1. This draft report has been prepared by IIED and is being circulated to all workshop participants for comment and clarification.

2. The term "strategy" when used unqualified in this report means a strategy for sustainable development.

Notes:

• Importance of a central administrative co-ordination unit (e.g. the Ministry for Sustainable Development in Bolivia);
• A Ministry of the Environment is not a suitable location for a sustainable development strategy (sustainable development is more than the environment) (Pakistan);
• The capacity of governments to formulate strategies needs to be addressed (Namibia).
  

• Donors should not be involved in strategy formulation. The strategy must be nationally owned. Instead, donors should concentrate on assisting the implementation of national strategies (Thailand);
• Donor co-ordination is essential but often missing (Burkina Faso).
  

• Increased participation of civil society is needed (Burkina Faso).
  

• The private sector is crucial to success or failure (Bolivia).

• National plans/strategies/actions need to be linked to local initiatives (Burkina Faso, Nepal);
• Local ‘social’ capital is important (Nepal);
• Strategies need to be ‘demand driven’ (Tanzania);
• Decentralisation is a crucial process that needs to be addressed (Bolivia, Thailand, Nepal).

• A good strategy builds on what is already there, rather than creating an additional burden (Tanzania);
• There is often a failure to address synergies between different overlapping strategies (e.g. lack of synergy in Burkina Faso, PRSP and CDF developed separately in Pakistan).

• Consultation with all stakeholders at all stages of strategy formulation (Ghana);
• BUT consultation can be slow, expensive and requires capacity-building to enable participation (Ghana);
• Increasing awareness and access to information is important (Pakistan).

• A vision for sustainable development is an important element (Bolivia, Namibia);
• Ghana’s Vision 2020 – an overarching framework for strategy in Ghana.

• Good governance is crucial. Need to ensure transparency in government - private sector – civil society consultations (Thailand)

• "Outcomes are more important than policy statements" (Bolivia);
• Implementation is often weak. So there is a need for indicators and monitoring (Burkina Faso);
• "From commitment to inaction" (Pakistan);
• Importance of linking strategy to finance/budgets (Bolivia).

• Importance of integrating long-term sustainability and environmental issues into national planning processes (Namibia, Pakistan);
• Environmental issues need to be integrated into socio-economic decisions (Pakistan).

Four working groups discussed the emerging issues and lessons from the country reports and considered three important questions:

a) How to build strategies from the bottom up ? What works ?

b) What are the threats and opportunities posed by other strategies (eg PRSPs, CDF, etc)

c) What are the roles of stakeholders?

The process of democratization facilitates the bottom-up approach to development of nssds. Examples: Ghana, Bolivia

The subsidiarity principle promotes role delineation among various levels and actors. Ex: Bolivia

Linkages and networking among different community/civil society/territorial groups gives voice to civil society in facilitating bottom-up nssd. Ex: Thailand

Effective local-level capacity development as part of political devolution and fiscal decentralisation helps assure bottom-up nssd. Ex: Ghana, Bolivia.

Roles

• Promoting trust/confidence-building among development partners.
• Ex: Nepal
• Creating the environment/conditions for effective public-private partnerships in nssd design/implementation. Eg. Nepal Dairy Development Program
• Fair application of laws. Eg. Competition laws in Thailand.
• Allocating necessary financial and other resources for developing nssd through the bottom-up approach.
• Ensuring constitutional and legislative requirement for participatory approach in development4 planning ( Ex: Ghana) and methodologies/approaches for doing that (e.g. Bolivia)..

b) Donors

• Facilitate/promote homegrown nssds.
• All donors should respect/conform to nssds.

1. Networking among groups.

1. Ensure investments that supports nssd

• Facilitators of ideas/initiators
• National co-ordination, partnership
• PRSP – nssds should be a common framework because sustainability is fundamental to
  everything else – so nssd should be a principle for all strategies

4. Partnership bet. Central and local govt – partnership approach should be part of
   the strategic framework

• Not practical or desirable to have an overall strategy – but need overall principles
  of SD for all strategies (devt, biod etc) - & national vision with principles, and enriched with B-U. Govt needs to facilitate B-U approach by ensuring there are links bet local, regional and national levels.
• Most of the countries are in a decentralisation process so nssd should work with decentralisation process – involve local authorities more
• Community facilitators can help to change national policy (eg. BF)
• Many strategic initiatives coming from outside could reinforce the tendency for T-D strategies. But with a set of principles we can encourage all these strategies to be conducted in a certain way and contribute to a common vision.

• Not possible to have a truly B-U approach to nssds. We are already half way
  through a top-down process so how do we turn around at mid-stream and make it 100% upstream? Nssd concept came from Agenda 21, and then national governments, therefore it is top-down. ‘participation’ = consultation with key actors, not truly B-U – ‘participation’ has been romanticised
• Difficulty of making the step between the consultation process and the process of policy planning – how to prioritise after consultation? Those consulted are not present when drafting decisions are made, and the perceptions of the drafters, and timeframes are different – so the needs of those consulted are often lost – need for representatives of civil society to participate directly in drafting committees (ie. In decision making)
• To make the transition to a more bottom-up approach, ‘participation’ is not enough. Once you start developing an nssd at national level, prevent it from being bottom-up. Need to learn about successful initiatives that have been designed and implemented by local people, and ‘replicate’ these elsewhere. The Nssd concept can only be changed partly through ‘participation’. The govt. needs to learn from the people, not impose top down.
• ‘Replicate’ does not mean copy exactly – this would also be top-down, but it means sharing the experience with successful initiatives to help people in other areas to develop their own successful initiatives. So the govt. facilitates exchange of information and experience.
• The poor should be the main beneficiary group of nssds – an nssd is basically an integrated approach to development (ie. poverty reduction). The national govt, private sector and donors are secondary stakeholders – they should be involved as facilitators.
• Who are the poor? The definition is expanding – focus on the relative poor, but also need to involve other people (eg. economic actors) in strategy process – and for them to be truly involved, they need to benefit. Poverty has a physical and a spiritual dimension.
• Top-down ‘economic’ approach to development of the govt. has caused increased poverty (eg. Thailand) because resulted in environmental degradation and erosion of wisdom about natural resources. Therefore need ‘participation’, or co-operation between people and the govt.
• How to achieve a B-Up approach? Need to improve the information in govt; and reform education so people learn about their local area and resources, not just about western technology. This will help to create the local conditions to enable people to create their own plans. Has to be self-generated not imposed by the govt.
• Also need to strengthen local groups at national level so they can influence govt. policy.
• But also need a mechanism to filter out components which are likely to have negative impacts on neighbouring areas/regions/countries.
• Roles:
  - govt: catalyzer/facilitator (facilitate learning about what works by improving information flows and bringing groups together – use the people themselves to transfer knowledge; create enabling conditions; provide legitimacy for local initiatives)
  - govt. should work with existing civil society groups – not try to create new ones.
  - Management of knowledge by local people brings confidence and this is
  necessary for self-sufficiency

GROUP D:

• Ingredients of success – flexibility, having movers & shakers – drivers – to make it successful or survive in the gots; inf and communication; many conflicts in terms of setting priorities – cultural, resource etc. so should work only at local level 1^st then take to national level. Some feel that there should be a national vision of SD – but others felt that there are lots of things at local level that won’t fit into a national level;

Opportunities/threats:

• Culture is both
• Parallel strategies can be an opp. Cos there is overlap – can hyave set of SD strategies
• Donor funding is both a threat and an opportunity – threat cos something that is strongly donor funded can get a label as a donor driven agenda

• Government role – main role is networking cos in many areas the CS does not have access to all regions and people & they can change the way devt planning is done
• Bolivia experience - both processes are very important – top down & B-U; T-D makes a vision and B-U enriches it and makes it shared. Need indicators that allow transition from good intentions to real results. This monitoring needs to be done by govt and CS, so that plans/strategies can be improved yearly.