack of alternative sources of
energy promotion policies and problems created by single type of trees
in private forests. In agriculture sector promotion of cash crop and modern
agriculture technology was emphasized. It was felt that the arrangements
to provide loans for agriculture should be reformed to bring improvement
in this sector. Promotion of agro based industries and plants was also
considered necessary. The need for biodiversity inventory was pointed
out by a sizeable number of participants. Management of grazing land was
also considered important. The participants saw the need for maximum utilization
of irrigated land for agriculture purposes. They said good quality seeds,
breed and fertilizer should be made available on time to increase agriculture
production.
5.3.4.
Law
While
there was agreement about the presence of adequate legal framework for
sustainable development, the need for timely reforms in legal provisions
and correction of contradicting laws was considered necessary. Existing
laws are not being effectively implemented. Not enough is done to meet
international commitments made. Patent rights for medicinal plants of
Nepal are looking. The need to provide legal authority to local institutions
regarding conservation activities was also stressed.
5.3.5
Infrastructure
While
recognizing infrastructure development specially in the transport and
communication sectors, the participants offered a number of suggestions
for improvement in these and other areas. They felt the need for North-South
highways. They stressed the need for regulating unplanned human settlements
and urban growth. Road quality was considered poor and the participants
drew attention on the need for road maintenance. Roadside encroachments
were also a matter of concern for many participants. Other suggestions
were for increase in the area of irrigated land, establishment of micro
dairy farms and construction of cold storage.
5.3.6.
Environment
A wide
range of concerns relating to environmental degradation and pollution
were expressed. Participants in the Mid-Western Development Region complained
that unplanned coal extraction was creating problems in forest and land
conservation. Some participants in the Eastern Development Region felt
that hydro-electric plants were adversely affecting the environment. In
the first national workshop some of the participants suggested for provision
of fiscal incentives for environment friendly productions and technologies.
They suggested also for application of “polluters pay” principle.
5.3.7.
Cross Cutting Issues
Many
of the participants believed that in order to realise sustainable development
certain improvements in all the sectors are needed. High in their agenda
was the need for effective mechanisms for monitoring and evaluation. Equally
important is coordination among the concerned institutions. Provision
of adequate financial resources on time for implementation of policies
and programmes was also emphasized. Political interventions were said
to be common in all sectors which needed to be removed. Transparency in
all stages of development activities was considered essential. The need
to take more advantage of available communication facilities and information
technology was pointed out. Improvement in governance structure was suggested
by involving local people in the planning and implementation of development
programmes.
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