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The
Pakistan National Conservation Strategy (NCS), at its approval in 1992,
situated Pakistan’s socio-economic development within the context of
a national environmental plan. The five years of planning that led to
the formulation of Pakistan NCS, made it both a process and a product
i.e. a multi-sectoral consultative process of consensus building and
mobilisation of a constituency; and a strategic framework. The implementation
period for the strategy was envisaged to be from 1992 to 2002.
In
order to take stock of the implementation of recommendations made by
the NCS, a major review was mandated mid-way through its ten-year implementation.
The NCS MTR was conducted between May 1999 to April 2000, in two phases.
Phase 1 consisted of information collection that was completed over
a period of twelve months. The phase 2 of NCS MTR was an external review
conducted by an independent external review team. External review was
a month long process primarily based on background studies and extensive
consultations with NCS stakeholders.
The
strategic significance of the NCS MTR was marked by the fact that its
process and results provide direction for convergence of several strategic
initiatives in the development scenario of Pakistan. The changing global
scenario and it implications on Pakistan also emerged as an important
aspect of MTR findings.
Significant
Pointers:
The
NCS MTR process brought to light a few very important lessons for Pakistan’s
planning processes:
- NCS
could not influence key socio-economic issues such as poverty reduction
and economic development – This is an emerging debate under the MTR
results i.e. the macro level issues were not integrated into NCS implementation
strategy and that NCS implementation was largely left to project identification
around NCS core areas.
- NCS
implementation processes could not characterise formulation processes
hence leading to rapidly decreasing commitment for action – Consultative
processes were the hallmark of NCS formulation, however, NCS implementation
strategies did not emerge in as participatory a manner as was anticipated.
- Need
for action on environment and SD has nevertheless been recognised
by public sector even given the harsh political environment and capacities
– The MTR reports that an intensive effort has been made towards awareness
raising and institutional building. This however, with less than adequate
political commitment and with prevailing level of capacities did not
translate into adequate action for NCS implementation.
- The
contextual shift from environmental conservation to SD over last ten
years – Substantial changes in emerging context necessitated a flexible
approach to implementation of NCS or any other SD plan for Pakistan,
translation of which through a flexible and frequently revisable process
is inevitable.
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Progress
on Follow Up to NCS MTR
- Draft
MTR report has been circulated to over 200 people for comments and
feedback.
- A
high level meeting was convened at the Ministry of Environment,
Local Government and Rural Development (MoELG&RD), Government
of Pakistan (GoP) which was chaired by the Secretary of the same
Ministry to discuss the process of taking the MTR forward. The plan
highlighted in section on What’s Next in this paper were identified
during this meeting. Following were the key decisions of the meeting:
1. Establishment
of NCS Steering Committee comprised of representatives from Ministry
of Environment, Planning & Development Division, IUCN and SDPI.
2. The concept
paper capturing the identified next steps along with budgetary requirements
for taking the MTR process forward would be developed by the said
committee.
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In order
to disseminate learning from Pakistan NCS MTR a regional dialogue
was organised by OECD-DAC, IUCN Nepal and Pakistan Environment Programme
of IUCN Pakistan in Kathmandu Nepal on July 25 –26, 2000. The dialogue
was attended by representatives from Nepal, Vietnam, Bangladesh,
Srilanka, Thailand and Pakistan. Mr. Asad Sibtain Deputy Secretary
NCS Unit represented Ministry of Environment, Government of Pakistan.
During the dialogue, it was noted that Pakistan’s experience provides
a rich learning ground for not only those nations who are either
in the process of review or formulation of NCS/NEAPs/BAP but can
also contribute greatly to the currently ongoing OECD-DAC donor-developing
countries dialogue on formulation of national strategies for sustainable
development (nssds). This dialogue aims to inform donors on best
practices in supporting developing countries to formulate/implement
their nssds on the basis of learning from developing countries.
The process would result into a) a guideline for external partners/donors,
and b) a source book on formulation of nssds. The development of
these two documents is being facilitated by IIED (International
Institute for Environment and Development UK). It was therefore
decided that, after the finalisation of MTR report, mechanism would
be formalised to incorporate the Pakistan experience into the two
outputs.
- A
mid term review of OECD-DAC Dialogue was held in Phuket Thailand
from October 9 14, 2000. The dialogue was attended by representatives
of DFID, OECD-DAC, European Union and GTZ from donor community.
The developing countries taking part in the process are Burkina
Faso, Bolivia, Nepal, Thailand, Tanzania, while Pakistan, Ghana
and Namibia have been chosen as parallel countries where potential
learning opportunities exist. During the course of the dialogue
a meeting was facilitated by DFID between IUCN Pakistan and IIED
and activities were firmed up for integrating Pakistan experience
into the guideline for donors and source book on nssd
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Following
activities have been identified to take the MTR process forward.
Preparation
of a concise summary of NCS MTR report in collaboration with IIED.
In
order to fully exploit the richness of learning from the Pakistan
NCS MTR it is imperative that the findings and learning from MTR are
widely understood and internalised. Only then, participatory and informed
decision making towards NCS-2 can be ensured. In addition, during
the regional workshop in Kathmandu it was widely expressed that Pakistan
experience holds a wealth of learning for other countries in the region.
This brought to light the need for a concise summary, a 20-25 pager,
based on MTR report and other development initiatives currently being
undertaken in Pakistan. Moreover, this paper would directly address
the framework for OECD/DAC guidelines and will feed into the source
book on nssd. The paper would therefore facilitate
i.
Participation in making decisions on NCS-2
ii.
Preparation of guidelines for donors and source book on nssd.
iii.Dissemination
of learning at regional level in Asia
It
was agreed in a meeting with IIED and DFID that a total of two weeks
would be allocated for the development of this paper. The first week
would be spent on developing a framework synthesising various categories
of findings and learning from MTR and other supporting documents.
This would primarily be done in Pakistan by NCS Coordinator in consultation
with Dr. Stephen Bass of IIED who is also a member of NCS MTR external
review team. While in the second week it would be finalised jointly
by Dr. Stephen Bass and NCS Coordinator at IIED. The paper would also
be translated into Urdu.
Initiation
of a Dialogue process
In
Pakistan the NCS processes, both formulation and review, are characterised
by extensive participation of and consultation with key actors from
public, NGOs and private sectors that ensured the widespread ownership
of NCS by all sectors. Now there is a need to build a broad-based
consensus on taking the MTR forward. Also there is a need to initiate
an informed public debate on future directions in the emerging political
and economic context. Involvement of media would therefore
be a key element. Dialogue is also necessary to bring an informed
convergence of various sustainable development initiatives that are
being deliberated in the country. Such as poverty reduction strategy
(World Bank and IMF), National Sustainable Development Programme (UNDP),
(OECD-DAC), Mainstreaming Environment to Fight Poverty (WB) and follow-up
on NCS MTR (Ministry of Environment and Planning and Development Division
of GoP, IUCN, SDPI) that is also linked with OECD-DAC nssd dialogue
process. It is therefore envisaged that a national forum would
be launched to deliberate upon the convergence of various initiatives.
The advocacy through various political fora has been identified as
a key to gauge high level political commitment and support for SD
agenda in Pakistan.
The
dialogue process would therefore be aimed at
i.
Wider stakeholder debate on MTR findings in conjunction with all
other sustainable development initiatives currently being considered
at the national level
ii.
Consensus building on a futuristic framework that converge all initiatives
iii.
Creation of ownership of and support for SD agenda in Pakistan
It
is envisaged that this will be achieved through:
1.
Stakeholder consultations will be held at national, provincial,
administrative regions, and district levels
2.
Launching a national level SD forum
3.
Advocacy with the decision makers through Pakistan Environment Protection
Council and NCS Cabinet Committee in order to have consensus and
commitment towards the NCS-2 or Pakistan SD Plan
4.
Initiation of public debate through print media, existing networks
in the public, NGOs and private sector
Documentation
This
would facilitate two objectives:
i.
Record keeping of learning from the processes
ii.
Preparation on nssd/NCS-2
The
process of NCS MTR greatly benefited from the lessons learnt and recorded
during the formulation process of NCS and other plans in Pakistan.
Similar efforts are underway to record key lessons from the MTR process.
Due to the contextual complexity of the current phase, the documentation
of this future focused process would be a key resource not only for
planning processes in Pakistan but also for other nations and for
external development partners. In addition it is envisaged that the
documentation on findings of dialogue process would lead to the development
of a framework/proposal for nssd/NCS-2 in Pakistan.
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