ISSUES IN MOUNTAIN
DEVELOPMENT
ISSN: 1027-0027
1996/1

ISSUES IN MOUNTAIN DEVELOPMENT is a series released from time to time to brief planners, development workers, researchers and donors on recent trends, findings, and issues affecting mountain development. The papers in this series can be quoted with due acknowledgements.Comments are welcome.


Integrated Planning for Environment and Economic Development in Mountain Areas:
Concepts, Issues, and Approaches


The Environment-Development Dilemma

Most development activities impinge upon the environment and adversely affect the ecological balance of the mountains. It would be unreasonable and unfair to the mountain people if, for that reason, no development activities were to be undertaken in mountain areas.

In between the two extreme types of activity; namely, (i) 'environmentally-benign' ones and (ii) 'ecologically-disastrous' ones there is a whole range of activities that have various combinations of income-generating and environmental impact potential.The intimate and interactive links between environment and development necessitate complete incorporation of environmental of the generally practiced post-formulation assessment of environmental impact of a project or a programme. Efforts in the past have focussedmainly on categorising areas as resource-abundant and resource deficientor on zonation of environmentally-sensitive areas (e.g., into green, red, and orange categories). The concept of carrying capacity has also been used to assess the extent to which development activities could proceed without endangering the environment. These approaches have succeeded in highlighting the importance of environmental protection, but they have fallen short of evolving approaches that can strike a balance between environmental and developmental needs. Environmental impact analysis, on the other hand, has been applied to judge specific projects or programmes, without necessarily having a range of options for consideration.

Methodologies for evolving alternatives from which a set of development activities causing minimum damage to the environment could be chosen for mountain regions, in general, and for specific areas with a varying resource base, in particular, have not been adequately developed.

Available methodologies for EIA and assessment of income potential for precise quantitative estimates may prove inadequate, and they need to be further developed by natural resource and environment specialists and economists together.A quantitative assessment of the environmental sensitivity of different activities, in terms of both resource use and resultant processes and activities, is needed. Ideally, an aggregate index or coefficient of environmental impact for each potential development activity is required. There are essentially two steps in this exercise; one, in terms of the state of natural resources that need to be developed and, two, in terms of the extent to which a development activity affects these indicators directly and indirectly, which have to be assessed.

Activities should also be indexed according to their income-generating potential, in order to choose an activity structure that is sustainable in terms of both its impact on the environment and potential for income generation on a continuing basis. Simultaneously, the development plan should provide for the possible regeneration and replenishment of environmentally-sensitive resources that would be depleted, even if slowly, in the process of economic development.


Paving the Way

Any development strategy will have to ensure expansion of employment opportunities and broad-based development of human resources and skill formation,particularly among small-holders, the landless, and women, to ensure that the benefits of development are widely distributed.Integrated planning in mountain areas requires the use of linkage analysis in operational aspects, not merely as a tool for estimation of demand-supply balances and output and investment requirements. For, due to the problems of inaccessibility and marginality, production linkages do not materialise without interventions. This is true of both linkages between infrastructure and directly productive activity and those between different activities or different links in the production and marketing chain.Thus, development of transport infrastructure and power supply in themselves does not necessarily lead to the development of income-generating activities, nor does wide-scale prevalence of manually-operated, low-productivity activities, even considering the potential for high productivity and better incomes through use of power and access to outside markets, bring about development of energy and transport facilities.

Similarly, production of primary commodities, even though on a significant scale, does not encourage the development of processing facilities, thus depriving the producers of better incomes and others of employment opportunities locally. Even an activity like tourism, for which mountain areas have a comparative advantage, is often found to have more 'leakages' than 'linkages' because there is no integrated planning approach to link it with other local activities.

Integration in mountain areas, therefore, has to be a concrete aspect of planning and not a mere methodological device. It must, at the same time, be recognised that, in operational planning, integration can be effective only if appropriately reflected in coordination among different sectoral agencies and departments, insofar as the responsibilities for sectoral development and activities and resources for that purpose are divided among line agencies.


Special Focus  

Only a radical change in thinking, women can do most jobs men can do,endowing them with the necessary skills (e.g., in processing, managing,marketing of produce,rather than mere farming and collecting of subsistence needs) can make them effective partners in development.In view of the centrality of women and their proven potential for hard work and enterprise, the gender dimension needs to be completely integrated into development planning in mountain areas: the 'special programme' approach is neither adequate for the development of women nor for using their potential to develop mountain areas and communities. Any planning methodology, therefore, needs to incorporate the gender dimension as well as the environmental dimension. Ways to equip women to participate effectively in new, dynamic activities and processes, as well as to enable them to make decisions on significant matters that affect improvements in the standards of living and welfare of their families, should form an integrated part of area development plans. The principal focus should be on broadening the choices for women in relation to their work and time allocation.

Distinct Approach

The terrain and altitudinal characteristics of mountain areas require a distinct treatment of space in area planning methodology. Agroclimatic zoning and watersheds provide, within certain limitations, useful concepts for this purpose. Different elevation and altitude ranges, which may also coincide with different agroclimatic and resource zones, could also be adopted as planning units. But in no case is an entire area, used as a planning unit in the mountains, going to be at the same altitude and with similar terrain and slopes (if so, it would not be a mountain area!).

Therefore, spatial mapping for preparation of resource inventories and assessment of development potential has to be three dimensional. A tool, such as the Geographical Information System (GIS), which is now widely used for spatial depiction of all kinds of characteristics and their interrelationships, would be most useful for this purpose. It would, however, be necessary to determine the nature and extent of data necessary for integrated planning. Given the general limitations in respect to availability of data on a disaggregated area basis, and the time and cost involved in primary data collection, the tendency to ask for large-scale, highly detailed information should be avoided. Prior identification of the kind of information necessary and adequate for a clear conceptual framework of integrated planning should be made. At the same time, planning on an area basis would also make it possible to fill in data gaps as and when they appear, as part of the process of formulating and implementing plans and programmes.

The institutional arrangements for planning in mountain areas also need a distinct approach. Mere decentralisation, which commonly means decentralised implementation of the programmes planned from above, is not good enough for mountain areas: planning from below on an area basis is essential.

In mountain areas with their highly diverse and heterogeneous resource base and spatial discontinuities caused by altitude,slope,and relief,'autonomy' in planning in a real sense is required. In other words,plans for development of mountain regions have to be evolved on an area basis, so that they can take into account the specificities of resource base and achieve better integration between resources and activities, among activities, and between environment and development. Local, institutional capacity-building and people's participation are necessary conditions for successful preparation and implementation of plans in this approach. The vagaries and exigencies of nature resulting from terrain and climatic characteristics have compelled the mountain people to evolve ways of cooperating and working together as communities. Historical, cultural, and ethnic specificities have introduced further specific dimensions to naturally determined mechanisms in some mountain areas. This phenomenon, which takes the form of indigenously-evolved institutional arrangements, should be used and strengthened as far as possible by providing modern scientific, technical, and management inputs. These should be supplied by government and non-government organisations. Similar use should be made of the indigenous knowledge and practices developed by mountain people over the centuries as a part of their survival strategies. In other words, a methodology for preparing and implementing plans and programmes in mountain areas must incorporate the local institutional and human adaptation specificities, rather than mechanically applying institutional models developed elsewhere.  

Looking Ahead

Methodologies for integrated and area planning using 'consistency' models and regional planning techniques are reasonably well-developed. They, however, need to be modified and adapted for integrated planning on an area basis for mountain regions in respect to (i) incorporation of environmental issues into the plan framework, and (ii) intersectoral integration at the area level. On both these counts, existing methodologies are deficient. Plan models, mostly using an input-output framework to determine demand-supply balances and consistencies, have not internalised environmental parameters, and regional and area plans have mostly been an amalgamation of sectoral schemes and programmes without paying much attention to linkages among activities.


ICIMOD Interface

The mountain perspective should be the guiding principle in planning, in wholly or predominantly, mountainous countries and regions. Numerous manuals and guides have been developed to elaborate and resolve conceptual and technical issues involved in integrated area planning. What is important for the present purpose is to identify the critical modifications to be made to concepts, issues, and methodologies to account for the mountain perspective

. This perspective, as developed in the past work of ICIMOD, consists of a set of mountain specificities, namely, inaccessibility, fragility, marginality, diversity, niche, and human adaptation mechanisms. The first three broadly represent constraints, and the remaining three opportunities, in mountain development. Basic factors underlying these specificities, their operational and development implications, as well as externalities of development interventions directed to different specificities, have also been elaborated in earlier work at ICIMOD (for more details and further reading, see MEI Discussion Paper 96/2). A number of ICIMOD activities used this framework to develop approaches to sustainable mountain development, particularly in the area of agriculture and farming systems. Based on both the conceptual work on mountain perspectives and application-oriented research and demonstration, ICIMOD has also tried to elaborate upon the concept of sustainability, particularly in terms of its indicators, positive and negative, in respect to agriculture.

A training manual for mountain area development planning is an idea worth considering. It should, however, be borne in mind that training for planning methodologies for integrated mountain development needs to be based on substantive and real world situations that could be used not only as illustrations of a standardised methodology of area planning, but also to lead to modifications and changes in the methodology itself.

AUGUST 1996

Contact:
Dr. T. S. Papola
Mountain Enterprises and Infrastructure Division

e-mail: papola@icimod.org.np