Sarhad Provincial Conservation Strategy - IUCN

tal impact assessments for public-sector projects. The
ES would review these assessments and the Chief of
the Section would participate in the Provincial
Development Working Party to ensure that environmentally
damaging projects were not approved.
The ES was commissioned on January 20, 1992.
The Planning and Development Department became
the PE&D Department in October 1992, and the EPA
was transferred to the PE&D Department about the
same time. On November 4, 1993, the EPA was
upgraded and made a regular Attached Department
of the Government headed by a Director General.
The relevant Rules of Business of the Provincial
Government were also amended to complete and
internalize the changes. Moreover, a new
‘Environment Sector’ was added in the NWFP's
Annual Development Programme, beginning in
1992-93, as a mechanism to fund the core environment
projects that would emerge from the SPCS and
would not fall in any one sector. Sector-specific projects
would, of course, be listed in the respective sectoral
programmes.
The most important lesson from the NCS has been
that the process of developing the strategy is just as
important as its contents, and that public consultation
increases the credibility and ownership and thus acceptability
of the strategy. The development of component
strategies in the NWFP through stakeholder and extensive
public consultation in districts and villages was
essentially inspired by this lesson from the NCS.
There are other subtle but equally important
lessons from the NCS process as well. The NCS was
developed at the Federal level although implementation
was going to take place at the provincial level.
This has meant it has taken time to have the recommendations
integrated into provincial policy making.
Consequently, few in the provincial Governments
knew about the NCS when it was approved. This
partly explains the lack of commitment towards implementation
of the NCS unless driven by donor funds.
The NCS recommendations are not readily finding a
place in the provincial and sectoral agendas and the
NCS Unit in the Environment and Urban Affairs
Division has had a hard time pushing them through.
The NCS has an elaborate implementation plan
and a very ambitious investment portfolio (Rs. 150
T O W A R D S T H E S A R H A D P R O V I N C I A L C O N S E R V A T I O N S T R A T E G Y 4
billion in 10 years). Resources on this order are difficult
to obtain. During 1992-2001, the NCS anticipated
Rs. 37 billion additional public investment in the
environment. In contrast, the core environment sector
received only Rs. 138 million in the Government of
Pakistan's Public Sector Development Programme for
1993-95. Even the NWFP, which is leading the NCS
implementation, could not allocate more than Rs. 14
million to its core environment sector. This has made
the NCS donor-dependent, although there are several
actions that can conveniently be taken with modest
local investment. Since the NCS was approved in
1992, only the World Bank, the European Union,
and Canada have provided substantial support.
Bilateral aid from the Norwegians, the Swiss, the
Dutch, and the Germans has also helped, but it has
been in small amounts.
Another problem is that donor support, especially
by the multilaterals, is always conditional. Donors
often seek institutional change faster than the
Government can manage. Past experience is that
small, bilateral projects have smoother implementation
than the multilateral projects where there are
delays and bureaucratic hurdles on both sides.
Most multilateral projects are national; the
provinces move along at a different pace, coordination
is difficult and expensive, and, finally, much
less is accomplished than planned. The World Bank
project for Environmental Protection and Resource
Conservation in Pakistan, delayed for four years, is
a case in point.
While the NCS did present a thorough analysis of
the performance of different sectors, it did not fully
acknowledge and incorporate ongoing initiatives,
especially in its recommendations and action plan.
Another weakness of the NCS is that it did not adequately
provide for integrating environment with economic
policy management. More specifically, there is
little examination of the many ‘ecologically blind’
public-sector initiatives. Macro-economic policies
have been little analyzed with regard to their impact
on sustainable development.
Thus, the lessons for the SPCS are:
■ Be more realistic with respect to resource availability
and establish clear priorities for investment
by donors and the Government itself.
SARHAD PROVINCIAL CONSERVATION STRATEGY 29