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Components and results targeted

Following an intensive participatory process involving DFOs, DSCOs and Project specialists, a logical framework with four result areas was agreed upon. The three fundamental elements of the OP, social, economic and environmental development, as well as the ultimate aim, handover were incorporated. It is noteworthy that while the NACRMP Component 4, upper slope management has been abandoned, the other aims are similar.

Component 1: Gender and social equity, good governance, conflict sensitivity institutionalised Component 2: Business development service mechanism strengthened and operational Component 3: Sustainable national resource management systems strengthened

Component 1:
Gender and social equity, good governance, and conflict sensitivity institutionalised at all levels

The Project’s committed advocacy of equity for women, the poor and the disadvantaged in CFUG participation, decision-making roles and benefit sharing; its espousal of transparency; and its promotion of social harmony can be seen at the national, district and community levels. The Project will continue to support the MFSC to mainstream its GSE vision as well as to integrate conflict sensitivity modules. It will also document the approach, status and service needs of the existing 80 or more women’s empowerment programmes (WEPs) and help the MFSC persuade other ministries to support WEPs.

At the district level, the training curricula for LIPs will be refined to consolidate Stage One learning about GSE, GG and conflict sensitivity, but also to add relevant material related to women’s empowerment and business enterprise. The LIP will be closely integrated with updated modules of OP revision. District women’s development and education offices (DWOs and DEOs) will be recruited for involvement in addition to the already active DFOs and DSCOs. The Project will also develop partnerships with potential NGSPs which can deliver training curricula.

Activity consolidation in clusters will be the focus of community-level efforts. The main actions of local facilitators will be to help CFUGs revise their OPs in order to include LIPs which address the priorities of, and benefit, the poor; to alter constitutions and executive committees to provide for greater GSE in participation, decision-making and benefit sharing; to promote transparent accounting, fund management and decision-making; to form homogeneous sub-groups of the disadvantaged; to initiate sustainable natural resource-based income-generating enterprises; to manage resources soundly and distribute benefits broadly; and to manage conflict and promote peace.

The success of this endeavour will rest on the finalisation of user-friendly guidelines for creating new and improved, three-dimensional OPs. CFUGs will need technical backstopping to improve their capacity to do so but as much as possible, they should assume responsibility for revision and not wait for Project assistance.

Component 2:
Business development service mechanism strengthened & operational

The Project aims to facilitate and strengthen the capacity of local facilitators to provide CFUGs with BDS so that they can function independently after the Project withdraws. It also redefines business to include not just enterprise per se, but also CFUG fund management itself.

Some of the individual services to be provided include assistance in product selection, business planning, legal advice, technical implementation, marketing and quality control, financial management, human resource development and GSE. Many providers were identified in Stage One and some were even mobilised, but more work needs to be done in identifying the most suitable service providers. With stakeholders ranging so widely, producers, producer associations, and national product networks; buyers; CFUG facilitators, networks, and the CFUG national federation (FECOFUN); government officials in forestry, soil conservation and other areas at the ministerial and district level; training institutions like the National Training Resource Mobilisation Centre (NTRMC); I/NGOS and their projects; and NACRMLP itself, that won’t be an easy task. However the overriding need and biggest challenge is finding an umbrella organisation that can assume the Project’s role of providing overall guidance, direction and support.

Four options for overseer have been identified, but there is not a clear winner at this point. The Project is leaning towards empowering DFCCs to assume this role because although they are technocratically controlled, they can be expanded to include producer associations, FECOFUN representatives, social development agencies and the private sector.

As with Component 1, action on Component 2 will take place on all levels. At the national level, the Project will prepare a policy paper on operationalising and institutionalising business development mechanisms, while at the district level it will focus on establishing linkages among stakeholders. Community-level action will be concentrated on consolidating enterprises initiated in Stage One and on incorporating BPs in the OPs of focus CFUGs.

Given the abbreviated time frame of the final stage, the Project will emphasise building partnerships with the existing micro-business programmes of other line agencies and I/NGOs and will put together a training curricula based on the best materials already available. Then it will transfer this expertise to institutions suited to service provision and prepare CFUGs to absorb their services.

Component 3:
Sustainable natural resource management systems strengthened

This component involves two main types of intervention at the local, district and national levels: first, simplifying the process of OP revision; and, second, supporting line agencies in improving technical prescriptions, guidelines and polices for NRM, while simultaneously institutionalising activities and transferring responsibility to them.

Guidelines must be understandable, easier to revise as the context changes, and more committed to sustainable standards of resource management and to the livelihood priorities of the poor and disadvantaged. The Project will support DFOs, forest guards; local or other service providers in helping the CFUG clusters revise their OPs. Central-level assistance will be oriented toward developing and mainstreaming new and revised guidelines into national policy.

NACRMLP will also provide technical input, primarily in terms of supporting line agencies in preparing or refining technical prescriptions in several key areas: silvicultural guidelines for pine plantation management plans and their implementation, NTFP screening and inventory guidelines as well as training curricula for NTFP, and guidelines for incorporating community forage programmes into OPs. The Project will also support the existing DSCWM programmes in Sikar Khola and Dapcha in their third and final year and help prepare a policy paper. Whatever little was accomplished in terms of upper-slope forest management in Stage One will also be passed on to DFOs. The Project will also share lessons in land use management with DADOs and provide more support to DLOs in training village animal health workers (VAHWs).

In all these efforts, the Project aims to strengthen and consolidate its past achievements so that they are not lost when it pulls out, leaving Nepalis to assume ownership and carry on.