Chitral Conservation Strategy
The Sarhad Provincial Conservation Strategy was approved by the NWFP Cabinet in June 1996, and was the principal strategic planning framework for implementing the National Conservation Strategy in the NWFP.One of the commitments made under the SPCS was to test the concept of a district level strategic planning process, which would be decentralized from Peshawar to the respective district centres. It is toward this end that the Chitral Conservation Strategy was developed.
http://www.ccs.iucnp.org
Covering an area of 14,850 sq km, Chitral lies in the north west corner of the NWFP and has an estimated population of 347,000. Chitral is unique in that it is the only district in Pakistan that is landlocked and remains cut off from the rest of the country for four to five months during the winters. Nestled between the mountains of the Hindu Kush, Chitral is characterised by an extremely rugged and mountainous terrain. The region forms the drainage basin of the Chitral River, which flows into neighboring Afghanistan and meets the Kabul River near Jalalabad.
Chitral remained an independent state for centuries until 1954 when the rule of the mehtar came to an end, and the Government of Pakistan took over the state administration. In 1969, Chitral was merged into Pakistan and became a district of the NWFP.
Chitral has low social indicators: the state of physical infrastructure continues to remain poor and the natural resource base is under tremendous pressure from a rapidly growing population. The traditional social structures, which promoted collective action to combat these problems, are losing their importance as off-farm employment comes to play a greater role in the economic life of the area.
Many of Chitral’s problems arise because development planning has been ad hoc, sectoral, centralized and often removed from ground realities. Consequently, although a number of development projects have been implemented, they have not been sustainable. To compensate for and correct the development distortions perpetuated by these interventions, work is in progress to develop a truly indigenous and comprehensive sustainable development agenda under the title of the Chitral Conservation Strategy.
Funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, the Chitral Conservation Strategy (CCS) is being jointly developed by the District Administration and IUCN-The World Conservation Union. The whole process will be guided through a District Conservation Round Table that will draw upon representatives of all the stakeholders and provide a forum for sharing, debating and coordinating sustainable development activities. It is hoped that the partnerships formed during this development process will be the basis for continued cooperation in taking the CCS forward.
The CCS is poised to be different from other past and ongoing development initiatives in Chitral. It is based on the principle of participatory planning and employs mechanisms that ensure the active involvement of, and ownership by key players: government, media, NGOs, academia and civil society. Instead of narrowly focusing on one specific area, the CCS takes an integrative approach to development, forging linkages between ecological, economic and social issues. The CCS also seeks to study innovative financial measures to facilitate implementation and translate policy into action.
The development of the Strategy was divided into three phases:
Phase I: This phase involved the establishment of an office, networking with partners, and the preparation of an Inception Report.
Phase II: The Inception Report was put through extensive tehsil and village level consultations. With support from the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme, the CCS team also held meetings with women’s organizations in different tehsils.
Phase III: Based on public consultations and meetings, a report identifying the priority issues was prepared. Technical papers on these issues were commissioned and peer reviewed. Following this, the first draft of the strategy document, identifying major issues and their possible solutions, was produced for presentation to the Round Table.
For further details please visit the website at http://www.ccs.iucnp.org
