NEWSLETTER NO. 25 


IN THIS ISSUE

 


THE REGIONAL COLLABORATIVE PROGRAMME - AN UPDATE

Egbert Pelinck
Director General

Introduction

In the Spring Issue (No 21) of the ICIMOD Newsletter, we reported that the ICIMOD Board of Governors and the ICIMOD Support Group had endorsed the "Regional Collaborative Programme for the Sustainable Development of the Hindu Kush-Himalayas" (RCP) as the basic framework for implementing ICIMOD's mandate. The programme document consists of a long-term vision and a four-year workplan and budget for the period from 1995-1998. Ambitious in its contents, the RCP is the first major effort in many years to change from a project approach to a programme approach in which all the key issues of integrated mountain development can be addressed on an equal footing.

Increased Donor Support

So far, this approach has met with considerable positive response, both from ICIMOD's partner institutions in the region and from the donor community. In the first 18 months, the contributions from the non-regional donors to the RCP (formerly called "core funding") have doubled from $1.2 million to $2.4 million per year, and other donors have used the RCP to select particular issues or activities listed to which their support could be allocated.

Strengthened Capabilities at ICIMOD

As a result, ICIMOD has been able to attract highly qualified professionals to work at the Centre for periods of three years or more. At present, 80% of all internationally-recruited professionals fill positions identified under the RCP, and only three positions are left vacant. This provides us with an opportunity to respond to a whole range of issues we are faced with in our daily work.

Sustainable Partnerships

Equally important is the fact that, with a minimum "core" programme, it is now possible to establish and maintain partnerships with institutions and organisations with a mandate in sustainable mountain development in the HKH. Without such partnerships, it would be impossible to have a real impact on the lives of the people of the HKH and their environment.

Monitoring the Progress and Impact of the RCP

Eighteen months into the four-year programme have shown the great advantages of a programme approach. All professional staff have been able to initiate programmes that are related to at least 2-3 of ICIMOD's statutory functions. To assess the progress in a more systematic way, the First Meeting of the newly constituted Programme Advisory Committee of the Board of Governors met on 27-28 June under the chairmanship of Dr. Zafar Altaf, Secretary of the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock, Pakistan. Intensive discussions were held with divisional staff and overall agreement was expressed with the steps undertaken. Some concern expressed about the lack of clear priorities and the need to create linkages between the different activities that were undertaken will be taken into account in the report to the next Board of Governors and Support Group Meeting.

 


Institutional Innovations in Common Property Resource Management

While the role of community-based institutions in managing common property resources in the mountains is well-recognised,experience indicates that innovations in institutional development are imperative to ensure a better response to the changing development paradigm. This was the key issue discussed by a trans-country panel made up of participants from India and Nepal at the annual conference organised by the International Association for the Study of Common Property Resources in Berkeley, USA, in June 1996.

The panel was constituted by ICIMOD's Participatory Natural Resources' Management Programme. Its five members represented community-level institutions, a non-government organisation, and a forest department. A common theme running through three presentations was the emergence of institutional innovations in community forestry over the last two years in the Hindu Kush-Himalayas. Innovations include the Himalayan Grassroots' Women's Natural Resource Management Network; HIFCOM - Hindu Kush-Himalayan Forum for Forest Conservation and Management, a network of professional foresters; and the Federation of Community Forestry Users' Groups in Nepal.

Radha Bhatt's paper and presentation focussed on the hilly areas of Uttar Pradesh, India, and outlined the history of social action related to forest resources. She examined the social context of these environmental movements, especially reasons for the proactive role women played and continue to play in them. She also analysed the presence of Van Panchayat(s) in the hills and the reasons for their inability to manage community forest lands effectively. CHIPKO, the well-known environmental movement, was located in these hills and a regional women's network had been formed to form linkages among women from the Hindu Kush-Himalayas. One of the principal endeavours of the network will be to evolve strategies that will give women more control in decision-making in natural resource management.

A.K. Gulati, from the Department of Forest Farming and Conservation, Himachal Pradesh, India, provided a historical overview of the emergence of participatory forest management in Himachal Pradesh. Although a government order had been passed by the state to encourage joint forest management and some experience had been gained, many new challenges and institutional concerns remained. The process of change from custodial to people-oriented forestry was slow and gradual. In this context, professional foresters had recently established a regional mechanism called HIFCOM. The key mandate of HIFCOM was to promote and support participatory forest management in the mountain areas of several countries and to ensure that change comes from within the institution and is properly internalised .

The three panelists from Nepal - H. P. Neupane, B. P. Shrestha, and Apsara Chapagain- represented the newly formed Federation of Community Forestry Users' Groups in the country. They highlighted the role of indigenous forest management systems and the impact of state policies and rules in Nepal. Recent developments in community forestry and their impact on community initiatives were shared. In the context of Nepal's mostly inaccessible hilly areas, the role of decentralised institutions in sustainable management of common property resources was discussed.

The group outlined the process which led to the emergence of the Federation in Nepal. The Federation is committed to ensuring that the rights of marginalised communities are not compromised. The Federation aims to strengthen district-level networks and undertake the advocacy and influence of policies at national level.

These institutional innovations aim to address the lacunae existing in mountain areas and to strengthen community-level initiatives.

A.L. Joshi, Ministry of Forests and Soil Conservation, HMG/Nepal, was a discussant, and Anupam Bhatia of ICIMOD chaired and coordinated the panel.

The presence of participants representing community-level institutions and practitioners brought diversity to the IASCP Workshop and the recognition that academic and scholarly perspectives have to be tempered with farmers' perspectives and ground realities.


Implications of GIS and RS Technologies in the HKH Region

Pramod Pradhan & Basanta Shrestha

Introduction

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing (RS) technologies are recognised as a powerful tool in the decision-making process. There is a movement towards convergence of GIS, RS, and GPS (Global Positioning System) and communication technology to provide a multitude of opportunities for the use of modern technology by decision-makers in coping with the management of problems associated with natural resources and the environment. Rapid advances are being made in these technologies, and they are becoming available at ever more reasonable costs.

Since its inception in 1990, the Mountain Environment and Natural Resources' Information Service (MENRIS) at ICIMOD has been creating awareness of and disseminating these technologies in the HKH Region through capacity-building, extensive training programmmes, collaborative GIS applications, and information base development. Over the past six years, MENRIS, together with partner institutions in the HKH Region, has built up a sizeable GIS capacity in regional member countries.

It is well accepted that GIS is a powerful tool, which is often regarded as an 'enabling technology', the implications of which reach far beyond the mere automation of tasks previously performed by traditional means. The growing concern for environmental issues, with their socioeconomic dimensions, and sustainable development of mountain areas calls for a sphere of applications demanding realistic integration of technology, human aspects, and institutional frameworks.

Outcome

An established GIS network is serving as a useful instrument for pooling resources, expertise, and facilities as well as providing a platform for work on common problems in the HKH Region for the mutual benefit of participating regional member countries through a network of collaborative national institutions. This partnership initiative is designed to extend the functional capabilities of national institutions by developing mutually-supportive relationships. These relationships

initially focussed on training and GIS and RS dissemination activities. Having established a regional network, progress is being made principally in regional, national, and district-level databases and collaborative GIS applications. Academic sectors are being emphasised to close the human resource gaps on a continual basis.

Need

In order to make our investment in GIS worthwhile, there is need for corresponding growth in awareness about the technology on the part of decision-makers and, more importantly, an institutional framework that provides an environment conducive to the adoption of the technology. We now see that there is more to the organisational aspects of GIS than technical aspects alone; such organisational aspects will determine its future. GIS technology is no longer a luxury, but rather an essential tool for the management of natural resources and environmental problems in the HKH Region.

This has important organisational implications in terms of policy focus for institutions like ours in the HKH Region where GIS use is growing. Without these advances, the implementation of GIS technology will prove unsatisfactory, and GIS will be seen to have failed to live up to the initial expectations.

There is a need to bring about this awareness among decision-makers and to facilitate an appropriate policy focus within in respect to organisation. It is our experience that GIS in isolation is quite often a failure. A complementary approach amongst various institutions is indispensable for successful implementation of GIS. Moreover, full realisation of the value of GIS technology demands progress on all fronts - technology, information base, technical calibre, and institutional framework.


New Thoughts and Approaches to Sustainable Development in the Mountain Areas of Pakistan

Zafar Altaf

Mountain areas demand a specific approach. The type of approach mountain areas demand, in keeping with current requirements, is cataclysmic. Such an approach would mean moving away from traditional modes of development thinking. A traditional approach, by definition, is a steady approach. Years of neglect and insensitivities can be rectified by a radical approach.

In keeping with this thinking, Pakistan has introduced interventions in the mountain regions to deal with the problems and convert them into opportunities; at the same time being flexible enough to achieve clearly-set objectives. This necessitates a look at the planning situation, establishment of clear objectives, and systematic monitoring and evaluation. The decision to set these objectives and the manner of arriving at optimal decisions are different. The means of decision-making, thus, become relevant. While doing so, knowledge evaluation, replicability, and the heartbreaking failures evidenced in other countries are taken into consideration. Innovative ideas need imagination; expertise and experience, in such circumstances, become limiting factors.

An intellectual ferment of this kind can only come about by looking at intangible factors; factors beyond the normal realm of bioscientists. The applicability of knowledge becomes a priority if ethical, moral, and scholarship variables are examined in the human resources involved in the entire effort. The leadership provided to the system assumes special significance, for it has to be aware of, and indeed sensitive to, issues of equity, efficiency, efficacy, adequacy, marginality, and human suffering. Effective leadership experiences agonising moments. Decision-making is not easy, for there are multiple choices that can be made. The route eventually taken may have more pitfalls than the ones not taken. Yet, one must have courage, based on reason, to take risks. A surgical intervention is called for - and one can cross the difficult bridges when one comes to them.

The social issues that need to be addressed are related to time-honoured concepts of justice, freedom, and balancing paradoxical situations in which alternative positions are examined. The overriding consideration should be the larger interest of the population rather than the vested interests of the few; the icons in the system.

In all this, the role of discretion and its application is central. Discretion is exercised in the context of inaccessibility, fragility, marginality; a context which is central to ICIMOD's thinking. Conversion of hopelessness to hope - this is a significant and desirable outcome. Awareness of the role of discretion has to be inculcated into key players, key institutions, and, above all, a godfather as owner has to be found for one's innovations. Such ownership can be used successfully to smoothen ruffled feathers, take care of unnecessary opposition, and modify insensitive actions. The underlying philosophy is to avoid head on adversarial thinking and, on the other hand, develop a lean organisation; the basis being the organisation of human resources supportive to the objective. It is for this reason that a supportive owner, who is influential and resourceful, is a requirement for such areas and in such times.

Having made a general statement on the subject, let me deal with specific interventions, innovative and iconoclastic ones, in the case of Pakistan. Pakistan is excited by the intervention of seabuckthorn elsewhere. It thinks of ICIMOD as the lead agent. Pakistan had made pilot interventions. The failure of these interventions meant that precious time was lost, as these interventions were neither here nor there. An analysis of existing interventions indicates the weakness in institutional linkages. As such, catalysts nominated and given authority by national institutes had weaknesses; were these due to human insensitivity or cussedness in inadvertently running this intervention into the ground? The new project design has to take past failures into account. Is the new intervention research or development? Its success, in a particular culture, was identified. Can we, in Pakistan, come close to this culture? Is Pakistan capable of identifying institutes that have the degree of regimentation which exists in the country where this regimentation has been successful? The model demands not only biotic interventions but also innovative thinking about the externalities that are required and which are essential for success.

Leadership in such an intervention is significant and needs to be carried out in reference to the statements made earlier. One's reputation has to be put on the line and, to do this, the leadership has to provide internalised power. Paradoxically, a rigid will has to be balanced with a reasoned will. It is this kind of paradoxical balancing which makes all the difference between success and defeat. The answer is to follow a rainbow and realise your dreams. In the past, in the history of nations, good ideas have led to good consequences and vice versa.

One intervention that needed special attention was edible oil, i.e., Conolla; a case in which innovative thinking increased the crop area twelve fold. A second initiative, the use of very saline water to grow another edible crop, created an opportunity to use an exciting institutional partnership based on free market application, a relationship between national and innovative private international organisations. And so it goes on.

Finally, I have been an advocate for establishing an institutional framework in which human resources are differently organised. One has to look beyond degrees earned through formal examination to get a balance and to deliver objectives. Thus, for a particularly exciting and difficult (opportunity) area, a master craftsperson (difficult to locate), sociologists (not necessarily PHDs and Masters but people with proven track records in interpersonal relationships and who are acutely aware of local cultures); and agriscientists are needed; some dynamic young individuals fill this kind of requirement. What we have to avoid are Spanish armadas, slow moving, slow-thinking individuals.

The objective in development of the area is also that of harmonising a tribal culture likely to undergo change. Tribals have to be brought into the mainstream of national life without disturbing their heritage and culture. A tall order - you bet!


SOME REGIONAL NEWSLETTERS

This Newsletter focusses on issues related to people's participation in watershed management in Asia.

Contact address: Prem N. Sharma,

Regional Coordinator

Asian Watershed Management Network

PO Box 25, UN Building,

Kathmandu, Nepal

Tel/Fax: 977-1-225144

This Newsletter was launched in April this year and is part of the networking chain of the Asia Pacfic Mountain Network. Its intent is to highlight major mountain issues and events throughout Asia and the Pacific. It is published by the APMN Secretariat at ICIMOD. A Russian version of the Newletter was published by Prof. Yuri Badenkov.

Contact address: Dr. Mahesh Banskota

Coordinator APMN

ICIMOD

email:banskota@icimod.org.np

mforum@icimod.org.np

This Newsletter examines issues of resource conservation on the grounds of human experiences and self-governance and their applicability far beyond the circumstances in which they originate.

Contact address: Resources Nepal

GPO Box 2448, Kathmandu

Nepal

This bi-monthly Newsletter deals with irrigation development in Nepal.

Contact address: Research & Tech. Dev Branch,

Dept. of Irrigation, HMG/Nepal

PO Box 2055, Jawalakhel,

Lalitpur, Nepal

Tel: 527151,

Fax: 535384

This quarterly Newsletter focusses on disaster prevention methods and technologies related to water-induced disasters.

Contact address: Disaster Prevention Technical Centre

Pulchowk, Lalitpur, Nepal

Tel: 535407, 535503,

Fax: 523528

This Newsletter focusses on `Management of Biogas and Natural Resources for Sustainable Solutions to Our Problems'.

Contact address: Biogas and Natural Resources' Mngt.

Consolidated Management Services

GPO Box 10872, Kathmandu, Nepal

Tel:977 1 410498/421654

Fax:977 1 415886

The Newsletter provides information on past and current agricultural research in China.

Contact address: Hunan Academy of Agri. Sciences

410125 Changsu

Hunan, P. R. China

Fax: (86731)4448724