Development of policy for the effective management of natural resources

The defensive and bearable use of land, water, air, forests, rangeland, flora and fauna constituting the major part of natural resources for delivering magnificent services to the ecosystem helping to uplift and ease human life by providing basic life support in the form of consumptive and public-good services including soil productivity, recycling of food, cleansing of air, provision of oxygen in the long run is known as natural resources management [2].

In Asia during the recent decades an increasing attention is diverted towards the management issues of natural resource in response to food, water, energy and other resources reduction crises due to overwhelming challenges faced by the environment because of climate change, poverty, low productivity and ineffective resources mobilization and management.

Countries in Asia are facing numerous environmental challenges as they have compromised their natural resources base consumption for technological growth and advancement and this has adversely effected and increased pressure on natural resources for urbanization, infrastructure development, population growth, market demand and international trade. Such settings and conditions have deteriorated the quality and quantity of water, forest and land as the rehabilitation of these resources are not guaranteed causes injustice use, disputes over shares and threats to the feasibility and sustainability of natural resources in Asia. These combats on the ownership and use of natural resources are ignited due to the contrasting goals of the Government and community for the protection, rehabilitation, over use, bargaining, timber trade, wood fuel, political unrest and social values [1].

Natural resources management in Afghanistan is a is a key cross-cutting issue that adds to the impetus for improved awareness regarding policy and institutional analysis impact to provide the community with the best of technical capability and advising them on how to deal with future issues needs highly efficient policy with predicted human factors.

Policies plays important role and are vital element of any association and agency as it portrays significance by addressing relevant and persistent problems like guiding the behavior of employees in acceptable manner for decision making consistency. The innovation concepts in recent years has gone up but still there is need for policy choices to be adopted by the government as thoughtful classification of values for achieving coherent deliverables based on good practices, and knowledge management to strengthen the effective management of natural resources in Afghanistan.

Forests, rangelands, protected areas and wildlife forms the natural Resources of Afghanistan are under immense pressure through man-made and natural disasters including population rise, poverty, overdependence of rural populations low level of awareness, climate change and no existing policy are the biggest challenges for the protection and management of natural resources while supplementing three quarter of population livelihoods (GD-NRM strategy, 2017) [5].

Oli 2013, stated that Afghanistan has some of the world's most advance, pioneering regulations and guidelines of natural resources management on forestry, water and wildlife management but these policies are having little perceptible effect as the provinces have slight administrative capacity to put them into action on the ground [6].

Shrestha and Thapa, 2019, reviewed policies and programs in South Asian countries and identified that piloting and scaling-up of sustainable climate resilience and natural resource management is the highest priority [8].

UNEP 2009 reported that there is a lack of laws and policies in Afghanistan to facilitate the implementation of natural resources management through combating desertification, drought, biodiversity conservation and climate change and are rarely considered in the processes of plans, sector policies, investment plans and national legislation [7].

The goal of this research is to identify policy areas for the effective management of natural resources by reviewing and evaluating different policy formulation models and design implementation options to assist and guide organization in making plans and decisions. A survey of 72 employees of the General Directorate of natural resources management were conducted to study the perception, use, implementation, importance, behavior and performance standards regarding development of NRM policy.

Fifty six percent of the natural resources policy formulation and design survey respondents reported that population pressure, poor economy and land lords have weakened the traditional strategies for coping and management of natural resources. Majority of the participants emphasized that policies are the backbone for resources management in controlling decisions and must be developed within the present context as an organization without policy is an organization without control.

Most of the natural resources managers revealed that policy being essential part of an organization administration to cope with related issues and guidance while decision making clearly defining the classification of stages to be followed in a consistent manner showing the limitation and responses to policy violations. Sixty five percent of the respondents reported that they are using policies when needed, while thirty and five percent of the respondents concluded that they used policies during daily activities and not et al as well respectively.

Establishing green landscape and natural resources dependent efficient economy is a centric contest of development in Afghanistan today as 91% of the natural resources users are of the view that putting policy in place to reduce logging, deforestation desertification and promote sustainability will boost organization performance efficiency and improve resources productivity can help in enhancing the environment to bring down the resources over use for human economic growth, insecurity and competitiveness. Furthermore, this assessment portrayed that management of natural resources resource efficiency is highly dependent on national policy based on collective action and coordinated inputs to ensure equal assistances in Afghanistan.

Development of new policy for the management of natural resources in Afghanistan plays a necessary role in highlighting the best sectoral practices in establishing a platform for exchanging experiences at national and international level. The key message of 95% interview informants of NRM policy formulation assessment is that the new policy should target the resources efficiency in terms of products entire life-cycle and more emphases on making parallel and integrated sectoral policies in various areas including novelty, venture, trade, education and services development with natural resource management efficiency aims. NRM sustainability requires uprising by merging management policies

However, these policies and procedures are rendered useless if employers neglect to adhere to them or fail to effectively communicate them to employees. Utilizing both policies and procedures during decision-making ensures that employers are consistent in their decisions.

Natural resources require related policies merging for sustainability and management to execute over extensive productive sectors by involving multiple users and institutions proficient in dealing with the swiftly growing petition for natural resources, are critical for effective implementation of well-organized, reasonable and justifiable resource use claimed by 75% of the policy assessment pretenders. Here the results show that the new NRM policy should have fluctuating groupings of state, cooperative action and discrete ownership rights.

Sixty two percent of the NRM policy development options survey contestant investigation agreed that policy promote exchanges, collective learning, and information sharing are instrumental for handling opposition and shortage of resources. This will improve the effectiveness and impartiality of resources allocation and helps in wanted constitutional rights to natural resources tempt users to deliberate the full cost and alternative uses value. Also, the result and problem solving oriented policy will allow for efficient and equitable use of resources among the deprived local inhabitants, native groups, womenfolk and youth to access and secure their rights.

Policy and technology are two separate worlds and there is a gap between them identifies in the year 1959 known as the two cultures of science and humanity hindering in solving the world's problem. We must bridge the gap between technology and policymaking as our future depends on it; [3]. In case of Afghanistan NRM sector drivers as per the investigation eight percent believe that in this modern era of technology there is still need for policy choices because it helps in thoughtful classification of values while seven percent stresses that policy helps in achieving coherent deliverables. Amon them the rest eighty five percent suggests that in this technological era of science policy is of utmost importance as it supports in considerate organization of morals aids in accomplishing comprehensible outcomes.

Natural resources Policy development is based on good practices and knowledge management to strengthen the effective management of natural resources in Afghanistan, adds to the impetus for improved awareness of resources and also advise managers and community in how to deal with constraints exposed by eighty nine percent of this investigation contributors. While seven percent of the survey contributors said that policy reinforce the operative supervision of natural resources. the remaining four percent are of the view that policy improves the motivation for better outreach of resources.

Policy gap analysis is required in management aspects of natural resources of Afghanistan to find out how does management impacts performance and formulate or amend new policy for efficient organization management. Gap analysis is used to make the negotiation and progress more planned as it identifies how rationalized and how tenable current policies are, address present glitches so that future action plans can be effective when it comes to providing the needs of the business [4].

This study showed that causes of rarely used developed policies are problem between top management & employees and poor policy implementation. The NRM policy formulation and design respondents reported that as per their experience throughout policy making process sometime times the leading agency fails to to gain their main objective of securing authoritative status for certain policies implementation. The other reason for rarely used policy is that Government is unable to form a policy and mix it with a program just to avoid conflict of policy failure. Most of the times the specific objectives of a policy are not well translated into actions to overcome implementation performance because of theoretical sophistications.

Weaknesses in policy implementation in Afghanistan are lack of capacities in provincial and local level employees caused the rare implementation of NRM policy in the field are still not clear at central level as well. This needs specific policies for technical decision making as policies are not well coordinated and communicated to provincial and field level staff and a living example is NRM strategy. Policy maker should be a think thought group having a deep study of the consequences and able to present a flexible and alternatives options for decision making. Policy capability focuses on administrative and organizational skills with sound research and analysis to support policy decisions and promote operational performance policy implementation.

Low capacity is the main reason of weakness in policy implementation with inadequate human and material resources as the knowledge capacity of the top managers are not up to the mark to understand and implement a specific policy. Unawareness of modern policy making tools and knowledge and how does the new technology impacts policy making process are the main reasons of poor policy making. Why policy do not work out in Afghanistan is because corruption means that the top level management advertently puts obstacles in front of policies to benefit a specific group.

It is true that technological skills are required to promote health policy changes but they are not enough. Instead, they need to be complemented by civic involvement and lobbying to ensure public interest that policies are intended to represent. Corruption, lack of continuity in government policies, inadequate human and material resources, all of which often lead to implementation gap, i.e. the widening of the distance between stated policy goals and the realization of such planned goals.

Policy development for the effective management of natural resources requires reviewing and evaluating different policy formulations models and design implementation options as there is an intense need for natural resources policy of Long term and short term. The study suggests the following characteristics and composition of for the New NRM policy:

- The new policy should reflect increase in public awareness regarding the outcomes of natural resources management to support, strengthen and up-scale indigenous local organizations, resume cooperatives and development;

- Transparency and corruption free policy must be formulated as to eradicate poverty and uplift the livelihoods of natural resources dependent rural communities depends;

- Policy must be based on stakeholder analysis and approaches including wildlife conservation, rangeland management, forests, water, air, biodiversity conservation and geographical indicators to guide all partners at all level (decision makers, practitioners, academia, donors);

- Policy should be based on SWOT analysis to reflect sustainability, risks, improvement, conflict resolution and accords of constitution to be strictly followed;

- It should be short, medium- & long-term policy meeting the actual condition of Afghanistan made by national experts;

- The tools required for natural resources management should be focused;

- Policy should reflect the rights and responsibilities of individuals and communities in an action plan;

- Policy should be in local languages and practical.

It must have the options for increasing the level of revenue and funding with specific goals objectives and field of actions to collaborate with other relevant organizations in climate resilience agriculture practices adaptation based on integrated management approach;

- It should have capacity building options;

- Policy should reflect Government and donor commitment for economic values considerations, risks and roadmap;

- Good governance, accountability and integrated natural resource management;

- The policy should address the main causes of national resources and gives clues regarding approaches;

- The NRM policy should follow an eco-friendly sustainable way to helped both current and future conditions;

- Monitoring and evaluation in the part of low capacity and especially in the part of corruption;

- Revenue sharing (between communities and government) which leads us to sustainable NRM;

- On ground action, activities and responsibilities of both government and public;

- Role of private sector and public private partnerships;

- NRM policy's non-confirming programs and projects implement shall not be allowed;

- Implementation and sustainability plan;

- To the NRM policy these should be add Drought Food aid Decreasing size of cultivable land.

REFERENCES

1. Meinzen-Dick R., in Redefining Diversity & Dynamics of Natural Resources Management in Asia, Volume 1, 2017.

2. Iyyanki V. Muralikrishna, Valli Manickam, in Environmental Management, 2017

3. We Must Bridge the Gap between Technology and Policymaking. Our Future Depends On It. URL: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/11/we-must-bridge-the-gap-between-technology-and-policy-our-future-depends-on-it/

4. 9+ Policy Gap Analysis Examples. URL: https://www.examples. com/ business/ policy-gap-analysis-examples.html

5. Allan McConnell; why do policies fail? A starting point for exploration. Paper presented at political Studies Association 64th Annual International Conference 14-16 April 2014, Manchester.

6. Afghanistan Drought Risk management Strategy 2019- 2030; Food and Agriculture Organization and Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock Afghanistan.

7. Oli Brown, 2013, Encouraging Peace-building through Better Environmental and Natural Resource Management;

8. United Nation Environment Protection, 2009, National Capacity Needs Self-Assessment for Global Environmental Management and National Adaptation Program of Action for Climate Change;

9. Shrestha and Thapa, 2019; Policy and Program Priorities in Agricultural Research & Development in South Asia