Implementation in Perspective:

The basic challenge for the SPCS is to make the Strategy fully operative. Thus, detailed arrangements for its implementation have been set out. These include the institutional processes and mechanisms necessary for the Strategy's adoption, the avail- ability of finances required in each sector, and methods to monitor and assess progress towards sustainable development in the NWFP.

Institutional Processes

The dynamic and recurrent nature of the SPCS demands that strategic planning continues in conjunction with implementation-the one benefiting from the other. The SPCS believes that a plethora of new structures is not necessary, and that the existing institutions can be relied upon for its implementation, provided they are suitably reformed and strengthened. To that end, the SPCS makes several recommendations. These include:

Legislation

A commitment is made to:

• develop, institute, and operate environmental impact assessment procedures to integrate environment and development;
• enact a provincial environmental law, complementing the Federal legislation;
• make the SPCS a legal requirement to be repeated several years before each Five-Year Plan;
• review and reform forest laws, as well as laws dealing with the urban environment; and
• assess the needs and, if required, enact a law to ensure the supply of clean drinking water and sanitation facilities for the people.

Coordination

A commitment is made to:

• remove the overlap in environmental coordination structures by reconstituting the Provincial Environment Protection Council and the Steering Commit- tee, to be coordinated by a focal point in the Chief Minister's Secretariat or the PE&D Department;
• institute Round Tables and focal points in the key sectors of environment;
• open up District Development Advisory Committees and Social Action Boards to grassroots input by providing for NGO representation;
• assess the need for and institute Environmental Coordination Committees at the district level;
• integrate the Social Action Programme with the SPCS; and
• improve coordination with the National Conservation Strategy's implementation at the Federal level.

Build Capacity

A commitment is made to:

• strengthen the PE&D Department to enable it to effectively coordinate and oversee SPCS implementation;
• further strengthen the EPA to allow it to have a regional presence outside Peshawar and to ensure effective enforcement of environmental laws;
• create a fund that Government departments could use to hire short-term consultants for small sums (up to Rs. 50,0001, with short and simple procedures to turn SPCS recommendations into project proposals;
• carry out institutional reform in the key sectors of environment to combat corruption, increase efficiency, and generate capacity for environmental management;
• place information about public-sector development projects and programmes in the public domain;
• dedicate a portion of the proposed Environmental Information Management Centre to setting up a data base on monitoring the SPCS; and
• assess and provide for the needs of the traffic police to combat vehicular pollution and to protect its personnel against air pollution on the roads.

Financing

The total financial requirement for carrying out the SPCS is an estimated Rs. 65.578 billion, of which Rs. 14.787 would be needed in the short term (1995-1998). These are ballpark figures, worked out on the basis of costs of comparable projects implemented in the past. The actual cost of the project would, however, vary.

What is likely to be made available over the coming three years is Rs. 11.240 billion. This assessment is, again, based on two factors: the trend in public sector investment during the past three years, and greater interest of government and the donors in some sectors than in the others.

In order to ensure that the SPCS does not become entirely donor-dependent and that implementation of key actions are taken according to the availability of local resources, the SPCS themes and the order of recommendations within each have been prioritized in an outline action plan.

The arrangement of major themes follows the relative priorities assigned to them by the people of the NWFP. For example, governance and capacity building is a major priority, while cultural heritage is a lower priority. This does not mean that the cultural heritage component will be implemented only after all others have been implemented. In fact, simultaneous action in all the component strategies is necessary. However, it does mean that if there was only one new rupee available for the SPCS, it would be invested in governance and capacity building before anything else.

Assessing Progress

Monitoring the implementation of the SPCS and assessing its contribution to sustainability are two different things. Implementation does not necessarily mean having the desired effect. Hence it is essential to provide for both.

Monitoring

Basic mechanisms will be established to monitor each objective in each priority area. These will include work plans with objectives, sub-objectives, outputs, activities, and results.-

These work plans then become the principal management tools, not only to report results on a six monthly basis, but to allow frequent monitoring, concurrent critiques, a reassessment of priorities, and inevitable crisis management. They will also serve as the basis for employee’s evaluation, budget control, and ultimately the design of the sub- sequent versions of the SPCS.

Several useful mechanisms exist to monitor the strategy and to assess progress towards achieving sustainability. The focal points in key sectors will be networked with the PE&D Department to provide monitoring information for their respective sectors. In addition, the Department will commission its own periodic surveys to gather quantitative and qualitative information about the efficiency and relevance of the recommended actions, and about the progress towards sustainable development.

The monitoring data will be collected and translated into proposals for adjustment in strategic planning and in the approach to implementation. The Executive Committee for Environment and the Provincial Environment Protection Council will consider and approve the proposals as necessary.

Achieving Sustainability

Human well-being and ecosystem well-being are equally important, because people are an integral part of the ecosystem and the well-being of one is bound up in the well- being of the other. Sustainable well-being is the combination of human and ecosystem well-being. A society is sustainable only if both the human condition and the condition of the ecosystem are satisfactory or improving. If either is unsatisfactory or worsening, the society is unsustainable (IUCN, 1994)

A system to assess SPCS contribution to sustainability will be designed, and people will need to be involved in the assessment of sustainability. That has been partially achieved through the first two rounds of public consultation. At these meetings there were many suggestions about 'indicators'- about how to assess ecosystem and human well-being. This will happen for the overall strategy, but it will be tested more completely in the district-level strategies, where people are better versed in the quality of the environment and the quality of life.

SPCS: The Next Generation

This SPCS 1995-98 is the first generation of the Strategy-in effect, a 'snapshot' of the work in progress in 1995. But by 1998, the priority-setting process will be in line with the financial planning cycle of the Government of NWFP, and there will be a more rational connection between environmental priority-setting and financial reality.

In 1997, it will be appropriate to do an evaluation of the Transition to Implementation phase of the SPCS and to prepare for a reworking of the Strategy. In 1998, it will be linked to the Ninth Five-Year Plan. But this will have far more significance than the first one, given the dawning of a new millennium. In fact, the next phase of the SPCS might best be called the SPCS 2000 with an even longer term vision than the five- year planning cycle and work plan that it would contain. The SPCS 2000 will, there- fore, have a more symbolic component as well-defining with more precision a vision of sustainability for decades to come.

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