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Strategies, plans, impacts and people: IIED's role in changing the world of planning and environmental assessment

Barry Dalal-Clayton

The concept of sustainable development began to take shape during the 1980s. Following from the writings of Barbara Ward, the 1980 World Conservation Strategy pushed for the integration of environment and conservation values in development. In 1987, the report of the Brundtland Commission¹ also promoted closer links between environment and development and emphasized issues of social and economic sustainability. Brundtland defined sustainable development as ‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’.

I joined IIED in 1988 when Brundtland mania was sweeping the development community and the Institute was in a period of expansion. Over the next four years our focus was on the 1992 Earth Summit. Agenda 21, one of its main accords, placed sustainable development as the internationally agreed core goal for development. It called on all countries to develop national strategies for sustainable development to translate the words and commitments of the Earth Summit into concrete policies and actions. But no official guidance was forthcoming on how to do this. IIED has been working on this challenge ever since, analysing experience and practices with partners and practitioners in many countries.

To achieve its aims, Agenda 21 also signalled the need for effective, integrated planning supported by appropriate tools such as environmental impact assessment (EIA) and natural resource surveys and evaluations. Yet by this time, planning had somehow earned itself a bad name. As the more participatory and integrated ethos of sustainable development was gaining increasing acceptance, ‘planning’ was becoming increasingly associated with all that was seen to be wrong with the failures of state-controlled development in the communist-bloc countries. We saw part of our task at IIED as promoting more participatory and holistic approaches to planning through integrating economic, social and environmental concerns.

STRATEGIES FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

It was clear to us that the emerging international experience of national conservation strategies, the parallel approaches adopted for developing Tropical Forestry Action Plans and various other strategic planning mechanisms offered a platform on which to build for countries to address the wider challenge of sustainable development. The World Bank had also been pushing the preparation of National Environmental Action Plans (NEAPs). If countries wanted to secure soft loans (under IDA-9), it was required that they complete a NEAP by 1993 at the very latest. This was criticized as a form of conditionality. Guidance to Bank staff was provided in the infamous Operational Directive 4.02. NEAPs, particularly the first generation in Africa, were often developed in a highly top-down manner and usually led by Bank ‘experts’.

We began to debate the idea of national strategies for sustainable development, and introduced these ideas into discussions during the preparatory process for the Rio Earth Summit. Later we were responsible for crafting some of the language on the need for strategies for sustainable development which was subsequently taken up and peppered throughout Agenda 21. In the run up to Rio, Johan Holmberg – on secondment to IIED from the Swedish International Development Agency (Sida) – ran the Institute's 1992 programme which concentrated on building awareness of the challenge of sustainable development.

A short explanatory booklet about sustainable development² was a key document used extensively by negotiators attending preparatory meetings for Rio. It contained some early ideas on indicators of sustainable development – as opposed to a mix of strictly economic, social or environmental ones. The indicators gave a flavour of what sustainable development would look like – for example, passenger kilometres travelled by public transport were increasing in proportion to those travelled by private motorized transport. These suggested indicators were intended to be easier to monitor than the indicators proposed by the Commission for Sustainable Development and other international organizations, and more conducive to participatory monitoring by citizens’ groups.

In the aftermath of Rio, IIED's Environmental Planning Group, funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the UK's Overseas Development Administration, began work on a review of experience in developing and implementing National Conservation Strategies (NCSs), Tropical Forestry Action Plans (TFAPs), National Environmental Action Plans (NEAPs), and a range of other processes in order to learn lessons and provide guidance for developing strategies on sustainable development. At the same time, IUCN embarked on a programme to to learn from its 14 years of experience of NCSs. This was a joint inititiative of IUCN's Secretariat in Switzerland and IUCN's Commission for Environmental Strategies and Planning. In 1992, IIED and IUCN combined forces and, following several regional workshops involving strategy practitioners, developed a handbook for the planning and implementation of national strategies for sustainable development.³

Several thousand copies of this handbook were distributed to decision-makers, planners, academics, governments, donors, UN organizations and others, and it became the main source for those charged with developing strategies. The handbook was a great success and we were asked to run a string of workshops and seminars for different donors, and to contribute to conferences on the subject. At IIED, we also produced a series of papers giving more detail on particular aspects of strategies (eg, key dilemmas, participation, the challenge for small island states).

Requests came in from different governments for information, advice and help in developing their strategies. ODA commissioned IIED to help the Government of St Helena with its strategy – on this we collaborated with Kew Gardens which was working on conserving the endemic island species. We also worked with the World Bank to help it reflect on its experience of NEAPs and had some fairly intensive ‘discussions’ with somewhat defensive Bank staff. But slowly the Bank took on board many of the principles we had pulled together in the handbook, and this contributed to a change in the Bank's policy and behaviour on NEAPS.

Many developing-country practitioners expressed a need for information on how developed countries were developing their strategies. So, in 1996, IIED produced a study of strategy experience in industrial countries. The problems faced by developing and developed countries in preparing strategies for sustainable development are usually quite different. Most developing countries are occupied with achieving economic development, through industrialization where this is possible, and by expanding production. By comparison, one of the key issues for sustainable development in most developed countries is dealing with the problems caused by high levels of consumption, by existing industries and by technology-based economies (for example, pollution and waste). The study⁴ showed some marked differences between the processes followed in the North and South (see Box 13.1) but also suggested that that the developed and developing countries have much to learn from each other.

In 1997, governments met again at the Special Session of the UN in New York to take stock of progress since Rio. It was noted that there had been continued deterioration in the state of the global environment under the combined pressures of unsustainable production and consumption patterns and population growth. This assessment led governments to set a target date of 2002 for introducing national strategies for sustainable development (nssds⁵). In preparing for the UN meeting, the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the OECD called for the formulation and implementation of a sustainable development strategy in every country by 2005 (adopting this as one of seven International Development Goals).⁶ The document also committed DAC members to support developing countries in the formulation and implementation of nssds through a partnership approach.

Despite these international targets, there was a lack of clarity about the nature of an nssd (there is still no internationally agreed definition). Nor was there any official guidance on how to prepare one. The DAC therefore launched a project to clarify the purposes and principles underlying effective national and local strategies for sustainable development, describe the various forms they can take in developing countries, and offer guidance on how development cooperation agencies can support them. Because of its acknowledged expertise on strategies, IIED was asked to help design, coordinate and facilitate this work. It was undertaken in collaboration with a donor Task Force co-chaired by DfID and the EC.

Between 1999 and 2001, we coordinated stakeholder dialogues and reviews of a range of different strategic planning processes in eight countries, each led by local teams, and organized three international workshops. An innovation used to support the project was the development of a strategies website.⁷ This culminated in the development of policy guidance on nssds as a partnership exercise between developing countries and DAC members (the first time this had been done) with IIED drafting the initial text. The guidance was endorsed by aid ministers at the High Level DAC. The project is now in its final stage as we put together a resource book with detailed case studies and methodological guidance.

In the past, many strategic planning initiatives have had limited practical impact because they have focused on the production of a document as an end-product, and not been implemented. It is now accepted that, instead, the focus of an nssd should be on improving the integration of social and environmental objectives into key economic development processes. The DAC guidance defines an nssd as:

A co-ordinated set of participatory and continuously improving processes of analysis, debate, capacity-strengthening, planning and investment, which seeks to integrate the short and long term economic, social and environmental objectives of society – through mutually supportive approaches wherever possible – and manages trade offs where this is not possible.⁸

Sustainable development strategies require a systematic approach and iterative processes of learning and doing. Different strategic planning processes can be used as starting points for a strategy for sustainable development. The learning from the country dialogues and other experience confirmed that putting a sustainable development strategy into operation would, in practice, most likely consist of improving existing strategic planning processes and their coordination rather than establishing a new process.

LAND USE AND RURAL PLANNING

Our work at IIED on land use planning was also greatly influenced by my earlier experiences working with the Department of Agriculture in Zambia in the 1970s and 1980s. We undertook soil and land capability surveys, producing beautiful maps. However, we achieved very little by way of effective progress for the rural poor. Our soil maps were never used to any effect. They were far too technical and couldn't be understood except by professionals. They were not wanted by decision-makers. Costly printed maps lay unused in offices, although one office messenger used some to paper the wall of his hut to keep out the draught. The land use plans were prepared mainly in provincial offices and headquarters with no involvement of the beneficiaries.

In Tanzania, there were numerous, expensive, integrated rural development programmes, water master plans, zonal plans and similar initiatives of the 1970s and 1980s, none of which made a lasting difference. One reason why these plans were unsustainable was because they placed very little emphasis on institutional building. Usually, they were managed by expatriate staff, and all activities tended to grind to a halt when their short-term contracts came to an end. The remaining local staff had limited skills or capacity and were unable to manage and sustain the programmes. Also, the lack of benchmark indicators and adequate data prevented any assessment of impacts of these programmes.

Our work at IIED found these problems to be commonplace in many developing countries, and we used the principles of sustainable development to look for a better way to proceed. In 1991, we began the Planning for Sustainable Development project. This involved detailed case studies of experience of resource assessment and land use planning in Sri Lanka and Tanzania. These were undertaken by local teams based in the Land Use Policy Planning Division, Sri Lanka, and the Institute of Resource Assessment, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. We worked with contacts around the world to prepare a review of resource assessment and the use of land resource information in developing countries.

The reports of this project launched a new IIED publications series – Environmental Planning Issues. The overview study⁹ found that large surveys had often been undertaken without establishing who would use the information collected, and how. Much information gathered by costly surveys had been under-utilized and effectively lost. It confirmed that land use planning remained largely sectoral and unintegrated, and usually centralized and top-down. There was little effective participation in land use planning by the supposed beneficiaries. The series also provided examples of emerging practices in participatory planning, and recommended how to change approaches. The overview study, recently updated with new materials,¹⁰ had a significant impact on FAO's planning practices and procedures, has been used extensively by rural planning departments, and has become a key teaching text in universities.

In the mid-1990s, the concept of sustainable livelihoods gained prominence and was adopted by DfID as a key pillar of its thinking. In 1998, DfID commissioned IIED to undertake a study of approaches to rural planning, to learn about potential contributions to sustainable livelihoods. The work involved country case studies in Ghana, South Africa and Zimbabwe (again, undertaken by local partners) and an overview synthesizing global experience.¹¹ The work led to some key conclusions:

• There is a paramount need for rural planning to operate under a truly domestically driven development vision at national and sub-national levels – not tied to party, ethnic or religious groups.
• The sustainable livelihoods concept offers a powerful focus for development planning, linking natural, human and capital assets of a particular place both with the vulnerability and opportunities of different livelihoods and with potentially transforming institutions (governmental and non-governmental) and processes (eg legal, planning).This contrasts with previous piecemeal support for services, infrastructure and commodity projects. It remains to translate sustainable livelihoods into practical guidelines for effective decision-making and action on the ground. The real value of sustainable livelihoods as a planning concept is that it brings together a small number of key factors. Its value will be lost if it is made over-complicated.
• Two underlying causes of the general failure of top-down planning in poor and emerging countries have been the absence of any local stake or input to the planning process, and the preference of donors to bypass ineffective local administrations by setting up financially and administratively autonomous project organizations, which have further weakened local capacity to plan and deliver development. In reaction to these failures, decentralization and participation are now the watchwords.
• Planning is not a politically neutral, technical activity. It is now increasingly recognized that successful implementation of development plans depends upon common ownership of the problems and the proposed solutions by the people who will be affected. This common ownership may arise from consensus about the goals and the necessary actions, or from a negotiated compromise between groups with different goals and insights.
• If there is to be negotiation of a sustainable future, there must be some forum that commands general respect and legitimacy where all stakeholders can negotiate and contribute to plans. Appropriate platforms for decision-making are needed at each level of planning (local, district and national) and the stakeholders must be equipped to participate.

The need to adopt more participatory planning approaches is increasingly being accepted – particularly with the focus now placed on decentralization. For example, as part of its support to the decentralization process in Tanzania under the Capacity 21 programme, UNDP is promoting participatory planning in two pilot districts. To guide the design of this programme, in 1999, I worked again with Professor Idris Kikula, former Director of the Institute of Resource Assessment (IRA) at the University of Dar es Salaam. This was yet another in a series of fruitful collaborative studies undertaken with the IRA over the past decade (see Box 13.2).

Achieving progress in planning depends on resolving several key questions, which also indicate where we need to concentrate future efforts.

1Are bureaucrats willing to do things differently, thinking and behaving in more open, participatory ways that provide for dialogue and consensus-building in order to agree what is needed and how to get there. Are they also willing to decentralize? Experience has shown so far that this is not the case. There is therefore, a need to identify motivations to encourage bureaucrats to work differently.

2Are institutions willing to work in support of each other to achieve cross-sectoral integration and synchronization? Experience shows that, in many countries, cross-sectoral intergration is constrained by government structures even at the lowest levels. Heads of departments are rewarded for performance in their own sectors and not for inter-sectoral activities. There is a need to identify and support, in each situation, the constructive institutional relationships that exist, how to build capacity through action to overcome initial constraints.

3Is there political will for the necessary changes and new planning frameworks that support rather than inhibit participatory approaches? Such political will needs to be harnessed to achieve realistic objectives and to implement change.

4What is the appropriate role for government? This needs to be clarified, particularly in relation to private enterprise – the latter represents an important resource (often virtually the only resource in many countries, albeit it at a low level) to drive effective development.

DEVELOPING ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT METHODS

Environmental impact assessment (EIA) was first introduced in the USA as a requirement of the 1969 National Environmental Protection Act. During the 1970s, it emerged as a procedure for encouraging decision-makers to take account of the effects of development on environmental quality and the productivity of natural resources. More than half of the countries in the world now have a formal EIA system, and increasingly comprehensive and sophisticated procedures have been drawn up by development agencies.

Work on environmental assessment took off at IIED in 1988, with IIED providing various support services to the British Overseas Development Administration (ODA) and then to its successor, the Department for International Development (DfID). We screened hundreds of projects for their potential environmental impact (often also addressing the social issues). Projects ranged from industrial plant and transport infrastructure, hydropower dams and irrigation schemes, to wildlife management and conservation activities. We also assessed projects for other agencies.

In the early 1990s, commissioned by ODA, IIED undertook an impact assessment of the Kilombero Valley Hardwood Project in Tanzania, together with the Institute of Resource Assessment. The Kilombero project was being proposed by the Commonwealth Development Corporation (CDC) and would see the investment of £29 million in a private-sector venture to grow 25,000ha of teak. Rather than conduct a conventional EIA, we based the assessment on sustainability principles, examining social and economic as well as environmental aspects. The process was participatory, involving a range of stakeholders and engaging with local communities through traditional village fora.

The assessment findings were in favour of the project in general terms, but we took issue with a number of elements which were not in the best interests of the local communities. ODA was generally pleased with the report but CDC reacted strongly – more I think out of pique that ODA had insisted on this EIA and that someone had been critical of its plans. In practice, many of our suggestions were subsequently taken up by the project managers and, ironically, CDC did then change its ways of working and adopted EIA procedures consistent with the approach we had followed.

The Kilombero experience signalled the need for a modified approach to EIA based on basic principles of sustainable development – integrating environmental, social and economic concerns – an approach which has been dubbed sustainability analysis.¹⁵ But progress in securing such integration in EA practice remains a major challenge. The problems are not really technical or methodological, they have more to do with lack of institutional and political will.

At the request of the DAC, 1991 saw us launch the International Environmental and Natural Resource Assessment Information Service (Interaise) in collaboration with WRI and IUCN. Over the next five years, three Directories of Country Environmental, Studies were compiled (led by WRI), regional directories were produced for southern Africa and Latin America (by IUCN) and an Interaise information service was established at IIED, providing copies of documents to developing countries. In 1992, we completed a series of environmental synopses assessing environmental conditions and trends in a number of countries.

In late 1992, IIED embarked on a major review in Bangladesh, to provide a balanced assessment of challenges to water management. It was stimulated by misguided international efforts (led by the World Bank) to support the preparation of a Flood Action Plan (FAP) in response to periodic (and devastating) floods. The review¹⁶ reinterpreted some of the vital inter-relationships, highlighted the inadequate attention to environmental issues and participation of floodplain communities in the FAP process, and pointed to the need for strategic planning to provide integrated water resources management. This report added to the weight of criticism of the FAP. In the event, many donors declined (for various reasons) to provide support to implement projects proposed by the FAP. As a result, the FAP died and was replaced by the National Water Management Plan which was influenced by the criticisms made of the FAP by the IIED study and many others.

Collaborative work with the IRA in Tanzania was also central to our attempt to determine objectively the influence of environmental impact assessment. EIA is big business internationally, with countless consultancy companies offering services. But it is questionable whether, as currently practised, it is providing value for money or making any effective difference to steer development down a sustainable path. IIED aims to undertake further studies in other developing countries with different types of EIA frameworks and institutional capacity.

EIA has rarely been attempted at policy level. However, there is increasing recognition of the value of introducing environmental considerations at the earlier stages of the decision-making process. In response, we have recently seen the emergence of Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) – environmental assessment at the level of policies, programmes and plans. Several developed countries have also established SEA systems – some mandatory, some informal. There has also been considerable recent interest in the use and application of SEA in developing countries.

During 1998-99, Barry Sadler and I undertook preliminary study of SEA in developing countries, to investigate experiences, constraints and opportunities for implementing sustainable development strategies. A more thorough stock-taking is now planned, given the momentum which appears to be growing to promote the use of SEA in the South. A key question here is whether SEA, as it is currently understood and applied in the developed world, is an appropriate tool for promoting sustainability in developing countries or those in transition. One element of SEA is scenario planning, which helps us to see options for the future and to agree on what kind of world we want to live in. Scenario planning is an area in which more effort should be invested, particularly to represent the full range of stakeholders.

IIED is perhaps best known in the world of EIA for its Directories of Impact Assessment Guidelines¹⁷ which aim to improve awareness of, and access to, existing guidelines. The directories have gained international recognition as sourcebooks for EIA practitioners. It is hoped to begin work on the third edition in the near future, to include chapters focusing on good practice in environmental assessment.

The ideas of sustainable development can now be found in almost every quarter, and the buzzwords (participation, integration and the rest) are in common use. But an even bigger challenge remains – to put the principles into practice and to implement sustainable development. Here it is not a question of methodologies – there are sufficient tools already available and people who know how to use them. Rather, it means securing the political will, at all levels; bringing governments, the private sector and civil society together to work on creating the future we hope for; and building the skills and capacity to deliver this. Here lies the development agenda for the future.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1WCED (1987) Our Common Future. Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (The Brundtland Report), Oxford University Press, Oxford.

2Holmberg J, S Bass and L Timberlake (1991) Defending the Future: A Guide to Sustainable Development, Earthscan, London.

3Carew-Reid, J, R Prescott-Allen, S Bass and DB Dalal-Clayton (1994) Strategies for National Sustainable Development: A Handbook for their Planning and Implementation, IIED, London, and World Conservation Union (IUCN), Gland, in association with Earthscan, London.

4Dalal-Clayton, DB (1996) Getting to Grips with Green Plans: National Level Experience in Industrial Countries, Earthscan, London. This study analysed strategic planning approaches in 21 case studies of strategic planning in 10 countries and in the European Union.

5The lower-case letters are used here to indicate that the nssd is not a ‘brand’ but a generic approach to be interpreted locally.

6OECD-DAC (1997) Shaping the 21st Century, Development Assistance Committee, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, Paris.

7The website (www.nssd.net) contains information about the project, all the key literature on strategies and related subjects, and all project documents and papers produced by the country teams. It is updated every two weeks and has enabled the all interested people to keep track of the project, to see and comment on draft documents as the evolve, and to make their own inputs.

8OECD-DAC (2001) Strategies for Sustainable Development: Practical Guidance for Development Cooperation, DCD/DAC 9, 21 March. Development Cooperation Committee, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, Paris.

9Dalal-Clayton, DB and D Dent (1993) Surveys, Plans and People: A Review of Land Resource Information and its Use in Developing Countries, Environmental Planning Issues 2, IIED, London.

10Dalal-Clayton, DB and D Dent (2001) Knowledge of the Land, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

11Dalal-Clayton, DB, D Dent and R Dubois (2001) Rural Planning in the Developing World with a Special Focus on Natural Resources: Lessons Learned and Potential Contributions to Sustainable Livelihoods: An Overview.Environmental Planning Issues No.20, IIED, London.

12Kauzeni, AS et al (1993) Resource Assessment and Land Use Planning in Tanzania.

13Mwalyosi, R and R Hughes (1998) The Performance of EIA in Tanzania: An Assessment. Research Paper 41, Institute of Resource Assessment, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Environmental Planning Issues 14, IIED, London;

14Mwalysoi, R, R Hughes and D Howlett (1999) Training Courses on EIA in Tanzania. Three volumes: 1 Introductory Course; 2 Orientation Course; 3 Review and Quality Control Course. IIED in association with Institute of Resource Assessment, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

15Kikula, IS, DB Dalal-Clayton, C Comoro and H Kiwasila (1999) A Framework for District Planning in Tanzania. Volume One. Report Prepared for the Ministry of Regional Administration and Local Government and UNDP. Institute of Resource Assessment, University of Dar es Salaam and IIED, London.

16Dalal-Clayton, DB (1993) Modified EIA and Indicators of Sustainability: First Steps Towards Sustainability Analysis, Environmental Planning Issues 1, IIED, London.

17Hughes, R, S Adnan and DB Dalal-Clayton (1994) Floodplains or Flood Plans? A Critical Look at Approaches to Water Management In Bangladesh, IIED, London and Research and Advisory Services, Dhaka.