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VII. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
[ VII-A | VII-B | VII-C |VII-D ]
D. Monitoring and evaluation
The existing legal, regulatory and institutional provisions provide sufficient opportunities for the various stakeholders to play their respective roles in undertaking environmentally friendly activities, and for those activities to be monitored and evaluated. However, serious gaps exist in the efforts to bring those provisions into effect. One of the main problems lies in the weak capacity to properly integrate environmental considerations into the development process, and to foster meaningful coordination across sectors and subsectors. The other constraint relates to the inadequate or absence of coverage of environmental factors in the established system for progress reports and monitoring, as well as the virtual absence of any system or capacity at the local level.
First and foremost, a firm decision is required to incorporate environmental elements in monitoring and evaluating policies, programmes and activities at the national, sectoral and operational levels. All the institutions concerned, such as NPC, the Ministry of Population and Environment, other line ministries, local government, implementing departments and their district/subdistrict level units, NGOs and the private sector all have to re-examine their current modes of operation and adjust them to meet the environmental challenges. While regular and routine monitoring should be the responsibility of the ministry and department concerned, the Ministry of Population and Environment should periodically cross-check and evaluate the environmental impacts and discuss its findings at EPC and NPC progress review meetings and suggest corrective measures or other required actions.
Second, integration, coordination and consistency in the strategy and implementation mechanisms as suggested above would create a large demand for adequately trained manpower, of which there is a serious lack in Nepal. The donor community can lend a helping hand in that regard.
Third, within the pool of resources available at present among the various parties concerned, much can still be achieved by harmonizing efforts related to communication and information dissemination, and even in formal education. For example, the proliferation of magazines, newsletters and other means of mass communication emanating from the various public, private and NGO sector institutions could be streamlined through mutual cooperation in integrating environmental concerns and in maximizing their intended effect.
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