KATHMANDU: The forestry and conservation sector is flush with foreign aid. According to rough estimates, donors have pumped in up to 120 million dollars in Nepal’s community forestry since 1980, which is rather high. Receiving huge funds means nothing if the intended recipients don’t get the benefits.

The conservation sector depends largely on foreign aid and most of the projects are designed in the capital, setting ambitious objectives. But the real assessment of the work conducted in the field is rarely disclosed.

In most of the projects, the donor calls the shots and the government seems to be like an obligatory recipient. Forest Resource Assessment in Nepal, supported by Finland, aptly demonstrates how the projects are designed. The total budget of the project is about 5.5 million euros but about 4.4 million euros will be spent directly or indirectly on consultants and logistic support for the staff.

According to officials at the ministry of Forest and Soil Conservation, the projects cater to the interests of donors, not the government or the communities. The nation is economically poor but is one of the richest countries in terms of natural resources and biodiversity. There are hidden agendas behind investing in natural resources of Nepal. For one, its rich biodiversity is the best natural laboratory for the researchers from the international community. Secondly, the INGOs are creating employment for the foreigners. In

many cases, the highly skilled manpower of the nation is ruled by the low-skilled international manpower.

In most of the projects, government just acts like a sub-contractor of the aid provided to the nation rather than bargaining for better benefits for the communities or the intended recipients and compromises by agreeing to the terms and conditions of the donors. It is not hard to say that the most of the bilateral and multilateral projects have become bargaining tools for the high-level bureaucrats and the aid-sustained intellectuals for their own benefits.

Conservation sector has seen bilateral aid programmes but most were scrapped when the phasing out process began. The reason is not so hard to fathom. Those who could justify their work have stayed on others have left. The project survival depends not on the need of the beneficiaries but the

entrepreneurship of those who run the projects. Studies are being sponsored to justify their worth in poverty alleviation. People are being treated as passive subjects and objects of justifying narrow private interests of those who really want the project.

The aid politics of elites is undermining the very process of civic empowerment. It is colonising intellectuals by bribing officials.

The intellectuals have to rely on aid for livelihood. This creates intense competition among different groups to handle the

aid. This has come to peak in forestry

and conservation, but the national

institutions are not proactive. Despite so much institutional development, they still consider themselves as sub-contractors of international or bilateral agencies.

Most of the projects cater to the interests of aid handling groups of elites and the intended recipients are either the workers getting low wages, unpaid facilitators or a good audience, but gain sustainable livelihood. Conservation dependent on the foreign aid has already started to show a negative impact. The government officers who are paid by the government are rushing to the projects rather than utilising their skills and knowledge. The ministry officials make a beeline for the departments that attract foreign aid. They are slowly losing their ground to bargain for the benefit of the intended recipients. The officials have started to think that without the projects they don’t have any responsibility to bear and such thinking is rampant in the conservation sector.

The scattered projects in the interest of different groups have dispersed the money but have gained little. Common and concentrated effort is the need of the hour in conservation and the national institutions should dare to bargain on getting more benefits for the communities rather than for themselves and their own institutions.

The authorities concerned need to answer whether there is a possibility to enhance the efforts to conserve the forests and wildlife, if the donors stop providing the fund? Do we have our own agenda or we will have to follow the agenda set by others?

How long will the foreign investment

in the name of capacity building run

and when will the national intellectuals become capable to handle the nation’s agendas on conservation?