International precepts versus local knowledge as bases of planning for sustainable development

Pergamon HABITAT INTL. Vol. 20, No 3, pp. 477-492, 1996

Copyright O 1996 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved

0197-3975/96 $15.00 + 0.(210

S0197-3975(96)00019-7

International Precepts Versus Local Knowledge as Bases of Planning for

Sustainable Development: Methodological Choices of Pakistan's National Conservation Strategy

MOHAMMAD A. QADEER Queen's Universi~', Kingston, Ontario, Canada

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the relative roles of universal models and local knowledge in the conceptual framework of Pakistan's Conservation Strategy. The domination of universal models over historical and institutional factors in the methodology of the strategy is demonstrated through a critical analysis of its contents. From this "case study", a number of methodological issues relating to the knowledge-base of planning or policy- making exercises in the Third World have been identified. The relevance and effectiveness of planning or policy-making partially depend on choices made on these methodological issues. An approach of particularising the universals and grounding analysis in institutional realities is proposed as the basis of the planning process. Copyright © 1996 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd

PLANNING METHODOLOGIES AND THE THIRD WORLD

Leafing through telephone directories or walking in the capitals of Third World (TW) countries, one is struck by the abundance of public institutes and bureaux as well as non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and international agencies. There are national economic commissions, environmental protection agencies, energy conservation institutes, women's affairs divisions, technology transfer bureaux, over and above the usual ministries of finance, agriculture, education, forestry, etc. For almost every developmental idiom there is an agency or programme in most TW countries. 1 By this evidence the TW should be, by and large, well prepared to deal with its problems and chart the course of its development. Yet this is not the case. While the developmental agencies and programmes have proliferated, the indebtedness of TW countries has increased and their capacity to promote self-sustained development has declined, particularly in Africa. Obviously, the TW's slow progress in economic growth and social development is not for lack of agencies, organisations or plans. Probably it is the ineffectiveness and, often, irrelevance of these institutions and their programmes which, by and large, keep most of the TW mired in poverty and dependence.

This paradox of high-minded programmes and agencies persistently leading to disap- pointing results points to the need for examining planning methodologies used in TW

Correspondence to: Mohammad Qadeer, School of Urban and Regional Planning, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada K7L 3N6.

477

478 Mohammad A. Qadeer

countries. The term "methodology" refers to the philosophical stance, including assumptions and values, that serve as a rationale for research. 2 This is the starting point of the present paper. It proceeds from the premise that many of the current developmental programmes and institutions are conceived in terms of "universal" patterns observed and defined by international agencies and Western academia. "Universals" are values, cultural elements, forces or behaviour patterns common to many societies and cultures. 3

With universals as the analytical categories, local knowledge and particular institutional factors are assigned secondary roles, thereby raising the methodological question of relevance and validity of a conceptual framework. This proposition undergirds the present paper.

This paper examines the approach and methodology of planning for sustainable development in Pakistan. It aims at sorting out relative contributions of universal precepts and local knowledge in the formulation of the Pakistan National Conservation Strategy (NCS). 4 Questions are addressed regarding the premises, concepts and analytical categories that inform the Pakistan National Conservation Strategy. Where do they come from? How much do they build on historical lessons and social conditions of the country? The universe of our discourse is the theoretical and conceptual bases of Pakistan's conservation policies and not an evaluation of their impacts.

UNIVERSAL MODELS AND INTERNATIONAL PRECEPTS

The phenomenon of shifting paradigms, sometimes called intellectual fashions in the development theory on the one hand and programmes of international agencies on the other, is widely recognised. 5 Development theory has traced an evolutionary path from the Rostowian "stages of growth" to the Modernisation paradigm, through neo- Marxist and Dependency theories, from World System models to Human Resource Development and Basic Needs Approaches, and the current postulates of export-led growth, free trade, privatisation and sustainable development. The evolutionary stages of development theory and their constituent notions and models are extensively discussed in the literature. 6 From our point of view, the importance of these theoretical shifts lies in changes induced by them in planning methodologies and policy approaches.

International and national aid agencies, along with their networks of consultants and experts, transform shifting theoretical paradigms into policy and programme precepts in accordance with their changing national and organisational interests. These are then offered as the universals of development theory and international policy precepts for purposes of defining problems and explaining, as well as solving, them. The spreading of these models or precepts is greatly facilitated by the inducements and conditionali- ties of external aid and advice. The international conferences, such as Rio 94 or Beijing 95, and academic seminars, meetings and publications, further help their dissemina- tion in the TW. Table 1 describes successive waves of theoretical models and program- matic precepts that have swept through the TW in the last four decades.

LOCAL KNOWLEDGE AND PARTICULARISTIC CONDITIONS

Universal laws and policy precepts reflect one level, albeit a highly generalised and abstract one, of reality. Beneath this level is the world of "particulars", referring to specific historical and structural conditions of culture, society or situation. It is encapsulated in what Geertz calls local knowledge. 7 The universal laws and precepts are meant to be mediated through local knowledge and appropriately modified to account for specific conditions of a particular phenomenon.

Universal models and local knowledge are not to be regarded as polar opposites. They reflect two complementary but distinct strands of reality. Although theoretically both levels of reality are accessible to anyone, insider or outsider, immersed in ap-

International Precepts Versus Local Knowledge

Table 1. Periodic waves of international precepts

479

Theoretical paradigms Development strategies

1950s • Stages of growth • Industrial development • Unlinear development • Technical assistance

• Capital formation

1960s

1970s

1980s

• Balanced vs unbalanced growth • Multi-sectoral development • Dualism • Rural development • Core-periphery • Green revolution • Dependency Theories

• Political economy • Basic needs approach • Neo-Marxist approaches • Employment creation "Informal" sector • Environmentalism • Development from below

• NGOs as agents of change

• Neo-conservatism • Feminism • Sustainable development • Globalisation

• Women and development • Privatisation of public enterprises • Market pricing of utilities and services • Free trade and "comparative" advantage" in production • Property rights • Pollution trade-offs • Reduction of public sector

propriate approaches and methods, universals predominantly come from Western and international sources, while the local knowledge, codified and uncodified, is usually the preserve of a country's residents.

The methodological issues of the relevance and validity of the internal vs external views have been long debated in social sciences and policy disciplines. 8 There are persistent claims about the distinctness of, for example, Canadian or Swedish sociol- ogy and Japanese economics, based on primacy of culture (internal) as the defining element of social sciences. Said's thesis of Orientalism and Foucault, Lyotard and other post-modernists' questioning of unitary and universalistic narratives have further strengthened the case for particularistic perspectives of social theory. 9 From our perspective, the significance of these debates about the structure of knowledge lies in the weight to be given to universals and global precepts in planning methodologies for TW countries. This is the nub of the methodological issue being probed in this paper. What body of knowledge helps identify planning problems and how to structure methods of assessing and addressing them? What are the respective contributions of international precepts and local knowledge in the structuring of planning approaches? Answering these questions through an in-depth look at the conceptual structure of Pakistan's NCS is the objective of this paper.

THE PLANNING PROCESS

Before proceeding to explore the conceptual underpinning of Pakistan's Conservation Strategy, I will briefly discuss the scope of the planning process through which any methodology is applied. The term "planning process" refers to procedural steps involved in plan or policy making. Procedural steps for plan making are of two interrelated but distinct types: (i) intellectual-technical and (ii) institutional-organisational. The comprehensive-rational model is the foundation of intellectual-technical procedures fashioned in the mode of scientific method. It envisages planning (or policy-making) as beginning with problem identification and articulation of objectives, proceeding to canvassing of alternatives for realising objectives leading to the choice of effective and efficient alternatives to formulation of a course of action. ~° This is the rational protocol that has served as the guide as well as the foil for theorising about planning

HAB 20:3.


process, ll Lindblom's Incrementalism, Baybrooke's Bonded Rationality, Davidoff's Advocacy Planning and Schon's Reflective Practice offer some other models of technical-intellectual aspects of the planning process. 12 Presently the notion prevails that planning is as much a political and sociological process as technical and intellectual. 13 The discussion about planning process, and implicitly methodology, has splintered along lines divided by ideological and theoretical schools. Yet there is one element of the process that has received little attention, the knowledge base, or "the conceptual glasses", by which problems are observed, assessed and addressed.

The second part of the planning process is the institutional-organisational aspect which refers to "who does what" to prepare the plan. The most striking element of this aspect in recent times is the rise of the "participatory" mode, involving citizens and other stakeholders, as a preferred form of organisation process for planning. The ins t i tu t iona l -organisa t ional process serves as the medium through which intellectual-technical procedures are enacted. This is how it comes to have bearing on the knowledge base that defines the methodology of a planning or policy-making exercise. These connections will be examined in the context of Pakistan's NCS.

HISTORY OF ENVIRONMENTAL MEASURES IN PAKISTAN

Sustainable development, a phrase popularised by the Bmndtland Commission, proposes a form of development which meets "the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs ,)4 It blends together goals of economic development and environmental preservation. Pakistan is one of the TW countries where sustainable development has become official policy. Canada's Minister of External Relations and International Development has eulogised Pakistan as a success story of Canadian aid in promoting "environmentally sound strategy for development". 15 Pakistan s National Conservation Strategy, approved by the cabinet of the federal government on l March 1992, has three broad objectives, namely, resource conservation, sustainable development and improved efficiency in the use and management of resources. As a national plan for the management and use of resources, it offers a comprehensive vision of a green and viable Pakistan.

NCS represents a national commitment to a sustainable mode of economic development. It marks the incorporation of environmental preservation as a public goal in Pakistan's development ideology. Yet it is not a solitary measure; rather it is a link in a chain of events marking the arrival of environmental ethos in Pakistan.

The public consciousness about the environment began to crystallise after the Stock- holm Conference, although there were individuals voicing concerns about pollution and waste of natural resources long before 1972. Environmental protection and ecol- ogy were recognised as legislative subjects in Pakistan's constitution of 1973. The constitutional responsibility to frame environmental policies has been assigned concur- rently to provinces and the federation. From the beginning, administrative responsibilities for the environment were co-joined with urban development and planning. The federal ministerial division of Town Planning and Agrovilles (1972) was renamed Environ- ment and Urban Affairs (EUAD) in 1975 to reflect the convergence of urban development and environmental interests. Provinces also assigned environmental protection functions to the departments of physical planning, housing or public works. Initially, environmental functions of these agencies meant little more than sending delegations to international meetings and conferences. In 1983, the Environmental Protection Ordinance was passed, envisaging the establishment of a high-powered Pakistan Environmental Protection Council, to be headed by the President, and the Pakistan Environmental Protection Agency as the executive body responsible for carrying out the mandate of the ordinance.

The Environmental Council and Protection Agency, under the 1983 ordinance, have the authority to establish comprehensive environmental policy, formulate national qual-

International Precepts Versus Local Knowledge 481

ity standards, seek foreign assistance and provide institutional and technical capabili- ties for monitoring and testing the environment. The most striking power granted to the Environmental Protection Agency was its authority to require environmental impact statements for construction and industrial projects. Despite this ambitious beginning, the ordinance remained dormant for a long time. Initially, neither the Pakistan Environ- ment Council nor the Environmental Protection Agency was established. Frequent changes of government and pressing economic and political issues kept the environment well down the national agenda.

Public initiatives in the environmental field picked up pace in the late 1980s. Gal- loping urbanisation and the shortage of electricity supply, combined with visible air and water pollution in cities such as Karachi, Lahore and Faisalabad brought home environmental concerns to a large number of citizens. The international environmental movement also affected Pakistan. A number of NGOs were formed to press for environmental protection: the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) opened branches in Pakistan. Following the recommendation of the Brundtland Commission, the World Summit on the Environment was planned for Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Pakistan was chosen to be the chair of the developing countries' Group of 77. This "honour" induced further pressure on the govemment of Pakistan to activate its environmental plans. Provincial environmental protection agencies were established, first in the Frontier province (1990), and subsequently in Sind and Punjab. The National Environmental Protection Agency started functioning in 1994. Thus, the institutional base for environmental conservation was put in place by the early 1990s. NCS crystallised the environmental agenda and gave a direction to conservation efforts. NCS is the most notable achievement of Pakistan's commitment to environmental conservation.

THE PLANNING OF NATIONAL CONSERVATION STRATEGY

NCS has been both a process and a product. As a product, it is a 368-page. long document giving a comprehensive account of Pakistan's environmental conditions and offering policy and programme proposals for almost every conceivable resource sector. I will later review the contents of this report, but presently my focus is the process of preparing the conservation strategy.

NCS took about 6 to 8 years to come to fruition, depending on what one considers to be the starting point. Table 2 shows the chronology of events and actions leading to the adoption of NCS.

It is also an account of the respective roles of various ministries, committees, NGOs and international agencies in the preparation of NCS. It describes the institutional- organisational framework of the planning process. The examination of this process suggests the following observations:

(a)

(b)

The responsibility for formulating and choosing proposals and recommendations ultimately rested with the federal agencies and their senior officials, though NGO representatives and foreign advisors were closely involved throughout the process. Organisationally, the NCS process was lodged in the public bureaucracy and it was conceived as a public planning exercise. The NCS process was relatively open and involved large numbers of non- officials, specialists and, to a limited extent, common citizens. It is said that about 3,000 persons were consulted as part of the process of preparing the NCS. Village meetings were organised, consultative workshops in universities and research institutes were held, and extensive public education campaigns were carried out on television, radio and in newspapers. The public consulta- tion procedures were neither designed to obtain representative opinions nor aimed at covering all parts of the country. Despite these limitations, NCS was


Table 2. The planning process: institutional--organisational dimension

Chronology of events in the formulation of NCS

1980

1983

1983-85

1986

1986

1988

1989-90

1991

1992

IUCN published World Conservation Strategy and started promoting the development of National Conservation Strategies in TW.

Pakistan's delegate to IUCN requested assistance for wildlife and forest preservation plans. Two IUCN experts went to Pakistan and recommended the establishment of an IUCN chapter in Pakistan. Also proposed preparation of National Conservation Strategy. IUCN appointed a representative in Pakistan.

The Environment and Urban Affairs Division of the Government of Pakistan (EUAD) assigned the responsibility to co-ordinate the development of conservation strategy in collaboration with IUCN, World Conservation Union and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).

CIDA's expert helped organise a "search conference" to outline issues and scope of the conservation strategy. The search conference commissioned 13 papers to identify key issues in major resource sectors of Pakistan's economy.

A Steering Committee was established, headed by the Deputy Chairman, Pakistan Planning Commis- sion, including eight secretaries of major ministries, and five non-official members from NGOs, the media and business, to supervise the development of NCS.

The Secretariat of NCS established within EUAD. A Canadian appointed as the co-ordinator on behalf of CIDA as a counterpart to the Pakistani co-ordinator of NCS secretariat.

NCS Secretariat commissioned 16 sector papers (e.g. agriculture, industry, livestock, human settle- ments, soils, population, etc.) from national experts. A series of provincial workshops to discuss sectoral papers, attended by officials and representatives of business, the community, academia and NGOs. Meetings held in three selected villages of Punjab, NWFP and Northern areas to obtain citizens' input to the planning process. Throughout the process, IUCN and CIDA experts actively involved in discussions, reviews, and drafting of NCS.

The final report of NCS, including detailed policies and programmes, presented to the Government of Pakistan.

Federal Cabinet approved NCS and charged EUAD to implement it in March 1992.

one of the most "participatory" planning exercises in Pakistan, where normally National Five Year Plans and public policies are formulated by the bureaucratic and professional elite without much involvement of non-officials. The NCS process attempted to include citizens and non-officials. It partially forged a new idiom of the planning process in Pakistan.

(c) International agencies and foreign experts played a critical part from initiation to adoption of NCS. IUCN was the "midwife" of NCS. It actively promoted the preparation of national conservation strategies in the TW, modelled after its World Conservation Strategy. In Pakistan, it found a sympathetic group of officials. Canada's commitment to environmental causes prompted CIDA to be the sponsor of NCS and its supporter throughout. Finally, the forthcoming Earth Summit in Rio proved to be another spur for the completion and adoption of NCS. The international influence permeated all phases of NCS preparation, from initiation, funding, advice and even editing of the final report. The scope of international guidance can be observed from the Canadian Co- ordinator's sense of his mission, encapsulated in his quote at the time of his leaving for Pakistan: "The interest and the challenge is that Pakistan is virtu- ally an environmental basket case, almost, not quite hopeless". 16

(d) The task of preparing a comprehensive strategy was divided into two stages. Initially, sectoral and prescriptive papers were prepared by some of the leading Pakistani experts and were subjected to peer review. In the second stage, these papers were combined together into an integrated set of policies focus- ing on major resource sectors individually, i.e. water, agriculture, forests, livestock. The success of the NCS process lies in managing the flow of ideas and analyti-


cal observations through various stages, eventually bringing them together in an integrated and comprehensive set of proposals.

The product emerging from this process is an integrated set of ideas about the current conditions and prospects of Pakistan's environment and about courses of action to deal with resource scarcities. It is a report about how to deal with twin challenges of conservation and development. The question, from the perspective of this paper, is from where and how these ideas were derived. What conceptual frameworks and analytical models inform NCS? These questions point toward the second component of the planning process, i.e. intellectual-technical. To probe this side of the process, first we have to describe the contents of NCS.

NCS AS A PLAN FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

As a planning product, NCS is an impressive document. Most of the accolades received from international agencies and foreign experts are well deserved. It is a very readable document, whose 368 pages are crammed with tables, graphs, pictures and scenarios. The report is divided into three parts: (I) an analytical account of the existing and projected environmental conditions; (ii) an integrated set of sectoral policies and programmes addressed to objectives and principles suggested by the analysis; and (iii) proposals for an institutional and financial framework to implement policies and programmes. Together, the three sections provide a comprehensive pictures of Pakistan's environmental situation and offer a coherent set of proposals to ensure sustainable development.

Natural resources

NCS rightly identifies the limits of natural resources as the major challenge for Pakistan. Its land area of 88.2 million hectares is largely (62%) barren. Almost all of the cultivable land (23%) is under production, though much of it sub-optimally, and subject to waterlog- ging, salinity, erosion and desertification.

Water scarcity is striking, yet much of what is available is lost in delivery. Out of about 137.2 million acre-feet (MAF) of water available in the Indus River system on average per year, 75% is drawn for irrigation, but only 30% of the canal water eventually reaches crops. The rest is lost through seepage, evaporation and diversion. The second major source is groundwater tapped by tubewells, about 44 MAF. It may be noted that only 5% of water from private tubewells is lost in field water courses, compared to a 45% loss for irrigation water delivered by public agencies. Obviously there is a vast scope for increasing an effective water supply through better management of existing sources. This point is tellingly made in NCS.

Pakistan is also an energy-deficient country. A majority of the population lives without electricity, but even those who have access to the electric supply have to live with frequent load shedding (outages). NCS estimates that natural gas is the source of 40.6% of the commercial energy supply, followed by imported oil (29%) and hydro-power (9.9%). Pakistan has a 16-year supply of natural gas and a 20.5-year potential supply of coal. Hydro-power harnessed by damming rivers and streams offers the greatest promise for meeting energy needs of a growing population. Only 11% of the potential has been tapped so far. NCS emphasises the need for efficient use of existing resources. It points out that about 24% of electricity is lost in transmission and distribution. The loss, if reduced, would increase the effective supply by an equivalent of a few hydro- power plants.

NCS has also analysed the state of the marine, mineral, forest, livestock and cultural resources. It has also inventoried all institutions having a bearing on the use of the resources. All around, limits of resources and inefficiency of current management are


evident. A convincing case is made about the urgency of conserving and efficiently using resources. By NCS analysis, Pakistan is a country bumping against the physical limits of the supply of natural resources. It can fulfil its national goals if it quickly changes its present pattern of resource use. The second part of the NCS report presents a wide ranging strategy for such a change.

Policies and programmes

Part II is the heart of NCS. This is where the policies and measures for sustainable development are delineated. NCS aims at interrelating economic and environmental sectors, with the purpose of making fundamental changes in work activities, lifestyles and habits. It explicitly disfavours the idea of making environmental protection a separate sector or function. Its three overriding objectives, i.e. resource conservation, sustainable development and efficiency in resource use and management, are injected into all major economic sectors, yielding specific policies and corresponding measures for action. These proposed policies and measures are elements of the strategy.

To promote sustainable agriculture that will also meet the demands of the population, NCS policies include sweeping statements such as "halt overuse of prime soil" or "prevent soil degradation", or "encourage recycling of organic matter". NCS recommends 15 policies and 28 measures (ideas for action) for agriculture alone. Similar is the scope of proposals for 13 other sectors. Water is a precious resource for semi-arid Pakistan. NCS proposes policies to increase irrigation efficiency, to promote demand- based water supply and to levy water charges and to make water users' associations responsible for maintenance. These policies and measures often take the form of broad generalities, but their underlying thrust is considerably in line with current international precepts about introducing efficiencies in resource use through pricing and market discipline. NCS paints Pakistan's environmental policies with the neoclassical brush.

In the same vein, NCS recommends five policies and 23 measures for industrial development, emphasising introduction of pollution controls and encouraging environmentally benign or beneficial industries. Included among the measures to rea- lise policies are formulation and enforcement of regulations, establishment of environmental protection agencies at federal and provincial levels, preparation of plans for waste management and waste trading networks and regulation of industrial locations. NCS looks favourably at the idea of charging fees for discharges or selling licences for pollution as a mechanism to regulate industrial wastes.

Urban development also receives about four pages in NCS. Included in the recommended policies are: adoption of the National Human Settlement Strategy and redirec- tion of the growth to secondary cities and promotion of energy-efficient and environmentally sound transport and housing. Similarly, population growth and women in development are addressed as conservation issues for recommendations about participatory approaches, community-based initiatives and education for environmental awareness and population control. Undoubtedly, I have plucked these policies and measures out of their respective sectoral recommendations for illustrative purposes, but altogether they should give a fair idea of proposed actions that constitute the strategy.

Finally, in Part Three of NCS, an exhaustive, rather complicated framework for the implementation of policies and programmes has been laid out. The strategy identifies 14 programmes for implementation, ranging from "maintaining soils in croplands", "increasing irrigation efficiency", "conserving biodiversity" to "integrating population and environmental programmes". For each programme, short- and long-term goals and inputs and outputs have been detailed. A series of matrices cross-tabulate agencies, instruments and players with policies and programmes to assign responsibilities. The implementation plan also envisages broad institutional changes in public bureaucra- cies and civil society, requiring a mandatory introduction of planning, programming and project appraisal in most agencies, grafting of environmental analysis in various line activities of ministries and departments, and promotion of community initiatives,


women's participation and NGO's role in development. These institutional reforms, like most NCS proposals, mirror currently fashionable development ideas.

The financial plan of NCS envisages an expenditure of Rs. 150.72 billion (US$4.93 billion) over an 8-year period, 1992-2000. The largest investment is proposed for soil improvement (18.7%), followed by pollution control (14.5%) and energy conservation (14.2%). Interestingly, priorities reflected in the financial plan are relatively more in line with the conventional environmental agenda, i.e. conservation of soil and energy and pollution control, though NCS promises all along an approach of weaving the calculus of environmental costs and benefits into every economic and social transac- tion. All in all, NCS does operationalise its policy agenda and provides a fairly detailed framework for implementing its plan. It envisions a green and efficient economy in Pakistan and turns this vision into a workable plan.

THE METHODOLOGY OF NCS

The intellectual-technical procedures by which the above-sketched contents of NCS have been derived make up the second segment of the planning process. What theoretical framework underlies the analysis on which NCS is based? What value-premises inform its choice of policies and measures? What is the structure of argument in NCS? These questions pertain to the methodology of NCS.

NCS follows the rational protocol by proceeding in steps from analysis to projec- tion, evaluation and formulation of objectives, choice of policies and measures, proposals for implementation. The theoretical paradigm that informs NCS is largely economistic-behavioural and also of the neoclassical bent. The socio-political and cultural determinants of individuals' behaviour and organisational decisions have a minor role in the NCS conceptual framework. Similarly, present operational dynamics of institutions has been given little attention. The pervasive corruption in Pakistan, for example, and its distorting effect on public decisions, have no place in NCS analysis.

NCS proudly acknowledges that the initial formulations of its objectives and principles were drawn from the World Conservation Strategy and the report of the World Com-

17 mission on Environment and Development. The issues on which it focuses, the analytical categories it uses to observe and assess, and policies and measures it chooses to recommend are based on global ideas put forth by the Brundtland Commission, the World Conservation Strategy and the UN/World Bank policies. The methodology of NCS thus comes down to applying those universalistic notions and criteria to the environmental conditions in Pakistan. This point is best illustrated by a few examples.

Forest development and management

NCS point out that only 5% of Pakistan's land is in forest. Though small in propor- tion, this figure reflects a certain improvement, as the forest area has increased from 3 to 5% since the early 1950s. NCS aims at increasing forests and promoting planting of trees. Its policies and measures seek to strengthen the public institutional framework, legislation as well as technical, to encourage farm forestry and increase the private sector's lead role.18 These are suggestions for promoting community forests and obliga- tory emphasis on women's involvement in forest management. ~9

It is true that Pakistan needs to plant and sustain more trees and better manage its forests. This is the "universalistic" dimension of sustainable forest policy, as valid for Pakistan as for Iceland, for example. From a strategic planning perspective, this universal notion has to be transformed into objectives and plans appropriate for Pakistan. The pertinent question is what technical, social and economic conditions inhibit the development and (efficient) management of forests. This question directly leads to an investiga- tion of Pakistan's historical experience of past policies.

Pakistan has had "tree-planting weeks" and "grow more trees" campaigns annually


for almost 40 years. Every year such campaigns are declared successful, with claims of millions of saplings planted. There is little evidence to give credibility to these claims. NCS should have drawn some lessons from these failures. Yet it barely acknowledges past efforts. This is just one example of how NCS policies and measures are disembodied from institutional and situational realities.

A conservation strategy attuned to institutional realities of the country should build on lessons of the past. It will have regard to differences in provincial authority and regional tenurial systems, management, harvesting and marketing of forest products. By doing so, it would transform universal models into operational principles relevant to Pakistan.

The adoption of new technologies and forestry practices, NCS's thrust for sustainable development, can be accelerated by policies which take into account household expectations and equitable distribution of risks and gains among public, private and individual actors. Similarly, the promotion of community forestry or the increasing of women's share of economic gains may be laudable objectives, but they have to be reinterpreted in the social context and historical factors of Pakistan. Such ideas have to be cast in the social and political idiom of Pakistan. NCS is largely oblivious to the particularities of local conditions.

The National Human Settlement Policy

NCS advocates redistribution of economic development and population growth to selected secondary cities, where productivity is high and infrastructural installation costs are low. z° NCS makes National Human Settlement Policy (NHSP) its top priority for sustaining urban development in Pakistan.

Interestingly, it just happens that NHSP as an international precept for dealing with urban growth has already swept through Pakistan without making a mark. In the 1980s, the World Bank became enthusiastic about human settlement policies as instruments of guiding explosive urban growth in the TW. It funded NHPS in countries in all parts of the world, from Peru to Pakistan. Its consultant, Professor Harry Richardson, went around the world applying his methodology of balancing urban productivity against service costs as an instrument of identifying cities for growth. Pakistan was his compli- ant client. Pakistan's NHPS was an elaborate affair, consisting of a series of reports based on complicated analysis. NHPS was still-born from the beginning on account of its esoteric methodology and unimplementable recommendation. The report, though drawn after some perfunctory consultations with provinces, was lodged with EUAD in the federal government. The report is almost extinct; its copies are not even trackable in most of the provincial and federal agencies. It has at best served as a source of country papers by Pakistan's delegates in international conferences. Richardson, after many years, conceded the irrelevance of his human settlement strategies and backed away from the (his) earlier work. 21 From this experience with NHPS, NCS has drawn no lessons. It does not even acknowledge that NHSP has been superseded by many other World Bank-sponsored national strategies. Instead, it reiterates faith in NHSP as a tool of sustainable urban development. NCS approach is ahistorical and uncritical.

Economics of resource use

One of the three operating principles of NCS is to "merge environment and economics in decision-making ,.22 This principle permeates almost all the policies and measures recommended by NCS. It finds expression in the form of policies for "full pricing of electricity", "water rates to recover capital, environmental operating and maintenance costs", "taxation of vacant urban land", and a "regime of user charges and cost recovery from most public services". These are policies that international agencies have been pushing in the TW for many years. They may be valid instruments of influencing household behaviour in the consumption of resources, i.e. to make them bear the cost


at a broad behavioural level. Their applicability in Pakistan is qualified by ineffÉciency and corruption characterising the supply mechanism. Consumers' economic behaviour is affected by their perceptions of manipulation and mismanagement by suppliers.

Electricity supply, for example, is a public monopoly. NCS reports that 24% of electricity is lost in distribution, though newspaper accounts suggest that up to 40% of the electric supply is not accounted for in big cities. It is lost through illegal connec- tion, tampered meters and poor maintenance, all sustained by kickbacks, bribes and blackmail practised by officials of the Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) responsible for the electric supply. The situation is the same in the supply of household as well as irrigation water. On top of these corrupt and inefficient practices, powerful corporations and influential individuals do not pay their water or electric bills amount- ing to millions of rupees. Consumers are often faced with exaggerated charges and inappropriate bills for electricity and water supplies or telephone calls. These practices are so widespread that they can be considered institutionalised. The supply system is unreliable, mired in corruption and mismanagement. It has eroded consumer confidence in the relationship between what they pay and what they get. It is unlikely that price increases will produce a corresponding change in consumption patterns. The interven- ing variables of institutional mis-management in the supply system are likely to result in driving more households towards bribery and illegal use, as they are burdened with price increases that they feel do not reflect their consumption. The point of this elaborate discussion is that NCS should have anchored its diagnosis of the wasteful use of resources as much in the particularities of Pakistan's situation as in current international precepts. This example also points out the methodological dilemma: should a plan be based on assumptions about the "expected" institutional structure, or on its "real" functions and operations, though illegal.

Community-based approach and grassroot organisations

NCS stresses a participatory approach to development. It recommends giving a prominent role to NGOs, women's organisations and citizens' groups. It envisages community- managed forests and user-controlled distribution of irrigation water. Undoubtedly, citizen involvement in managing their collective welfare is a fundamental fight across cultures and societies. Yet this value finds expression in a great variety of institutional forms and social practices among countries of differing social and cultural systems. Pakistan is a patriarchal and clan-based society. It has had long spells of authoritarian rule. Local government is non-existent. Communities are often divided along clan, class and ethnic lines. Merely reiterating global clichrs about a community-based approach ignores the critical historical experiences.

Pakistan has a long history of national programmes aimed at promoting self-help and community development. Over its 48-year history it has witnessed many highly touted community development programmes sweep though the country to end up as hollow exercises in social mobilisation, e.g. V-AID, People's Works, Integrated Rural Development, Rural Growth Centres (Markazes), Agrovilles and recently Tamir-i- Watan. Would it not be appropriate to evaluate their successes and failures for identifying critical factors in community self-help? NCS refers to two currently much-lauded experiments of community development in Pakistan: Orangi project in Karachi and the Agha Khan Rural Support Programme in Northern areas. Again, NCS should have examined the conditions of their success and also the reasons why their examples have not been repeated anywhere else in Pakistan. In the same vein, NCS enthusiasm for water-user associations, for example, is not shared by even the World Bank's evaluator. He found them to be "relatively weak, in effect "paper" rather than Pakka organisations". 23 Again, this example leads us to the conclusion that NCS has not grounded its analysis and proposals in the historical and institutional realities of Pakistan.

To conclude the foregoing discussion, it can be said that the NCS' methodology is


primarily based on behaviourist conceptions of environmental protection and resource use. Its conceptual framework is drawn from global models and international precepts. Its analytical part consists of gathering and assessing information around indicators derived from its universalist framework. The NCS methodology is ahistorical and largely detached from the institutional context. It gives little weight to lessons and experiences of the past, even for its proposed policies and programmes that are similar to past efforts. Its analysis is wide-ranging but only just scratches the surface in most cases. NCS is simultaneously broad and unspecific. It is a strategy that is made in Pakistan in accordance with international templates.

PATHS NOT TAKEN

Inherent in our critique of the NCS methodology is an alternative perspective. It is the approach of particularising the universals, of interpreting conceptual categories in the institutional and social context of a phenomenon. In development economics, the mutual relations between the economy and the rules of the game for economic exchange, incorporated in institutions, are held to be central to analysis. 24 This approach is all the more necessary in policy development or planning, because the objective is to solve concrete problems which occur under specific material and social conditions. A planning methodology that is institutionalist in approach and critical in intent would have grounded NCS more closely to Pakistan's realities.

A planning methodology differs from the approach of a social inquiry. Its objective is to assess problems and propose their solutions. It seeks explanations that lead to actions and not merely those that are theoretically sound. These requirements neces- sitate, in Myrdal's words, "an understanding of p rob lems . . , how they actually function and what mechanisms regulate their performance". 25 They also demand that the structural conditions of particular sectors and the organisational dynamics of agencies and actors in Pakistan should have been the objects of analysis to uncover causes of wasteful use of resources. Such analysis grounded in the internal dynamics of Pakistan would have yielded more effective policies.

The NCS choice of substance is also biased towards environmental problems of the formal sector. The agrarian pollution, the bazaar sector's waste, and resources critical for the informal economy have been given little significance in NCS. Broadly speak- ing, water, land, energy or forests are undoubtedly resources under threat. Yet within these broad categories, concerns of the informal sector and the needs of lower classes have been neglected. The pollution of land and water from human and animal wastes is the source of disease, ill health and foul living conditions. A strategy to reduce pollution should focus on the disposal of human and animal wastes. In Punjab alone, the largest, and a relatively developed province, 85% of rural housing units were without latrines in 1989. 26 A programme of developing composting toilets and communal latrines in culturally appropriate ways, for example, could have been an NCS measure. Cows in cities are a source of much filth and pollution. Every year for the last four decades, campaigns have been launched to move cows out of the cities to "cattle colonies" without any success. Similarly, much of the garbage rotting in city streets and green, weedy, scum fouling village environments are wastes of grain dealers, butchers, carpet makers and auto mechanics. These are environmental issues associated with the bazaar and household economy. They do not figure in NCS, which is mostly occupied with pollutants and waste characteristic of the formal and urban sectors. The caption of an article in the New York Times magazine captures this point very lucidly: "Forget PCB's, Radon, Aler. The world's greatest environmental dangers are dung smoke and dirty water". 27 The bazaar sector is a very significant component of Pakistan's economy. It has as much, nay more, impact on resource use as the industrial and urban sectors. By largely overlooking the environmental issues of the informal sector and consumer households, NCS has left out possibilities of affecting the quality of life for the majority of Pakistan's population.


IMPLEMENTATION OF NCS

NCS has given rise to a number of projects and programmes. Since its adoption by the Federal cabinet, a plan of action for the period 1993 to 1998 has been drawn-up to implement NCS. This plan is a catalogue of 42 projects explicitly prepared for donor agencies. It is a revealing document in that it shows the implicit role of NCS - - to prepare the groundwork for foreign assistance. The Plan includes energy conservation studies, demonstration and training workshops, proposals for research institutes, watershed afforestation, construction of infrastructural and waste-disposal facilities in specific cities. In sum, the plan of action has turned NCS into a mine of environmental projects, mostly of an institutional building variety, contrary to the NCS objective of integrating environment into economic development. Since aid funds are more generally available for environmental projects, many conventional urban infrastructural facilities are now being proposed under the rubric of conservation, i.e. sewage treatment in 11 small towns, drainage schemes in five cities, or improvement of a cattle colony. Many of these projects have been gestating for years. They are now being presented at the environmental windows of foreign donors. The point is that international aid condi- tionalities cast their shadow on plans and create proposals that meet the supply criteria of donors. NCS is not gathering dust on shelves, as has been the fate of the National Human Settlement Policy, the National Housing Polic~8 and other policy ideas which have been translated into projects for foreign funding.

NCS has also stimulated environmental programmes by provincial governments. The Frontier Province has drafted a provincial conservation strategy. Punjab has established an environmental cell in the Planning and Development Department. The Sustainable Development Institute (SDPI) has begun to function. A treatment plant for notorious chemical wastes from Kasur's tanneries is being planned. NCS is becoming a source of new justifications for favourite projects.

CONCLUSION

This paper attempts to uncover the conceptual bases of the method used in NCS. Specifically, it focuses on the sources of ideas that underlie NCS analysis and prescriptions. Thus, it is an examination of the intellectual-technical aspects of the planning process, though in exploring the conceptual framework, discussion of contents has been unavoidable. Yet it is not my intention to evaluate the effectiveness of the conservation strategy.

NCS promises a path of sustainable development in Pakistan. It proposes policies and programmes for conserver practices in all sectors of the Pakistani economy, such as agriculture, water, forestry, urban development and energy. It is comprehensive in coverage and ambitious in its prescription. It has consciously attempted to weave environmental considerations into economic decision-making, instead of separating out environment as a sector. On all these scores, NCS is a landmark in Pakistan's approach to national planning. There is much to commend in NCS, notwithstanding the critique that follows.

NCS is both a process and a product. As a process, it followed the currently popular public consultative mode, probably for the first time in Pakistan at the national scale. For the intellectual-technical aspects of the process, NCS is tilted towards universal models and international precepts. Its conceptual framework as well as analytical categories and policy ideas are based on behaviourist notions and functional relationships presum- ably operative across cultures and societies. Its concepts and categories are ahistorical and "decontextualised" from political, social and institutional structures of Pakistan. This conclusion is the core of our findings. The social conditions and historical lessons of Pakistan's developmental experiences have a secondary and minor role in defining the conceptual framework of NCS.


NCS is a product fashioned with conceptual tools forged by the global environmental movement and precepts of international agencies. It has fit these concepts and categories onto Pakistani data to define problems and formulate prescriptions. NCS is made in Pakistan largely with the international template. This is the fundamental structure of its methodology. It has attempted to fit empirical conditions of Pakistan onto the current wave of global theories and notions.

The tilt towards universals in the NCS conceptual framework has been paradoxi- cally reinforced by the participatory approach of its organisational process. With the exception of three village-level meetings, the NCS consultative process was centred around federal and provincial secretariats, and allied institutions and agencies. Public and corporate officials and academics were the primary participants in NCS consultations. They are, typically, the modernisers in Pakistan whose careers and credentials draw sustenance from their cosmopolitan interests and global links. They internalise and represent global ideas and interests in Pakistan. They are the agency for infusing Pakistan's policy-making with international precepts.

The argument about the "external" vs "internal" perspective for observing and explaining a social phenomenon of a country are well known in development disciplines. This paper brings out another allied but divergent dimension of this polarity. It shows that the distinction lies between decontextualised universal concepts and theories on the one hand and structural particularities and institutional realities of a society on the other. These are two levels of reality or two universes of discourse that characterise every situation. Both are valid, but what is relevant for a particular study depends on its purpose. A planning study aims at suggesting solutions to problems and thus has to be rooted in a specific context. It has to find institutional means to manipulate relevant variables. Its universe of discourse has to be particularistic.

Universal concepts are a dominant idiom in the TW because they are backed by resourceful and prestigious international institutions and conventions. In recent times, they have become carriers of globalism into TW societies and local communities. NCS is an example of a national policy analysis structured by internalised global notions.

This study of NCS brings out four methodological conundrums confronting planning or policy development exercises:

(a) To be conceptually valid based on generalised theories, or to be relevant for solving specific problems in a particular institutional context.

(b) To be comprehensive in scope and expect conformity to "assumed" models, or to focus on what is achievable and implementable.

(c) To ignore institutional shortfalls and value-conflicts as reflected in pervasive corruption or underground economy, or to take them into account as functional conditions and develop proposals which will get around such distortions.

(d) To be aligned with global trends and international thoughts, or to focus on local experiences and empirical situations. Planning methodologies, implicitly or explicitly, make choices about the above dimensions.

Their relevance depends on these choices. International aid and advice predisposes planning methodologies in the TW towards universal models and international precepts. Local experiences and political--cultural factors are systematically disadvantaged, result- ing in national plans which are lauded abroad but cynically ignored at home. NCS shares this fate to some extent.

NCS has spawned many studies and projects for establishing institutions and agencies. These projects appear to be increasingly meant to fit the criteria of donor agencies, producing the situation wherein the supply of aid generates a corresponding demand for projects.

NCS is little known outside a limited circle of environmental professionals and sponsoring agencies. Its meetings, conferences and reports carry more weight among aid agencies clustered in the capital than in towns and villages across the land. 29 In its


hope of creating a green and more conservation-conscious Pakistan, such efforts may have been compromised by methodological choice.

NOTES

1. The evidence of the numerous national and international agencies and consultants involved in economic and social development of TW comes in many forms. National agencies are often observable in multiplying ministries, departments and bureaux. Data about NGOs are selectively available. The presence of international agencies and consultants can be inferred from statistics about expatriates. For example, the World Bank estimated that about 80,000 expatriates were working in Africa in 1990 - - more than the total number of colonial officials of pre- independence Africa ("When Advice is a Rip-off', South 112 (February 1990, p. 14). Pakistan has about 8,500 NGOs, most emerging in 1980s largely in response to the availability of domestic and foreign funds.

2. K. Bailey, Methods of Social Research (The Free Press, New York, 1982) 3. A. Kroeber, Cultural Patterns and Processes (Harcourt, New York, 1948), p. 131. 4. Environmental and Urban Affairs Division (EUAD), The Pakistan National Conservation Strategy The Govern-

ment of Pakistan/World Conservation Union, Islamabad, (n.d.), p. 368. 5. See, for example, G. Jones and E Ward, "Tilting at Windmills, Paradigm Shifts in World Bank Orthodoxy", in G.

Jones and E Ward (eds), Methodology for Land and Housing Market Analysis (Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, Cambridge, 1994) pp. 8-23 and M. Qadeer, "External Precepts and Internal Views: the Dialectic of Reciprocal Learning", in B. Sanyal (ed.), Breaking the Boundaries (Plenum Press, New York, 1990), pp. 193-210.

6. See, for example, W. Elkan, An Introduction to Development Economics (Prentice Hall, New York, 1995) and G. Meier (ed.), Leading Issues in Economic Development (Oxford University Press, New York, 1984).

7. Local knowledge is a term essentially referring to learnings, meanings, systems of thoughts, experiences and symbols particular to a society or a community. It is embedded in social institutions and is part of the organisational culture and memory. Geertz describes it as "local frames of awareness" in C. Geertz, Local Knowledge (Basic Books, New York, 1983). For our purposes, local knowledge means ideas, explanations and descriptions emerging from institutional experiences and organisational behaviours informed by cultural patterns of a particular society.

8. See, for example, L. Stifel, R. Davidson and J. Coleman, Social Sciences and Public Policy in the Developing World (Lexington Books, Lexington, MA, 1982); D. Okpala, "Received Concepts and Theories in African Urbaniza- tion Studies and Urban Management Strategies: A Critique", Urban Studies 24 (1987), pp. 137-150: and L. Arizpe, "Culture in International Development", Development 1 (1989), pp. 17-19.

9. See, for example, E. Said, Orientalism (Pantheon Books, New York, 1978); J. Foucault, Power~Knowledge, Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-77 in C. Gordon (ed.) (Pantheon Books, New York, 1989) and J. Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: a Report on Knowledge (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1984).

10. See, for example, A. Faludi, Planning Theory (Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1973); M. Breheny and A. Hopper (eds), Rationality in Planning (Pion Ltd., London, 1985).

11. C. Hoch, What Planners Do: Power, Politics and Persuasion (Planners Press, Chicago, 1994). 12. C. Lindblom, "The Science of Muddling Through", Public Administration 19, 1 (1959), pp. 79-88; D. Braybrook

and C. Lindblom, A Strategy of Decision: Policy Evaluation as a Social Process (The Free Press, New York, 1963); P. Davidoff, "Advocacy and Pluralism in Planning", Journal of the American Institute of Planners 31 (November, 1965), pp. 186-197; and D. Schon, The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action (Basic Books, New York, 1983).

13. See, for example, J. Forester, Planning in the Face of Power (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1989). 14. World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future (Oxford University Press, New

York, 1987). 15. The Globe and Mail, Toronto (4 June 1993), p. AI0. 16. This is a direct quote from Mr A. Crerar, Co-ordinator of NCS, reported in a newsletter of the public advisory

committees to the Environmental Council of Alberta, PAC NOTES 2, 2 (March-April 1988), p. 1. 17. Environment and Urban Affairs Division, see note 4, p. 137. 18. See note 4, p. 178. 19. See note 4, p. 177. 20. See note 4, p. 222. 21. H. Richardson, "Wither National Urban Policy in Developing Countries?" Urban Studies 24 (1987), p. 227. 22. See note 4, p. 142. 23. K. Bryes, Water Users Associations in Worm Bank-assisted Irrigation Projects in Pakistan (World Bank Techni-

cal Paper No. 173, Washington, DC, 1992), p. xv. 24. See, for example, D. North, "Institutions and Economic Growth: An Historical Introduction", World Development

17, 9 (1989), pp. 1319-1332 and E. Feige, "Defining and Estimating Underground and Informal Economy: the New Institutional Economics Approach", Worm Development 18, 7 (1990), pp. 989-1002.

25. G. Myrdal, Asian Drama, Vol. 1 (Pantheon Books, New York, 1968), p. 26. 26. Government of Pakistan, Shelter for Low Income Communities. Final Report, -- Punjab Appendices (National

Housing Authority, Islamabad, 1991) Appendix I, p. 9. 27. G. Easterbrook, "Forget PCB's, Radon, Aler. The World's Greatest Environmental Dangers are Dung Smoke and

Dirty Water", The New York Times Magazine (11 September 1994), pp. 37-41. 28. During the 1980s, the World Bank, its regional affiliates and other United Nations agencies funded preparation of

a host of "national strategies and policies". This wave swept through Pakistan, though mostly these policies have been quickly forgotten, except to initiate more consultancies and studies. The following table illustrates the range of recent "national policy exercises in the environment/urban sector only:


National Policy Funded by

1983 1984 1986 1987 1989 1989 1991 1992

National Human Settlement Policy Management of Cities Policy National Housing Policy Pakistan Urban Sector Profile Low-lncome Housing in Pakistan Housing Finance National Shelter Strategy National Conservation Strategy

World Bank World Bank World Bank Asian Development Bank Asian Development Bank Government of Pakistan World Bank CIDA

29. Newspapers in Pakistan report about environmental measures typically in the following vein: "Except media campaign, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has done nothing for the improvement of environment . . . ", The Pakistan Times, Lahore (6 June 1993), p. 3.

International precepts versus local knowledge as bases of planning for sustainable development

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