Building Capacity through Participation

Nauru National Sustainable Development Strategy

Kevin Balm

• Publisher: Asian Development Bank
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9789715617314
• eBook ISBN: 9789292572013
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Sustainable Development
• Index: Economics

For years, Nauru, a small Pacific island nation (population 10,000), benefited from the considerable wealth generated from its only major natural resource, phosphate. However, when that resource was almost exhausted and national assets held under the Nauru Phosphate Royalties Trust had been reduced to relatively minor holdings, the Government of Nauru sought and received assistance from the Asian Development Bank and the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID) to prepare a National Sustainable Development Strategy to guide future development in the country. This case study examines innovative efforts to strengthen participatory capacity in Nauru to support development of the new strategy, focusing on the design and implementation of a participatory planning process which engendered wide community engagement and included communications with communities about the choices and trade-offs facing them moving forward.

BUILDING CAPACITY THROUGH PARTICIPATORY PLANNING

Extreme wealth generated in Nauru over the 25 years since independence resulted in capacities being viewed as goods and services to be purchased. The rapid decline of that wealth in the last decade has resulted in awareness of the need for other types of capacity, including capacity to engage and participate in the effective functioning of households, the public and private sectors, and the nation as a whole.

The participatory process specialist’s experience and background in technology of participation (ToP) methods led him to believe that gaining wide support for an agreed, feasible future and taking steps to implement that future successfully required three critical conditions: (i) genuine and wide engagement and participation of stakeholders in building the components of the development plan; (ii) an experience of engaging in planning that was empowering, even transformational; and (iii) the development of participatory leadership capacity of at least a core group of people to champion ownership at all levels of the National Sustainable Development Strategy (NSDS).

“Participation” of stakeholders in the planning process had to improve the “doing” (skills and capabilities), “knowing” (knowledge and understanding), and “being” (attitudes and values) dimensions of stakeholders, individually and collectively. In other words, participation had to deliver more than a plan, however practical and feasible that plan might be. It also had to develop—in some cases shift—people’s knowledge base and understanding to align with the plan. And the experience from participating in the planning process had to attune, sometimes reframe, people’s historical and cultural attitudes and values. This was to be capacity development by engaging and participating in development planning, and development planning made sustainable by developing capacity to engage and participate.

The community largely viewed formulating and implementing development initiatives as the responsibility of government, while the government largely viewed the community as not having the necessary capacities to be involved. Given the community’s low-level of trust and confidence in the abilities of public sector institutions, it was necessary to ensure that the NSDS, especially its implementation, was not going to be left to government alone. Hence, the need for a new kind of engagement with and participation in development planning, and the creation of a champions group drawn from the public and community sectors and equipped with participatory leadership methods to “champion” the plan and its implementation. If the NSDS were going to be a different “parade” to the future, the champions group would be the marshals of this parade.

Nauru NSDS Process: Enhancing Many Capacities

The NSDS project emphasized the capacity to engage with and participate in development planning. To sustain this capacity beyond the NSDS required the project to focus as well on developing the capacity to lead engagement and participation processes. Hence, the “doing,” “knowing”, and “being” dimensions of engagement, participation, participatory planning, and participatory leadership capacities were targeted. However, other capacities were also being developed or initiated by the NSDS and are described below. Additionally, while this section focuses on a few key capacities, it is important to acknowledge other capacity development efforts initiated on many fronts in Nauru—some as a result of inclusion in the NSDS document, others accelerated by the NSDS process.

Participative Capacity: Participation in Development Planning

Consultation, engagement, and participation in the context of ToP, as practiced during the NSDS project, have the following characteristics.

Figure 1: The ToP Principles of Participation

Source: Technology of Participation (ToP) Facilitative Leadership Program.

The ToP principles (Figure 1) describe a participatory process in which the authentic engagement and participation of individuals in a collective setting empowers “new” thinking and leads to collaborative efforts that improve collective capacity to act. In the case of Nauru, this meant enabling stakeholders to fully express their thoughts and ideas about the future development of their country. The second principle has to do with tapping the creative or innovative edges of thinking for, in the words of Albert Einstein, “the significant problems we face today cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.” Third, participation is about collaborative efforts based on the recognition that no one person or interest group has a monopoly on good ideas and often, we do not know who will come up with the breakthrough ideas. Last, participation is about moving the results of thoughts and discussion into action.

Complementing these principles is an understanding of...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acronyms
• Foreword
• Introduction
• NSDS Project Scope and Capacity Dimensions
• NSDS Project Context
• NSDS Methodology: Framing Capacity Development
• Building Capacity through Participatory Planning
• Key Lessons for the Future
• Back Cover