Good governance: Best practice of WTLCP

Ek Raj Sigdel

Introduction
Transparency, social inclusion, making implementing partners accountable to local communities, bottom up planning process, and maintaining close coordination amongst stakeholders are considered as major ingredients of good governance. The Western Terai Landscape Complex Project (WTLCP) which is in implementation in the Far Western Terai for about two years has integrated the aforementioned elements in project cycle. The project is the joint undertaking of the Government of Nepal, UNDP, GEF, SNV Nepal, WWF, Bioversity International, NARC and LIBIRD.

Transparency
WTLCP has given utmost importance for making each and every project activities a transparent to its wider stakeholders, ranging from field to policy level people. It implements its activities through three major windows such as the government line agencies, local authority and civil society. The role of the project has just been seen as a facilitator. To maintain transparency, before and immediately after implementation of each and every activity, implementing partners are encouraged to make the budget public. In addition, implementing partners have been advised to display the agreed activities and associated budgets in their office premises, so that every citizen can have access of information. Even, some of the implementing partners have initiated the practice of handing over of the pay cheque to the beneficiary communities by organizing mass meetings in the project sites.

Similarly, WTLCP updates regularly its objectives, implementation and progress status to its stakeholders including, District Forest Coordination Committee - a mini parliament - that includes some 30 members, representing political parties, line agencies, local authority, civil society and individuals. Interaction and open communication with implementing partners and other stakeholders have been maintained. As far as possible, each and every meeting / workshops related to the project have been used to disseminate WTLCP objectives and implementation approaches. It is believed that the project has been introduced to about 80% of the total of about 20,000 households in the project sites thus far.

Social inclusion
To ensure participation of women, dalit, indigenous communities and marginalized people, the project has adopted a positive discrimination approach. In this process, at the Village Development Committee (VDC) level, the local communities are ranked into four well-being groups. Based on the indicators developed by the participants themselves, local people are differentiated into rich, medium, poor and very poor categories. To ensure the access of project benefits to the poorest of the poor communities, the project supports them with nine day entrepreneurship development training. The training helps developing their confidence on micro enterprises development. Then, to attract the trainee in their desired business, the project supports them with some soft loan through forming cooperatives at VDC level. An arrangement has been made with the cooperative so that the poorest of the poor people can have access of the loan in lower interest rate compared to the other share holders.

Similarly, the project has conducted various training on good governance, leadership development and alternative livelihood opportunities for its implementing partners. Roster of the implementing partners, especially local NGO have been established and updated regularly. In this regard, WTLCP invites letter of interest including introduction and experiences of potential NGOs through local News Papers. Based on the financial and technical proposals, project identifies the implementing partners.

The management responsibilities of the project activities have been gradually handed over to the local community based organizations. To make them accountable in their activities, the local community representatives are encouraged participating in District Forest Coordination Committee (DFCC) meetings. And any query related to the performances of those activities; have to be answered by the community representatives themselves.

Participatory planning and implementation
The project has adopted participatory planning and implementation approaches from the very beginning of its implementation stages. It has been realized that the involvement of the local communities in the project planning process creates ownership of local people on the planned activities. It ultimately helps smooth implementation of the project. The exercises also make them accountable on the outcome of the project activities.

While preparing the participatory Annual Plan 2008, the project underwent a series of consultation processes with various tiers of stakeholders. Firstly, by organizing pre planning meetings in Kathmandu, following the project document, a participatory planning guideline - 2008 was prepared. After that, based on the guideline, in consultation with the WTLCP field staff members, site specific planning guidelines were designed. Then, a preplanning orientation workshop of VDC level stakeholders, including political party, line agencies, local authority, forest user groups, committees and coordination committees and civil society were held. Then, a two day planning workshops were conducted in each it's working VDCs. To aware the planning process and importance, the project mobilized some of the district political party leaders as Resource Person. In addition, to avoid duplication, the project utilized the expertise of District Development Committee Program Officer as Resource Person in some WTLCP working VDCs. After undergoing a thorough discussion on each and every proposed activity, the plans at VDC level were prepared. Finally, the plans were forwarded to the DFCC meetings for approval. During the DFCC meeting, the community representatives themselves were encouraged to present their plan to the DFCC members. As the DFCC meeting represents district based stakeholders, it creates an opportunity of making aware district based political party on the importance of conserving biodiversity resources and participatory planning.

To maintain consistency in the planning process, all the project staff members attended the first VDC level planning workshop. Then, the staff members were mobilized in group as well as individually in all the planning workshops. It has been realized that the participatory planning process undertaken at VDC level enhanced the capacity of staff members as well as local communities. It developed confidence of the staff members as well as local communities on the participatory planning process.

The project has adopted Appreciative Participatory Planning and Action (APPA) tool to prepare the settlement based plan. To ensure the effective implementation of the community based plan, the project has encouraged forming a monitoring committee at VDC and DDC level. In this regard, a project monitoring committee representing political party, community based organization, women and Dalit at Godawari VDC of Kailali District has already been proposed. Likewise, the initiation of forming monitoring committee at district level has been taken by forming a monitoring and evaluation committee in Kailali District. The 7 member committee represents political party, FECOFUN, and District Forest Office, Kailali.

Coordination
As the landscape approach to conservation demand establishing functional linkages in various land uses, it is equally important to establish a connection amongst the stakeholders at organizational level. In this regard, the project has given utmost importance for establishing and functionalizing District Forest Coordination Committees (DFCC) at district level. DFCC has already been established in Bardia, Kailali and Kanchanpur. The DFCC discusses on the various conservation and development issues regularly. The project updates the DFCC on plan and progress regularly. As the meeting demands presence of district line agencies, civil society and local authority representatives in a place, it creates an opportunity of discussing various issues and activities. It facilitates inter sectoral coordination in the district level. In order to establish strong coordination between fields based community organizations and district based government line agencies, the WTLCP has initiated the practice of preparing and presenting community and line agencies plan for WTLCP in the DFCC meetings. The practice creates an environment for government line agencies to understand community initiatives and giving feed back on the community plan.

Mobilizing district based political party leaders, District Development Committee Program Officer and line agencies representatives as resource persons for facilitating the village level planning helped a lot in avoiding any duplication on community activities. Also, most of the village level meetings were undertaken in the VDC offices premises so that the community had the opportunity of knowing VDC plan and exploring possibilities of establishing partnership with the VDC programs.

Moreover, to strengthen the coordination amongst the stakeholders, the project has carried out various interaction meetings and open communications. It has helped to establish a trust, which is considered a prerequisite for successful implementation of the project activities.

Challenges
There are many challenges to institutionalize the practice of good governance participatory planning, and coordination. Firstly, the expectations of local communities have been increased greatly, mainly after advent of the democratic republic regime in the country. People think that the project should have dealt with all the development issues instead of paying attention more on conservation related activities. Secondly, the policy makers and local communities, especially forest dependent marginalized people want to see immediate benefit of the project, which is not possible to show within one or two year's period. Likewise, absence of elected body in VDC and DDC level causes many obstacles to ensure smooth running of VDC and DDC based coordination meetings. Moreover, in the changing political context the existing DFCC guideline is not acceptable to the DFCC members. As the landscape approach to conservation is an evolving science, the project has to gain knowledge by experiencing itself.

Opportunity
Based on the experiences, to institutionalize participatory planning process, to strengthen the coordination, and to maintain transparency a platform of local stakeholders is also necessary at the VDC level, which is not provisioned in the project document. To attract politician and other stakeholders' involvement in the natural resource conservation, it is imperative to show them the higher value of the natural resources in monetary term. The DFCC guidelines should be reviewed timely, so that the project can attract suggestions from various quarters of society. In addition, a joint monitoring system should be institutionalized in the project implementation processes. Finally, if all the disintegrated activities are synchronized, then it would open an avenue for addressing need of many local people.

Conclusion
Within a short span of time, despite having many challenges, the project has been able to attract the attention of wider stakeholders in the front of good governance, participatory planning and coordination. As the landscape concept as such is new to the world, sharing of the learning gained within the short period with broader communities would save their time and resources. The project should focus its upcoming activities to institutionalize and disseminate the best practices, so that it contributes to the landscape level planning.