TCO: GCP/INT/542/ITA
F.M.J. OHLER
FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS Gorkha, July 1997
This technical report is one of a series of reports prepared during the course of the project identified on the title page. The conclusions and recommendations given in the report are those considered appropriate at the time of its preparation. They may be modified in the light of further knowledge gained at subsequent stages of the project.
The designations employed and the presentation of the material in this document do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries.
In the period of October 1995 - January 1996 the Inter-regional Project for Participatory Upland Conservation and Development, GCP/INT/542/ITA, carried out a Participatory Rural Appraisal and Planning exercise in 26 communities of the Bhusunde Khola watershed in Gorkha District. This resulted in 26 Community Action Plans (CAPs), in which a total of 223 activities were proposed for implementation in 1996 (see also Field Document 3/97). The objective of this report is to document and report the participatory implementation of the 26 CAPs by the user groups of the Bhusunde Khola watershed with the assistance of the project in 1996 and 1997.
All CAPs follow the same structure, they indicate in the form of a table what the planned activities are, where they should be done and when, the number of beneficiary households, what the project should do, what other institutions should do, and what the community should do. The CAPs included 177 physical activities (any activity with a direct physical component, such as construction, planting, providing improved genetic material, handing over and management of forest), and 46 training activities. Water source protection was most popular, and was included 52 times, followed by trail improvement, which was included 24 times.
Criteria were set for user groups who wished to solicit project assistance, conditions were set for cost sharing arrangements, and participatory feasibility analysis were carried out. As a result 81 (46%) of the physical activities were screened out. Of the remaining 96 physical activities, 74 were implemented in 1996 and 1997, an implementation rate of 77% of all feasible activities, and 42% if all proposed physical activities are considered. Of the 46 proposed training activities 13 (28%) were rejected by the project for various reasons. Of the remainder, 15 proposed activities were actually realized. Often user groups participated in training events though they had not included these in their CAPs.
User groups contributed 41% of the total cost of engineering activities (gully control, water source protection, trail improvement, irrigation) in the form of non-remunerated un-skilled labour. A further 16% of total cost was contributed as remunerated skilled and un-skilled labour. Total labour contribution amounted to 19,000 days. Monitoring and evaluation, both at project and community level, were important elements in the successful implementation of such a large amount of activities.
Recommendations are made to improve the quality of participatory planning procedures, notably to include participatory feasibility analyses and data of time availability before finalizing the CAPs, and to pay systematic attention to the planning of training. Recommendations are also made on how to deal with time limitations in the participatory implementation of activities, and on the need for flexibility in the use and assignment of staff.
This electronic document has been scanned using optical character recognition (OCR) software and careful manual recorrection. Even if the quality of digitalisation is high, the FAO declines all responsibility for any discrepancies that may exist between the present document and its original printed version.
2.1 1995/96 PRA and planning exercise
2.2 1996 Community action plans
2.2.1 Participatory planning methods and tools used
2.2.2 CAP structure
2.2.3 Types of activities included in the CAPs
2.2.4 Size of CAPs2.3 Implementation of physical activities
2.3.1. Physical activities included in the CAPs
2.3.2 Criteria for project assistance
2.3.3 Cost sharing and people's contribution
2.3.4 Participatory feasibility analysis
2.3.5 Design of small scale engineering works
2.3.6 Implementation costs and agreements
2.3.7 Physical activities implemented2.4 Implementation of training activities
2.4.1 Training activities included in the CAPs
2.4.2 Selection and organization of training activities
2.4.3 Training activities implemented2.5.1 Project level monitoring
2.5.2 Project level evaluation
2.5.3 Community level monitoring
2.5.4 Community level evaluation2.6.1 Quality of the CAPs
2.6.2 Implementation rate
2.6.3 Participatory implementation of physical activities
2.6.4 Planning of training activities
2.6.5 Monitoring and evaluation
3.1 Quality of participatory planning procedures
3.2 Participatory implementation of CAPs
3.3 Facilitator skills and staff management