0092-C1
Krishna P. Acharya[1]
Forestry research in developing countries like Nepal can contribute significantly to the development and management of forest resources. Low policy priority, lack of development vision on the part of planners and managers, lack of funds, decreasing appointments of professional researchers and increasing frustration among existing researchers are major constraints for the development of effective research and development. Research administrators are often inept in creating favourable environments to stimulate research activities. Moreover, international research support organisations fail to encourage young research officers to participate in international forums, and line ministries ignore research participation in country meetings.
Appropriate thought must be paid to removing constraints in order to enable research institutions and researchers to fulfil the needs of forestry research to meet sustainable forestry development in developing countries. Forestry research has been given little attention by the public media. This is due to insufficient understanding of the importance of such research and its long-term nature. This paper aims to bring the issues of forestry research to the attention of wider audiences, of policy-makers and planners in order to draw attention to identifying appropriate solutions to the problems that forestry research is presently facing specially in developing countries.
Increasing need for forestry research has been recognised with the increasing awareness of the value of trees and forest (Burley, 1994). In general, forestry research in the developing countries has been unable to provide adequate information and responses to the challenges of sustainable forest development in a rapidly changing world. The editorial of Unasylva (1994) argues that this is due to insufficient understanding of the link between the strong national forestry research capacity and resolution of the boarder development issues. Sall (1994) urged that the main constraints to more effective forestry research in these countries is the lack of political and financial support and lack of adequate research management capacities. Moreover, most developing countries are located in the tropical and sub-tropical zones, where higher biodiversity with complex ecosystem exits creating difficult challenge in the development of sustainable land management system. In addition, the available technology on such complex systems is rudimentary (Temu 1987). Unfortunately, forestry research is less discussed and debated issues in all developing countries including Nepal.
Nepal is a small mountainous country, which extends 800 km east to west along the southern slopes of the Himalayas in central Asia. It is a land-locked country located between 80° 4' 88° 12' east longitudes and 26° 22' 30° 27' north latitude. Its total land area is 147,181 square kilometres. But there exists climatic variation resulting with a large number of flora and fauna that increases challenges to forestry researcher in Nepal. The Department of Forest Research and Survey (DFRS) under the Ministry of Forest and Soil conservation is authorised governmental organisation to carry out forestry research activities in Nepal though there are at least 30 different agencies involved in forestry research (Amatya 1999).
The forestry research activity in Nepal has been seriously constrained by the lack of resources specially financial and human resource (MPFS 19889). The situation has not been improved rather is worsened day by day. The forestry research programme has received lowest priority within the forestry sector. The MPFS (1989-2010) has identified forestry research as support programme and has placed in 10th position among twelve programmes. The present year budget allocation shows that the share of forestry research funding within the forestry sector is about 0.8 percent.
The MPFS 1989, defined research not only traditional research but also technical and policy information and their dissemination to the government's forest development workers and eventually to the large masses of rural people, who will be managing the country's community and private forests. To achieve these objectives, there should be clearly identified and prioritised set of short and long-term research programmes and pathway to implement them. The priority setting must be a central issues in research management (Brown 1994) however, is virtually absent in Nepal (Acharya, 2002). The first and foremost question to ask is forestry research for whom? The answer of this question provides identification of potential stakeholders and potential role of the DFRS. The DFRS has to play the role of information seeking and information sharing in ways that are beneficial to its stakeholders. These all situations demand for an improved planning process of the DFRS. The identification of stakeholders will guide the areas to be covered in the programme.
There is a lack of clear understanding of the fact that good forests are the result of good forestry research activities. This fact needs to be lobbied up to the policy level people through appropriate mechanism. Such mechanism will help to place forestry research as priority programme within the forestry sub-sector. At the same time, the research professionals need to be adapted for their roles, responsibilities and accountability. The DFRS must conduct need assessment activities to identify proper need of the Department. In the absence of this information programme identification, implementation and their outputs may not be useful, as they must have been. If regarded as a process, it will be able to capture changes and needs of stakeholders timely. Once needs have been identified, they should be prioritised for implementation.
Since all identified and prioritised needs may not be feasible to implement due to various reasons such as financial, technical and physical constraints. Therefore, an action plan describing the proper pathway should also be prepared for the smooth and effective planning and implementation of the activities. Once the action plan is prepared, identified activities should be implemented. Based on the nature of the activity, the implementation process should involve stakeholders. The scattered and diffuse activities should also be consolidated in some area so that it will have dual impact. The cost of programme will be reduced and the demonstration effect will be high and positive for active forest management. Figure 1 presents the conceptual framework showing the relative importance of researchers and stakeholders in forestry research programme in Nepal.
Figure 1: Conceptual framework showing the relative importance of researchers and stakeholders in forestry research programme in Nepal.
The regional and international co-operation in forestry research can foster efficiency and save scare resources. The proposed sissoo (Dalbergia sissoo) dieback study in Nepal, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan will help reducing cost and prevent duplication of research. The participation of researcher in international conferences and seminar will provide an opportunity to better understanding and widening their views.
Individual researcher motivation factors are essential to raise the standard of research (Burley, 1994). The MPFS, 1989 claimed that dedicated, research-minded, well-trained personnel are usually not attracted to research because of the disincentives that prevail in forestry research organisations. The MPFS has recommended extra motivation than normal salary for forestry researcher, such as flexible approach to promotion, flexible working hours, which were never implemented. A clear and transparent system of evaluation is necessary for a successful research organisation. Promotion and grade should be based on the evaluation of researcher performances indicators such as articles and papers and not on the based on the closeness of the boss. Often personnel relation keeps higher values. Research manager are increasingly moving to become more and more administrator and wants to reap benefits for individualization rather than institutionalisation. International organizations are also equally contributing to dissatisfaction to young researcher of poor countries. They rarely support young researcher from developing countries rather support head of the research institutions who are not researcher but are bureaucrats and with whom there is a good linkages of donor officials.
The trend of dropping out service from DFRS indicates towards tragedies situation to forestry research. The DFRS lost 1 senior manager, 3 middle level managers and 3 young research officers within a year. The dropping out clearly indicates the preferences of forestry researcher to leave research organisation, which could have been contributed due to low privileges in forestry research. It is a great loss of research institution as there is significant amount of investment of different scare resources to develop individual's researcher's capabilities. It is not only financial frustration but also humiliation for young officers to work in such an organisation where seniors are leaving the jobs. More frustration lies on the fact that academic study has also been limited in organisation like a research for example the MoFSC has ordered that only one researcher per year can apply for a Ph D study.
The DFRS is the most vulnerable organization and experienced several organization changes and restructuring. These structural changes have not been aimed to strengthen institutional or researcher capability rather to fit in organizational reform programme of the government. The employer of an organisation who is struggling for survival and counterparts in other departments are enjoying other benefits such as housing facilities, electricity and so on is definitely not working with full efficiency. Very frustration to mention that the productive sub sectors within the forestry like forest department, soil conservation and wild life all are enjoying benefits of donor support and an organisation like forestry research is running with the government fund, where 50 % cuts in allocated funds is experienced.
Monitoring and evaluation as a process has never been accepted in the DFRS. Research managers hardly visit field based research plots. Consequently, no evaluation system and chance for the improvement of research process and activities. The quality assessment of research is completely lacking due to lack of evaluation and monitoring system. Incentives and motivation to researchers at various stages of research implementation are essential. As mentioned earlier the career developments of individual researchers are even limited for higher academic study. So there is a question among researcher as where is our future working in this Department?
Efficient and effective demand driven research,
Research for the sake of research is waste of scarce resources unless the output is made available to the stakeholders through different extension media. This is the most critical part of the programme planning process for a forestry research organisation. However, limited concentration has been paid on publication issue. Researchers must be encouraged to publish their research results and the performance of the researcher should be based on their publication, which is lacking at the present. Moreover, regional and international forestry conferences and seminar could be a vital place to encourage young researcher to publish research results and reports.
As mentioned earlier, the research outputs should reach to the users in understandable, legible and in acceptable quality. The production of output in the form of leaflet or reports only is not sufficient but should be supported by effective dissemination mechanism. There should also be clear linkages and co-ordination mechanism within the different Department of the Ministry, training and extension wings of the ministry and public agencies like forest user group association.
The fundamental constraints for more effective forestry research in Nepal has been a lack of political and financial support resulting from a poor understanding of the links between forestry research importance and solutions to broader forestry issues. This needs strengthening the national forestry research capability and policy priority for research activities. The existing forest research and survey modality should be thoroughly reviewed, examined and updated to suit with the present need of the country. The increased research funding and staff motivation are essential elements for successful and quality research outputs. The area of research is highly increased due to new forestry sector policy. With the change in forest management paradigm of the country, forest research work also needs modification to include national priorities in future programme and activities. Such areas could be programme to include forestry research focused in contributing poverty alleviation and policy research issues, participatory action research, appropriate forest surveying model for community, resource assessment outside national forest and development of non-timber forest products management systems.
The research as institution is not functional; reasons are staff motivation and budget allocation. The existing forestry research approach and process of the DFRS is based on traditional approach, which needs to be revised to identify the potential role of the stakeholders. The fact that increasing the relevance of forestry research is a shift towards a more demand-driven approach including the involvement of end-users in setting the research priorities should be adopted by the DFRS. The analysis and dissemination of research result up to the stakeholders should also include in the programme planning process. Due to lack of investment in forestry research, forestry dominant land use categories in Nepal and green productive sector require financial support from other sectors. Forestry as a whole is unproductive and is increasingly is financial burden to the government. This situation can be tackle by placing not only more funds in forestry research but also long-term political and professional commitments associate with a stable organisation. The international donor agencies should also review their strategies to support researcher from developing countries. Creation of an appropriate environment by research manager should be given first priority.
Vision driven approach is necessary in place of existing crisis driven approach. The research should be able to capture paradigms shift in forest policy. The inadequate focus at present could be due to lack of recent research policies and programme directives and lack of involvement of stakeholders in programme planning process. The research needs of all other stakeholders such as research on soil conservation, biodiversity and community forestry were not adequately incorporated at present. The coverage of the research was also limited to some areas and geography. There is limited representation of climatic and geographical variations of the country in the research planning. Some of the important research issue such as plant disease has not been included at all.
Due to lack of recent programme planning policies and directives, planning of research activities was influenced by the individual researcher's biases (Acharya 2002). Moreover, the scattered and diffuse research activities are causing increasing financial burden to the Department. The future planning process of the Department may be based on the following two basic principles. These are participation of stakeholders in the planning process and development of an effective and efficient dissemination mechanism. The first step is to develop goal/vision of the DFRS. The formulation of goal will help to develop plan and programme to fulfil the demand of stakeholders. The national priority of the poverty alleviation should also be considered while setting the departmental vision.
Acharya, K.P. 2002. Role of forest research and survey in forestry development in Nepal. Our Forest in Nepali), Department of Forest
Amatya, S.M. 1999. Forestry Research and Its Application in Nepal. Proceedings of III National Conference on Science and Technology, March 8-11, 1999, Kathmandu, Nepal.
Brown A.G. 1994. Setting and implementing research priorities. In Proceedings of international seminar on forestry research management, 2-6 March, 1994, Dehra Dun India, pp13-19.
Burley, J. Evaluation of forestry research and incentives for excellence. In Proceedings of international seminar on forestry research management, 2-6 March, 1994, Dehra Dun India, pp51-59.
FINNIDA 1987 Forestry Research Management, Helsinki, Finland
HMG, 1989. Forestry Sector Policy: Master Plan for the Forestry Sector of Nepal. Ministry of Forests and Soil Conservation, HMG/ADB/FINNIDA, Kathmandu.
HMG, 1989. Master Plan for the Forestry Sector of Nepal: Forestry Research Development Plan. Ministry of Forests and Soil Conservation, HMG/ADB/FINNIDA, Kathmandu.
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| [1] Assistant Research Officer,
Ministry of Forest and Soil Conservation, Forest Research Division, GPO
Box 3339, Kathmandu, Nepal. Email: [email protected] |