SARHAD PROVINCE CONSERVATION STRATEGY INDICATORS FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT SECTION 1 REPORT

This report, prepared by Dr. Peter Hardi of the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) in June 1998, details a technical assistance project to design a monitoring system for sustainable development within the Sarhad Province Conservation Strategy (SPCS) in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP). The document outlines a capacity assessment of data availability, the results of a multi-stakeholder workshop in Abbottabad, and the resulting outputs, including an integrated assessment system and a set of measurement tools.

• Public and policy priorities in the North West Frontier Province have shifted away from the environmental focus of the National and Sarhad Provincial Conservation Strategies toward urgent social and development issues. The most pressing priorities identified are poverty alleviation, food security, and population growth control, followed by societal peace, education, and health.
• There is a critical lack of data and monitoring systems to measure progress toward sustainable development in the NWFP. Specifically, there are no government-run systematic monitoring networks for air quality, soil contamination, waste disposal, or surface and groundwater quality. Additionally, macroeconomic data for the province, such as provincial GNP, is unavailable as it is monopolized by the federal government.
• Existing data in the NWFP often suffer from reliability issues due to poor supervision of field enumerators and inconsistent definitions. Examples include unverified afforestation data, inaccurate population growth rates based on previous guesses, and under-reported television set ownership due to fear of usage charges.
• The use of English as the professional language creates a significant barrier to the implementation of the SPCS and public mobilization. The full text of the SPCS is not translated into Urdu or local languages, and terminology related to sustainable development is not indigenous to the local culture, making it difficult to translate and communicate to the general population.
• The current government data collection system is characterized by centralization and compartmentalization, which contradicts the decentralization goals of the SPCS. Furthermore, the system cannot evaluate community involvement, and limited resources have led to the employment of inadequately qualified personnel for field evaluation, particularly in agricultural statistics.
• Stakeholders expressed a strong desire to move from planning to implementation, fearing that further delays in action could jeopardize the credibility of the SPCS. There is a demand for simple, action-oriented indicators that identify local problems and specific pockets of underdevelopment rather than aggregated national averages.

APA

Hardi, P. (1998). SARHAD PROVINCE CONSERVATION STRATEGY INDICATORS FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT SECTION 1 REPORT. International Institute for Sustainable Development. https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/pkrptsec1.pdf

Chicago

Hardi, Peter. SARHAD PROVINCE CONSERVATION STRATEGY INDICATORS FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT SECTION 1 REPORT. International Institute for Sustainable Development, 1998. https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/pkrptsec1.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Hardi |first1=Peter |title=SARHAD PROVINCE CONSERVATION STRATEGY INDICATORS FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT SECTION 1 REPORT |publisher=International Institute for Sustainable Development |date=25 June 1998 |url=https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/pkrptsec1.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{hardi1998sarhad, author = {Hardi, Peter}, title = {{SARHAD PROVINCE CONSERVATION STRATEGY INDICATORS FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT SECTION 1 REPORT}}, institution = {International Institute for Sustainable Development}, year = {1998}, month = jun, url = {https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/pkrptsec1.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }