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Higher Synergy Through Coordinated Donor Intervention
A Practical Example from The Central Highlands of Vietnam
National governments, donors, implementing agencies and local partners recognise the urgent need for higher impacts of bi- and multilateral development aid. Synergy and complementarity, harmonisation and avoiding duplication are the buzz words often heard and discussed during donor coordination meetings. PRSP led multi-donor intervention, SWAPS, budgetary support follow this new intervention logic.
However, looking at the vast number of players in international development cooperation and their many different approaches to development, donors and local partners do realise that the anticipated coordination is difficult to achieve. The major problem is that effective coordination requires lengthy and complicated consultations amongst donors and with local partners.
The following example shows that at project level, where clearly defined activities are implemented, such coordination may be much easier and direct cooperation more tangible. This is particularly true where projects focus on related sectors with similar target groups in neighbouring regions. The on-going cooperation between a German and a Swiss funded development project in the Dak Lak and Dak Nong Provinces in the Central Highlands of Vietnam may serve as a good example
Well-known for its abundant natural forests, rivers, and wildlife the region used to be sparsely inhabited by native hill tribes traditionally practising shifting cultivation. Over the last three decades though, this region has seen a remarkable economic development which brought along dramatic changes in demography and natural environment. The native ethnic minorities find it particularly difficult to cope with the changing situation and increasingly withdraw to more marginal and less productive lands.
No doubt, the provincial Governments have realised that the rapid deforestation and on-going degradation of arable areas in the uplands must be addressed urgently. Without fundamental adjustments of current land and forest management practices and without more immediate integration of the ethnic minorities into the rural economy, the natural forests and their great potential to sustain its population might soon be a thing of the past.
The Provinces have therefore launched a number of projects with external support to introduce a more sustainable management of the agricultural and forest resources and to transfer previously state-held forest land to private households, groups of households and even on entire communities.
Rural Development in Dak Lak Province (RDDL)
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In an attempt to address these issues, the German funded project 'Rural Development Dak Lak' (RDDL) was designed to help improve the living conditions of the rural poor in the uplands of Dak Lak Province, with a focus on ethnic minorities and rural women.
RDDL receives technical assistance from BMZ, the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation & Development and its implementing agency, GTZ, the German Agency for Technical Cooperation. GTZ has commissioned actual implementation of the technical assistance to GFA Terra Systems/IP which have extensive experience in rural development and sustainable forest management. Together with their local partners at the Department of Planning & Investment (DPI) and other relevant provincial departments, a team of 11 international and national experts and support staff introduce participatory approaches to rural development planning and sustainable management of the natural resources in the Province.
Participation means giving villagers not only the possibility but also the responsibility to express their real needs and to identify measures which directly improve their situation. The key element here is to involve the rural population from the very beginning to make sure that these measures meet the actual economic, socio-cultural and ecological requirements in the rural areas. The most important fields are the improvement of sustainable upland farming and community based forest management, allocation of forest land to the rural poor, the strengthening of required rural services and general rural infrastructure.
This helps DPI and provincial decision makers to establish demand-driven rural development plans and programs and to allocate available budgets accordingly. It also strengthens a sense of ownership amongst villagers for implementation and maintenance of development measures, which they have planned themselves.
For the province this is a new path which must be tested exemplarily before it can be followed on a larger scale. Hence, the project tests participatory processes of rural development and community based management of natural resources exemplarily in four communes within two districts before they will finally be adopted province-wide.
Step by step, the villagers will have to become key players in rural development. At the same time, the involved social organisations and government agencies face the challenge of having to change their role from implementers of centrally established plans to facilitators of grassroots planning and decision making. Respective capacity building is therefore a further task of RDDL.
Extension & Training Support Project for Forestry & Agriculture (ETSP) in Dak Nong Province
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Similarly to RDDL, ETSP supports the sustainable management of natural resources in order to help improve the living conditions in the rural areas. Funded by the Swiss Agency for Development (SDC), ETSP is implemented by the Ministry of Agriculture & Rural Development (MARD) with project components in the uplands of three provinces, namely Dak Nong, Hoa Binh, and Thua Thien Hue. Helvetas, one of the major Swiss NGOs in development cooperation is in charge of assisting MARD in actual project implementation. In Dak Nong Province as in the other provinces, the activities of ETSP are coordinated by a provincial coordinator who is supported by a team of international and national experts based centrally in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.
Within four years from January 2003 to December 2006, ETSP tests and introduces demand-driven extension and training concepts for farmers and rural service providers that can later be adopted by MARD as best practices for agriculture and forestry extension. In close cooperation with universities throughout the country, ETSP introduces procedures that help farmers and forest users together with the extension workers from the agriculture and forestry extension sections to find out sustainable and economically attractive options for farming and forest management. Together they test and evaluate them before finally introducing them on a larger scale. In order to make sure that these technologies fit into the general efforts towards community development, ETSP also supports integration of these processes into overall socioeconomic planning procedures in the villages and communes.
Fields of Cooperation
Both, RDDL and ETSP, promote a direct involvement of villagers in planning and implementing rural development and natural resources management. And both projects emphasise that efforts towards sustainable management of agricultural and forest lands must be closely linked with the overall socioeconomic development process in the rural areas. In close cooperation, RDDL and ETSP therefore support introduction of four main approaches:
- participatory village- and commune development planning (VDP/CDP)
- participatory development of sustainable upland farming technologies (PTD)
- participatory land use planning and land allocation (LUP/LA), and
- community based forest management (CBFM)
From the point of view of the local Governments, there is of course a mutual interest to develop consistent procedures that can be applied in the entire region in the long run. This in turn requires a close cooperation between RDDL and ETSP. The main fields are the formulation of concepts and guidelines for the related technical and administrative processes but also training, testing and evaluation of these approaches in both provinces.
The advantage is that GTZ in cooperation with GFA Terra Systems and SDC in cooperation with Helvetas have been major players in the development of such approaches in Vietnam for the past years. VDP/CDP-procedures, participatory agricultural extension methodologies (PAEM) and concepts for community based forest management have already been successfully introduced by GTZ and GFA Terra Systems in the north-western Provinces of Son La and Lai Chau in the context of the Social Forestry Development Project (SFDP) Son Da since 1995. Approximately over the same period, Helvetas has intensively supported the development of a participatory approach to development of community based forest management options for Vietnamese forestry extension in the framework of the Swiss-funded Social Forestry Support Project (SFSP).
Instead of reinventing the wheel, RDDL and ETSP have capitalised on this experience and focused their efforts initially on fine-tuning available concepts and procedures but also available training materials to the specific situation in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. The fact that both projects have started almost at the same time was an additional advantage. Through coordination of all related activities already at very early stages of project operation they could lay a broad foundation to achieve a best possible impact.
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So far, the close cooperation between RDDL and ETSP has proven very useful. The first important stepping stone was to reach a mutual understanding among the decision makers at provincial and lower levels on how best to involve villagers actively in rural development and the sustainable management of natural resources. Particularly for the issues of participatory development planning, community based forest management, and participatory development of sustainable upland farming technologies mutual workshops were organised and the respective responsibilities of government and social organisations clarified. Concrete workshop results were action plans for both projects and partner institutions for pilot testing of the proposed procedures and for the required training of coordinators and facilitators.
Following these workshops and based on an evaluation of exemplary test runs of village development planning in selected villages in the pilot areas of both projects, RDDL has developed training programs for trainers and facilitators for village and commune development planning, for community based forest management planning including land use planning and land allocation, and for the participatory development of upland farming technologies. In order to ensure consistency of these approaches in both provinces, ETSP and RDDL work together preparing respective training materials and technical guidelines. In addition, the partner organisations of ETSP participate in the training activities of RDDL as much as possible.
When testing the participatory procedures in the project areas, both projects coordinate intensively. They discuss the designs of the various pilot schemes and exchange their experience from monitoring and evaluation. In the end, such coordination will clearly increase the opportunity to accommodate the specific requirements in the Central Highlands in the planning procedures and extension approaches that will finally be proposed to both provinces for a wider application.
The cooperation between both projects facilitates the much needed interaction between their partner departments DPI and DARD in both Provinces. Their mutual understanding of and support to the strengthening of the role of the rural population in planning and implementation of rural development is a key requirement to enable the efforts of both projects, RDDL and ETSP, to effectively contribute to a sustainable improvement of the people's livelihoods and the conservation of their natural resource base.
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by: Daniel Wahby, GFA Consulting Group
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