Many natural resource management (NRM) groups have been formed and are functioning to manage the local forest and water resources in Nepal after the promulgation of community-based natural resource management policies, acts, regulations and plans. Despite significant achievements in participatory resource management, the NRM groups have limited technical, organizational and advocacy capabilities to follow and influence the policies and guidelines and to manage the resources in an equitable and sustainable manner. The NRM groups tend to have low participation of women, poor and disadvantaged group; poor accountability of responsibility bearers towards the right holders, the general users. The financial transactions and major decisions are not much transparent to general users, resulting in poor predictability of NRM groups and their internal governance.
The weak institutional capacity of NRM groups is further limited by inadequate services of government extension bodies and other service providers due to bureaucratic hurdles, deteriorating security situation and limited knowledge and skills on current development concepts and approaches. The civil society organizations (CSOs), federations and association of NRM groups are the bodies to raise the voice of NRM groups for securing their rights to access and control over the local resources. However, they have limited capacity and linkage to advocate the issues at local, district, regional and national levels.
In this context, the Strengthened Actions for Governance in Utilization of Natural Resources (SAGUN) and Strengthening the Role of Civil Society and Women in Democracy and Governance (SAMARPAN) Programs have been under implementation since 2002. These are designed to address a specific objective, which envisages Strengthened Governance of Natural Resources and Selected Institutions.
SAGUN Program primarily focuses on enhancing the technical capacity and awareness on good governance practices in NRM groups, service providers, federations and associations. Complementarily, the SAMARPAN Program has focused on strengthening the advocacy capacity of NRM groups through various training, workshops, campaigns and awareness programs. CARE Nepal is the prime recipient of both programs.
In the course of conducting training, workshop and awareness programs on Good Governance, Rights Based Approach (RBA) and advocacy for different level of stakeholders many issues are raised, which have policy implications at micro (intra-group), meso (district) and macro (national) levels. These issues have implications to either 1) formulation of new policy, 2) amendment in the existing policy or 3) effective implementation of the existing policy.
The NRM groups, with the support from SAMARPAN and SAGUN Programs, are resolving the micro level issues to some extent through identification of issues and preparation and implementation of the action plans. Increased representation of women, poor and disadvantaged groups in the executive committee of NRM groups and their active participation in the decision-making processes, increased availability of natural resources to poor, women and marginalized people are some of the achievements among many.
From the experience of SAMARPAN, SAGUN and their implementing partners, policy advocacy has been an important instrument to deliberately influence the policy makers for change in policies and their effective implementation to improve the livelihood of people, including women, poor and disadvantaged groups.
Specialized training and workshops, formation and effective functioning of constituencies and advocacy forums as a part of establishing policy advocacy system are some of the avenues that complement and build on SAGUN and SAMARPAN Programs for their sustainability and replication. In this context, the Policy Advocacy Campaign (PAC) program is being conducted by FECOFUN since September 2005.
Brief outline of SAGUN and Samarpan program
The sagun program envisions that "at the end of the four year period, good governance practices are internalized by natural resource management groups at all levels, supporting a code of conduct of equity in access to and benefits form local forest and water resources, specifically benefiting women and other disadvantaged people. There will be increasing productivity of natural resources under local management that is transparent and accountable, directly supporting poverty alleviation, rural community development and national economicgrowth. Partnership in natural resource management will resolve conflicts locally and nationally, and thus contribute to re-establishing peace in Nepal."
The overall objective of the sagun program is "to ensure that Nepal's natural resources are managed in democratic way; that the performance of selected institutions is improved to meet the principles of good governance and participation, and inparticular, that the benefits derived form natural resources are dispersed in accountable and transparent ways to thelocal communities and that they and other earned revenues are equitably distributed"
One of the major objectives of the sagun program is to support "related federations and associations, including FeCofun and nfiwuan, to provide technical, managerial and monitoring support to the local nRm groups."
Similarly, the samarpan program's goal is "to contribute to strengthening governance at the local level through increased women's participation and increased advocacy skills and capacity of selected civil society groups." The specific objectives of the samarpan program are: to increase advocacy capacity of selected civil society groups at community and federation level; to increase women's participation in elected local government, and to increase literacy of women elected representatives and members of advocacy groups. The target groups of SAMARPAN Program, among many others, are the networks and federations such as: Association of the District Development Committee, Nepal (ADDCN), the National Association of Village Development Community in Nepal (NAVIN) and the Federation of Community Forestry User's Nepal (FECOFUN).
Rational of PAC program program
SAGUN and SAMARPAN Programs have conducted several activities at the community level pertaining to governance, Rights Based Approach (RBA) and advocacy for improved governance and enhancing advocacy capacity of the NRM groups. There are several issues raised in the communities having policy implications at community, district and national levels. Community level issues are resolved by formulating and implementation of community level advocacy plans. However, there is lack of appropriate mechanism to bring these issues at the district and national level for policy change. SAMARPAN is going to be terminated in next few months and SAGUN, which mainly focuses on good governance, does not have broader scope for national level advocacy.
The SAGUN and SAMARPAN Programs, in consultation with federations and other civil society organizations, have developed preliminary mechanisms to link micro, meso and macro levels advocacy issues, however, the short period of these projects and availability of inadequate resources, the projects have limited opportunity to deal with district and national level issues. There is an apparent need for continuous support to the NRM Federations to play a significant role in the overall policy process, with out which the momentum gained by these two projects will be lost.
The NRM related federations, although have tremendous potentiality to form and mobilize constituency , their knowledge, skills and experience in formulation of appropriate advocacy strategy, especially the knowledge and skills in constituency building is limited.
Further, they have weak institutional linkages with other civil society groups and political parties at different levels. Although, political parties and their representatives play a key role to influence the policy decisions at different level, their roles are limited in NRM issues due to limited access to information and their involvement in NRM activities. Similarly, the role of different civil society organizations such as Nepal Bar Association, Nepal Journalist's Federations, and NGO Federation at different levels is not well capitalized while making constituencies to advocate for NRM related issues. Thus, there is a need for involving multi-stakeholders to streamline the advocacy efforts at the district and national level.
The current policy formulation process is not well decentralized limiting participation of local people. There is no such mechanism to communicate and put their issues of concern. So, this program intends to establish and promote a policy advocacy mechanism by establishing and activating policy advocacy forums at district and national levels.
Media has an important role in highlighting the policy issues with effective dissemination to the key stakeholders. In the present context, the media has also not been able to address the NRM issues to influence the policy decisions due to less priority in NRM issues, limited knowledge and skills. The involvement of both print and electronic media is crucial to organize issue based discussions and public hearings at district and national levels. Similarly, the involvement of politicians and policy makers is essential to amplify the policy issues for their internalization and influence.
Building on learning and experiences of Sagun, samarpan and FECOFUN, and to address the gaps, "Policy Advocacy Campaign (PAC) Program is being in practice. |
