PROJECT NEWS: Information from ICIMOD

Reaching out to the grassroots: scaling up the programme on indigenous honeybees in the Himalayas

Farooq Ahmad, Uma Partap, Surendra R Joshi and Min B Gurung

Another article with news about the work of the Austrian Government funded ‘Indigenous Honeybees Project’ at ICIMOD in Kathmandu, Nepal.

In BfDJ 71 we described our efforts to extend the programme in Afghanistan. Now we describe the approach being used to scale up the programme across the Himalayan region by involving rural development networks and organisations.

iCIMOD's indigenous honeybee project has shown considerable achievements in past years, especially in raising awareness of the ways in which marginal farmers in the Himalayan region can benefit from beekeeping with indigenous honeybees while conserving local biodiversity. Locally appropriate methods have been investigated and developed for keeping and breeding bees, and for harvesting, processing, and marketing of honey and other bee products. Farmers have also become more aware of how they can profit by keeping bees to support pollination of crops. Until now, these achievements have been mostly on a small scale with project activities focused on small areas. For the next phase, the project is looking at ways of scaling up the activities; if the approach can be disseminated widely at the grass roots level, it could benefit many thousands of households across the Hindu Kush Himalaya region.

Scaling up requires an approach different from that used in the smaller scale ‘pilot type activities. No one group can hope to cover the entire region: information dissemination and training must be carried out by many different partner institutions working together under a broad ‘project umbrella’, with activities developed according to the specific needs and interests in the different areas. The partner organisations in turn need to work through networks of community organisations to ensure that the information is really reaching those who can benefit most - the small farmers at the grass roots - and to be supported by other research and development institutions. The ICIMOD project is using an intense participatory planning process to develop an appropriate project document, which is intended to ensure that. partners are fully involved from the beginning.

Preliminary meetings were held with prospective partners in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan to initiate the process and gain some indication of their interest, commitment, and capacity for the promotion of apiculture. The selection criteria for potential partner organisations:

- to have extensive rural networks and links to communit based organisations;

- to have sufficient infrastructure and capabilities for the social mobilization process;

- to have a mandate for sustainable mountain development;

- to be interested in beekeeping interventions for income generation;

- to be interested in co-financing and partnership;

- to be committed to gender equality and environmental sensitivity.

Country specific planning workshops were held in Nepal, India and Pakistan to share the project concept, identify activities, and develop a logical framework matrix for each of the countries involved. A triangular model was developed for implementation involving ICIMOD, existing technical partner institutions, and the new regional partners and shared in each workshop. The first workshop, for Nepal and Bangladesh, was held in Kathmandu in June 2004, with a total of 40 participants including representatives from different prospective partner organisations, ICIMOD staff, a gender specialist, and external experts. A similar workshop was held in Himachal Pradesh in July 2004 for India with 19 participants from government, non-government, private organisations, and universities, and a further workshop for Pakistan was held in July with 35 participants.

So far, the workshop participants have successfully identified core problems and potential areas for interventions, and used these to prepare a draft project planning matrix for each of the countries. The full project document will be developed using these matrixes developed at the country workshops, and will be finalised at a meeting in September 2004, before submission to donors.