By Mark Harvey
I wrote two weeks ago an introduction and a first instalment of three blogs. That covered the 1980s and 1990s. Now I move on to the 21st century. Three more issues to frame the second part of this blog – PRSPs, SWAPs, FCAS.
Along with the MDGs a key feature of development at that time was the need for donors and agencies to coordinate and reduce the bureaucratic burden on lower capacity governments and administrations. Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP) became the means by which donors and recipients would work, getting the policies and plans in place in an acceptable and implementable form (for both parties) and they would be supported. A well-known UK Minister for International Development getting us to ‘drop our flags’. What that meant was, typically, Sector Wide Approaches (SWAPs). DFID supported such an arrangement in Uganda and I was seconded to the Ministry of Water Resources (MoWR) in Ethiopia to assist on their Universal Action Plan for another lesson in local ownership and policy implementation.
The WHO/UNICEF guidance at that time, if I recall correctly, was 25 litres per capita per day (lpcpd). MoWR argued that their financial and implementation capacity constraints did not enable them to reach this target service level and that, more importantly for them, their rural population generally managed on around 15 lpcpd and that by aiming to serve their population to this lower standard they could achieve universal service coverage. It was their policy, their plan, their goal – it made sense.
On the themes of local ownership and PSP in WS&S, while between postings, I worked with colleagues in the DFID water policy team in headquarters to answer allegations being posed by the World Development Movement that the UK was imposing water sector privatisation on developing country governments. We were able to show that this was not the case.
Around that time of the early 2000s as I relocated between Southern Africa and Ethiopia mentioned above, with my primary attention on rural WASH, I was very fortunate to spend four years based in Nepal. As well as supporting the rural WASH sector there my main responsibility was to oversee the implementation of the award-winning Rural Access Programme (RAP), a programme of labour-based, environmentally-sound district road construction in the mid-hills of Nepal (it is featured on the ICE website). Research in the 1990s on bio-engineering supported by ODA and, later, DFID alongside learning from the Swiss Development Corporation ‘Green Roads’ was a pre-cursor to today’s nature-based-solutions.
RAP was a well-designed programme building on many years of UK support to the strategic road network, going back to constructing the Dharan-Dhankhuta highway. However, it had not been explicitly designed to be implemented as the Maoist insurgency escalated. Then again, nor had the DFID programme as a whole. In 2001 as the fallout of the royal massacre was being realised, DFID in Nepal introduced its first ‘conflict adviser’. Previously attention to conflict had been within the remit of governance advisers, with response taken on by humanitarian colleagues. A conflict adviser was a new and welcome role. DFID’s programme adjusted and, as that adviser made very clear, programmes and projects can work around conflict, in conflict or on conflict – the programme shifted to ‘on’. FCAS (Fragile and Conflict Affected States, or ‘Situations’ as the Asian Development Bank prefer, as do I) became the norm. The DFID programme with GTZ in Nepal designed SEDC guidelines, training and a monitoring initiative – ‘Safe and Effective Development in Conflict’. RAP had to adjust to suit, we made it work, it expanded and evolved, moved onto district road maintenance and went through two further phases – a 23-year programme almost as old as EAP. Good development can take a long time but what I learned from that period and I hope took into further situations is that how you work and with whom is just as important, if not more so, as on what you work.
DFID was increasingly focused on FCAS in many respects through the 2000s and early 2010s. Professor Paul Collier’s 2008 book ‘The Bottom Billion’ was influential. And the government of the UK, including DFID, was involved in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I was deployed twice to Afghanistan. First to work in the UK-led Helmand Provincial Reconstruction Team (HPRT) in 2009-10 and then later in the DFID-Afghanistan office in Kabul between 2012 and 2015. Both of these were extraordinary experiences for me and each would warrant a long narrative in its own right. As I mentioned above, how you work and with whom is just as important, if not more so, as on what you work. So, finding with whom to work required close engagement with governance and political colleagues and to let governance processes determine pace, sequence, timing and priorities. One particular challenge, which to a large extent, was brought on by ‘ourselves’, was reining in the enthusiasm and style of some military colleagues.Thankfully some wise advice from a Brigadier to his ‘men’ (they were mostly men) was “don’t just do something, stand there!” in other words, listen, work with local stakeholders, don’t impose your solutions just because you want to leave your mark. But the tragic events of August 2021 and subsequent roll back of education and women and child’s rights is terrible.
I have used the example of ‘before and after’ photos of a road section in Helmand to demonstrate how infrastructure can contribute to the governance agenda. I will be happy to explain my theory and refer you to SDG16, targets 16.6 and 16.7.
So, governance is a key theme of this decade and brings us full circle almost to EAP with the Construction Sector Transparency Initiative launched globally in 2012 with a programme in Afghanistan from 2016. And it does not need me to write that the other key theme of this decade is tackling climate change. EAP should be commended for the publication with ODI of Climate compatible development in the infrastructure sector by Lily Ryan-Collins, Karen Ellis & Alberto Lemma. It preceded the World Bank report Lifelines: The Resilient Infrastructure Opportunity (worldbank.org).
‘Lifelines’ published in 2019 became my ‘go to’ resource in my role as Head of Profession (HoP) for Infrastructure and Urban advisers in DFID and later FCDO as I worked with colleagues in maintaining professional capability.
And on that note, I will close. My next, last instalment will propose three lessons from my experiences – it’s about systems, return to learn and identify your passion.
See you in two weeks.
Mark Harvey is a Trustee at EAP and a Chartered Civil Engineer with forty years of professional experience in international infrastructure development with a focus on low-income countries and fragile and conflict affected situations. Most recently, ten years of professional leadership in infrastructure for international development for the UK’s DFID and FCDO. He has worked on UK government development programmes in India, Southern Africa, Nepal, Ethiopia, Afghanistan and Vietnam including secondments to partner governments. He has a BSc in Civil Engineering, MSc in Water and Waste Engineering for Developing Countries and is a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers as well as a Member of the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management. He was awarded an OBE in 2011 for public service. He is married, has two boys in their twenties and is fortunate to live in the Yorkshire Dales National Park.