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The second and current stage

The vision of the Final Stage Plan and Sustainable Exit Strategy
The PDD had to be totally reworked when AusAID closed the Project prematurely due to a change in Nepal’s developmental priorities precipitated by the worsening conflict. Since two-and-a-half years were lost when the completion date was changed from 30 January, 2009 to 30 June, 2006, the Project could no longer go ahead with its plan to expand. Instead, it developed a Final Stage Plan and Sustainable Exit Strategy (FSPSES) re-formulated to meet its new aims, primarily consolidation and institutionalisation, before the final handover.

According to the FSPSES, the Project intends to complete, strengthen, consolidate, institutionalise and transfer the ownership of the activities it has already undertaken. These include socially equitable, economically viable, and environmentally sustainable community-based NRM systems and relative livelihood opportunities for poor and disadvantaged groups. Throughout the process it will use a conflict-sensitive framework. The FSPSES emphasises in particular the need to ensure the sustainability of the Project gains described above and to hand over assets in an orderly fashion. It believes that if timely initiatives are made in good governance and conflict resolution, second-generation community forestry can reduce poverty and inequity. Action too late or not at all could, in contrast, aggravate existing disparities.

	Peace and security
	Other guiding principles

Peace and security

Underpinning all Project activity is a concern for peace and security. In fact, it was the escalation of the insurgency nationwide and in the Project districts of Kabhre Palanchok and Sindhu Palchok that prompted AusAID to opt for an early end. The May 2005 deaths of three Sungure CFUG members and of NACRMLP facilitators at the hands of Maoists in retaliation for a perceived betrayal to Royal Nepal Army forces, only confirmed that the Project’s Post-Stage One decision of January 2005 was indeed the right one. The safety of its staff, the Project maintained, was more important than its continued presence. Other recent incidents, including Maoist abductions of community members in Dapcha Khola and a raid of the Project office in Chautara, provided further rationalisation, if any was needed.

In Stage Two, which also includes the interim period from February to May 2005, the Project has adopted some special responses to the conflict. Among them is bringing the need for safety and security to the height of awareness in all staff and adopting a do-no-harm policy which provides for every initiative to either promote peace or, at the very least, to minimize conflict. In addition, team leaders schedule regular meetings to deconstruct and analyse recent conflicts and review work programmes in light of the results. The Project has a strong Health and Safety Plan (HASP) and all staff have been trained in Safe and Effective Development in Conflict (SEDC). Other key actions have been to maintain transparency and openness in the field and to maintain contact with MFSC staff and other organisations to assess the level of risk. Like most other bilateral projects operating in Nepal, it has adopted and adheres to a set of basic guidelines for operating in conflict.

Security-Related Operating Guidelines

Security-Related Operating Guidelines agreed to by Bilateral and Multilateral Donor Agencies Working in Nepal.
Based on principles agreed internationally and in Nepal, we have adopted the following Basic Operating Guidelines for all development and, if necessary, humanitarian assistance in Nepal.

1. We are in Nepal to contribute to improvements in the quality of life of the people of Nepal. Our assistance focuses on reducing poverty, meeting basic needs and enabling communities to become self-sufficient.
   
2. We work through the freely expressed wishes of local communities, and we respect the dignity of people, their culture, religion, and customs.
   
3. We provide assistance to the poor and marginalised people of Nepal, regardless of where they live and who they are. Priorities for assistance are based on need alone, and not on any political, ethnic or religious agenda.
   
4. We ensure that our assistance is transparent, and we involve poor people and their communities in the planning, management an implementation of programmes. We are accountable to those whom we seek to assist and to those providing the resources.
   
5. We seek to ensure that our assistance tackles discrimination and social exclusion, most notably based on gender ethnicity, caste and religion.
   
6. We recruit staff on the basis of suitability and qualification for the job, and not on the basis of political or any other considerations.
   
7. We do not accept our staff and development partners being subjected to violence, abduction, harassment of intimidation, or being threatened in any manner.
   
8. We do not work where staff are forced to compromise their core values or principles.
   
9. We do not accept our assistance being used for any military, political, or sectarian purposes.
   
10. We do not make contributions to political parties and do not make any forced contributions in cash or kind.
    
11. 11. Our equipment, supplies and facilities are not used for purposes other than those stated in our programme objectives. Our vehicles are not used to transport person or goods that have no direct connection with the development programme. Our vehicles do not carry armed or uniformed personnel.
    
12. We do not tolerate the theft, diversion or misuse of development or humanitarian supplies. Unhindered access of such supplies is essential.
    
13. We urge all those concerned to allow full access by development and humanitarian personnel to all people in need of assistance, and to make available, as far as possible, all necessary facilities for their operations, and to promote the safety, security and freedom of movement of such personnel.
    
14. We expect and encourage all parties concerned will comply strictly with their obligations under International Humanitarian Law and to respect Human Rights.
    

Other guiding principles

Project staff safety is NACRMLP’s highest priority and is, in a sense, the overarching environment in which all other efforts take place, but the ultimate end of the Project is toward ensuring the fulfillment of its final mission--a smooth handover of achievements, tested approaches, assets, roles and responsibilities to local, district and national stakeholders. To do this, NACRMLP has two main interests: mainstreaming certain elemental principles and creating an institutional structure within which this handover can take place.

Its main principles include sensitisation to, and application of, conflict resolution measures, GG, and GSE, as well as a commitment to flexibility. The latter idea includes both a quick-response element key for dealing with any unexpected, potentially harmful events as well as the understanding, discussed above with respect to upper slopes, that community forestry plans must be made on a case-by-case basis. Steps which will increase the likelihood of CFUGs seeking peaceful solutions include building awareness about the need for social harmony, training local-level NGSPs in negotiation skills, providing notification of meetings and conducting public auditing. GG and GSE will get a boost from consolidating best practices in the 27 CFUGs in five clusters the Project chose to focus on and from role modeling these principles as a Project.

More of a concern to the Project are structural issues. At the heart of a successful handover is consolidating key lessons and providing an institutional mechanism for their transfer. Other appropriate implementers, whether on the local, district or national level, must develop a sense of ownership of the Project’s activities and be ready to step in when the Project leaves.

To ensure that government officials, especially DFOs and DSCOs, take up their new roles, the Project, using GoN norms, has promoted team management with the PMC and formed task teams for developing approaches and modalities for the handover. All its principles will be applied to three tiers: from decentralised arrangements to empower the five focused clusters of CFUGs, to interactions tailored to district needs, to efforts to encourage national-level reformist policies. The latter task will include human resource management, user-friendly guidelines for CFUG-driven OP revision, and equity. District-level collaboration may be at the level of range posts, forest guards, or CFUG networks, but Project staffing will not increase. What will be especially important is that the Project connects with the partner best suited to continuing to provide the support CFUGs need.

What the Project will leave in place is a consolidated version of the Project’s three main concerns livelihood improvement, business development and sustainable natural resource management, all integrated in a holistic community forest OP. Through this approach, every CFUG will look toward social, economic and environmental growth. Integration will also incorporate a three-pronged awareness element in the LIP: a social equity and action programme (SEAAP), a community awareness programme (CAP) and conflict sensitivity training.

The Project believes that it can most successfully facilitate the implementation of revised operational plans by focusing on improving the quality of the plans of a limited number of clusters of CFUGs that meet certain criteria for activity consolidation: the extent of community development achieved in Stage One of Phase 6, the status of the OP, the potential for natural resource-based enterprise, and access and security. In adopting just five clusters of the 27 leading Stage One CFUGs that made LIPs, NACRMLP has abandoned its earlier vision of scaling up activity. It will instead make sure that the scope of its operations is determined by the scale which implementing partners can manage in a conflict situation.

To make sure that activity consolidation is institutionalised beyond just these few focus groups, the Project will support group-to-group service provision as well as a pool of resource people using at least ten teams of highly trained lead facilitators. This local service delivery system already functions informally but guidelines will be prepared to institutionalise it nationally.