District Conservation Strategies

In 1992 the National Conservation Strategy was launched. Even before its launch, work in the NWFP had begun on initiating a Provincial Conservation Strategy—the SPCS. This was based on the realization that conservation and sustainable use of natural resources had to be planned and strategized closer to the people. In the design of the federation in Pakistan, the provinces have the mandate for management of natural resources in addition to planning and implementing most of the development activities.

The process of formulation of the SPCS further refined this understanding and it was recognized that that there would be a need for local initiatives for sustainable development and within that for conservation, protection and regeneration of natural resources. At the same time, due to the centralized dispensation of the state and consequent weaknesses in service delivery and development management, the need for decentralized approaches were recognized. The Rio Conference had also formulated the Local Agenda 21, which emphasized the need for decentralized development and placed added value on local initiatives. Due to all these factors District Conservation Strategies were conceived as district level strategic planning actions.

The SPCS emphasized decentralization as a reform of the state for achieving sustainable development. It also emphasized participatory approach towards development planning and implementation. The concept of DCS was a progress in the SPCS development moving towards implementation. Two districts were selected for the pilot phase of the concept. The purpose of the pilot formulation of two district conservation strategies was to demonstrate the implementability of the concepts of the SPCS in at least two different geographical and social domains.

The first district selected was Chitral due to its peculiar situation. It is a district with its unique culture and geography. The issues pertaining to development and conservation like depletion of natural resources, poverty, low social development and other factors were considered in selection of this district. The choice of the other district was initially Karak to provide a different context to the DCS process, since it was a dry plain compared with the mountainous Chitral. However the provincial government later had the view that Abbottabad may be selected as the second district due to the threat to natural resources there as well as being home to couple of other institutional reforms projects. Therefore Abbottabad was selected as the second district.

www.acs.iucnp.org

www.ccs.iucnp.org