Download - FRA Nepal

5. Assumptions and Risks
5.1 Institutional risks
Salary is enormously increasing on the private sector and other ODA projects. The trend is that the younger specialists are
leaving the Government organizations to work for the private sector, and ODA projects. It has happened quite often that
persons with acquired skills in information technology go and work for some other organization and this causes shortage of
human resources. The project should be able to motivate skilled people to stay and work in the project by offering
challenging tasks and good working environment. DFRS needs to designate appropriate staff members to the project to work
as full-time counterparts.
5.2 Technical risks
At the beneficiaries level there is a risk that collecting and processing of data for the FRA becomes too technical. It may
happen that the beneficiaries, for instance the district level forestry officers and decision makers cannot adopt the proposed
technology and new practices. Electricity and many other infrastructures related problems limit the use of technical devices.
This risk is diminished by adequate training, proper logistics support and results dissemination. Technically all used
equipment and information management software will be available. However, tailor-made applications and transfer of
personnel always have potential risk for missing institutional memory.
The technical matters will be discussed and decided in the project’s Technical Working Group (under the Project
Management Committee), where technical priorities will be discussed and solved. Most of proposed technical solutions are
already used in Nepal and some expertise is already available in the country. Open source solutions and applications will be
used as far as possible.
5.3 Funding and financial risks
The project will be funded by Finnish technical assistance (TA) and the government budget of Nepal. The Finnish TA is used
to cover the costs of the international expertise as well as supporting field work of Nepalese staff (travel allowance, logistics
and material support). The imbalance between the salaries of project funded expertise and the salaries of the Nepalese civil
servants exposes a risk of certain degree for the successful implementation of the project.
If project is managed through the Nepalese budgetary system, some financing risks may occur. Many donors have stopped
Red Book funding, because the aid instrument was ineffective due to the political and security situation. The budget
contributed by GoN will be managed by following government system. Funds from Finnish Government would be reflected
in the Red Book; however, the mode of expenses will be direct payment.
5.4 Coordination and security risks
With the several TA experts and part-time staff, the project will operate at the central level and in districts. It sets high
demands for successful coordination of activities. Therefore, good co-operation is needed between the project and
Departments of the Ministry for successful implementation of the project.
In addition, the information exchange among DFRS, DoF, SD and other government agencies, and communication in
forestry related departments need to be improved, in order to avoid unnecessary delays. If the project management
responsibilities are not clear, it is difficult to fully utilize foreign technical expertise and local contracted ICT-know-how.
Availability of appropriate national and international consultant is a low level risk. Timely recruitment of short-term
consultants is essential. In this context, attempts could also be made to outsource the fieldwork to private sector free-lance
field specialists or to use advanced level students who are committed to work several months in the field.
Political environment, peace process, drafting of the constitution and new federal structure can affect administrative
organization of country. However, the results of the project will be based on independent spatial network of sample points
and these can be used to recalculate new results for any new administrative division. The impacts of a weak security situation
in Terai and Eastern Hills may cause delays in data collection. It is possible to reduce this risk through local participation and
partnership programs with Department of Forests and DFOs and other local actors, such as community forest user groups.
There are still some active political groups in various remote areas. Careful consideration and consulting of local partners is
needed before each field campaign.
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