Moving the Frontier - IISD · the Sarhad Provincial Conservation Strategy 1 1 The terms...

Mark Halle

Moving the

THE STORY OF THE SARHAD PROVINCIAL CONSERVATION STRATEGY

FRONTIER

Moving theFRONTIER

THE STORY OF THE SARHAD PROVINCIAL CONSERVATION STRATEGY

Mark Halle

The International Institute for Sustainable Development contributes to sustainable development byadvancing policy recommendations on international trade and investment, economic policy, climatechange, measurement and indicators, and natural resource management. By using Internet communi-cations, we report on international negotiations and broker knowledge gained through collaborativeprojects with global partners, resulting in more rigorous research, capacity building in developingcountries and better dialogue between North and South.

IISD’s vision is better living for all—sustainably; its mission is to champion innovation, enabling soci-eties to live sustainably. IISD receives operating grant support from the Government of Canada, pro-vided through the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and Environment Canada,and from the Province of Manitoba. The institute receives project funding from the Government ofCanada, the Province of Manitoba, other national governments, United Nations agencies, foundationsand the private sector. IISD is registered as a charitable organization in Canada and has 501(c)(3) sta-tus in the United States.

Copyright © 2002 International Institute for Sustainable Development

Published by the International Institute for Sustainable Development

All rights reserved

Printed in Canada

ISBN 1-895536-70-7

International Institute for Sustainable Development161 Portage Avenue East, 6th FloorWinnipeg, Manitoba CANADAR3B 0Y4Tel: (204) 958-7700Fax: (204) 958-7710E-mail: [email protected]: http://www.iisd.org

Moving the Frontier was designed by Donald Berg, Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Printed by ePRINTit (www.eprintit.com), Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Cover photo: Community members participate in a community consultation. Courtesy IUCN-TheWorld Conservation Union, Pakistan.

This publication has been made possible through the generous support of The Swiss Agencyfor Development and Cooperation and IUCN-The World Conservation Union.

Table of Contents Introduction 1

Section I: From Planning to Realization 5

Section II: Tools, Approaches, Methods 17

Section III: Finding the Balance 31

Section IV: Towards a New Governance – The SPCS and the Wider World 41

Annex I: SPCS Reviews/Evaluation 45

Annex II: Project Managers – SPCS 46

Annex III: District Level Public Consultations 48

Annex IV: Composition of the SPCS Steering Committee 49

Annex V: Profile of Public Consultations 50

Annex VI: Sector-specific Public Consultations 51

Annex VII: List of Roundtables 52

Annex VIII: Main Training Events Under the SPCS 53

Annex IX: Sarhad NGOs Ittehad (SNI) 55

Annex X: Kabul River Study 56

Annex XI: List of Demonstration Projects 57

About the author… 58

IntroductionThe adoption by the Cabinet of the PakistanNational Conservation Strategy (PNCS, orNCS) in March 1992 marked a major milestonein Pakistan’s environmental history. A massiveeffort, involving hundreds of specialists over aperiod of six years, the PNCS broke new groundin many ways—through extensive use of publicconsultation, reliance on national expertisewherever possible and the clever use of commu-nications techniques. The PNCS also broke newground through the deliberate, patient effort tobuild ownership in the strategy from the upperlevels of government, to the academic andresearch communities, and to the civil societystructures concerned with environment anddevelopment on the ground.

The PNCS presented the most detailed assess-ment of Pakistan’s environmental situation todate, and identified a range of activities that, iffaithfully implemented, would slowly shift thejuggernaut of Pakistan’s development processinto a sustainable channel. Nobody expected thegovernment to drop everything and to focus sin-gle-mindedly on implementing the PNCS; theformal adoption of a strategy is only a crossroadsin a long, winding journey replete with pitfalls,roadblocks and reversals.

As it turned out, however, PNCS struck a fortu-nate confluence of events. Initiated at the begin-ning of what turned out to be an exceptionalwave of international interest in the environ-ment, it rode this wave astutely. The project’screst coincided with the Earth Summit—a merethree months after the strategy’s adoption—and

the exceptionally strong fascination with theplanet’s environmental priorities within thedonor community.

The PNCS is being implemented under the leadof the federal government and through a com-plex, ambitious and multi-faceted programme ofwork at the national level. While there have beensetbacks, and while not all of the strategy’s rec-ommendations have been faithfully implement-ed, there can be no doubt that the whole PNCSprocess contributed to a significant growth inenvironmental awareness in Pakistan. ThePNCS process can claim a part—often animportant part—in generating much of theenvironmental action which has taken place inthe past decade in Pakistan.

This booklet is not the story of the PNCS. Thattale has been told in the volume entitled TheStory of Pakistan’s NCS. It is, instead, somethingof a sequel. It is the story of how the PNCSexperience was taken to the next step; how it wastaken to the provincial level and, experimentally,to the district level in Sarhad (also known as theNorth West Frontier Province).1 Here, at thelevel where development is not simply plannedbut practised, the PNCS philosophy met its firstreal test.

For the committed environmental professional,there can be no greater challenge than arriving atthe point where environmental theories, envi-ronmental ideas, even environmental enthusi-asm are confronted with reality—a reality that isoften grim, often delightful, and very often

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1 The terms “Sarhad,” “North West Frontier Province (NWFP)” and “Frontier” are used interchangeably to designate theprovince. This text has favoured “Sarhad” (literally “Frontier” in Urdu), simply because it is the “S” in “SPCS.” As faras this author could determine, there are no political implications attached to the choice of “Sarhad” for the project title.

Photo: Panelresponding toquestions from an engaged community.

unexpected. This story examines how well theenvironmental approach stood up to the realitiesof a sometimes stagnant bureaucracy, a develop-ment process locked into the political game andthe relentless grind of poverty, traditionalismand the pressing needs of those lacking basicsocial services.

The story is in part just that—an account, abrief chronology of what happened, who wasinvolved and what stages the project wentthrough, from its origins in 1991–92, throughelaboration (Phase I), the transition to imple-mentation (Phase II) and the launch of thePartnerships for Sustainable Development in theNWFP programme in mid-1998 (Phase III). Itattempts to understand what challenges werefaced, how they were overcome or how aspira-tions had to be scaled down, and what waslearned in the process. This story is a rich, com-plex and at times amusing one, of courage andvision, but also of private ambition and ofbureaucratic resistance.

It is a story that could be written at length andin detail, and it might prove edifying to do so,especially for those who were involved in theSarhad Provincial Conservation Strategy(SPCS). But this is not the main purpose of theSPCS story. The history is presented in summa-rized form in Section I, focusing on the features,events, personalities and highlights necessary tounderstand how the SPCS was initiated, how itdeveloped and what impact it has had to date.This history, presented in the first part of thispublication, provides a framework for the rest.Section II looks at the story of the SPCS from adifferent angle, telling the story of some of thetools, approaches and mechanisms used in theproject and reflecting on their success or on theirlimitations. Section III examines the dilemmasthe project faced and the balances that had to bestruck in order to advance the environmentalagenda in a place and at a time that do not nec-essarily give it high priority—or call it by anoth-er name. It suggests some lessons that may bedrawn from the Sarhad experience that mayprove useful for other such projects in Pakistanand elsewhere. Finally, Section IV relates theSPCS to the context of broader global change,and seeks to demonstrate that, if the SPCS wasoften too far ahead of its time in Sarhad, it waswell “in synch” with the global movements thatare beginning to question and redefine howdevelopment is conceived, planned and imple-mented.

This account is not in any way intended to be aformal review or evaluation of the SPCS or anyaspect of it. Many such reviews exist [see AnnexI] and were drawn upon to provide material forthis story. Neither the time devoted to reviewingthe material, nor the range of people spoken to,permit considered judgments to be cast on peo-ple or events, and this is not the purpose. And,while broad in scope, the SPCS story does notaim to be entirely comprehensive. That wouldrequire a thorough journey through theprovince, through the archives and dialoguewith the many hundreds of people involveddirectly or indirectly in the project. Many ofthese have moved on from their posts, have leftthe province or have chosen other walks of life.Instead, this publication is based on a 10-dayvisit to Pakistan, a review of hundreds of pagesof written and printed material, and interviewswith a range of people in the provincial govern-ment, IUCN, academic institutions, NGOs andthe media.

With such a short time available, writing thestory was possible only because of the valuableresearch and writing assistance of Ali Qadir, for-merly of IUCN Pakistan, and of a wide range ofIUCN staff in Peshawar and Karachi, amongwhom the former Head of the IUCN Sarhadoffice, Gul Najam Jamy, stands out in particular.Full points, both for substance and for persist-ence, go to Mohammad Rafiq, IUCN PakistanCountry Representative, and Aban MarkerKabraji, IUCN Regional Director for Asia, whohave never been known to allow reason to get inthe way of doing what they decide to do. The lat-ter, in particular, played a crucial role throughoutthe SPCS process, mostly behind the scenes.

In the end, however, the image I offer of theproject is my own; what judgments the text con-tains reflect my opinion. It engages neither theInternational Institute for SustainableDevelopment nor IUCN, much less the otherparticipants in Sarhad or elsewhere. As with anyhistory, it reflects my selection from amongthousands of facts, opinions and impressions,written and oral. That selection, in turn, reflectsthe standpoint from which I approached thetask. In the interest of clarity and transparency,the main characteristics of this standpoint are:

• there is no place to start from but here, andno time but now: any approach to develop-ment must take as its starting point the real-ities of the place and time in which itunfolds;

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• sustainable development will not beachieved, nor brought much closer throughpiecemeal action;

• sustainable development requires an econo-my, a political system and a governancestructure that create incentives for sustain-ability, consequently, action on the policyframework for development is essential;

• the deep-seated changes required to bringabout sustainable development cannot beexpected to take place through governmentaction alone;

• these changes will come about when peopleaffected by decisions play a central role intaking those decisions;

• thus the achievement of sustainable devel-opment will require a major change in gov-ernance and in the organization of society;

• this can take place by revolution, but histo-ry shows that it is more likely to take placesuccessfully if it evolves over time; and

• all experimentation and innovation thatpioneers new forms of governance and deci-sion-making relating to natural resources arewelcome as they advance the process ofchange.

My interest in the project, and the judgments Imake, directly or by implication, are unashamed-ly shaped by the above considerations.

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Section I: From Planningto Realization The roots of the Sarhad Provincial ConservationStrategy (SPCS) go back to 1980, when IUCN-The World Conservation Union, the WorldWildlife Fund (WWF) and the United NationsEnvironment Programme (UNEP) collaboratedto produce the World Conservation Strategy(WCS). The WCS in many ways marked awatershed in the international conservationmovement. Abandoning the adversarial posi-tion—opposing development because of its neg-ative impact on natural resources and ecosys-tems—the WCS accepted that, for most of theworld, development was the imperative. Onlydevelopment that did not integrate environmen-tal concerns was doomed to failure.Environment and development—sustainabledevelopment—had to advance together, or bothwould fail. This early expression of the purposeof sustainable development was adopted sevenyears later by the Brundtland Commission,whose definition of sustainable development,modelled closely on the WCS, still prevailstoday. Sustainable development, by that defini-tion, is “development that meets the needs of thepresent without compromising the ability offuture generations to meet their own needs.”

Publication of the WCS also changed IUCN forgood. From an organization devoted to savingendangered species and protected areas, itturned its focus towards the developmentprocess, and deliberately set about building theskills needed to integrate environmental consid-erations into development planning and practicein such a way as to promote development that issustainable—development, in other words, thatis economically efficient, socially equitable and

environmentally sustainable. It is difficult, with-out having lived it, to understand just how pro-found a transformation this was. IUCN did notabandon its dedication to living naturalresources; simply, it understood that it wouldhave to influence the entire process of planningand implementing development if theseresources were to be saved from depletion.

IUCN’s relations with developing countries had,before the WCS, been confined essentially to thebiological research community and to conserva-tion professionals within or outside government.Suddenly, IUCN’s message was relevant to thecentral concerns faced by these countries and itsservices were in high demand. In 1981, IUCNset up the Conservation for DevelopmentCentre to respond to requests for assistance inimplementing the WCS. In 1983, at the invita-tion of the IUCN’s Focal Point in the FederalGovernment of Pakistan—the Inspector


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Box 1. What were “Focal Points”?

Focal Points were mid-level professionals hiredby IUCN and placed at the disposal of the rele-vant department of the provincial government.They were paid by IUCN but they reported tothe Director of the SPCS as well as the Secretaryof the concerned department. They wore sev-eral hats: they were agents of change; integra-tors of environmental concerns into routinedevelopment work; and promoters of whatwas embodied within the SPCS philosophy.

Photo: Publicconsultationsplayed a key rolein the preparationof the SPCS.

General of Forests, W. A. Kermani—an IUCNmission visited the country and recommendedthe initiation of a national conservation strategy,aimed at applying the prescriptions contained inthe WCS at the national level.

The Story of Pakistan’s NCS has been eloquentlytold by David Runnalls, President and ChiefExecutive Officer of the International Institutefor Sustainable Development. It chronicles themomentum generated by government and non-governmental actors alike, in a unique spirit ofpartnership. IUCN led the process from its ini-tiation in 1984 to approval of the NCS in 1992.

The approval of NCS was a high point in thecountry’s environmental movement. It wasmarked by a sense of euphoria and a spirit ofpartnership in civil society and governmentalike, and high hopes were pinned on its activeimplementation. IUCN facilitated a series ofworkshops in 1991 and 1992 to discuss theimplementation of the NCS, and recommendedthree sets of action: (1) the formation of an NCSUnit in a strengthened Environment and UrbanAffairs Division of the federal government and anew Environment Section in the federalPlanning and Development Division; (2) pri-vate sector and non-governmental action to beled by the newly-formed SustainableDevelopment Policy Institute (SDPI); and (3)action on the ground to be led by the provincialgovernments. IUCN also engaged in a compre-hensive follow-up programme based on theNCS recommendations.

A series of workshops was held by the provincesto discuss their role in NCS implementation. Atthe workshop in Peshawar in August 1991, theSarhad government expressed its desire to buildon the NCS with a provincial conservationstrategy to guide actions on the ground anddemonstrated its good faith by establishing anEnvironment Section in the provincial Planningand Development Department. The provincialgovernment recognized that the NCS was, ofnecessity, generic in its prescriptions, and thatthe province of Sarhad required its own strategyto guide activities and future planning. InJanuary 1992, the government organized a two-day workshop to plan the Sarhad ProvincialConservation Strategy.

Much of the credit at this early stage goes to Dr.Tariq Banuri, the first Director of SDPI. Astrong proponent of provincial strategies, heprovided considerable intellectual input to thediscussion on implementing the NCS, and

pointed IUCN towards Sarhad as providingfavourable ground for experimentation in sus-tainable development. Through his contacts inPeshawar, he persuaded the provincial govern-ment to look positively on what eventuallybecame the SPCS, and helped make some of thecritical connections on whose foundation theinitiative was built.

Inception: January to June 1992In addition to the role of Dr. Banuri, thereappear to be four essential reasons why theSarhad government was the first to step forwardto develop a provincial conservation strategy,building on the momentum generated by theNCS. First, and perhaps most important, wasthe vision and impetus provided by the chiefbureaucrat responsible for development in theprovince, the Additional Chief Secretary(Development), Khalid Aziz, a close friend ofBanuri. Mr. Aziz firmly believed that a provin-cial process, based on the NCS, could signifi-cantly improve development success in theprovince. In this he was not atypical of the lead-ership in the province. The people of Sarhad are,in general, particularly close to their rural roots,and therefore well aware of the fragility of theenvironment.

The heavy presence of indigenous and donor-assisted projects in the Sarhad, especially in thenatural resources sector, also predisposed theprovince to a process for building environmen-tal considerations into development. Further,with a significant portion of Pakistan’s remain-ing forest resources in its territory, Sarhad has ahigh concentration of rural development andnatural resource management projects andmany donors, including the Swiss Agency forDevelopment and Cooperation (SDC), activelypromote the integration of environmental con-cerns in development planning (though, unlikethe SPCS, mostly with a sector focus). This cre-ates a more conducive atmosphere for environ-mental strategy planning than might have beenencountered in other parts of the country. Manyin the Sarhad bureaucracy were, because of this,sensitive to the importance of environmentalconcerns. This meant that there was a cadre ofsenior civil servants around Khalid Aziz whosupported taking strong action on the environ-ment.

Finally, the government of Sarhad at the timewas widely recognized in Pakistan as being themost forward-looking of the four provincial

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governments. It had been the first to experimentwith a number of development initiatives, andthe SPCS was yet another example.

After the workshop in January 1992, an SPCSSteering Committee was formed, chaired by theAdditional Chief Secretary, and an SPCS sup-port project2 was established within the govern-ment. A strategic decision was taken at the timeto house this unit in the Planning andDevelopment Department, soon to be renamedthe Planning, Environment and DevelopmentDepartment (PE&DD). One reason for this wasthat the PE&DD is the central department inthe province responsible for development plan-ning, including preparation of the AnnualDevelopment Plans. Further, an EnvironmentSection had been established within the provin-cial PE&DD, modelled on the federal Planningand Development Division. The SarhadEnvironment Section had a number of strategicstrengths: it was new and energetic; it was sup-ported entirely from the province’s own moneyand not from donor assistance as was the casewith other provincial environment sections,thereby giving it an independent character; itwas headed by a dynamic individual committedentirely to the SPCS process, Mohammad Rafiq;and it was supported by IUCN, an organizationcoming fresh from the NCS experience andcommitted to sustainable development inPakistan for the long haul.

IUCN facilitated the process by hiring Dr. G.M. Khattak as a programme coordinator. A for-mer Chief Conservator of Forests for Sarhad andDirector General of the Pakistan Forest Instituteand a widely-respected environmental figure andacademic, he played a key role throughout thefirst years of the SPCS, serving as a mentor forIUCN in the province he knows so well, andguiding IUCN around a number of obstacles. Itwas indeed Khattak who identified Rafiq as ayoung and promising forest officer, not longback from academic training in the UnitedStates. Khattak and Rafiq put together a propos-al to the SDC, which was rapidly approved. Thefirst phase of the project began in July 1992.

The amazing pace at which the project was ini-tiated merits attention. The NationalConservation Strategy proposal had taken a yearto be accepted by the government following the

initial scoping mission in December 1983, anda further two years before the initial phase of theproject actually began. In fact, work on the NCSper se did not begin until 1988, more than fouryears after the proposal was mooted with thefederal government. The SPCS, by contrast, wascommitted to, planned and begun in a space ofless than one year. Certainly it profited a greatdeal from the momentum of the NCS, whichdrove the provincial administration to deliver onexpectations raised by the NCS process, and totake advantage of the opportunities it offered.The donors, too, were eager to support innova-tive environmental initiatives with the EarthSummit in Rio de Janeiro just around the cor-ner.

The workshop in January 1992 opted for asomewhat different route to SPCS formulationfrom that adopted by the NCS:

• it envisioned preparation of a draft SPCSthat would serve as the basis for a thoroughprocess of consultation before being final-ized;

• it decided to strengthen the capacity of thePE&DD in parallel with the preparation ofthe strategy document, thus preparing forthe time when the department would needto take it to implementation, and also intro-ducing new approaches to planning; and

• on demand from participants in the 1992workshop, and in keeping with the action-oriented nature of the project team, it wasdecided to undertake some implementationactivities in parallel with strategy formula-tion.

The latter was a substantial innovation—notonly did it aim to take immediate action toaddress well-known environmental priorities, italso aimed to build public and political supportfor the strategy by demonstrating in practice thesorts of results which might stem from the strat-egy once completed. The combination of thesethree factors set the SPCS apart from the NCSby its considerably greater reliance on the strate-gy process, and its consequent lesser focus on thecontent of the final document. The process wasably supported by a project team that grew insize as the initiative grew in stature.

In March 1993, the Programme Coordinator


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2 This story refers frequently to the “SPCS” and to the “SPCS project,” or simply “project.” When the former is used, itrefers either to the government-led process to develop and implement the strategy, or to the strategy document itself,which should be clear from the context. When the project is meant, the term “SPCS support project,” “support proj-ect” or “project” is used.

(Khattak), the Head of the EnvironmentSection in PE&DD (Rafiq) and a ProjectCoordinator (Hameed Hassan) on secondmentfrom the provincial government, were joined bya Canadian Technical Adviser, Stephan Fuller.Fuller brought with him years of experience inprovincial conservation planning in Canada—including in development-challenged areas inthe Canadian Arctic—and in the integration ofenvironmental considerations in developmentplanning. Fuller’s arrival not only brought freshperspectives, but also considerable methodolog-ical rigour to the team. His contribution to theconceptual structure of the report provedinvaluable. Fuller remained with the SPCS proj-ect until January 1997.

The “personality factor” also proved importantto the SPCS. Khalid Aziz served as a critical allyto the project, moving it quickly through theapproval stages and ensuring the full support ofPE&DD. It is doubtful whether the project

could have moved so quickly without his con-sistent support. He also played a pivotal role insupporting some of the project’s more notableinnovations—for example, public consultations,which are often regarded as politically sensitivein Pakistan. Aziz also helped secure and main-tain the support of the Chief Minister (head ofthe Sarhad Government) and of the chief donoragency, SDC. SDC’s policy of supportive non-interference, its willingness to engage at the con-ceptual level, stimulating without imposingideas, enabled the team to innovate and proceedin a spirit of strong partnership with the donor.

Rafiq was another critical driving force, takingthe lead within PE&DD in developing the ini-tial project proposals, as well as the InceptionReport. Fuller and Khattak provided conceptu-al structure to the process, especially in the areasof forestry, natural resource management andagriculture.

In fact, it is clear that the composition of theearly team determined to a large extent the direc-tion that the project took. The heavy focus onforestry took root from the expertise of bothKhattak and Rafiq, while the structure of theInception Report and the SPCS drew on Fuller’sconsiderable experience with strategic planningfor environment and development in theCanadian North. The “two-track approach”adopted, supporting demonstration projectssimultaneously with strategy formulation, was adirect reflection of the inclination of the projectteam, as was the decision to approach strategyformulation and preparation for implementationas parallel and complementary. So too, it must besaid, was the relative lack of focus on the privatesector, or on the rapidly changing policy context.This bias made its way through to the SPCS sup-port project.

Early on, as can be expected with any changeprocess, the project team began to face adversereaction from within government. The idea ofbringing an organization like IUCN, at thesame time international and Pakistani, into theheart of government planning was threateningto some. And opening the planning process tocivil society involvement, a central theme of theproject design, certainly deviated from the normof linear planning, although a few governmentofficials could see the advantages. Some in thegovernment began to perceive a threat to theirestablished power roles—especially in theirauthority over planning—and although this didnot hinder the project in the beginning, it sowedthe seeds for later discontent.

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Box 2. About the SDC’s role.

The Swiss Agency for Developmentand Cooperation

It is customary in texts such as this one for theauthor to doff his hat perfunctorily at thedonor. After all, without the petrol, the motorwon’t run. Without the generous funding fromthe Swiss taxpayer, SPCS might have remaineda pipe dream.

As IUCN already knew, and as was amply con-firmed in the SPCS process, SDC is much morethan a donor. SDC support was consistent,helpful and strategic. They understood thatSPCS had long-term objectives, and that itwould face many obstacles in the course of itsjourney. They showed appreciation whenthings went well and understanding when theydidn’t.

The review and evaluation teams that periodi-cally came to examine the SPCS made animportant contribution to the process, and thevarious SDC desk officers in Islamabad werealways ready to weigh in to support theprocess when it ran into difficulties.

The success of the SPCS is due in no small partto SDC’s positive approach, to its experienceand to its wisdom.

Elaboration: Phase I – July 1992to June 1995The sheer momentum of the initial process andthe driving force of key individuals took theSPCS process a long way. The team put togeth-er a draft Inception Report in only a fewmonths. This report was to provide a basis forlaunching a dialogue with a wide range of stake-holders, with every expectation that these wouldlead to a substantial shift in focus and emphasisfor the SPCS. Commissioning and incorporat-ing material from a range of sector-specificpapers, the final version of the Inception Reportwas ready by October 1993. While the reportwas being prepared, the team reviewed how bestto receive broad-based input to the SPCS. Thefinal choice of consultative mechanisms restedon three fundamental considerations:

1. the need to receive broad-based input to“feed” the SPCS and to ensure a meshbetween the technical analysis and the per-ceived needs of the province;

2. the need to build a strong sense of owner-ship in the province for the final strategy;and

3. the need to design a replicable model ofstrategic planning that reflected the realitiesand aspirations of people in Sarhad, andwhich could be adapted to lower politicallevels, to sectors of society or to issues.

The team decided to go for broad public con-sultations (PCs) in all 21 districts of the province[See Annex III]. A comprehensive plan for con-sultation in each of the district headquarters wasprepared and presented to the SPCS SteeringCommittee and the government. Both readilyaccepted the proposal. A summary of theInception Report was translated into Urdu,3 anda standard format was prepared to govern theconduct of the meetings. The first PC was heldin Peshawar in late January 1994.

Despite all the planning and the hopes investedin it, the meeting in Peshawar was disappoint-ing. Of the more than 100 people invited, only15 turned up! The team’s morale plummeted,and they began to reconsider their assumptionof broad public interest. But the second PC inMardan, held just one month later, attractedover 300 people! They came from all walks oflife, considered the ideas presented to them bythe team, provided valuable input and expressed

their firm hope that the project would eventuallymaterialize into concrete outputs. From there on,the momentum of success never let up. IUCNrecruited two more coordinators, and the teamdivided into two to cover the massive agenda.

The district consultations progressed well, butthe team realized after about eight consultations,that rural populations were poorly represented.The cross-section of participants at the districtmeetings was not representative of Sarhad’s over-all population. The team decided to add a seriesof village consultations that would follow andcomplement the district PCs. The team workedaround the clock to organize the meetings, pre-pare reports and feed the findings into a contin-uously changing SPCS framework. They alsowidened the net considerably, enlisting a num-ber of NGOs to take charge of the consultationsin the areas where they worked, and takingadvantage of the presence of both governmentand donor-assisted projects working in particu-lar districts. The SUNGI DevelopmentFoundation, for example, managed the consul-tative process in its Hazara heartland, as did theHuman Resources Management andDevelopment Centre (HRM&DC) in SouthernSarhad. HRM&DC and IntegratedDevelopment and Entrepreneurship AdvisoryServices (IDEAS)—another NGO—played amore general role, assisting with logistics andpreparing the final reports. Separate consulta-tions were held with women’s groups at theprovincial level and in southern districts.Elsewhere, local women were encouraged to par-ticipate in the consultations.

Finally, to ensure broad-based technical input tothe strategy, the team held 15 sector-specificconsultations involving academia, the privatesector and relevant government departments.

The SPCS document, produced in late 1995,drew heavily on input from the consultations.Indeed, the consultations resulted in one signifi-cant difference between the SPCS and the NCS:a prioritized list of sustainable development con-cerns in the province. The priorities reflected theoverwhelming opinion of the people, and result-ed in a strategic plan that could be used to preparetargeted interventions. At the same time, thecomprehensive sector-specific papers added tech-nical weight to the document. Close consultationwith the finance department resulted in a realisticestimate of the funds that the provincial budgetmight allocate to strategy implementation,


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3 The national language of Pakistan.

together with a prioritized budget for interven-tions.

It is striking to note the difference between theInception Report and the SPCS document thatemerged following the public consultations. Theformer was the work of the best experts in theprovince, supplemented with strong input frominternational experience. It represented the bestanalysis of the province’s environmental priori-ties then available. However, what emerged fromthe consultations was a strong sense of where thepeople of Sarhad placed their priorities, and thesewere overwhelmingly in the fields of develop-ment and good governance. This paradox isexplored in the third section of this story, but itis the combination of the team’s initial environ-mental vision—and the popular demand fordevelopment—that gave the solid sustainabledevelopment content of the eventual strategy.

What set this phase of the project apart fromsimilar planning initiatives, including the NCS,was the focus on an enabling process. The objec-tives of this phase reflect the process-orientationof the project, through its choice:

• to identify, develop and initiate pilot proj-ects designed to test SPCS ideas in a sampleof priority areas; and

• to provide technical assistance to strengthenthe Environment Section of the PE&DD.

Ensuring progress towards both objectivessimultaneously, while at the same time prepar-ing the strategy, led to an expansion of the timeframe of the first phase, but it paid off byanchoring the SPCS solidly in the ground reali-ties of the province.

The first phase is broadly regarded as havingbeen a success. The public consultations gener-ated invaluable information and a “realitycheck” with the people of the province; the sec-tor papers were more detailed and specific thanthose of the NCS; key NGOs were engaged andgiven a central role in the process; and the gov-ernment, especially at the provincial level, wasfully involved. This last feature was arguably themost significant of the formulation process. TheAdditional Chief Secretary supported and over-saw the formulation process with a personalinterest. The provincial government, primarilythe PE&DD, made sure that district adminis-trations facilitated the public consultations, andrepresentatives from the administration and linedepartments attended all of the district and vil-lage consultations. The Deputy Commissioners

at the district level were supportive, and thePE&DD observed the process of formulationclosely.

The elaboration phase, like the inception phase,was driven to a large extent by personalities.Support from Khalid Aziz was critical, as wasthe momentum generated by the project team.Rafiq, as Head of the Environment Section, setthe ball rolling within the government and then,in January 1994, moved to the forefront ofSPCS team as the IUCN Programme Director.He led the team through the formulation phase,as the previous Director, G. M. Khattak, movedto a technical advisory role. Khattak providedconceptual input to the key forestry and agricul-ture components of the strategy while leadingthe project’s innovations in the all-importantforestry sector. At the same time, Stephan Fulleradded his experience and critical perspective tothe design of the SPCS. He played a key role inusing the feedback from the consultations torefine the SPCS process and structure.

The first phase succeeded in demonstrating analternative approach to strategic planning. Theprovincial government at the time appearedready to embrace the practice of consulting civilsociety, academia and the private sector instrategic planning for development, and hassince tried to replicate the process. However, nosubsequent effort has succeeded in providing thecomprehensive coverage that characterized theSPCS consultation process.

Regarding the document itself, the governmentaccepted the directions emerging, led from thetop by the Additional Chief Secretary and thenew Chief Minister, Aftab Sherpao. However,the danger with relying on “champions” at thehighest level soon began to emerge. WhenKhalid Aziz assumed the position of ChiefSecretary, his replacement as Additional ChiefSecretary for development was not as supportiveand did not enjoy the same comprehensiveunderstanding of the project. The process beganto stumble near the end of the phase. It becameclear that the project’s objectives and philosophyhad not been sufficiently internalized through-out the provincial government and even inPE&DD, especially at the middle levels.

The common assumption—that strong politicalsupport from the top would filter down andacross the government—proved overly-opti-mistic. Indeed, such political messages rarelywork down through a natural process of percola-tion. They require particular tools and a careful-

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ly tailored communications mechanism, neitherof which were in place. The cast of senior officialsthat began to flow through the government didnot always accord the SPCS the same prioritythat the initiators had. Even when the SPCS wasformally approved by the Sarhad cabinet in June1996, there were delays in organizing its publiclaunch. The new political set-up was hesitant tofollow up on the SPCS, and recommended proj-ects were not immediately initiated. Althoughthe idea of civil society participation was accept-ed as a general philosophy, the civil service beganto strengthen its core functions and isolate itselffrom intrusion. Access to financial resources inthe provincial budget became difficult, and proj-ects stemming from SPCS were rarely accordedfunding priority. The deteriorating economy ofPakistan did not help.

Civil society partners, drawn into the processover the two years of consultations, began toquestion when the project would “deliver.” Theproject found itself in a dilemma: while the proj-ect team believed very strongly that the key tosuccess was to be found in the process of prepar-ing the SPCS and generating ownership in itscontent, the demand from partners was to startshowing concrete outputs. Some NGOs sug-gested that the project “get its hands dirty” bygiving priority to some on-the-ground fieldwork. Although stakeholders readily acceptedthe SPCS in general terms, some confusionbegan to emerge about what to do next—therewas no clear sense of commitment by organiza-tions (in civil society, private sector and the gov-ernment) to “take on” the SPCS agenda andbegin to implement it.

PE&DD continued to support the SPCS, albeitwith reduced dynamism owing to budget cuts,frequent staff changes and rapid shifts in thepolitical signals received. Some departments,though, seized on the SPCS and began toimplement some of its recommendations. TheForest Department, aided by funding from theAsian Development Bank, undertook majorreforms advocated by the SPCS, but few otherdepartments showed that sort of leadership.

While self-doubt is natural towards the end of aheady process, it is critical to intervene at keyjunctures to maintain momentum and to ensurea strong orientation towards continued progress.This was an ideal role for IUCN as the “outside”partner. While the SPCS team soldiered on toproduce the strategy and secure its approval,IUCN might usefully have played a stronger rolein helping think through the baseline require-

ments for success in subsequent stages. IUCNleadership, though it played out behind thescenes, was not always sufficiently forthright,and some confusion arose as to the relative rolesof IUCN, the SPCS support project and theSPCS team.

It must be said that IUCN itself was to someextent sailing through uncharted waters. Whilethe NCS experience gave IUCN some self-con-fidence, the experience was not automaticallytransposable to the provincial level, and specifi-cally to the political environment of Sarhad.Particularly after the departure of Khalid Aziz,IUCN was obliged to devote a good deal of itsenergy to fighting attacks on the SPCS by itsenemies in the bureaucracy. Running this sort ofinterference may not be very glamorous, normuch remembered in later years, but it can befundamental to a project’s success.

This phase also appeared to have had limitedsuccess in communicating the very essence of itsexistence—preparation of a participatory strate-gy for sustainable development, which could beimplemented by the people of the provincethemselves.

Perhaps the assumption was overly-ambitious.The project had, after all, entirely redefined thepriorities for development, had intervened at alevel not previously achieved, and had brokennew ground on participation. These were radicaldepartures from the norm, and the province wasnot ready simply to adopt them wholeheartedly.

A more robust handover strategy was obviouslyneeded. The project decided to enter a secondphase—the transition to implementation.

Transition to implementation:Phase II – July 1995 to June 1998The period from 1995 to 1998 marked a delib-erate transition to implementation. The Swissagreed to extend another grant to facilitate thistransition whose main objectives were:

• to strengthen capacity in provincial and dis-trict governments, civil society organiza-tions and the private sector in the provincefor strategic planning and implementation;

• to strengthen partnerships with civil societyand the private sector, generating enoughcapacity for the two to continue implemen-tation of key components of the SPCS ontheir own; and


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• the final publication and dissemination ofthe SPCS, and the implementation of pri-ority projects identified in the strategy.

A critical assumption in this phase was that thepolitical situation in the province would encour-age and promote the involvement of communi-ties and community-based organizations, as wellas the private sector, in natural resource man-agement. As it turned out, this was the period inwhich the country began to experience signifi-cant political turmoil. With the reshuffling ofsenior decision-makers in the province, theproject could no longer count on the high-levelsupport it had enjoyed earlier. Additional ChiefSecretaries and Secretaries of PE&DD came andwent, and the support project was not alwayshigh on their list of priorities. Some of themfailed to grasp the significance of the project, oreven felt threatened by it. Nor was the instabili-ty confined to the upper levels. Frequent staffchanges affected the PE&DD, gradually erod-ing the relationship with the support project.

Another major assumption was that the supportproject would move into the next phase ofimplementation through strengthened institu-tions and supportive legislation. As it turnedout, neither assumption proved to be correct.The capacity building initiatives undertaken inthe first phase were poorly linked to the need tostrengthen key institutions. New institutions—such as the Provincial Environmental ProtectionAgency—began to flounder virtually from themoment they were established, and funding toimplement projects identified by the SPCSbecame increasingly scarce. Poor coordinationin the donor community also influenced theSPCS. The Provincial EPA, instead of joiningforces with—and seeking support from—theSPCS support project, preferred to hold out(vain) hopes for a major grant from the WorldBank.

Importantly, the first phase of the project hadaccepted—largely as a result of the public con-sultations—that addressing key social issues wasa prerequisite for success in the transition to sus-tainable development. The SPCS had to someextent addressed the social and economic con-text within the province, but in the end, it nev-ertheless focused principally on environmentalfactors, relying on other initiatives like Pakistan’sSocial Action Programme (SAP) to complementits work in the social arena. SAP, though, turnedout to be an unreliable counterpart, and there

was in fact no other organized effort in theprovince to address social priorities with whichSPCS could dovetail.

Matching the political instability in the country,project management also went through somerapid changes. In October 1996, Rafiq becameHead of the IUCN Sarhad Program, andAlamgir Gandapur joined the SPCS project asProject Director, but found it difficult to steerthe project effectively through the turbulenttimes.

Despite these problems, the project managed tostay on course. The political situation preventedimmediate implementation, and the project hadto show patience until a new government wasestablished in February 1997. The new ChiefMinister, Mehtab Abbasi, turned out to be astrong supporter of the environmental move-ment, and the project capitalized on his support.The Chief Minister’s Deputy Secretary,Musharraf Rasool Cyan, played a key role inbringing the project to the attention of seniorpolicy-makers, and in providing high-level sup-port. An ex-Focal Point,4 Gul Najam Jamy tookon the post of Project Director in June 1997.

Still, despite the fact that the SPCS had beenformally adopted in June 1996, it had not beenpossible to overcome both the inertia and thepockets of resistance within the provincial gov-ernment to publish the strategy and to under-take a public launch. IUCN and the supportproject saw an opportunity with the plannedvisit by the Director General of SDC to Pakistanto overcome this resistance to organize a formallaunch of the SPCS in November 1997. Sincethe SDC had been the principal donor to theSPCS project and several other projects in theprovince, since it had played a consistent andactive role in support of the process and sincethe provincial government hoped to secure fur-ther contributions from them for SPCS-relatedwork, they could not afford to delay the launchany further.

The launch turned out to be a huge success. Notonly did it raise the public and official profile ofthe project, it also marked the unofficial “re-launch” of the support project. In 1996, theproject had already hired technical experts toserve as Focal Points in key line departments rel-evant to the SPCS, and had begun to establishRoundtables—topic-based fora gathering repre-sentatives from government, civil society and

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4 See discussion on Focal Points below and in Part 3 of this Story.

the private sector. After the launch, and with thesupport of the new government, both mecha-nisms were reinvigorated.

One key innovation at this stage in the develop-ment of the SPCS process was the initiation ofpilot district conservation strategies. The ChitralConservation Strategy was initiated in mid-1997, and the Abbottabad ConservationStrategy followed soon after. They followed aprocess very similar to that of the SPCS.

The project achieved a great deal in establishinga “climate of confidence and mutual endeavourbetween government and civil society.”5 TheFocal Points and Roundtables institutionalizedthe concept of participatory decision-making,and also influenced other development projectsof donors, NGOs and the government. Theirkey success probably lay in the non-hierarchicalprocesses adopted. These pioneered a movetowards decentralization, which anticipatedfuture developments.

At the same time, the project showed its vulner-ability to political change. The rapid change-over of senior administrators continued to affectprogress to an unacceptable degree. When a pos-itive and benevolent officer was appointed to apost, the project could surge forward, but it wasequally—if not more frequent—for the incum-bent to try to marginalize the project and placeobstacles before its progress. One of the longer-serving Secretaries of PE&DD remained deeplyskeptical of the project. Although he could notstop a project that had already begun, he didplace considerable roadblocks in its path.

The second set of problems—unfortunately alltoo characteristic of the implementation phaseof strategic projects—began to emerge.Institutional roles and responsibilities had to bedefined, leading to all-too-common “turf bat-tles.” The authority and exact role of the FocalPoints required clarification, as did the three-way interactions among the PE&DD, theEnvironmental Protection Agency and theSPCS support unit itself.

By June of 1998, it was clear that implementingthe strategy would require considerably moreattention than previously thought. Issues ofpolitical support, institutional capacity and, pri-marily, reaction to a redefinition of roles werecritical. On the other hand, the project had suc-ceeded in institutionalizing some key mecha-nisms, and had managed to raise awareness about

SPCS to a large degree, helped by the networksthat were established and strengthened duringthe course of the project. The project could alsobuild on the growing awareness among govern-ment, donors, NGOs and the public at large thatenvironmental issues could be ignored only atextreme peril to development achievement.

In the final analysis, the expectations for uptakeof the SPCS by external partners (governmentdepartments, select NGOs and the private sec-tor) proved in some respects to be overly-ambi-tious. It is clear that the rigour and determina-tion that went into constructing the SPCS hadto be at least as sharp and as creative in facilitat-ing and supporting the implementation, and inensuring a gradual handover, whereby Sarhad-based actors assume responsibility for taking thestrategy forward, and both IUCN and the proj-ect team gradually withdraw or take the strategyto the next levels. This in turn requires consoli-dating both awareness of, and commitment to,the SPCS beyond the few leaders in IUCN andgovernment. During the transition to imple-mentation, this was achieved to a limited extent,though the absence of clear commitment to theSPCS began to pose a serious problem.

It is certainly commendable that IUCN and theSarhad government did not simply present theSPCS document and go home. Indeed, rightfrom the start, it was clear that formulating thestrategy was only a step in what would inevitablyturn out to be a long and twisting road. Ifuptake of the SPCS recommendations by gov-ernment was not always optimal, it was in factphenomenal when compared to other policiesand strategies prepared and promulgated inSarhad in the years before and after the SPCS.So when compared with a glowing ideal, SPCSmay have fallen short, but in terms of what it ispossible to achieve in the current political, insti-tutional and social environment of Sarhad, it didremarkably well.

At the same time, visible commitment by gov-ernment to the SPCS is only one indicator ofsuccess. Many of the innovations pioneered byIUCN and the SPCS project may prove to havemuch more significance. The SPCS process suc-ceeded, for example, in creating a tenuousalliance between government and the NGOs.The SPCS is the first government policy docu-ment to recognize and assign a role to civil soci-ety in the development process. SPCS opened arange of opportunities for NGOs to be repre-


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5 Quoted from the second Mid-Term Review of the SPCS, 1997.

sented in government decision-making bodiesand even, in some cases, to nominate their ownrepresentatives. As will be seen in the followingpart of the story, the SPCS was instrumental increating and reinforcing NGO networks andservice organizations, and in particular theSarhad NGO Ittehad and the Frontier ResourceCentre. The impact of these developments maynot be felt immediately, but they represent thebeginnings of a change whose reach could bevery extensive.

Beyond SPCS: partnerships forsustainable development in theNWFP (PSDN)

Phase III – July 1998 to June 2001 andPhase IV – June 2001 to the present

This story of the SPCS is intended to cover theinitiation, preparation and launch of the strate-gy, and properly ends in mid-1998. For the peri-od beyond that, which ushered in the start ofthe devolution, it is difficult to stand back andto achieve the perspective necessary to under-stand and interpret events. This short section isintended simply to reflect on the direction theprocess appears to be taking, and to indicatewhere problems have been overcome, or contin-ue to plague the project.

The objectives of the SDC funding allocated forthis third phase were to support capacitystrengthening for SPCS implementation, with afocus on developing and reinforcing partnershiparrangements. This would recognize the factthat SPCS was a fragile shoot that still needednurturing if it was to grow more robust and putdown deep roots in the political culture of theprovince.

At least in the initial stages, this has proved to becomplex. The SPCS process found it difficult toescape the impact of the general economicdecline and the political uncertainty that hascharacterized Pakistan over the past few years.People initially consulted and involved have notconsistently been kept in the loop of develop-ments, thereby creating resentment. The pauci-ty of clearly visible outputs created frustration.The failure to launch anticipated demonstrationprojects proved important, especially for theirsponsors. They were meant to provide a demon-stration of the SPCS’s ability to affect groundreality and their repeated postponement beganto sow doubts as to whether the SPCS could, infact, bring about real change.

Some of the problems that had emerged in theimplementation phase from 1997, remainedunresolved. Support for SPCS remains modestat the mid-levels of government, and continuesto be eroded as staff are transferred and posts aredropped. Similarly, the frequent changes inmanagement of the support project and inIUCN have taken their toll. There is little evi-dence of the key Sarhad NGOs or the privatesector adopting the SPCS as a planning tool. Infact, the government itself stopped using theSPCS as a policy guide, due partly to staffchanges, and began to feel that it was too diffuseand generic a document to help concretely.Similarly, the problem of redefining the role ofgovernment in general, and the roles and man-dates of different sections in government in par-ticular, became increasingly insurmountable asPakistan sank into a period of political andfinancial uncertainty.

Some of these difficulties may be laid at the feetof IUCN or the SPCS team. Much, however,has to do with the context in which it worked,and to sheer bad luck. The two-year periodbetween the approval of the SPCS and itslaunch was unfortunate. While it was not an idleperiod—far from it—it nevertheless provedimpossible to sustain the momentum that hadbeen generated, and the team was forced todevote far too much of its energy to fighting thesystem. This period coincided with a rapidcycling of government officers and an awkward-ly high turnover in the SPCS team. None of thathelped to keep up the momentum, or to holdtogether the body of knowledge and under-standing that had been generated.

If things were difficult in the period from 1995to 1997, they grew markedly worse. Six monthsafter the launch of the SPCS in May 1998,Pakistan exploded a nuclear device and founditself cut off from much of its foreign aid and itslines of credit. With projects shutting downthroughout the province, the government’s pri-ority turned away from innovation and experi-mentation, and focused on consolidating andsaving whatever staff and activities it could. TheSPCS sank in the government’s list of priorities,and the donors were poorly placed to insist onits rehabilitation.

As if that were not enough, a military govern-ment took power in October 1999. As one of itsfirst priorities, the military rulers focused on“cleaning out” what they deemed to be a deeplycorrupt civil administration in Sarhad. A largenumber of civil servants were arrested, chased

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out or transferred to other provinces and newones shipped in from elsewhere. They broughtwith them a total ignorance of the SPCS. Thosecivil servants that remained kept a low profileand operated by the book. Any activity thatsmacked of innovation, experimentation andchange was locked in the filing cabinet and for-gotten. Prospects for the SPCS could not havebeen worse. Indeed, it is a significant tribute tothe robustness and inherent rigour of the SPCSthat it survived at all.

With the events of September 11, 2001, and thealliance over Afghanistan, Pakistan has beenrehabilitated internationally, and the militarygovernment has gained broad acceptance—atleast for now. Aid money is flowing again, andgovernment attempts at controlling corruptionin the civil service seem to be having an effect.The SPCS’s star may be on the rise again.

There is, of course, considerable scope for SPCSto learn from its past and play a more centralrole in shaping development in Sarhad.However, clarity and focus seem to be an impor-tant pre-requisite, for concentrating on“upstream” vs. “downstream” impacts; for focus-ing on civil society vs. government; for trying toreform the government or trying to replace it,following the lead of the stakeholders or provid-ing leadership and so on. One important mes-sage emerges: the process of strategic planningand social change is a continuous effort to strikethe right balances. Success is determined by howwell such a project has learned its lessons andbuilds on them in changing contexts to refine itsbalances.

Toward a new governance

The late Chinese Foreign Minister, Zhou Enlai,is famous for replying, when asked about thehistorical significance of the French Revolution,that it was too early to tell. The same can be saidof the impact of the SPCS on sustainable devel-opment in Sarhad. Both the SPCS itself, and tosome extent this story, have focused on howSPCS might have affected government develop-ment planning, how well environment has beenintegrated into the work of the provincial gov-ernment and its line departments. But is thatreally the best indicator? Might the impact of theSPCS not be measured using other factors, suchas impact on local government, on civil societyor on the private sector? Or is it in introducingnew thinking, new ideas and new institutionalapproaches that the SPCS will be found to havehad its most lasting effect?

It is clear that IUCN and the SPCS project wereahead of their time. They pioneered approachesto development planning that were unfamiliarin the province, and succeeded in getting manyof them rooted and accepted. They introducedmethods and approaches whose significance willprobably become clear over the coming years,and which may well prove to be more influentialand a greater stimulus to change than the accu-mulated technical analysis and the kilos of doc-uments, produced by the project teams.

One of the SPCS process’s clear successes is theintroduction and widespread use of public con-sultations—not only those conducted in the firstphase of the project, but those that continuedthrough involvement of NGOs and communi-ty-based organizations, through the district con-servation strategies and in the Roundtables, toname a few. It may well be found, with the per-spective of a decade or so, that this innovationled to a substantial change in developmentthinking in Sarhad, and proved a stimulus for arapid shift to new governance thinking.Similarly, bringing together members of the pri-vate sector and civil society with governmentmay have enshrined habits that will be hard tobreak and that will rapidly erode what onceappeared to be the impregnable fortress of thebureaucracy.

It may even be aspects of the SPCS that wereregarded as marginal at the time that end uphaving some of the strongest impact. The studyundertaken under the auspices of the SPCS onthe link between environment and security inthe province, which has had a noted impactinternationally, may prove to be the foundationfor a new approach to evaluating the importanceof environment and resource management,especially now that the region is at the centre ofinternational attention and the debate is ragingon how to stabilize Afghanistan and neighbour-ing regions, and how to ensure that the environ-mental root causes of conflict might beaddressed.

If there is one impressive feature of the SPCSprocess and the support project in particular, itis its willingness to adapt, to experiment, toinnovate, to import and adapt new and interest-ing ideas, wherever they might come from. It ishard, in a brief account of this type, to conveythe sense of excitement that characterized theproject, particularly in the first years, before thehard grind of reality and bureaucratic resistancebegan to cause the first grey hairs, and before thegeopolitical crisis shoved the SPCS somewhat


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into the shadows. Nevertheless it is that open-ness, that ability to challenge assumptions, torevise one’s own ideas in the face of new think-ing that proved the most enduring strength ofthe SPCS process. That may be its most lastinglegacy.

It is remarkable and instructive that thoseaspects of the NCS that are perhaps the moststriking and are now having the deepest impactwere not necessarily those that would have beenchosen as the most likely candidates immediately

after the NCS launch, nor even after two orthree years of implementation. Indeed, anassessment made of the impact of the NCS at asimilar stage would certainly have been morepessimistic than one made today. A strategicplanning process introduces many ideas, con-ducts many experiments and plants many seeds.The full impact of all of this creativity and ener-gy begins to emerge only later—often years later.There can be little doubt that the same willprove true of the SPCS.

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Section II: Tools,Approaches, MethodsThe SPCS story is one of courage and persist-ence. Mistakes were made, or course, as theyalways are, and some of the experiments came tonaught. But the project never ceased to inno-vate, to experiment, to seek new paths aroundobstacles and to encounter new ways of advanc-ing its goals. IUCN, in particular, scoured itsorganizational experience, in Pakistan and else-where, for best practice examples that mightapply to Sarhad, and cast the net wide in termsof identifying people and experience that couldbe recruited to the service of the SPCS.

What chance did the project have of reaching itsgoal “to secure the environmental, social andecological well-being of the people of theNWFP through the conservation and sustain-able development of the province’s naturalresources”? Or, more fairly, what would consti-tute satisfactory progress down that path in acountry where, despite some progress, “funda-mental development constraints remain, includ-ing: inequitable economic growth and wide-spread poverty, feudal social structures that arereflected in political power relationships,absence of local government and exclusion ofthe majority of the population in decision-mak-ing and access to basic services, unabated envi-ronmental degradation and failure of institutionsto provide sufficient integration of environmen-tal, social and economic policy objectives”?6

The SPCS set high ambitions, in an environ-ment that was largely unfavourable. In such cir-cumstances, good planning and persistence are

not enough to remove the many roadblocks.Success with the project required considerablerisk-taking and innovation. Happily, the projectshowed a strong inclination towards both.

This section focuses on the innovative mecha-nisms that the project introduced, the experi-ments it conducted and the ideas it pioneered. Itoffers some reflections on the positive and nega-tive experience that the SPCS process had withthese mechanisms and suggests some lessonsthat might be drawn from the experience.

Some of these mechanisms are tried-and-truetechniques in common use elsewhere; somewere already in operation in the province. Buttheir importation or adaptation in the context ofthe development challenges in Sarhad requiredconsiderable creativity. Other mechanisms wereentirely new to the province. Some were neweven to IUCN. The principal mechanisms arereviewed below:

The reality check: public consultationsPublic consultations played a key role in thepreparation of the SPCS. They proved relativelyeasy to organize, since they are not too far fromthe jirga system—the cultural tradition of par-ticipatory planning and decision-making inSarhad. As noted above, once the InceptionReport was ready in October 1993, the teamsought broad-based feedback through a series ofpublic consultations in all parts of the province.


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6 NCS Mid-Term Review Report, 2000. Note that in respect of local government, things are changing quickly.

Photo: UncleSargam Show –part of SPCS’sconnection strategy to checkinnovativeapproaches.

The objective was threefold:

• to understand how conservation and devel-opment problems and priorities were per-ceived by the people consulted;

• to ascertain how this perception differedfrom the technical analysis of the situationundertaken by the SPCS team; and

• to demonstrate that alternatives exist to theprevalent centralized, top-down, power-and influence-based approach to planningfor development.

The last of these was particularly important,given the traditional government approach toplanning: isolated, linear and based on limiteddata and the expertise of a handful of govern-ment officials.

The team proposed the extensive use of publicconsultations. Though there were pockets ofresistance, the notion was broadly welcomed bythe provincial government. The Chief Ministerat the time, Aftab Sherpao, threw his supportbehind the public consultations, as did KhalidAziz. The provincial government facilitated theconsultations by ensuring that the DeputyCommissioner and relevant line departmentrepresentatives attended the consultations.

The experience turned out to be an eye-openerfor the administration and, as the consultationsproceeded, they stimulated more active involve-ment by government departments. The publicconsultations were also regularly attended byparticipants from Chambers of Commerce andAgriculture, NGOs, community-based organi-zations, academia and local communities. Twolocal NGOs, IDEAS and HRM&DC werehired to assist in organizing and reporting on theconsultations, and pinpointing ideas and recom-mendations that could be forwarded as inputs tothe strategy itself.

Early on it was noted that, while the public con-sultations often led to lively debate, there waspoor attendance by women, and those whocame tended to remain quiet. While this was tobe expected given the culture of the provinceand in particular the rural areas, views on thekey issues and priorities of environment anddevelopment from the perspective of womenwere deemed essential. As a result, HRM&DCwas asked to organize separate consultationswith women and women’s groups. Ultimately, fivewomen’s consultations were held (see Annex V).

The public consultation process was spearhead-ed by two teams (Mohammad Rafiq headingone; Hameed Hassan the other) that took com-prehensive notes, feeding these to StephanFuller and G. M. Khattak to consolidate. Asnoted above, after the initial few public consul-tations at the district level, the team proposed tothe government that select village consultationsalso be held.

Given the time constraints attendant on theproject, this turned out to be an enormous task.The selection of target villages was to someextent arbitrary—one village was chosen in eachtehsil (sub-district), providing a geographically-balanced coverage of the rural areas of theprovince. Only Chitral could not be covereddirectly, for logistical reasons. Instead, anarrangement was made with the Aga Khan RuralSupport Programme, which is active and organ-ized in most of the villages of Chitral, to organ-ize and run the consultations there. The villageconsultations proved to be hugely successful, andthe participants greatly appreciated the rareopportunity to air their concerns. Other devel-opment projects active in the district or villageweighed in by encouraging partner community-based organizations to attend and to mobilizetheir own constituencies. In all, public consulta-tions were held in each of the 21 district head-quarters in Sarhad, and in 40 additional villages.

Following this initial cycle, the SPCS team held15 sector-specific consultations to review tech-nical issues in greater depth. These consultationsserved essentially to provide feedback on the sec-tor papers, and included a broad range of peopleand institutions (see Annex VI). Consultationswere held, involving line departments,Chambers of Commerce and Agriculture, uni-versities, the provincial Finance Departmentand, separately, with citizens’ forums. TheFinance Department, in particular, warned ofthe huge financial implications of the strategy.

The entire consultation process occupied a verysubstantial proportion of the SPCS team’s timeand resources from late 1993 to the end of1994. The results of the various consultationswere compiled and served as a principal input tothe draft SPCS, which was drawn up in thecourse of 1995 and approved by the provincialcabinet in June of the next year.

Assessment

The strength of the public consultations wasthat they covered a commendable range of geo-

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graphically-diverse and sector-specific stake-holders. The rich ore of ideas and perspectivesmined from these consultations was refined andserved as one of the major ingredients in theSPCS itself. The Strategy, as a result, rested on amuch broader base of knowledge than wouldotherwise have been possible, and offered anaccurate reflection of the issues and priorities inthe province as seen by the principal stakehold-ers. The range of consultations appears to havestruck a judicious balance between comprehen-sive geographical coverage and strategic sector-specific input, given the constraints under whichthe project was operating.

The project was also successful in demonstratingan alternative method of planning—involvingall stakeholders in a process of consultation. Thegovernment recognized the value in this, andbought into it substantially. This initial enthusi-asm can be attributed to a range of factors:

• genuine fascination with the ideas and per-spectives emerging from the stakeholders;

• a sense that these ideas, if given a positiveresponse, could confer some legitimacy togovernment departments suffering frompoor public image; and

• the first rumblings of the call for devolution,which would require them to work moreclosely with the stakeholders in the future.

It is disappointing to note that this enthusiasmdoes not seem to have led to much uptake, andthe public consultations undertaken as part ofthe SPCS process appear to be an isolated exam-ple, at least of such comprehensive coverage.Changing old habits does not take placeovernight.

The general praise that the SPCS processdeserves for the consultative process is marred byone issue. The attempt to build a sense of hopeand ownership through the consultations suc-ceeded, with the participants buying into theSPCS process to a significant degree. They were,in a sense, being asked to offer SPCS their con-fidence, and their trust that their inputs wouldlead to concrete improvements on the issues andpriorities they had identified. Their trust was notplaced in a document, but in the process itself,and the hope for change that it appeared to holdout. That trust must be maintained—and thelevel of interest sustained—until changes inground reality begin to pay off.

Unfortunately, the consultations focused on thefront-end need to assess priorities and glean

ideas for solutions. The consultation process, ina sense, was a taker. When the time came forSPCS to give in return, much of the enthusiasmhad dissipated. Once the SPCS was preparedand approved, the momentum generatedthrough the public consultations began to dissi-pate through poor communication with thosewho had participated, and through lack of visi-ble, concrete outcomes in the form of develop-ment actions. The demonstration projects wereslow to get off the ground (see discussion ofdemonstration projects, below), and much ofthe follow-up appeared to be focused on moreplanning, this time at a lower level (see discus-sion of District Conservation Strategies, below).So the opportunity to build and nurture a sup-portive constituency was not fully tapped, andthe investment of trust on the part of an impres-sive range of stakeholders was not adequatelyput to productive use.

Calling in the stakeholders:RoundtablesA partial exception relates to the Roundtablesestablished by the project and which have playedan influential role both in the formulation of theSPCS and in the transition to implementation.The choice of this mechanism of Roundtableswas influenced by the project team’s experiencewith the NCS process, by experience fromCanada introduced by Stephan Fuller and byRafiq’s exposure to comparable processes in theNetherlands. The first Roundtables were estab-lished in the first phase of SPCS implementa-tion—in early 1995—as an innovative vehicleboth for promoting stakeholder buy-in to theSPCS and as a tool for spreading the responsi-bility for implementation beyond the public sec-tor. The idea was to bring concerned individualsfrom government, civil society and the publicsector together in a neutral, non-hierarchicalforum to exchange ideas concerning a particularaspect of the sustainable development challenge.Roundtables were seen as an experiment withnew governance approaches and especially as atool to break down the hard barriers between thesectors of society, to resolve conflicts that aroseduring SPCS implementation and to buildbroad support for the policy, regulatory andinstitutional changes necessary to implement theSPCS.

The uniqueness of the Roundtables lay in thefact that they were entirely neutral fora for dis-cussion, often without a permanent chair or anyrecognition of traditional power or position.


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Instead, Roundtable meetings were usually facil-itated, on a rotating basis, by one of its mem-bers, and support between meetings was provid-ed by a secretariat nominated by these samemembers.

It is important to note that the Roundtables arethe subject of official “notification” by govern-ment. In other words, they have a formal man-date and authority devolved upon them by thegovernment. Although the recommendationsformulated by Roundtables are not binding,they nevertheless exert a certain moral pressureon decision-makers, especially when these deci-sion-makers participate in the Roundtableprocess. Experience has shown that governmentrepresentatives on Roundtables have in factpicked up on some suggestions and presentedthem to their departments.

The government seems to have generally accept-ed the Roundtables, although there was initialresistance to the concept of opening for widerparticipation what have traditionally been gov-ernment functions. In particular, the issue ofinvolving civil society in public decision-makinghas not been easy to accept in a culture of non-participation. Government resistance has gradu-ally been overcome thanks to the generally pos-itive experience with participatory developmentprojects in the province, and thanks to the qual-ity and relevance of the debates that theRoundtables have begun to generate. Now thatRoundtables are a broadly-accepted norm inpublic decision-making in Sarhad, one of thenext steps envisioned by the project is to handover the organization and support for theRoundtables to a range of players beyond IUCNor the project. This has already happened in thecase of the NGO Roundtable, and is an indica-tor of the success of the concept. It is also sig-nificant that the Roundtable concept has movedbeyond Sarhad and has been adopted by boththe Balochistan and Northern AreasConservation Strategies. In these areas, govern-ment departments have set up Roundtables orinterest groups which, in some cases, have con-tinued beyond the IUCN support project’s life-time. (See Annex VII for a list of theRoundtables.)

The Roundtable on Forestry is worthy of partic-ular mention. It arose out of the new ForestryAct that emerged largely from the SPCS process,although the Act itself was drawn up under anADB project. Although one of the firstRoundtables to be conceived and proposed, itproved almost impossible to agree on setting it

up, especially since it was linked to the idea of anindependent Forestry Commission. TheForestry Roundtable was entrusted, under theAct, to develop the criteria for Commissionmembership and to draw up a panel of candi-dates from which the Commission memberswould be selected. The Forest Department resis-ted what it perceived to be a serious threat to itsauthority, and received a boost from the militarygovernment, which proved to be cool to the ideaof non-governmental membership on theCommission. Persistence, the interest of thestakeholders evident from the public consulta-tions and the political authority of the SPCSitself have, however, paid off. The ForestryCommission has been notified, although itappears to have been slow to begin functioning.

Other interesting Roundtables have been thoseestablished in Abbottabad and Chitral notaround a sectoral topic, but as broad fora exam-ining all sustainable development issues relatedto the district conservation strategies. In Chitral,the newly-elected district government (June2001) decided to confer formal recognition tothe Roundtable, and to use it as a mechanismfor consultation and consensus building. TheNGO Roundtable provides a forum for a widerange of NGOs to discuss their capacity-build-ing initiatives related to SPCS implementation.It lapsed for a couple of years after the publica-tion of the SPCS document, but was revived inDecember 1999 and now meets regularly. TheIndustries and Agriculture Roundtables are alsovery active: they are holding substantive debatesand are backed by active secretariats.

Assessment

There is no doubt that the Roundtables havepromoted interaction between government,business and civil society in relation to key mat-ters of public policy. Traditionally, public sectordecisions rested on the technical knowledge of afew officials and a strictly linear process internalto the government. The Roundtables have beencritical in opening these decisions to publicdebate, and have improved the quality of deci-sions by broadening the knowledge base. Theyhave also played an important role in refiningthe sector-specific recommendations generatedby the SPCS project. Their potential as fora forconsensus building and conflict resolutionremain high, though inadequately explored.

However, many of the Roundtables have begunto flounder as the adoption of the SPCS fadesinto the ever-more-distant past. The Roundtables

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on Communications, Environmental Education,and Cultural Heritage are dormant, while theone on NGOs has only recently been revived.The combined experience of Roundtables hasresulted in little visible policy impact, apart fromthe Agriculture Roundtable’s input into recentsector reforms. At the same time, they have notsucceeded in consolidating experience and toolsfor consensus building and conflict resolution,as initially envisaged. Nor does there seem to bemuch progress in using the Roundtables as con-duits for the capacity building required toimplement the SPCS, as was originally intend-ed. The Training Needs Assessment of theRoundtables has not been completed (with thepartial exception of the NGO Roundtable) andvirtually no progress has been made towards thisend.

The experience has yielded valuable lessons forthe project in its efforts to institutionalize theRoundtables in the province. For a start, it hasbecome clear that the Roundtables need to begiven a clearly defined role in the implementa-tion of SPCS. Without this focus, most of theRoundtables have become inactive, while othersare struggling. While promotion of SPCS as abrand name is not crucial, the agenda of thestrategy needs to be closely linked to theRoundtables, and this has not always happened,for example, in the case of the NGOs. Similarly,the Roundtables need to meet more frequentlyand more regularly if a shared vision is to bedeveloped and action plans formulated.

Most participants in the Roundtables feel thatthey are of enormous value in promoting inter-sectoral coordination, but that this advantage islimited by the quality of participation. The par-ticipants need to be adequate in number andrepresentative in composition, and this has notalways been the case: the Sustainable IndustrialDevelopment Roundtable, for example, initiallyhad few private sector members. Even choosingfrom within the stakeholder groups has beenproblematic. This may be one reason for the lackof complete acceptance of Roundtables as toolsfor policy influence. Another has been the resist-ance from some within the government, who seethe Roundtables as an infringement on theirturf!

The message that comes through again andagain in speaking of the Roundtables is that thesuccess of these fora requires a clearly-definedand realistic agenda targeted at the policy level.Better communication of the Roundtable dis-cussions at the appropriate level could also

produce better results. At the same time, themembership needs to be well chosen, with somecommitted leaders in each forum and active sec-retariat support.

The issue of leadership is critical, as the SPCSexperience demonstrates that Roundtables arerarely self-propelled. They need catalysts to per-form this role as a full-time function. Indeed,follow-up between meetings is crucial to the effi-cacy of the fora.

As a whole, however, the Roundtables haveproved to be a useful and creative vehicle. Theyinitially functioned extremely well, though theyhave tended later to flag, often failing to “takeoff” in the way expected. They did result in rein-forcing the concept of participatory decision-making, but have been less successful in trans-lating this into effective policy influence.

Catalyzing government action:Focal PointsThe idea of Focal Points—mostly IUCN-recruited SPCS project staff placed within andwith a mandate to liaise exclusively with key linedepartments in the provincial government—emerged in the first phase of the project. TheFocal Points were envisioned as sectoral catalystswho could mobilize and support theRoundtables while at the same time introducingthe SPCS agenda into the work and future plan-ning of each department. In their support rolefor the respective Roundtables, the Focal Pointswere expected to ensure the effectiveness of theseparticipatory fora and ensure adequate follow-up to the discussions and to any decisions taken.

The second objective for the Focal Points was toensure that the SPCS agenda permeated thefunctioning of each department. This was to beachieved through working within the depart-ments on a day-to-day basis. As it turned out,the Focal Points tended to become key players inbolstering capacity within their respectivedepartments and in ensuring continuity, both infollowing up Roundtable discussions and inbuilding SPCS recommendations into the workof their respective departments.

The Focal Points were hired and put in place in1995. Initially, the question arose as to howextensively the system should be introduced—inPE&DD only, or in each department central toSPCS implementation. The latter choice provedto be a good one. From the outset, the FocalPoints began to sensitize their host departments


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to the SPCS recommendations, and proved auseful force in building the SPCS agenda intothe work of their departments. More often thannot, they took the lead in promoting SPCSimplementation through the work of theirdepartments.

In the SPCS implementation phase, as the proj-ect began to consider its hand-over strategy, theidea of Government Focal Points was intro-duced. The objective was to transfer the func-tions of the Focal Point to staff within thedepartments themselves. This was intended toovercome the problems faced by the FocalPoints as sometimes unwanted outsiders, whilereinforcing the sustainability of the SPCS and itsimpact. The choice of the officials to be namedas government Focal Point was critical. Theyhad to be senior officials, whose word wouldcarry weight and influence, yet not be so senioras to be unreachable. The choice tended to reston Chief Planning Officers and AdditionalSecretaries.

Assessment

The experience of the Focal Points has beenmixed. Although their attachment to relevantdepartments was meant to set in place frame-work conditions for the implementation ofSPCS, this appears to be realistic only over along time frame. Further, for this to succeed, theFocal Points require strong process-orientedskills, such as catalyzing action and networkingthroughout the department. The active develop-ment of such skills has not been one of the pro-ject’s strengths. Instead, success has tended todepend on the latent talent and professionalgrowth of the individual Focal Points.

At the same time, the style and culture of theprovincial government departments has provedrelatively unreceptive to “outside” intervention,and the poor understanding on the part of someFocal Points on how government decision-mak-ing operates has sometimes limited their influ-ence. Further, it proved difficult to recruit FocalPoints with the full range of skills required in thedepartments where they would be placed. So thelevel of credibility and acceptance required forthe mechanism to work could not always beachieved, making the task of “mainstreaming”the SPCS agenda more difficult.

There was always a danger that departmentheads would fail to respect the special status andfunctions of the Focal Points, instead divertingthem onto a range of extraneous assignments.

This occurred in some cases. In other cases, thesystem has worked well, and the departmentheads have been recruited as strong supportersof the SPCS agenda. In any event, the FocalPoint system was not designed for sustainability.The Focal Points were given a brief to assist withsectoral input to the SPCS, identify opportuni-ties for SPCS implementation in their sectors,and help mainstream the SPCS agenda. Afterthat, they were to hand over their duties andstep down, or be absorbed by their respectivedepartments. It was hoped that, if they hadmanaged to demonstrate their usefulness, theirfunctions (if not their posts) would be absorbedinto the structure of the department.

The Focal Points helped to sharpen the focus ontangible outputs, such as facilitation of capacitybuilding for the public sector, inter-departmen-tal coordination, and support to theRoundtables. Their role in selecting trainees fornon-SPCS training programmes such at thoserun by LEAD-Pakistan, and ensuring continuityof training has proved important. This has not,unfortunately, translated into significant policyinfluence, nor into significant improvement inthe functioning of the respective departments.The extent to which success was achieved withthe Focal Points is linked very closely to the rela-tionship that the individual Focal Point man-aged to establish with his or her governmentcounterparts. Although the Focal Point systemproved cost-effective and the experience in theagriculture sector reforms has been particularlypositive, it is hard to escape the feeling that thefull potential of the system was never realized.

It is harder to evaluate the success of the govern-ment Focal Points, in part because they havetended to come on stream late in the period cov-ered by this story, or even beyond it, and in partbecause it is not always easy to separate the per-son’s SPCS-related responsibilities from thesame person’s established duties. It can be said,however, that the responsibilities involved inserving as a government Focal Point have tend-ed to be added to the often very onerous dutiesalready shouldered by that officer, and this hasmade it difficult, without additional capacitydevelopment and support, to fulfil these respon-sibilities optimally. A key indicator of successwould be the assumption of responsibility forthe Roundtables and for the follow-up of theirrecommendations by the government FocalPoints and in this respect the track record hasbeen patchy.

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Capacity buildingThere is nothing more facile than to identifylack of capacity as a major obstacle to sustainabledevelopment, or indeed to any development, inSarhad. The same statement would generallyapply to any developing country or region.Helping to put in place the basic capacity for thedevelopment and implementation of the SPCShad to be one of the central challenges of theSPCS. At the same time, the SPCS project oper-ated under the assumption that adequateprogress could be made with existing institu-tions and human capacity while the process ofstrengthening that capacity unfolded. How justi-fied was that assumption, and how strategicallydid the SPCS process address the capacity gaps?

The nature of these capacity gaps is not uniform.In civil society, the biggest problems are often ofa “hardware” variety—securing financing, staff,infrastructure, etc. The public sector, on theother hand, must overcome a strong in-builtinertia in the face of the need for change andreform, an absence of viable systems, a dearth ofstrategic thinking and lack of exposure to recentthinking on sustainable development issues. Acommon problem for both is the exaggeratedreliance on individual personalities, and the cor-responding weakness of systems, together withthe overall lack of trained professionals. To makematters worse, funding to address these needsreduced to a trickle after May 1998, withPakistan’s explosion of a nuclear device and theadvent of a military government in 1999.

The institutional capacity issue is central. Theleading environmental regulatory authority inthe province, for example, is the EnvironmentalProtection Agency, NWFP. The EPA was sup-posed to have 103 staff members by 1998,including 62 technical officers, according to aWorld Bank-funded environmental capacitystrengthening project. Even late in the SPCSproject, however, available funding supportedonly 40 staff, of whom only four were full-timetechnical professionals. Until 1999, the EPA didnot even have a testing laboratory! Furthermore,it was supposed to be delegated regulatory pow-ers in 1997 by the Pakistan EnvironmentalProtection Act. In the event, the federal govern-ment delegated limited regulation and enforce-ment powers to the provincial government onlyin 1999, and the government has only recentlyassigned authority to the EPA. Principal respon-sibility for regulation and compliance stillresides in the federal government. Such realities

have severely hampered the development ofenvironmental regulation, a matter assignedhigh priority by the SPCS. Training a limitednumber of staff could not have reversed this sit-uation.

The SPCS process contributed to capacitybuilding in two broad ways: through the organ-ization of specific training and familiarizationevents; and through the ongoing operation ofthe different mechanisms through which thestrategy was developed and implemented: com-munications and awareness raising, public con-sultations, networking, Roundtables, internships,environmental awards, Focal Points, internal andexternal project reviews, and through providingaccess to IUCN’s capacity in Pakistan andworldwide.

While the SPCS support project aimed at build-ing capacity from the outset (June 1992), effortswere consolidated only in the third phase. In thepublic sector, most of the efforts have beengeared towards training. Of particular note is thecustom-designed set of six training modulesdelivered by LEAD-Pakistan to 22 mid-levelofficials from different provincial departments.Participants were selected through a rigorousprocess that sought to identify those who wouldmost likely be in a position to use the acquiredskills. Unfortunately, intervention into the selec-tion process by politicians and civil servantssometimes watered down the quality of thegroup chosen.

Other training courses in the private sector havebeen mostly sector-specific, for example in agri-culture and forestry.

Some of the indirect capacity-building measures,on the other hand, have been more successful.Throughout the development and implementa-tion of the SPCS, the staff of the support proj-ect and many of their counterparts in govern-ment travelled all around the province, partici-pating in meetings, workshops and reviews, andusing every opportunity to introduce or explainthe SPCS and to seek the reaction of the audi-ence to its approach and proposals.

An environmental awards scheme is proving tobe a positive innovation in the third phase of theproject, while the internship programme hasbeen successful in infusing new thinking intogovernment departments. Interns, largelyrecruited from universities in the province, wererecruited and placed in the support project, theIUCN office, NGOs and government depart-ments. Indeed, the advertisements led to a flood


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of applications, and a large interview panel hadto be set up to deal with the load. Many of theinterns have gone on to join their host organiza-tion or have secured good jobs as a result of theirexperience, and many others have kept in closetouch, forming a professional network of someinfluence. The interns placed with the govern-ment are particularly interesting. In most cases,it proved a shock to see in what conditions gov-ernment is obliged to work, and has led to ahealthy respect for those who, despite the odds,still try to accomplish something.

The interns were called together for monthlymeetings, and this provided the material formany course corrections and generated a rangeof good ideas and recommendations to the project.

In civil society, the support project concentratedon networking and planning capacity. It organ-ized training for numerous NGOs on strategicplanning, and tried to facilitate the flow of infor-mation to civil society organizations, includingthe environmental journalists’ network, by link-ing them to outside sources of information. Thepositive impact of these efforts has been tar-nished by the general atmosphere of suspicionand wariness, sometimes lapsing into outrighthostility, between government and NGOs, andby the structural problems faced by manyNGOs. Most NGOs survive on project fundingand voluntary effort only, and face enormousuncertainty about their future. The SPCS sup-port project attempted to link them to donors,but with mixed results. It also focused on “green-ing” the portfolio of the larger NGO’s active inSarhad, such as Strengthening ParticipatoryOrganizations and the Sarhad Rural SupportCorporation, as well as the Aga Khan RuralSupport Programme in Chitral. These areumbrella NGOs, and the project worked withthem to achieve a multiplier effect of incorporat-ing environmental priorities into their develop-ment agendas. The success of this approach wasless than it might have been owing to the struc-tural problems that affect all NGOs operating inthe province, and because of the mindset of someof these NGOs, who remain unconvinced of thepriority to be accorded to the environment.Some continue to think that the SPCS is “out ofsynch” with the province’s real developmentneeds. Others were affected by the movementtowards religious extremism in the province andin neighbouring Afghanistan. See Annex VIII forinformation on key training events.

Assessment

The challenge of capacity building in Sarhad isawesome and the assumptions made about exist-ing capacity were probably optimistic. Lack ofadequate capacity bedevilled the SPCS processfrom the start, and continues to undermine theprocess of SPCS implementation. The capacitybuilding conducted under the SPCS project hashad limited impact. Probably the task was sim-ply beyond what a project of the scale of SPCScould realistically accomplish.

One major problem lies in the fact that thecapacity needed to develop and implement theSPCS is weak or missing right across the board,from government departments, through NGOsand community-based organizations, to the pri-vate sector. This called for a well-coordinatedplan to ensure that all aspects of the capacity-building activities—whether direct or indi-rect—were mutually reinforcing. An extremelystrong, clear and well-supported capacity-build-ing strategy was the only hope to make a denton the reality of capacity limitation in Sarhad.

The problem existed also with the SPCS sup-port project. It proved difficult to recruit projectstaff with the right skill mix, as a result of whichIUCN’s capacity to provide leadership and tointroduce a steady stream of fresh ideas to theprocess was limited. This should have been iden-tified as a key priority early on, and a more con-certed effort made to address it.

Without wishing to appear too critical, theSPCS capacity-building efforts, despite the highpriority given to them, seem to have been a caseof “too little, too late” and, to some extent, alsotoo scattered. While a good deal of training wasundertaken, this training was not always ade-quately targeted, nor adequately followed up.Nor was it reinforced through strategic use ofthe indirect methods for strengthening capacity.

As is so often the case, the conclusion aboutcapacity building resides in a truism. Capacitybuilding is a long-term priority that requires astrategic approach, persistence and continuityover time, and careful targeting. The delicate bal-ance must be found between formal skill devel-opment and the many indirect ways in whichcapacity can be consolidated and supported. Thecapacity-building efforts of the SPCS project,while often successful, in aggregate were probablytoo dispersed and insufficiently strategic.

It also inevitably suffered from the stark realitiesof Sarhad and from the instability of its politics

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and institutions during the 1990s, to the extentthat the SPCS project’s fundamental assumption,stated above, was sometimes in doubt. Any proj-ect will suffer from bad luck, and the SPCS hadits share—of unhelpful counterparts, of rapidstaff turnover, of political upheavals—and all of ithelped to make the task of building capacity moredifficult. Nevertheless, the massive effort put intocapacity-building by the SPCS project will nodoubt pay off in many ways, whether these wereanticipated by the project or not.

NetworksWhen capacity is scarce, there are a number ofways to work around it, all based on making thebest possible use of what capacity does exist,extending and targeting it where possible andavoiding wasteful or overlapping uses. One par-ticularly useful tool, for capacity extension,awareness building and action coordination isthe formation and use of networks. By bringingtogether people and organizations sharing similarinterests and holding useful skills, a bridge can bebuilt over gaps in capacity and impact achievedthat would be inconceivable without the criticalmass of interest and commitment that reside inthe networks.

The SPCS project encouraged the formation ofvoluntary networks, many of them stemmingfrom proposals made in the public consulta-tions. The networks that were formed were, tothe extent possible, actively supported andencouraged by the project and often given a spe-cific role to play in the SPCS agenda. The reasonfor supporting and facilitating networks wastwofold:

• to provide a platform for consultation, toorganize substantive input into the strategyand disseminate information and buildawareness of the SPCS during the designstage; and

• to advance the SPCS agenda during imple-mentation.

The latter stemmed from the fundamental prin-ciple of the SPCS: the strategy must be ownedby the people and institutions of the province,and requires concerted action across the sectorsin society for effective implementation.

The SPCS team, along with theCommunications Unit of IUCN Pakistan,assisted in the development of the FrontierForum of Environmental Journalists (FFEJ).The well-established NGO Resource Centre in

Sindh collaborated with the SPCS project tofound the Frontier Resource Centre (FRC), aservice centre for NGOs and community-basedorganizations in Sarhad. The SPCS project itselfhelped to form the Sarhad NGO Ittehad (SNI),a representative body of NGOs and CBOs inthe province. Over time, the SPCS project hasalso assisted institutions and individuals in theprovince to link with national networks, includ-ing the Pakistan Environment AssessmentAssociation and the Pakistan EnvironmentLawyers’ Association.

The experience of facilitating and working withnetworks has largely been positive. The projecthad to invest considerable time and effort in thefacilitation process, and this investment has hadto be maintained over time. This has involvedhelping networks and network-servicing organi-zations (such as FRC) to register, developingmanagement systems and terms of reference, andleading strategic planning exercises. The projecthas also supported some network activities finan-cially (particularly capacity building), and hasprovided a number of services in kind, for exam-ple offering space to hold meetings.

The project had actively mobilized the localpress from the time of its Inception Report.When the Peshawar-based journalists decided toform a network, launched in September 1995,the project actively supported its developmentfinancially and programmatically. The projectand IUCN helped FFEJ initially by supportingsome activities, and later in its institutionaldevelopment.

SNI was formed in a similar manner, when anNGO workshop was held as part of the publicconsultation process during the design phase.Close to 140 participants were invited to sharetheir thoughts on the role of NGOs in SPCSimplementation, what enabling conditions theywould need from the government and how theymight best be represented in the formulation ofan NGO sub-strategy. The project then facilitat-ed consensus building among the participants,leading to their designating representatives tothe NGO Roundtable. The project also involvedthe emergent coalition, Sarhad NGO Ittehad inongoing deliberations. The Ittehad now includesa substantial proportion of the NGOs andCBOs from all districts of the province and thetribal areas in a representative, federal structure.Right from the beginning, the project kept a dis-tance from the day-to-day management deci-sions of the network, supplying information andother support on demand only.


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The SPCS team actively pushed for the involve-ment of SNI as a central partner in decision-mak-ing regarding SPCS formulation, implementationand more generally in the sustainable develop-ment activities of the province. A watershed in theinvolvement of civil society in sustainable devel-opment decisions took place during the ForestrySector reforms process facilitated by the project.The government not only involved SNI in tak-ing decisions, it went so far as to enshrine in theForestry Commission Act the right for stake-holders to identify a panel of potentialCommission members, from which the govern-ment could constitute the Commission’s finalcomposition. See Annex IX for information onthe structure and membership of Sarhad NGOsIttehad

At the same time, the involvement of individu-als and institutions in the networks helped toraise awareness of and a sense of ownership inthe strategy. The Frontier Resource Centre, forexample, and its clientele of hundreds of grass-roots organizations, now actively base some oftheir interventions on the priorities of the SPCS.

The organizations involved also shared informa-tion about environmental issues in the province,and tracked the progress of SPCS implementa-tion during their regular meetings. This sharingis empowering in its own right, and has beenone of the strengths of the networks. Further,the activities of the networks have played aneffective role in information dissemination. Thishas been one of the prime successes of the expe-rience with networks. FFEJ, for example, hasmanaged to infuse environmental reporting intothe mainstream newspapers of the province,which were otherwise unlikely to have been soopen to this “unconventional” news, though itdepends on the enthusiasm of a small base ofmembers. Similarly, the (admittedly few)newsletters of FFEJ and FRC have been widelydisseminated, and have helped to raise aware-ness about environmental issues and the SPCS.

As noted above, the networks played an impor-tant role in capacity building. Particularly in itsthird phase—Partnerships for SustainableDevelopment—the project attempted to buildthe technical and institutional capacity of thenetworks. This has included proposal develop-ment and monitoring training in SNI and FFEJ,and linking the networks to international train-ing opportunities. The project has also assistedthe networks in their strategic planning, and hasprovided them a window onto related interestsacross the world. This has included linking FFEJ

with the Asia-Pacific Forum of EnvironmentJournalists, providing a vehicle to strengthen theformer’s reach and effectiveness. At the sametime, some of the networks have been frustratedat the SPCS project’s limited ability to help civilsociety organizations with some of their urgentneeds, such as funding, equipment and infra-structure.

Assessment

The results of the engagement have generallybeen positive in awareness raising, informationdissemination and generating ownership ofSPCS implementation in society. The projecthas learned, however, that progress is consistentonly if there is continuous investment to facili-tate networks and to give the occasional impetusto specific initiatives. If progress is good, thenthis investment can increasingly take the form ofindirect capacity building and more networking.

The choice of members turned out to be anoth-er crucial factor. It was found that involvingactive and strategically-placed members made allthe difference in performance. FFEJ’s success,for example, has rested on the involvement ofsome dynamic members who are active journal-ists with mainstream newspapers. Similarly,SNI’s agenda is given credibility and weight bythe presence and leadership of some reputed fig-ures in the NGO world.

A clear weakness in the engagement process hasbeen the lack of private sector involvement inthe networks. Although the private sector hasbeen engaged through membership in theRoundtables, an inadequate effort was made tonetwork interested private sector parties. This isdue in large part to funding restrictions. SDCfunds could not be channelled to private sectorgroups, nor even to cover travel costs for privatesector representatives to attend meetings. A sep-arate network, or a strong link with one of theexisting ones, could have added value not onlyto the network itself but also to broadening theownership of the SPCS agenda.

IUCN itself initially provided a wide range ofvaluable information on sustainable develop-ment to the networks, including access to mate-rials, ideas and recommendations from otherparts of the world. However, the momentumgenerated in the beginning has not been ade-quately maintained, and the dynamism andinvolvement of the networks has proved sub-optimal.

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Demonstration projectsIn terms of generating momentum for success,there is nothing like a concrete demonstration ofprogress. Everyone is naturally skeptical of plan-ning and document preparation, and there isconsiderable cynicism at the impact that planshave on ground-level reality. From the momentSPCS was first proposed, there was pressure notonly to analyze data and identify issues, but atthe same time to begin addressing some of theprovince’s most urgent environmental priorities.Indeed, there were those who felt the planningside was superfluous—there were so manyurgent needs that it didn’t really matter whichwas addressed. Any forward movement was wel-come!

The initial SPCS team, with its strong composi-tion of field-oriented professionals, was in naturalsympathy with the call to supplement strategicplanning with direct action. The initial planningworkshop in January 1992 discussed the concernat the necessary time lag before the project wouldshow visible results, and proposed an immediateinitiative to address the polluted Kabul River (seeAnnex X). The team undertook an assessment ofriver pollution and sources and discovered thatmany of the problems were of a structural nature,and had to be addressed “upstream.” Althoughthis served as a clear demonstration of the reasonsnot to tackle the province’s environmental prob-lems piecemeal, the team’s visible commitmentto rolling up their sleeves and tackling real prob-lems gave the project a boost in credibility andstrengthened the team’s determination todemonstrate early results even while the strategywas being formulated.

There were two ways to address this need. Thefirst, favoured by the team, was to use the SPCSteam to identify and spin off projects that mightbe undertaken within the SPCS or apart from it,by IUCN or by other actors. Indeed the initialnotion of the two-track approach was justthat—strategy development and project genera-tion in parallel. And this approach can point toa number of achievements: projects generated bythe SPCS or to which it contributed. The large-scale project on Environmental Rehabilitationin NWFP and Punjab (ERNP), the MountainAreas Conservancy Project, several environmen-tal legislation initiatives and the proposed Fundfor Sustainable Development all stemmed inwhole or in part from the SPCS team.

Nevertheless, the pressure grew to demonstrateconcrete results within the SPCS project itself,

and to identify and fund specific demonstrationactivities on the ground. The provincial govern-ment invited its line departments to proposesuitable sustainable development projects that itwould fund from its own budget, and the SPCSsupport project did the same with the NGOs.Although the harvest was discouraging, the teamand their government counterparts reviewed theapplications and selected a short-list of projects(see Annex XI) that fit with the SPCS approachand which could be supported financially.

The initial determination, unfortunately, waslost in the blizzard of activity and commitmentthat fell upon the SPCS team as soon as it gotstarted. The cycle of public consultations, inparticular, absorbed the full resources of theproject and more, and it began to lose the feel-ing of involvement and momentum in theimmediate stage beyond SPCS formulation.

The demonstration projects next surfaced in thethird phase of the project in 1998. Again, theidea was to demonstrate the value of the SPCSagenda by implementing some of the projects itoutlined. The objective was not only to showresults, but also to generate a multiplier effect,where other stakeholders would implement sim-ilar initiatives.

Assessment

To date the experience has proved disappoint-ing. It has proved difficult to get the demonstra-tion projects off the ground. Those proposed bythe government departments became boggeddown in the bureaucratic process of projectreview and approval, only to be shelved whenthe economy went into a tailspin. Those pro-posed by NGOs were, in general, simply not ofa standard that permitted project funding to beallocated.

One modest achievement that can be pointed tois the acceptance of civil society involvement inthe demonstration projects, with the presence ofSNI on the demonstration projects committee.

District conservation strategiesThe district conservation strategies are the nextgeneration of the SPCS. They represent in someways a compromise between the strategic plan-ning approach and the urge to demonstrateresults. They also represent an experiment indecentralization of the SPCS, and attempt tobring sustainable development decision-makingcloser to the people.


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Two primary objectives were set out for the dis-trict strategies:

• to help SPCS become operational at thelevel where government planning is intend-ed to turn into action; and

• to demonstrate an alternative way of plan-ning for sustainable development at theplanning level closest to people.

Initially, there was considerable debate withinthe project about the wisdom and utility oflaunching district conservation strategies, and inparticular concerning the optimal point in theSPCS process at which to launch them. Manyconsidered district strategies as the natural nextstep as the NCS was taken down from the fed-eral, through the provincial, to the local level.The notion of district-level action began to gen-erate greater interest as the national debate ondecentralization and governance reform gath-ered momentum in Pakistan.

Initially, the plan was to launch district strategiesin Chitral in the north, and Karak in the aridsouth of Sarhad. The former presented interestingfeatures, in that it is far from the “centralized”planning and receives few benefits from theprovincial budget. The latter, though not very farfrom the provincial capital Peshawar, neverthelessis extremely poor and suffers from severe envi-ronment and development challenges. In the end,Karak was dropped in favour of Abbottabad forthree reasons. First, the absolute minimum capac-ity to conduct such a strategy in Karak could notbe located. Indeed, a high proportion of the malepopulation of the district works and lives in otherparts of the country or abroad. Second,Abbottabad retains a strong natural resource basethat is under threat, and is the home of otherinstitutional reform projects. Finally, the interestof the Chief Minister, who hailed from the dis-trict, could not be ignored.

The Chitral district strategy began in mid-1997and is now complete, while the Abbottabad strat-egy is well advanced. Both have followed a simi-lar route to that of the SPCS, relying on extensivepublic consultations within the district on keysustainable development issues. The ChitralConservation Strategy held 37 village consulta-tions as well as broader consultations in everytehsil in the district. These consultations raisedpriority issues at the local level, and also generat-ed a sense of ownership among the stakeholders.The challenge for the Chitral ConservationStrategy now is to build on this ownership as thestrategy moves into implementation.

Two major innovations set the district conserva-tion strategies apart from other developmentinitiatives at the district level. First, they set up,and routinely involve, a large districtRoundtable during formulation of the strategy.These Roundtables comprise major stakeholdersin strategic planning for sustainable develop-ment (70 members in Chitral), including com-munity members, NGOs, administration,politicians and the military. The experience hasalso been positive in that the Roundtables areunique forums at the district level for sharingexperiences of development and current politi-cal trends. The meetings have, in fact, tended toturn into “accountability fora” for officials andfor government actions. However, the size of theRoundtables, coupled by the difficulty of theterrain, has meant that they cannot meet often,and this has hindered significant input to strategydevelopment.

The second positive innovation has been theidea of district funds for sustainable develop-ment. The idea is that all development moneyfor the district should go to a central pool.Projects supported from this pool wouldrequire sanction resulting from discussions onthe proposals by all major stakeholders. A trans-parent system of disbursement would servegreatly to strengthen accountability, but theproposal has yet to overcome resistance fromgovernment.

One problem that has emerged in examiningthe idea of a district fund, and indeed more gen-erally in the district strategy process, is that thecurrent practice is for pre-determined disburse-ments to come from provincial headquarters,and for no real planning to be done at the dis-trict level. The devolution of authority to dis-trict-level decision-making will not be easy,despite the fact that it responds to official pub-lic policy in Pakistan. The Chitral ConservationStrategy, at least, has made some inroads, byproposing 52 sustainable development projectsto the provincial headquarters in Peshawar. Ofthese, 15 were included in the AnnualDevelopment Plan for 2000.

Assessment

One clear problem of perception in the districtRoundtables relates to whether they are intend-ed to replace government planning or to supportit. The confusion has occasionally generatedadverse reaction. Nevertheless, the governmenthas generally been supportive of districtRoundtables, largely thanks to supportive

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Deputy Commissioners.7 Since the governancereform introduced by the military government,the Chitral Conservation Strategy has received aboost. Indeed, the new District Assembly hascreated a Standing Committee to oversee imple-mentation of the strategy.

In a sense, the district conservation strategiesanticipated the current trend of decentralization.The government thinking on the topic nowoffers an unparalleled opportunity to replicatethe two pilot initiatives, and the model beingpresented is fully functional. However, the proj-ect has yet to be fully integrated with de factodecision-making in the province, and needs toconvince the policy community before it can beuniversally accepted.

Final considerations on approachesand opportunitiesThe aim of the SPCS is both to influence poli-cies in the province in favour of sustainabledevelopment, and to promote a more inclusive,participatory approach to policy-making in gen-eral. The SPCS can justifiably claim to haveidentified a range of ways in which public poli-cy could be made more supportive of sustainabledevelopment in the province. There is generalconsensus among the stakeholders that theSPCS has accurately identified the most criticalissues, and pinpointed the key priorities for theirremedy. Further, the strategy gains immenselegitimacy as a result of the massive and success-ful effort to involve the wide range of stakehold-ers in the province.

There are, of course, some problems in thedesign of the strategy. Ultimately, it is more of amenu than a practical planning tool. It needs tobe accompanied by sustained and effective com-munications, engagement of policy-makers, andclose cooperation with those designing develop-ment projects. It assumes a readiness for policychange that is not fully present in reality. At thesame time, the prescriptions in the strategy are,of necessity, too vague and generic simply to bepicked up and implemented, absent more spe-cific guidelines for planners. This could be partof the reason for the fact that the SPCS is notwidely used as a reference in provincial plan-ning.

That said, the SPCS has achieved clear successes.Some projects recommended by the SPCS have

emerged in subsequent Annual DevelopmentPlans and, while some have been funded, othershave been delayed or dropped owing to budget-ary constraints, and the attendant priority givento ongoing projects.

One piece of high-quality work emerging fromthe SPCS process has been the provincial legisla-tion for environmental protection. Unfortunately,this has never been enacted because the federalgovernment promulgated national environmen-tal legislation at the same time, and this hastaken precedence in line with the FederalConstitution. As it turns out, this is only a par-tial setback, as the national law derived a greatdeal from the provincial one. Sarhad is ahead ofother provinces in terms of government willing-ness to conform to environmental guidelines,and to subject project proposals to environmen-tal review, but it is restrained by capacity limita-tions.

Another highlight of the SPCS support projecthas been the reform process in forestry and agri-culture. The project played a major role in theestablishment of a Forestry Commission andparticipatory mechanisms, while contributing toagriculture sector reforms called for in the SPCS.

Generating and institutionalizing broad-basedparticipation has been a marked success of theSPCS project. Right through formulation andinto implementation, the project has managedto infuse the concept of participation in officialdecision-making. The government has wel-comed this shift, which has enhanced the quali-ty of decision-making and improved the owner-ship of decisions. Naturally, SPCS was part of alarger national and international trend, and socannot claim entire credit for this shift.However, the Roundtables notified by the gov-ernment are completely SPCS-initiated mecha-nisms, and mark a significant change in the wayin which government operates.

Reforming government and governance, howev-er, is a larger agenda than notifying Roundtablesor securing broad acceptance for public consul-tation. The SPCS support project has had tonavigate a narrow path between trying to reformgovernment and trying to replace it in some ofits functions. The project has inherently realizedthat governance mechanisms need to changeand has demonstrated some models, but this stillawaits adequate translation into policy influ-ence. In working with the government while try-


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7 Note that the post of Deputy Commissioner has now been abolished.

ing to placate reaction spurred by perceivedthreats to power, the project has walked atightrope. In the end, its ability to bring about aradical change in the way policies are made hasbeen limited.

For example, engaging the PE&DD was a goodchoice, but constrained by the fact that it con-trols only the provincial fraction of the three percent of national GDP devoted to “develop-ment.” Other sources of influence on theprovince’s sustainable development are muchmore important. It is questionable whether theproject gave enough priority to understandingthe diverse nature and roles of the different play-ers in policy setting. The real policy process wasnever analyzed, and so it was not targeted effec-tively. The assumption that public opinionwould guide strategic planning for developmentand build a strong momentum for change alsoturned out to be over-optimistic in the absenceof functioning mechanisms for the exercise ofaccountability in decision-making.

Finally, the project undervalued the role of theprivate sector as a policy player. This neglectedthe growing international trend of shifting policy-making from the politicians or bureaucracy tothe market. Various private sector actors andmultilateral institutions are playing an increas-ing role in local policy setting, but the projectdid not interact with them very consistently.

Recent attempts to do so have had positiveresults, for example working with the AsianDevelopment Bank to redirect a major develop-ment project in Sarhad, and with the UnitedNations Industrial Development Organizationto set up a national Cleaner Production Centrein Peshawar.

Part of the reason for being unable to followevery lead and take advantage of every opportu-nity was the limited capacity in the SPCS teamand the enormous workload imposed on it. Itnever really had the luxury to analyze the rootcauses of issues it wanted to address, such as badgovernance, poverty and environmental degra-dation. This limited its capacity to address thesefundamental issues at the policy level.

Another victim of the capacity gap was commu-nication. It proved impossible to meet thedemand to provide appropriate policy informa-tion at the right time to the right people. TheSPCS itself was never re-packaged for differentaudiences, although this might have greatlyincreased its impact and dissemination. Indeed,publication and launch of the SPCS documentwas held hostage for almost two years by con-flicts within the bureaucracy. Without this visi-bility in the policy community, the SPCS suf-fered from an inadequate profile, even as a bro-ker of knowledge.

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Section III: Finding the BalanceIf any single lesson has been learned from expe-rience with strategic planning over the pastdecades, it is that it will fail unless the process iscapable of adapting to constant change. Indeed,it is prudent to assume at the outset that the pre-vailing conditions will not only have changedseveral times during the course of the project,but that they will have undergone sharp ups anddowns, moments of euphoric advance and timesof depressing reversal. Strategic planning is achallenge of political navigation. With the goalkept firmly in mind, the pilot must adapt to thewinds and the tides, change tack, trim orincrease sail, and ensure that the vessel movestoward the goal at whatever pace is most likely toget it there most surely.

If this is true generally, it is true in spades forSarhad, a region not only beset with challengingdevelopment problems, but also buffeted bystrong winds of change, with frequent politicalupheavals, and a geopolitical position that pre-vents it from sailing a placid course towards asustainable future.

So the best course for the SPCS process was notnecessarily the straightest. The provincial gov-ernment and the project team faced the chal-lenge of striking the balance between what idealsdictated, and what reality imposed. This chal-lenge—to strike the right set of balances—is atthe heart not only of strategic planning; it lies atthe heart of development itself.

This section examines some of the areas where ajudicious balance had to be sought, and assessesthe SPCS process’s success in finding the rightbalance. For it is, in a sense, the ways in which

the balances are struck, rather than technicalcontent, that will eventually determine the suc-cess or failure of a strategy or plan.

Two basic dilemmasPerhaps the most basic dilemma facing theSPCS project was that of supporting government


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Box 3. The corruption factor.

No discussion of working with government canbe complete—or completely honest—withoutnaming the unnameable (or rarely named) real-ity of corruption. Corruption, graft and influ-ence-peddling are common currency in Sarhad,and a nefarious force the SPCS initiative had todeal with on a daily basis.

This text speaks of the obstacles faced by theSPCS team—bureaucratic interference, clan-nishness, unexplained delays and non-coopera-tion. It must also mention that many of theseproblems were due to the decision by IUCN notto enter into the organizational ethos and cul-ture of corruption. By refusing to indulge inpay-offs or nepotism, the SPCS paid a short-term price.

There can be little doubt, however, that therewill be a long-term pay-off. And in any event,IUCN had no choice. If it was to introduce thenew governance to Sarhad, it had to model itsvalues and practices.

Photo: First phaseconsultations generated invaluableinformation and a“reality check” withthe people of theprovince.

vs. pressing for reform. On the one hand, theSPCS was an initiative undertaken at the invita-tion of, through and by the provincial govern-ment. It quite naturally focused to a consider-able extent on improving government planning,on strengthening government services in theenvironmental area and on rendering govern-ment more capable of fulfilling its formal func-tions. On the other hand, it is common knowl-edge that government is a considerable part ofthe problem, and not only because of limitedcapacity in the public sector. Indeed, it can bestated without undue cynicism that the reformsrequired to bring Sarhad—and indeed mostother parts of Pakistan and the developingworld—onto a path of sustainable developmentare predicated on a deep-reaching reform ofgovernment institutions and practices. So therecould be legitimate grounds for doubt, if sus-tainable development is the objective, whetherefforts to reform government practice might notend up reinforcing the very structures that com-pound unsustainable development practices,and which require fundamental rethinking.

There is room for an almost endless debateabout how well this dilemma was resolved bythe SPCS team. IUCN’s approach was to useevery possible tool to pressure government, firstto respect the public trust, but also to considerand openly discuss far-reaching reforms. Bymonitoring government, sitting in its offices andlooking over its shoulders, and by ensuring thatgovernment action in the environmental fieldwas under constant scrutiny from the press,NGOs, donors, and environmental profession-als, IUCN and the SPCS support project pro-vided an incentive for government to approachits task with greater diligence than would be theexpected norm, and to consider new approaches.It provided the very channels for transparencyand accountability that are the foundation forall governance reform.

Further, the SPCS initiative often attracted andgave scope to the best and the brightest amonggovernment staff. It is a mistake to regard gov-ernment—for all its inefficiency and can’t domentality—as homogenous. Government ranksalso include officers who care deeply, who pre-serve a sense of integrity and motivation despiteall odds, and who are well aware that deepreform is needed. The project tended to givethese officers a positive outlet. It empoweredthem and gave scope for their creativity. And, itmust be added, it sometimes deprived itself ofpotential allies on the inside by repeatedly

recruiting the better ones to the SPCS supportproject or to the IUCN country programme!

At the same time, SPCS would have achieved avery limited impact had its attention been con-fined to government. Instead, as we have seen,the SPCS process pioneered a range of innova-tive mechanisms that brought government intodialogue with business, NGOs, the media andvillage organizations. These mechanisms were inpart a supplement to government authority—aform of capacity extension—but they were alsoin part a challenge to it. The Roundtables, thepublic consultations, the press and NGO net-works, all began to offer alternative channels forthe achievement of development objectives tothose offered by government. While any newmechanism needs time to show its impact, thedevelopment of multiple fora for debate andaction on environment and development issuesmay be one of the most lasting legacies of theSPCS. We should all hope this is so.

By working hand-in-hand with the provincialauthorities, IUCN not only contributed to thegovernment’s own process of reform, it alsosecured the space and the legitimacy to experi-ment with a series of mechanisms that, in thelong run, are intended as an alternative to thecurrent overbearing presence of the bureaucracy.So IUCN’s relations with the provincial govern-ment was supportive… and subtly subversive atthe same time.

Was the right balance struck? Probably. There isno point in shooting for Utopia. Reform worksbetter than revolution. There is no place to startfrom but here, and no time but now. We have toplay with the cards we are dealt. If there aregrounds for any criticism of the approach takento strategy formulation, it is perhaps that itfocused on the bureaucracy—and on a restrict-ed set of bureaucrats—and somewhat neglectedthe political levels of government. While thecivil service has, throughout Pakistan’s morethan 50 years as a nation, been the one elementof continuity, it tends for that very reason to bea conservative force. Identifying the changeagents among the provincial politicians mighthave been helpful at crucial times in the project’shistory (though it would have entailed addedrisks).

The second basic dilemma is that of depth ver-sus coverage. Projects tend to be successful whenthey are sharply focused and take on a manage-able set of challenges. Thus, initiating a strategyon women’s education, or on protected areas, or

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on soil erosion control, while still very much achallenge, nevertheless offers some semblance offeasibility. By contrast, sustainable developmentrequires adjustments across the entire spectrum,from the policy, institutional and regulatorystructures at the top, to land tenure conditionsat the bottom; and from natural resource man-agement on the one hand, through pollutionand urbanization, to tax policy, literacy and therole of religious institutions in public life on theother. This dilemma of depth versus coverage isthe source of constant debate in any strategicplanning process: whether to focus on a narrow-er range of topics and increase the chances ofachieving a lasting impact; or to aim broadly andavoid neglecting factors that affect sustainabledevelopment and which, if left out, couldundermine the success of the process.

Characteristically, this proved an ongoing sourceof discussion throughout the project, eventhough the NCS set the tone with its broadreach and emphasis on process. A basic decisionwas taken from the start: whatever way theSPCS was marketed (see the following section)its reach had to extend well beyond the IUCNheartland of living natural resources manage-ment. Indeed, the framework of the SPCS hadto range well beyond the environment field toembrace the full scope of the province’s develop-ment challenges, even if the specific activitiesand recommendations focus more particularlyon the environment. SPCS is a developmentstrategy with strong roots in the bedrock of ahealthy environment and a robust base of natu-ral resources.

If there are grounds for regret, it is that this deci-sion to cast the net wide was not accompaniedby a sufficiently rigorous process of holding tothe priorities that were set, or by a strict sequenc-ing of key actions, so that early success in someareas would build momentum for implementa-tion of the strategy as a whole. This enabled peo-ple—particularly within government—simplyto pick and choose among the wide array ofactions identified and to claim, while pursuingtheir narrow interests, to be contributing to theimplementation of the strategy as a whole.

Managing the trademark One of the clearest manifestations of the abovedilemma is the near-constant, and apparentlyunavoidable, debate that took place around theappropriate title for the effort. PNCS is thePakistan National Conservation Strategy and

the SPCS is its immediate heir. So the term“Conservation Strategy” reinforces the sense oflineage. SPCS aimed to achieve at the provinciallevel what the NCS achieved at the federal level.So retaining the title reinforced the sense of con-tinuity.

At the same time, if the aim is conservation, whyis the SPCS concerned with urban pollution,with governance reform and with women’s edu-cation? The SPCS’s government counterpartsusually operate under an “Environment” label.Many of the key players work in EnvironmentSections or in Environmental ProtectionAgencies. The traditional Planning andDevelopment Department became thePlanning, Environment and DevelopmentDepartment thanks to the SPCS. Conservationtends to connote living natural resources andtheir management—broadly the concerns of thegreen environment. Environment includes thegreen environment, but ranges more broadly tocover pollution issues, urbanization and envi-ronmental quality. It includes the brown envi-ronment as well. Surely “environment” wouldhave been a more accurate descriptor of theSPCS’s scope?

But why stop there? Putting Sarhad’s develop-ment on a sustainable footing requires muchmore than environmental action. It requires gov-ernance reform, capacity building, legislativedevelopment, attention to basic human needsand much more. What is really needed is what istermed sustainable development. Often dismissedby critics as being no more than “environmentwith frills,” in fact sustainable development isnot simply broader in scope, it is fundamentallydifferent from the notion of environmental pro-tection. To be sustainable in the long run, devel-opment must be economically viable, sociallyequitable and environmentally sustainable.

Imagine three concentric circles. The inner circleis conservation, the middle circle is environ-ment, and the outer circle is sustainable devel-opment. There is no reason for a strategyfocused on the inner circle not to cast beyond itsnarrow borders to understand the broader con-text within which it must pursue its goals. Anintelligent conservation strategy places itselfwithin a broader framework of the interplay offorces that make up the development process.

In the end there were two principal reasons forthe choice of title. First, whether it is a completeand adequate description of the scope of thestrategy, the term Sarhad Provincial Conservation


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Strategy ties the initiative to the NCS and, fur-ther back, to the World Conservation Strategyfrom which the approach originated. It is thus astatement of pedigree. Moreover, it clearly associ-ates the initiative with IUCN, its approach, itsphilosophy and its style of action. IUCN hasspent over 15 years nurturing its reputation inPakistan, much of which rides on its programmeand its conservation strategy approach. Morethan anything else, the term SPCS waves a par-ticular flag.

The second reason is more subtle. Sustainabledevelopment, with its requirement for openness,participation and accountability, represents athreat to established order. Indeed, it is impossi-ble to place development on a sustainable foot-ing with the power structures, entrenched inter-ests and mindsets largely prevalent in Sarhadtoday. Instead it requires the sort of change thatcalls every facet of existing developmentapproaches into question. It is, not to put toofine a point on it, a fundamental challenge tothe present reality. This is not true of the termenvironment and, even less so, of conservation.

The challenge to IUCN was to infiltrate the sys-tem and begin bringing about the process ofchange that will, with luck, favour the chancesfor a transition to sustainable development.Arriving with a battering ram to knock downthe gates of the citadel would have guaranteedfailure. Riding in on the more modest vehicle ofconservation was not only less threatening, itenabled IUCN to make a start on the SPCSwithout awakening too much suspicion. Afterall, nobody can seriously question IUCN’s greencredentials. These are recognized worldwide; inPakistan, when the SPCS was first mooted,IUCN had an established reputation, a perma-nent national presence, and the achievement ofthe NCS fresh in the public memory.

Yet the reason for adopting the non-threateningterm conservation was not only tactical. The fieldof natural resources management, and especiallyforestry, has been a leading source of new ideasand of development experimentation in Sarhad,but also more generally. This is a paradox worthexploring. One would expect the impulse fordevelopment innovation to come principallyfrom the social field, not from a field character-ized by an almost military background—the tra-dition of foresters as rural police. Instead, forestryprojects have introduced many of the basic ideaswhich the SPCS process was able to pick up andadapt, giving them wider currency and pavingthe way for their more widespread adoption.

Partly because of donor influence, but partlybecause they take place in remote rural areas farfrom the longing eye of the politician and thebureaucrat, forest and other natural resourcemanagement projects have introduced a rangeof tools—public consultation, collaborativemanagement, community-based institutionsand new roles for women—which, together, laythe foundation on which the new governancewill eventually be built. Because they lie at theend of the subsidiarity chain, they are the minefrom which the raw materials for bottom-updevelopment may be drawn.

So IUCN’s adoption of the vehicle of a conser-vation strategy was both strategic and tactical.And even where it still causes confusion, thatvery confusion can be taken as the starting pointfor discussion and debate.

Balances and compromisesAs noted above, the challenge for the SPCS wasto strike the optimal balance on the spectrumbetween the ideal and the realistic. Acceptingtoo modest an assessment of what was doablewould stifle the creativity needed for the SPCSgenuinely to change reality. Aiming for too per-fect an ideal, on the other hand, could condemninitiatives to failure where a more modest aimwould at least have advanced sustainable devel-opment somewhat. These dilemmas, balancesand compromises confront project managersevery day. How they are juggled and matchedwith the prevailing climate, in the end, deter-mines project outcomes. It is the differencebetween success and failure.

This section looks at a selection of these areas ofnecessary compromise, and offers some reflec-tions on how well they were addressed in thevarious phases of the SPCS project.

a) Participation

Although it is ahead of the rest of the country inthis respect, Sarhad does not have a culture of par-ticipation. If, at the local level, the jirga system isa fundamental feature of Pukhtoon culture, theprovincial government and its representativesthroughout the districts and tehsils are notknown to be enamoured of public debate, nor ofconsultation. Yet the entire SPCS approach wasbased on developing and implementing mecha-nisms to allow broad input into the formulationof the strategy, and to hand over a considerablepart of the implementation to groups outside theestablished structures of government.

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Where this might have been expected to triggera highly defensive reaction on the part of gov-ernment, in fact is was accepted with consider-able facility. How can this be explained?

First, Sarhad is a largely rural society, and thedistance between the rulers and the ruled is notas great as it is elsewhere. Even senior civil ser-vants are accessible in ways not common at thefederal level or in some other provinces. Furthernot even the most conservative provincialbureaucrat could ignore the fact that the windswere shifting. Business as usual is no longer avery secure option. Experimentation, conductedunder a project that is not perceived as a threatand which is ultimately under the authority ofthe government itself, can be a very positive wayto approach and try out changes which willinevitably have to come.

Second, there are progressive elements through-out the provincial administration who wel-comed the introduction or reinforcement of par-ticipatory approaches, both as a reality checkand as a source of valuable new ideas.

Interestingly, the notion of according a greaterrole to NGOs was reluctantly welcomed by theauthorities, although the relations between thetwo have not always been smooth. In Sarhad, aselsewhere, it is clear that the public sector doesnot have sufficient capacity to deliver urgentdevelopment benefits where they are most need-ed. Indeed, it is rapidly becoming evident thatthey never will have that capacity. The two mostcommon approaches to dealing with this realityare capacity extension and devolution.

In the first, government seeks partners to helpdeliver development services. In many casesNGOs are well-placed to adopt this role, espe-cially with respect to specific target groups in thepopulation i.e., women, students and isolatedcommunities. In the second, governmentdevolves responsibilities once held centrally ontostructures closer to the problems themselves,leading to the strengthening of village, tehsil anddistrict institutions which take over the role onceplayed by the provincial government itself.

In both cases, the SPCS was moving governmentonto fairly unfamiliar ground, and a great deal ofgoodwill and experimentation were needed. Theparticipatory mechanisms pioneered by SPCSproject—the Roundtables, the VillageConsultations, the networking and capacity-building activities—all provided a rich foundationfor exploring new and more flexible approaches.While some individuals predictably opposed the

opening of the debate and the central role given tostructures outside government, this feature of theSPCS process was broadly accepted.

It is clear, with hindsight, that the participatoryapproaches were used more effectively to gatherinformation and ideas than to design and imple-ment solutions. The wave of consultations thatcharacterized the data gathering and strategy for-mulation phases was—with exceptions—replacedby more opaque approaches in the later stages ofthe SPCS process. The feedback mechanismsneeded to keep the stakeholders consistentlyinvolved in the strategic process were somewhatweak, with exceptions relating to the DistrictConservation Strategies in Chitral andAbbottabad, and to some extent to the operationof the Roundtables and other networking mecha-nisms established by the project.

At the same time, in respect of its use of participa-tory mechanisms, the SPCS process clearly set atrend in motion. There are few major projectsconducted in Sarhad today that do not build theseapproaches into their design and implementation.

b) Public (dis-)service

The basic dilemma of supporting versus under-mining government was presented above. It con-cluded that IUCN had struck a clever balanceby capturing government as a partner while put-ting in place processes that would acceleratebadly needed governance reform. Beyond thebasic issue, however, there were other balances tobe struck.

IUCN, whether by default or as the result ofcareful analysis, accepted that its principal part-ner must be the provincial government. Whilethis is a logical decision on one level (after all,what were the alternatives?), it might have mer-ited more profound analysis. The decision tofocus the change process essentially on publicservice structures, and in particular on theprovincial government’s planning division, rest-ed on two questionable assumptions.

The first assumption is that development plan-ning in Sarhad is based on an objective andeven-handed assessment of priority needs, andthat it in some way translates the popular will. Infact the projects that make it into the AnnualDevelopment Plans, that proceed to planningpermission and that are presented to donors,have little to do with objective priority assess-ment and more with the interests of an estab-lished coalition of the bureaucracy, provincialand local politicians, and contractors.


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The second assumption is that there is a directlink between what is included in the develop-ment plans and what takes place on theground—that the planning process measurablyaffects ground reality. In fact, experience showsthat there is no significant and direct linkbetween the plans and the ground truth.

Thus IUCN, in placing key emphasis on thebureaucratic route, established a process predi-cated on bureaucratic support. Yet using thebureaucracy to change the policy framework isan uphill challenge. Bureaucracies traditionallywant politicians to depend on them. As notedabove, IUCN did not invest uniquely in thepublic sector, and was well aware of its limita-tions. And it hedged what it did invest heavilythrough support to alternative structures. This isalways the most difficult balance to strike, andopinions remain divided on how well the SPCSteam achieved its purpose in this respect.

It must also be remembered that the emphasison government was inherent in the nature of thefunding for the process. The principal fundingsupport came from the Swiss government, andthis was from their bilateral aid programme.This funding would not have been available hadthe provincial government not been the princi-pal partner. In the event, the donor gave IUCNa great deal of latitude in exploring non-govern-mental channels.

Finally it should be added that the provincialgovernment also made clever use of the SPCSprocess. When it suited them, they were quickto roll out the SPCS and take credit for itsachievements, its experimentation and its inno-vative character. When it got in the way of theirinterests, they were quick to ignore or criticize it.

c) Supply and demand

Striking the balance between supply anddemand, between leadership and engagement,or between bottom-up and top-down, is one ofthe greatest challenges of any developmentagent. While it is now well-established thatdevelopment doesn’t take without significant—even defining—input from those most directlyaffected, it is foolish for those with ideas andexperience not to contribute these to theprocess. Simply adopting a listening mode is notideal, in particular when dealing withentrenched interests with no desire for change.

The SPCS project invested heavily in the processof problem identification, dialogue and consulta-tion. Further, unlike too many similar projects, it

took on board what came out of these processes.The Inception Report—which represented theproject team’s considered assessment of where pri-orities lay—went through substantial modifica-tion as a result of the district and village consulta-tions. It is indeed fascinating and commendablethat the Inception Report—based on the experi-ence and insights of a team of highly-qualifiedenvironmental professionals and on a thoroughanalysis of data—underwent such fundamentalmodification in light of the perspectives emergingfrom the consultations. It was, perhaps, the bestpossible illustration of the difference between anenvironment focus and a focus on sustainabledevelopment, and speaks well for the opennessand intellectual honesty of the SPCS team.

At the same time, IUCN did not shy away fromfeeding its accumulated experience fromPakistan and elsewhere into the different stagesof the discussion. Not to do so would have beenirresponsible.

d) Basic human needs

So the balance between talking and listening waswell struck. But listening posed another dilem-ma—one central to the challenge of sustainabledevelopment. The village consultations set thetone, but the message was not substantially dif-ferent when women’s groups, media representa-tives or resource users’ groups were consulted.When asked about their environmental priori-ties, the response was a long menu of develop-ment needs—some, like clean water, immedi-ately linked to the environment; others, likeeducation, indirectly so; and still others, likeemployment opportunities, bore no obviouslink at all to the core challenge of the project.

One response would have been to apply envi-ronmental filters to the raw material gleanedfrom the consultative process, selecting for thosemessages with a clear environmental content. Toits credit, the SPCS team did not do that.Because, behind what they were hearing was thecentral message of sustainable development:there can be no environmental security withoutequity, justice and a threshold level of humanwell-being. SPCS shouted environment, and theecho came back development (and good gover-nance, equity, justice, etc.!).

This reality, perhaps more than any strategicconsideration, dictated the character of theSPCS in two ways. First, it underlined howclosely the prospects for environmental sustain-ability are tied to offering populations a share in

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the benefits of development, and to meetingtheir basic needs. Second, it emphasized thevalue of listening to, and learning from, theintended beneficiaries of the SPCS. There canbe few more salutary lessons than comparingwhat people request, and listening to their elect-ed representatives interpret these needs. If thereis one justification for the subsidiarity principle,it can be found here!

e) Incentives and disincentives: the compli-ance debate

A common—and often snide—comment aboutpolicy projects in general, and strategic planningprojects in particular, is that they rarely changethe reality on the ground. This is a justifiable crit-icism, and one that is familiar to the planningcommunity. The best way to counter the criticismis to build into the design of the projects theinstruments that will serve to ensure that it has areal impact.

In earlier days, such instruments would have beenfocused around a regulatory approach, stronglyrooted in government implementation. To havetaken that approach in Sarhad would have beenfoolish. The public service is being dismantled orstarved of personnel and resources, and theprospects for reversal of that trend are not good.Indeed, further shrinkage appears very likely. Andeven where the government capacity is in place,implementation of decisions and directives, andcompliance with laws and regulations, cannot beguaranteed. In fact, giving public servants imple-mentation authority, or the power to levy fines, isan invitation to corruption in a country alreadyfamiliar with that dismal reality.

While some of what must be done to addressSarhad’s sustainability challenges will requireboth hard (laws, regulations, enforcement) andsoft (standards, licences) regulatory instruments,a balance must be struck between these and therange of economic tools which provide incen-tives for desirable behaviour, and disincentivesto behaviour that is undesirable.

The SPCS team approached the latter challengealong three routes: the first and most importantwas to insist everywhere on processes that areopen, transparent and participatory. When actionis taken under the wary eye of the public, abuse isless easy and therefore less widespread. Opennessand transparency lead to a rising demand foraccountability, and participation leads to empow-erment and to the habit of involvement, a habithard to break once established.

The second was to institutionalize many of thefora through which this accountability could beexercised. The Frontier Forum ofEnvironmental Journalists provides a window tothe public for the good and bad measures takenpursuant to the SPCS. The Sarhad NGOIttehad networked NGOs with community-based organizations throughout the province,setting in place a potentially powerful mecha-nism for bringing abuses of power, or non-com-pliance, to public attention. And the (intended)institutionalization of the various Roundtableswill balance government influence with stronginput from the private sector and civil society.

The third was to pursue a combination of regula-tion and incentive. The SPCS project supportedand further developed legislation designed to set inplace innovative institutional mechanisms—e.g.,the Forest Commission. They also designed newones—e.g., the mechanisms envisaged under the(ultimately unsuccessful) Good Governance Act,and others that would offer a range of incentives togood sustainable development practice.

Many of the broad range of possible incentiveand disincentive measures used elsewhere in theworld—taxation, licencing, performance bonds,etc.—are new to the Pakistan scene and certain-ly untried in Sarhad. The SPCS team made astart with exploring these. They did not get veryfar. Nevertheless, given the incipient nature ofthe debate in Pakistan and, indeed, worldwide,the balance struck was satisfactory.

f) Policy vs. action: the upstream-down-stream debate

A more problematic balance to strike is betweenpolicy interventions and action on the ground.The first can address a wide range of problemswith a relatively small effort, but it may dealwith these issues superficially, and there may bea long lag time between policy formulation andground impact. The latter addresses a relativelynarrow set of problems, but often do so morethoroughly and the impact is more immediate.

This debate is perpetual—is it better to bringabout substantial improvements in 10 villages ormarginal improvements in 1000? There is noobjective answer to this question, and muchdepends on the inclination of those involved. Inan ambitious enterprise such as SPCS, it is pos-sible to do both—at least to some extent. Howdid it fare?

First, it suffered from IUCN’s general discom-fort with policy interventions. In the Union, the


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field habit runs deep; the urgency of the prob-lems, and the skepticism of NGOs and commu-nities waiting to see real results, all favour thespecific and the short-term. And, as notedabove, IUCN’s credibility depended to a consid-erable extent on showing that it could make adifference in terms of the immediate problemsthat people face. At the same time, there is a lin-gering sense that IUCN should have been bom-barding the bureaucrats and politicians withpolicy ideas, policy proposals and new initia-tives.

Having worked at the ground level to under-stand the nature of the challenges and deter-mined that they were deeply rooted in the struc-ture of and approach to development, moreattention might have been paid to the policytools that could help turn the situation around.It would not be surprising if, several years fromnow, it is found that it is the policy and institu-tional recommendations of the SPCS—e.g., theestablishment of the Forestry Commission orthe good governance provisions—that have con-tributed most significantly to change.

The SPCS suffers from a general absence ofcomprehensive and compelling benchmarksagainst which to measure success. This is tosome extent due to a consistent resistance tobenchmarking by the bureaucracy, indeed,benchmarking serves to underline how badthings really are. It also suffered from a lack ofacuity in its policy provisions—a sure test ofIUCN’s inexperience with policy. The policyrecommendations (with some exceptions), espe-cially in the area of economic and fiscal instru-ments, remain vague.

g) Personalities vs. institutions

The civil service in Sarhad has, since the SPCSprocess began, gone into a state of serious dete-rioration. Starved of funds and personnel, andwith dwindling public standing and support,and insecurity about its own future, and underpressure from above and below, it presents aspectacle of disillusionment and pessimism. It isnot that the bureaucracy is devoid of talent anddynamism. The civil service continues to attractsome of the best talent in Pakistan. But it is wellknown that institutions go through cycles ofgrowth and of decay, and the Sarhad civil serv-ice is in the latter phase of the cycle.

Faced with these circumstances, it is natural toseek out the leaders, the dependable officers, andfocus attention on them. Natural, maybe, but

not always wise. A strategy, by definition, aimsat longer-term change, and identifies policy pro-posals that require robust institutions to imple-ment. Strategies should therefore lean towardsinstitutional rather than individual approaches.Indeed, the field of development is littered withthe bones of projects that thrived when underthe benevolent wing of a local power broker, butwhich were rapidly discarded when the windschanged.

It is not possible to advance in any field inPakistan—and in that respect as much in Sarhadas elsewhere—without seeking the support andprotection of the currently influential, to relyheavily on the genuine commitment of certainindividuals, and to use personal or institutionalgoodwill to secure protection from more malev-olent forces, to lift obstacles to progress, and toinfluence those higher still. Where institutionsare weak, the importance of individuals becomescorrespondingly greater.

There can be no doubt that SPCS enjoyedstrong support from Khalid Aziz in the earlydays. However, there can equally be no doubtthat the project spent a good deal of energystruggling against powerful individuals whosepersonal political ambitions were not served bya successful SPCS.

Any project must develop skill at egosystem man-agement, and IUCN has had occasion over theyears to hone these skills into a fine art. It hasdone so, however, while retaining a healthy eyeon the longer term, and a strong commitmentto institutional reform and reinforcement.While the balance between attention to keyindividuals and institutions went through con-stant and rapid evolution throughout the life ofthe project, it can be said that IUCN found afully defensible compromise between the two.

h) Compiling vs. raising awareness

The SPCS support project gathered an enor-mous amount of data in the course of its years ofwork. Some of this was fundamental to under-standing the nature and opportunities of devel-opment; some was potentially explosive; almostall of it was useful and interesting. Two mutual-ly supportive options are available for dealingwith the mass of data that was assembled:

• turning it into the building bricks of newpolicy, academic understanding, or actionproposals, and

• using it to fuel the demand for change.

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Focus on the first leads to a more structured,robust strategy, while focus on the second leadsto heightened awareness. The first puts faith inthe current power-holders, the second on mobi-lizing public pressure for change. Ideally, the twomust proceed hand-in-hand.

The SPCS process placed unusually high priori-ty on public awareness, principally through themechanisms for public consultation and debatedescribed above. In development terms, the par-ticipatory approach is often its own reward: byarticulating their needs and aspirations publicly,people validate their own aims, and receiveimportant community endorsement for them,especially when they are widely shared. Thesesame needs, fed upwards from the village anddistrict level into development planning and pri-ority setting at the provincial level, also providethe raw information for public awareness, thusgaining in political influence. When used as thebasis for policy proposals aimed at the govern-ment, the priorities identified through these par-ticipatory processes can provide an importantcounterbalance for the individual and commer-cial interests with which decision-makers arebeset.

But it is not enough to feed ideas and needs intothe planning process, it is important to use pub-lic mobilization to ensure that they emerge aspriorities, secure funding allocation and are dili-gently implemented. IUCN and the SPCS proj-ect seem to have been less successful in usingcommunications, awareness and public mobi-lization at the output level than at the inputlevel, although the restricted size of the supportproject imposed its limitations. The communi-cations support to the project appears to havebeen too inconsistent, inadequately prioritized,overly concentrated on one-off activities andinsufficiently strategic in identifying the key tar-get audiences and reaching them with well-tai-lored messages. It also seems to have missedopportunities, such as reaching local radio, andthe influence network that the religious net-works represent. Not enough attention was paidto the madrassas and to the maulvis who, tradi-tionally, are hostile to the redistribution ofpower that sustainable development demands.An important source of public influence mayhave been missed.

This section has explored the navigation chal-lenges that any strategic planning process mustface, the more so in a place like Sarhad where theimpediments to sustainable development are so

overwhelming. It has tried to demonstrate that abroad-based strategy such as the SPCS mustcontend with a very wide range of variables, andmust retain the flexibility to adapt to change andto feedback on a constant basis. It is inevitablyaffected by fluctuations in the economy, the riseand fall of political parties, the arrival and depar-ture of key individuals, by good and bad luck,and by factors beyond the province whose rever-berations inevitably reach it.

Choices, course corrections, re-evaluations andnew initiatives must be decided every day, oftenon the basis of incomplete information. And thecircumstances under which the decisions aretaken are never ideal. Initiatives like the SPCSare always under-funded, confined to tight timeframes, subject to often time-consuming reviewand reporting requirements and they face anenormous challenge recruiting staff with the req-uisite skills and experience. Project staff arealways called upon to undertake tasks that donot respond directly to the priority needs of theproject. Decisions are too often delayed, fundingallocations are uncertain, the pressure to demon-strate clear outcomes is high, and progress maybe blocked for months by a single bureaucratwhose interests have been thwarted or whosepride may have been hurt.

All of these are the daily reality in strategic plan-ning, and the daily challenge of the projectteam. There is nothing more facile than to lookback and dream up a thousand things that, witheagle-eyed hindsight, the project team mighthave done better, and this section sometimessuccumbs to that temptation. But any criticismmust be couched in a healthy respect for thenature of the challenge, and for the constraintsunder which the project operated. The extent towhich the SPCS team and its supporters—inside and outside government—got thingsright is truly impressive, and is a tribute to theirskill, persistence and commitment to the pro-ject’s goals. That they did not get everythingright was inevitable. It is simply hoped that theidentification of some of the project’s oversights,wrong turns or instances of bad luck will helpothers who venture down the path to sustainabledevelopment to do better—if circumstancesallow them the luxury.


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Section IV: Towards aNew Governance – TheSPCS and the WiderWorldThis has been the story of the SPCS, an initiativethat unfolded in a particular part of the world ata particular moment in human history. Theapproach taken; the problems confronted; thepersonalities who emerged, played their role andthen left the stage—all of these are particular toSarhad in the last decade of the twentieth centu-ry. The experiences lived and the observationsmade might not apply to another province ofPakistan, much less another country. And whatthe SPCS team encountered in the 1990s theywould not have encountered 10 or 20 years ear-lier, and might not encounter 20 years from now.

So the SPCS has been a unique experiment inspace and time. But nothing takes place in isola-tion. Sarhad’s history has been deeply marked bythe past and present wars in Afghanistan and thevast movement of refugees into the province.These wars have much to do with the geopoliti-cal struggles of the great powers, and they aretied to the situation in Iran and Central Asia.Sarhad’s economy and society has been deeplyaffected by the movement of adult males fromrural areas to work in the Gulf and elsewhere,with all the implications of that movement foropenness to ideas and the influx of technology.Pakistan, itself, has fared badly in the competi-tion for a place in the global economy, and theprice it is paying in terms of economic hardshipand foreclosed options reverberates strongly inthe province.

It might have been interesting for the SPCSproject to undertake a study, early on, of thebroader changes in society, technology, economicmanagement and governance that are beginningto sweep the entire world, and which cannothelp affecting Pakistan as well. Such a studywould surely have underlined the need for astrong focus on the context, on institutions andon policy, in which the SPCS’s achievementsremained modest.

Not all the changes are dire for the province.Indeed, it will be argued below that the globalchanges observed in the past decade may be con-fusing, they may in some ways be disconcerting,and they may carry a heavy short-term price insome areas. However, they also carry the seeds ofhope for the province, and offer the best chancefor the SPCS to achieve its overall goal of sus-tainable development.

The new debateWhat are the grounds for this optimism, whenall the development and environment indicatorsin the province are pointing floorwards? It issimply that we appear to be in one of those timesin history when all assumptions are questionedand when the most creative efforts are dedicatedto discerning the shape and content of the newreality that will eventually replace this one.


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Photo: Signingceremony of theMoU for SPCSbetween the government ofN.W.F.P. and IUCNat Peshawar.

The media is full of the potential for theInternet, of the possibilities opened by freetrade, easy access to investment capital or thelatest technology. Others wax lyrical about theend of the nation state, the breakdown of theold order based on land ownership and militarypower. Many see in the end of the Cold War thefirst pale rays of the new dawn. Without gazingtoo deeply into the proverbial crystal ball, it isnevertheless possible to discern a number ofnow well-established trends.

Perhaps most interesting, at the internationallevel, is the questioning of the WashingtonConsensus, and the alternatives being offered upby the major elements of the social and environ-mental movements. The WashingtonConsensus insisted that developing countriesshould open their markets to trade, investmentand short-term capital as quickly and as fully aspossible. Although in the short-term this wouldcause some problems, the markets wouldinevitably find the right equilibrium and pros-perity would soon follow. A rising tide, as thesaying went, floats all boats.

This formula is now crumbling before our eyes.While liberalization did lead to economicgrowth, that growth was too often achieved atthe price of severe social dislocation, deepeninginequities and environmental destruction. It hasled to a backlash whose full weight is only nowbeing felt, with the derailing of the negotiationsfor a Multilateral Agreement on Investment,with the failure of the WTO ministerial confer-ence in Seattle and its aftermath, and with thestreet protests that now routinely accompanythe meetings of the World Bank and theInternational Monetary Fund.

But these are only the outside manifestations ofa much deeper shift. That shift is redefining ournotion of democracy, and what it means in prac-tice.

Redefining democracyIf there is one characteristic of the new paradigmthat describes it well, it is the rethinking ofdemocracy—of the way in which decisions havebeen made. In this respect, there has been anextraordinary evolution in the past decade, anevolution that will fundamentally change theSPCS’s prospects for eventual success.

This evolution is all the more powerful because itreflects the convergence of three broad move-ments: the human rights, development and envi-

ronmental movements. In the field of humanrights, the momentum has shifted away frompressuring governments to respect the UniversalDeclaration of Human Rights and is focusinginstead on how individuals or communities maybest ensure that they have a voice in matters thataffect them that is commensurate with their legit-imate interests. The development movement hasshifted away from the Right to Developmentnotions of the 1980s and the earlier NewInternational Economic Order to focus on fun-damental freedoms as the necessary and unavoid-able foundation for successful development, aseloquently expressed in Amartya Sen’sDevelopment as Freedom.

The environment movement has perhaps beenslowest to recognize the changes that are comingand to understand their significance. But there isan ever-clearer understanding that environmentalsustainability is not possible in a situation of grossinjustice or inequity, nor in a situation of grind-ing poverty, nor in a situation where citizens havelittle or no say over the way their resources aremanaged. In short, the key to sustainability is tobe found in human rights and in the freedomsnecessary to develop. We have always known thatdevelopment is not sustainable if it oversteps thelimit imposed on it by natural systems. We arenow learning that neither development nor envi-ronmental sustainability is possible in the absenceof a basic framework of rights and responsibilities.And those rights and responsibilities are best exer-cised by allowing those who hold the rights andbear the responsibilities to participate in decisionsthat affect them.

Recasting decision-makingThere is a basic truth in public policy: an openand inclusive process will result in more effectivepolicy. Decisions that involve those affected willbe better decisions. In development, chances forsuccess and sustainability can be greatlyimproved through decision-making that istransparent, participatory and accountable.Decisions based on an open assessment of devel-opment needs, of the options to meet thoseneeds, and of the optimal balance between thegenuine interests at stake, will be better deci-sions—the cost of failure will be reduced, thecost of conflict more often avoided, and the fullweight of human ingenuity mobilized behind ashared development goal.

There is no surer way of advancing sustainabledevelopment than by allowing the stakeholders

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in any situation to participate fully in decisionsaffecting them. This in turn requires an honestidentification of interests, of the rights attendantupon them, and of the information required toweigh the options judiciously. It requires mech-anisms to ensure the full and informed priorconsent of those associated with decisions. Andit requires mechanisms for recourse in the caseagreements are not implemented in good faith.

The new governanceThe attraction of this Rights and Responsibilitiesapproach to development is that it is compara-tively simple. Development is no longer theexclusive domain of economists, engineers andplanners. It is no longer something to be under-taken on trust by elected representatives. Itbecomes everyone’s business.

The same three elements underlie human rights,social and economic development, and sustain-ability: transparency, participation and account-ability. If transparency and participation arerespected, they confer legitimacy on decisions. Ifaccountability is respected, it leads to the rule oflaw.

Pakistan cannot long ignore the pressure of thistransformation. While some may attribute lesslofty motives to it, the current government hasacknowledged parts of this new reality in itsefforts to devolve power and to root out certainforms of corruption. There is still a very longway to go.

The SPCS as pioneerWhy this description of the emerging develop-ment paradigm? Simply because the SPCS, in itsown way, has served as an important vehicle tointroduce and test this new paradigm in theprovince. Seen from a perspective of a few years,it is clear that the SPCS process served—to theextent it had the scope to do so—as a laboratoryfor the new governance, often many years aheadof its time. The SPCS team introduced and reliedheavily on village consultations, and on othermechanisms to understand the priority needs ofpeople and communities. It experimented withRoundtables, formal networks and other institu-tional mechanisms to enable participation ofstakeholders in reviewing options and in somecases taking decisions that affected their rights. Itbegan the first serious effort in the province toimagine an approach to development that did notdepend entirely on currying favour with anentrenched bureaucracy. And it made enormous

efforts to provide the information base forimproved decision-making. SPCS is, to an extent,a manifestation of the new paradigm.

Like many of IUCN’s initiatives in Pakistan andglobally, the SPCS was ahead of its time. This isas it should be. The role and value of organiza-tions like IUCN is to introduce new ideas, newthinking, new approaches and new tools. It is toscan the field for ideas and practices that havebeen tried to advantage in other settings, and tointroduce them where they might serve. It is tobuild the bridges, make the connections, andopen the channels that will stimulate the imagi-nation and reinforce the notion that positive andlasting change is, after all, possible. The statusquo can perfectly well be tended by existingstructures; it is development actors like IUCNthat are needed to challenge it and to build sup-port for its replacement.

SPCS was an ambitious venture in a situationwhere only risky strategies could hope to bringabout the needed change. It has had its share ofsuccesses and failures, and in many cases, it istoo early to gauge its full impact. What is impor-tant is to continue treating SPCS and its succes-sors as living, growing and evolving processes, topersist in keeping SPCS present and in the pub-lic eye, to monitor advances towards its imple-mentation, and to build public pressure to keepup the momentum it has generated. It is criticalto seek and exploit all opportunities to introduceor reinforce the mechanisms for transparency,participation and accountability in develop-ment, from the local to the provincial levels, andto ensure that the new approach to decision-making becomes entrenched.

If this happens, and the movement towards anew approach to governance continues its slowbut inexorable advance, prospects for the faith-ful implementation of the SPCS will continue toimprove. It would not be surprising if, yearsfrom now, the SPCS is remembered not foridentifying the sustainable development priori-ties of the province, not for the quality of itstechnical content or the value of the document,and not because of its heroic effort to bringtogether the many stakeholders to strive for asafer and more productive future. It may insteadbe remembered for introducing to the provincethe new paradigm, for introducing and promot-ing a new approach to governance, characterizedby openness and participation, and by anapproach to decision-making that truly address-es the sustainable development needs of theprovince and the people of Sarhad.


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Photos: Top, centre left and centre right – SPCSpublic consultations gather community input intothe development and implementation of the strategy; bottom – Uncle Sargam Show, part ofSPCS’s connection strategy to check innovativeapproaches.

Annex ISPCS Reviews/Evaluation• IUCN-SDC Review of SPCS – I April 1994

• Mid-Term Review of SPCS – II March 1997

• Planning and Assessment Mission for SPCS III March 1998

• Mid-Term Review of SPCS III March 2000

• Planning and Assessment Mission for SPCS IV March 2001

• PSDN Studies (Evaluation of various SPCS mechanisms/processes) February 2001

(1) Roundtable-Focal Points-Government Focal Points

(3) Capacity Development

(4) Demo Projects

(5) Awareness and Advocacy

(6) District Strategies

(7) Integration of Environment into Development

(8) Gender Integration

(9) Networking and Facilitation


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Annex IIProject Managers – SPCS

Name Duration Designation

1. G.M. Khattak December 1992 to March 1994 Program Director

2. Mohammad Rafiq January 1994 to April 1994 Deputy Program Director

3. Mohammad Rafiq April 1994 to November 1996 Program Director

4. Alamgir Gandapur December 1996 to June 1997 Project Director

5. Gul Najam Jamy June 1997 to December 1998 Director

6. Hamid Raza Afridi December 1998 to October 1999 Acting Project Manager

7. Shuja ur Rehman October 1999 to date Manager

Focal Points/Coordinators

Sector Name Duration

SPCS Hameed Hasan May 1993 to December 1995

Communication 1. Mohammad Fayyaz May 1994 to October 1998

2. Zafar Iqbal Khattak November 1998 to October 1999

3. Qasim Zaman Khan April 2000 to November 2001

4. Nadeem Yaqub March 2002 to date

NGO 1. Siddiq Ahmad Khan September 1998 to October 1998

2. Saleemullah Khan November 1998 to December 2001

3. Siddiq Akbar Siddiqui October 2001 to date

Culture Heritage 1. Hamid Raza Afridi November 1995 to December 1999

2. Bakhtiar Ahmad March 2000 to June 2001

Industry 1. Shaukat Hayat November 1995 to October 1997

2. Iftikhar Malik July 1997 to June 2001

Education 1. Zubaida Khalid December 1995 to June 1998

2. Fatima Daud Kamal November 1998 to October 1999

3. Mahnaz Iftikhar October 1999 to November 2000

4. Mariam Amin Khan February 2001 to June 2001

Urban Environment 1. Gul Najam Jamy February 1996 to January 1997

2. Arshad Samad Khan March 1997 to June 2001

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Focal Points/Coordinators (continued)

Sector Name Duration

PE&D 1. Iftikhar Malik June 1996 to June 1997

2. Faheem Khan June 1999 to September 1999

3. Manzoor Ahmad Sethi July 2000 to June 2001

4. Waqar Ahmad May 2000 to date

Agriculture 1. Manzoor Ahmad Sethi November 1996 to June 2000

2. Rizwan Ahmad February 2001 to date

Training 1. Asif Hameed Khan June 1997 to February 2000

EPA 1. Fiza Gul July 1999 to October 2000

2. Arshad Samad Khan July 2001 to date

Forestry 1. Inamullah Khan May 2000 to June 2001

Project Managers

Strategy Name Duration

Chitral Conservation Strategy Shuja ur Rehman December 1996 to October 1999

Inayatullah Faizi April 2000 to date

Abbottabad Conservation Strategy Amanullah Khan February 1997 to June 2000

Sardar Taimur H. Khan August 2000 to June 2001

Iftikhar Malik July 2001 to date


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Annex IIIDistrict Level Public Consultations

S. No. Place Date

1 Peshawar January 13, 1994

2 Mardan February 9, 1994

3 Swabi March 2, 1994

4 Charsadda March 9, 1994

5 Nowshera March 24, 1994

6 Dera Ismail Khan April 5, 1994

7 Tank April 6, 1994

8 Kohat April 12, 1994

9 Abbottabad April 20, 1994

10 Karak April 23, 1994

11 Mansehra April 27, 1994

12 Battagram April 28, 1994

13 Bunner May 5, 1994

14 Lakki Marwat May 14, 1994

15 Bannu May 16, 1994

16 Haripur May 18, 1994

17 Swat May 30, 1994

18 Dir May 31, 1994

19 Chitral June 26, 1994

20 Kohistan September 14 , 1994

21 Malakand Agency December 14, 1994

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Annex IVComposition of the SPCS Steering Committee

Chairman Additional Chief Secretary, Planning and Development Department Government of NWFP

Members 1. Sardar Ghulam Nabi, MPA Abbottabad

2. Mr. Lal Khan, MPA Malakand Agency

3. Joint Secretary, NCS Unit, Ministry of Environment, Urban Affairs, Forests and Wildlife

4. Secretary, Finance Department

5. Secretary, Food, Agriculture, Livestock and Cooperative Department

6. Secretary, Forests, Fisheries and Wildlife Department

7. Secretary, Communications and Works Department

8. Secretary, Industries, Commerce, Labour, Mineral Development and Transport Department

9. Secretary, Irrigation and Public Health Engineering Department

10. Secretary, Physical Planning and Housing Department

11. Secretary, Information, Sports, Culture and Tourism Department

12. Director General, EPA

13. Director, PCSIR Peshawar

14. Vice Chancellor, NWFP Agricultural University

15. President, Pakistan Environmental Protection Foundation

16. Javed Saifullah Khan, KK Company

17. Haji Abdul Ali, Member, Executive Committee, Sarhad Chamber of Commerce and Industry

18. Begum Zari Sarfaraz

19. Mr. A. Rahim Masood

20. Media Representative

21. IUCN Pakistan Representative Chief of Section, Environment, Planning and Development Department.


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Annex VProfile of Public Consultations

Village Consultations, Female

Number of Consultations 5

Number of Participants 240

People in a consultation – Maximum number 85

– Minimum number 7

Location

S. No. District Tehsil Village

1 Bannu Bannu Shahaz Azmat Kheil

2 Lakki Lakki Begukhel

3 Tank Tank Mulazi

4 DI Khan Kulachi Muddi

5 DI Khan DI Khan Paharpur

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Annex VISector-specific Public Consultations

S.No. Sector Date

1 Peshawar University January 11, 1994

2 Pakistan Forest Institute, Peshawar February 3, 1994

3 Media July 27, 1994

4 Trade and Labour Unions August 29, 1994

5 Sarhad Chamber of Commerce and Industries September 21, 1994

6 Sarhad Chamber of Agriculture October 31, 1994

7 Women February 1, 1995

8 Information, Sports, Culture and Tourism Department May 23, 1995

9 Finance Department May 25, 1995

10 Public Health Engineering Department June 4, 1995

11 Industries, Commerce, Labour, Mineral Development and June 7, 1995Transport Department

12 Local Government and Rural Development Department June 11, 1995

13 Education Department June 13, 1995

14 Forests, Fisheries and Wildlife Department June 13, 1995

15 Physical, Planning and Housing Department/Provincial June 14, 1995Urban Development Board


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Annex VIIList of Roundtables

S. No. Name of Roundtable Notification No. of Members

1 Industries October 1996 23

2 Urban Environment October 1996 40

3 Agriculture January 1997 46

4 Communication December 1994 29

5 NGOs March 1995 35

6 Education June 1997 40

7 Cultural Heritage and Sustainable Tourism February 1998 48

8 Chitral Conservation Strategy August 1997 68

9 Abbottabad Conservation Strategy February 1998 41

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Annex VIIIMain Training Events Under the SPCS

S. No. Particular of Training No. of Participants Date

1 One-week Training in Decision-making for Resource 20 1998Sustainability (LEAD Program)

2 One-week Training in Leadership for Sustainable 20 1998Development

Stakeholders Dialogue in Policy Planning for Integrated Development (LEAD Program)

3 One-week Training in Strategic Planning for 20 1998Sustainable Development: Vision, Mission and Tools (LEAD Program)

4 Two-day Training Workshop on Environment (EPM) 30 1998for Kohat and Nowshera Clusters of SPO-NWFP

5 One-week Training in Measuring the Success of 20 1999Investments, Planning and Monitoring (LEAD Program)

6 Two-week Training for Bureau of Curriculum 35 1999(Peshawar)

7 Three-day Training Workshop on Environmental 20 1999Auditing for Industries Department

8 Three-day Training Workshop on Writing Project 22 1999Proposal for Staff of LG&RDD

9 Three-day Training Workshop for LG&RDD staff 10 1999on Orangi Pilot Project (OPP) Karachi

10 Three-day Training Workshop in Environmental 25 1999Sensitization and Project Proposal Development for CBOs Organizers in Collaboration with FRC Peshawar at Agricultural University

11 Two-week Training for Bureau of Curriculum 28 1999(Ayubia)

12 One-week Training in the Economics of 20 1999Environmental Sustainability (LEAD Program)

13 One-week Training in Animal Nutrition – Fodder 24 1999and Forage Production

14 Two-week Training in Development of Environment 3 1999Auditing Capacity in Pakistan

15 Two-week Specialized Training of Trainers in 17 1999Improved Technologies for Sustainable Production of Fodders and Forage Crops

16 One-week Training in Environment-friendly 14 1999Farming and Biodiversity Conservation Practices


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Main Training Events Under the SPCS (continued)

S. No. Particular of Training No. of Participants Date

17 Two-week Training in Environment-friendly 26 1999Livestock Management Practices

18 Series of three-day Trainings on Greening of NGOs 100 1999(AKRSP, SPO, SRSP) -2000

19 Two-week Training for Planners in Project Planning 28 2000and Implementation for Agriculture and LG&RD Department

20 One-week Specialized Training of Field Assistants, 27 2000Stock Assistants and Farmers in Fodder and Forage Production

21 36-hour Training on Eco-tourism 21 2000

22 One-month course in Computer Operations for 12 2000Interns

23 One-week Training on Measuring and Managing 18 2000Ecological Footprints: Ethics and Sustainability (LEAD Program)

24 Eight-day Training in Industrial Environmental 20 2000Management

25 36-hour Training in Communication and 23 2000Presentation Skills

26 One-week Training for Officers of Forest 3 2000Department in Project Cycle Management

27 One-week Training for Officers of Forest 20 2001Department in Communication, Presentation and Creative Writing Skills

28 40-hour Training in Communication and 20 2001Persuasion Skills

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Annex IXSarhad NGOs Ittehad (SNI)Sarhad NGOs Ittehad (SNI) is a provincial level coalition of NGOs constituted in 1995. The mem-bership of SNI mainly comprises NGOs and CBOs of NWFP. SNI consists of:

• General Body

• Provincial Council

• Working Council

The total members of Provincial Council in SNI are 64, consisting of NGOs and CBOs with a 25 percent and 75 per cent representation respectively. Total number of members of working council in SNIare 15 consisting of NGOs and CBOs elected by members of Provincial Council with a 33 per centand 66 per cent representation respectively.


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Annex XKabul River StudyIn 1994, the IUCN in collaboration with Department of Environmental Planning and Management,Peshawar University, with the financial assistance of NORAD, conducted a detailed study on theKabul River. The principal objectives of this study were to determine the locations where pollutedeffluents were being discharged into the Kabul River and the types of pollution. The study was con-ducted due to the following reasons:

• organic pollution is worst in the Shah Alam branch of the river due to effluents from sugar millsand sewage from the city of Peshawar, and just downstream of Nowshera;

• chromium, copper, nickel and zinc are present in concentrations above those suitable for the main-tenance of fisheries and aquatic life;

• data concerning sulphides which are present in high concentrations, are anomalous and moreresearch is needed to explain the situation;

• contaminants in the drainage from several industrial complexes, some owned by the government,are unacceptably high and will need much attention if they are to meet the new environmentalquality standards announced by the government of Pakistan; and

• two very dirty tributaries, the Bara River and the Kalpani River, also need urgent attention, dueto the high levels of human use.

The study analyzed the impacts of various pollutants. In this respect an action plan was proposed inthe study, which included both short- and long-term proposals. Salient points were as follows:

• government should use existing legislation to take action against the worst industrial polluters, par-ticularly those which it owns;

• the Environmental Protection Agency should be strengthened, particularly its enforcement capa-bility, to prepare for the new environment quality standards which will come into force for exist-ing industries on July 1, 1996;

• the SPCS Unit should take responsibility for publicizing the results of the report and monitoringthe implementation of the Action Plan;

• the Swat and Chitral rivers, which are comparatively clean, need to be without effluent or sewagetreatment;

• several abandoned industrial premises should be assessed and, where necessary, cleaned up; and

• additional scientific studies are required to answer several outstanding questions. These include: ahuman health survey; a analysis of contamination in fish; sampling for broader ranges of pollu-tants, particularly agricultural chemicals; and a more detailed look at several of the known con-taminants such as metals and sulphides.

In the long term, priority must continue to be placed on two areas of activity:

• continuing effort must be applied to the treatment of urban sewage. The second urban develop-ment project is already underway, but even when full-fledged, it will not deal with all the majorsources. Additional planning should begin for the cities and towns not already being treated; and

• efforts should begin to reform the existing water management structures and their legal under-pinning. The SPCS Unit should undertake this task in the next phase of its work.

The conclusion of this study shows that the Kabul River is dirty and in several locations is unfit forhuman consumption. This is due to the heavy loading of human sewage and effluents from someindustrial hotspots.

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Annex XIList of Demonstration Projects1. Environmental Clean-up Demonstration Model in the Marble Industry (Mineral Testing

Laboratory, Sarhad Development Authority)

2. Rehabilitation of Assia Park (Peshawar Municipal Cooperation), Local Government and RuralDevelopment Department

3. Pilot Projects for Promoting Floriculture Through Womenfolk in Peshawar and Kohat Divisions(Fruit and Vegetable Development Board)

4. Adaptive Research and Demonstration of High Fodder Yielding Summer Grass Legume Mixtures(Agricultural University)

5. Cultural Heritage Trail Network Through Eco-tourism Peshawar (Sarhad Tourism Corporation)

6. Environmental Education Training Workshop for Primary and Secondary School Teachers(Education Department)

7. Construction of Head Works and Protective Wall of Five Channels (Multi-purpose CooperativeSociety Koghuzi) Chitral

8. Development of Community Environment at Takht Bhai, Mardan


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About the author… Mark Halle directs the International Institute for SustainableDevelopment's office in Europe as well as the institute's global pro-gramme on Trade and Investment. He has worked for the past 25years in the field of international environmental cooperation, bothwith the United Nations Environment Programme and with leadingNGOs such as WWF and IUCN.

While working as IUCN's Director of Field Operations, he establishedthe country programme in Pakistan and was closely involved in estab-lishing the country office and in launching the Pakistan NationalConservation Strategy process. By the time the SPCS was launched,he had moved on to other responsibilities, but has continued to visitPakistan on a regular basis.

He joined IISD in 1998 and is based in Geneva, Switzerland.

Moving the Frontier tells the compelling story of theSarhad Provincial Conservation Strategy (SPCS). Launched

in 1991, the strategy was the first key, on-the-groundtest of the Pakistan National Conservation Strategy. Thisvolume captures the history of the SPCS and examineshow well its environmental approach stood up to the

realities of the day. It is a story of challenges and successes; expectations and personalities. And ultimately,

it's a story of lessons learned.

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