NESTOR M. PESTELOS

April 1993

PARTICIPATORY ISLAND PROFILING AND DEVELOPMENT PLANNING:

A methodology to assist small island communities achieve sustainable development

1.0 Background

Since the start of its Phase II operations in October 1989, the UNDP-OPS Integrated Atoll Development Project (RAS/88/014) has directed attention to further develop and refine standard methodologies for enabling island communities achieve sustainable development. These methodologies have been specifically designed and validated to enable the participating countries to carry out the basic replication process required to plan, implement and manage integrated development in remote atolls and small islands.

These unique approaches need to complement each other in mobilizing small island communities towards sustainable development. Thus the outputs of the participatory planning process, which are the Island Profile and the Development Plan, will necessarily become inputs to achieving other objectives, namely, to generate projects that the community itself has identified as important to solving local problems; and to enable the community to implement and manage these projects and share equitably the benefits of development.

The other methodologies facilitate and in some stages, reinforce, this core process by building skills, remolding attitudes and on the whole, transforming the islanders’ world-view so that they can look to the future with confidence and thus carry forward the various tasks required of a deliberate change process which relies more on local skills and resources to accomplish community goals.

This paper focuses on the Participatory Island Profiling and Development Planning (PIPDP) methodology, which was first, field-tested and validated in Mangaia in the Cook Islands and subsequently implemented in other participating countries along with other IADP methodologies. It will deal on the salient features of PIPDP, including how the participatory process has been enriched by implementation experience in the other outer islands and atolls in the Cook Islands and in other countries, such as Kiribati and Tuvalu.

2.0 Basic PIPDP process

As developed in the Cook Islands, the basic process includes the following key activities:

- gathering of relevant data on the island with the participation of national agencies;

- consensus-building among key officials and other resource persons on the possible development strategy for the target island;

- formulation of a tentative development island profile;

- data gathering at the island and consultation with key individuals and local resource persons;

- workshop with representatives of all sectors to update the profile data;

- discussion and analysis of the problems by the people themselves to facilitate their own understanding of the total island socio-economic situation;

- determination of local goals and strategies in solving priority problems;

- identification by the local people of an institutional mechanism for plan implementation;

- preparation of a long-term development with time frame meshed with the national plan; and

- validation of the plan through consultation with the village population.

This basic process ensures the involvement of the entire community, the people and their leaders, the island-based sectoral agency personnel, religious and traditional leaders, and representatives of sectors who may be traditionally at the periphery of local decision-making, such as the women and youth. They go through the same process of basically understanding better the local situation, identifying problems and resolving to overcome them through the effective planning and implementation of relevant local-level development projects.

The outputs of this process are:

- the Island Socio-Economic Profile, which contains updated data for the economic and social sectors, infrastructure, island administration and local institutions, as well as information on the island history, physical features and population;

- the Island Development Plan, which contains the community-articulated needs and problems, the statement on the overall development strategy, sectoral goals and strategies and the various projects proposed for implementation.

3.0 Refinement on the Basic Process

As a planning methodology, PIPDP provides a common framework for both the government and the community to work together in development actions directed at solving locally perceived problems. The workshop process forges close collaboration between the government and the community first by ensuring that the participants

- share the same picture of the local situation;

- assess together the relative weights of the economic social problems to arrive at priorities for action;

- and agree on a plan to generated community action in undertaking project activities.

Participation in the workshop thus becomes a precondition itself for future action. The workshop process makes sure that common understanding becomes the firm basis for such action.

After intensive application of the PIPDP process in 16 outer islands of Tuvalu and Kiribati, the following have been the refinements introduced upon the assessment undertaken by both IADP and the relevant government representatives:

- Three full days have been given the training team to conduct dialogues with the community and government functionaries on the validity of the secondary data collected from national agencies. A detailed guideline on data gathering for the community profile has been prepared. It now includes more data on poverty indicators and socially disadvantaged groups, ecological resource assessment and on indigenous institutions and organizations.

- A 1-Year Community Action Plan is now an output of the workshop process in addition to the long-term development plan. This plan significantly reduces the gap between plan formulation and actual implementation. It contains activities the community can immediately implement with minimal external assistance.

- A session-by-session guide for facilitators has been prepared which provides for smooth and logical transition from one workshop activity to another. The detailed guidelines facilitate easy comprehension by trainers of how to produce the specific outputs with maximum involvement of both community and government participants.

4.0 Other Innovative Features

PIPDP represents a major breakthrough in making participatory planning a sustainable activity. Its methodology does not require trainers to be highly educated. PIPDP builds on local knowledge and utilizes social and interpersonal skills to facilitate the outputs.