FOREWORD
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The Human Development Report 1999 prepared by the United Nations Development Programme ranks Nepal 142nd out of 188 countries members to the United Nations. This ranking, when the world has entered into the 21st century and the technology has played vital role in development, had alarmed us to review our past development efforts. In the past, we have had a number of experiments on different development models and learned how the people-based development can be achieved.
As poverty alleviation is major thrust of our national development policy, it can hardly be achieved without synergic efforts of each and every sector of the economy. This idea is encompassed by the Earth Summit that was convened by the United Nations at Rio de Jeneiro in 1992. The UN then assimilated the idea into its development assistance programme to help the governments to overcome the poverty. Such a determination of His Majesty's Government of Nepal in alleviating poverty is therefore reflected in the Ninth Five-year Development Plan.
Sustainable Community Development Programme (SCDP) was implemented by National Planning Commission (NPC) in three districts of Mid and Far Western Development Regions; Surkhet, Kailali and Dang from the end of 1996 as a demonstration. During implementation of the First phase, the SCDP proved its approaches to sustainable development more appropriate and cost effective. The process involves all stakeholders in planning, implementation and evaluation of community-led socioeconomic development and environmental management activities in a more coordinated manner. This Programme is found helping poor and backwards. The community level leadership has opened the door to them with the principle of help those who can help themselves.
The Community-based Organisations (CBO) have led the communities engaged in generating self-employment opportunities in the remote villages and raising and mobilisation of community funds to develop micro enterprises for economic betterment of rural poor. They are found proper vehicle to cater the development to the remote areas. They are the vendors who can sell the right idea how sustainable development happens with a very little resources that, in deed, we require in order to prepare a national sustainable development policy framework. Such an initiative is needed to formulate National Agenda 21 to show the path to sustainable development of Nepal in 21st century.
As it is well stated by the historical Earth Summit in the Agenda 21, development and environment management can not be separated. The idea is reflected into practice in Nepal through SCDP model. National development is the national face of local development. Therefore, District Development Committees (DDC) are the key for supporting and coordinating with line agencies as they are the owner of the Programme in the district in long run. This can ensure the sustainability of Programme benefits. Cost sharing with and involvement of DDC should be continued in favor of the sustainable development. Likewise the VDCs involvement and cost sharing should be highly encouraged at the grassroots level. Many of the VDCs of three demonstration Programme districts have initiated cost sharing practices with CBOs to implement village level development activities because of their strong commitment and cost effectiveness.
His Majesty's Government of Nepal is committed to encourage the development Programmes like SCDP that are deep-rooted in the community being directed towards community-led and poverty alleviation focussed development initiatives. Based on the success of the programme in the First Phase, selection of three new districts for SCDP implementation in Phase II is one of the examples of HMG's thrust. These districts were selected on eco-regional distribution basis together with the focus on hitting root causes of poverty. Experiences of the First Phase will certainly be helpful transforming technologies and access support from previous three pilot Programme districts to the new districts. SCDP will continue its support to the previous programme districts to enhance capacity building of CBOs and the supporting organisation in order to consolidating sustainable development activities.
SCDP still has many challenges to encounter, especially in making the programme more effective, result-oriented and clearly measurable. UNDP's technical help in doing so is not less important. UNDP should have a significant role to play helping concerned sectors of His Majesty's Government realizing the policy for sustainable development which had been brought out from the experiences we had gained during Phase I implementation. We require more collaborative efforts to materialise the ideas of Earth Summit in our particular national context.
The SCDP model of development has proved that each and every sector of the society has its own distinct roles to development and therefore the sustainable development can only be achieved in the long run if all sectors make synergic efforts. The Government has also supported this type of approaches by introducing Local Governance Act 2055 that gives the local governments more authority in making decisions in terms of district and village development planning. We do hope, SCDP can help in practicing decentralisation of planning from where it work upward.
Sustainability does not occur with working for just a project period. Even after phasing out the Programme, all the programme components require special attention to consolidate for effective impacts. We will be successful if we make attempts institutionalising the programme and their owner organisations. Capacity building exercises and cost sharing practices help in this perspective. Let our Phase II be also successful to formulate National Agenda 21 on sustainable development.
Hari Shankar Tripathi
Member
National Planning Commission and Chairperson
Executive Committee, SCDP