4 - Mountain Agenda sidelined as the conflict of political and personal interests at ICIMOD outbalances everything else (i)

Despite its bright past and some outstanding works, the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) is now giving the worst performance when it comes to advocacy of Mountain Agenda in the HKH region as well as outside, including major international processes. Please note, being a regional intergovernmental organization, ICIMOD's main focus is regional cooperation and policy advocacy.

Experts tell us this is primarily because of lack of vision, feeble leadership and serious lack of management skills of the present Director General (DG) Dr. David Molden who is neither a mountain expert nor a mountain thinker. Given a long list of weakness and inexperience of the Director General other senior staffs at ICIMOD are playing with his mind, manipulating the facts and imposing activities to fulfill their vested interest. Please find below list of selected activities, how they evolved in the past, their glory and how those success stories are unnecessarily killed by Director Molden and other senior management staffs at ICIMOD:

CASE I: Rio+20 Process – Preparations and Follow-up:

Evolution: 

Under the leadership of Dr. Madhav Karki, former Deputy Director General (DDG), ICIMOD made most important contribution to Himalayan and global mountain community by putting high the Mountain Agenda in the Rio+20 process. Started in April 2011, the Rio+20 preparations included several sounds of virtual as well as face to face consultation in the HKH as well as Southeast Asia Pacific Region. Several other experts played key role in making this process inclusive and voices heard. Dr. Golam Rasul, Programme Manger at ICIMOD played key role in developing concept of Green Economy in the context of developing and mountainous countries. Mr. Tek Jung Mahat, Project Manager and Node Manager – Asia Pacific Mountain Network (APMN) took this discussion among the youth and organized the largest ever e-conference among Asian youth that included over 550 contributors. 44 selected youth from 17 countries were invited to gather in Kathmandu in August 2011 for the Asia Pacific Youth Forum on Mountain Issues who later developed the Asia Pacific Youth Declaration on Climate Change and Sustainable Development, and the Asia Pacific Position Paper on Rio+20, the only input from Asian Youth to this global process. The team prepared Sustainable Mountain Development Assessment reports for the HKH and Southeast Asia Pacific region, issued Policy briefs and brought together Asia Pacific stakeholders (government, civil society, youth and media) to make the impacts larger in this process. This preparation was linked with activities in other regions led by trusted partners such as CONDESAN, SDC, UCA among others and the concept of Mountain Pavilion was realized during the Rio+20 conference itself, in which several advocacy programmes were organized, including a very high level meeting led by the Government of Nepal, which was attended by then Prime Minister Dr. Baburam Bhattarai, HE Gyan Acharya, High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States, Ministers and senior policy makers from several other mountainous countries. As a result of series of organized preparations, ICIMOD together with number of other global partners, was able to ensure presence of 3 paragraphs dedicated to mountains and mountain issues. Following to this Mr. Mahat involving several local partners organized another youth forum in 2012 in Katmandu and trained 40 youth from 13 Asia Pacific countries on Mountains and Green Economy. He furthered the initiative by developing National Youth Forums on Green Solutions in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal and Pakistan and trained other 280 plus youth in their own countries considering the local reality and actions needed.

Failure: 

Despite huge success and a strong need to continue mountain issues advocacy works in the Post Rio+20, Post-2015 Development Agenda and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) drafting process, ICIMOD failed taking initiatives after December 2012, when Dr. Karki got retired. Several consultation meetings organized by UN systems, Civil Society (called Major Groups), regional institutions and interest groups in the Asia Pacific have not seen any mountain advocates after this (except occasional presence of representatives of the Government of Nepal). By now at least 5 major global initiatives have already completed their regional and thematic consultations on these topics and sadly ICIMOD was nowhere during those meetings. Staffs involved earlier were found complaining about ICIMOD system, lack of vision of its leaders and poor bureaucratic model that has paralyzed staffs from making any contributions. Such failures have caused mountain issues going under noticed in these discussions. If a mountain dedicated institute fails in ensuring these basic preparations or mountain advocacy, what can we expect from ICIMOD in future? How can the thought, vision and plan-less leadership at ICIMOD convince billions of stakeholders in the HKH on what they are doing for mountains and mountain people?

Why ICIMOD failed to continue this legacy?

·         After retirement of its DDG in December 2012, ICIMOD lacked a leadership to continue this legacy and keep the momentum going at global and regional level. Sadly, inadequate vision of present DG, political conspiracy in the background and power games at the Centre created a situation in which ICIMOD was not able to recruit the DDG, who had been leading such initiatives. Interestingly the post of DDG is still vacant (for more than 11 months) and many believe this is another conspiracy being hatched by the DG with other staffs at ICIMOD and select interest groups (few member countries) to sideline the Nepali community at ICIMOD and deviate ICIMOD’s interest from Nepal.

·         Even when previous leaders were leading this process there was extremely high level of opposition and no-cooperation from the DG and other staffs at ICIMOD as they were not able to fulfill their vested interest through ICIMOD preparation from Rio+20. Such oppositions had delayed production of assessment reports, affected several network meetings, and halted advocacy works. Most importantly ICIMOD’s work with Government of Nepal was largely affected as DG was always against Nepali Government and Nepali community at large.

·         Related to previous point, the DG is neither a mountain expert nor mountain thinker. So he rarely cares about such important events. For him keeping few people in his group is more important than overall achievement of the Center and Mountain Agenda.

·         Young professionals coordinating this process during preparations were badly discouraged from taking any actions as the DG and people close to him felt Mountain Agenda is personal work of former DDG and ICIMOD should not work on them anymore.

What a pity situation? If the Rio+20, Post-2015 Development Agenda and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) activities were personal work of former DDG Madhav Karki, let’s ask present Director General Dr. David Molden, what are his institute’s present works and priorities? – spoiling ICIMOD’s management? Marginalizing Nepali staffs and communities? Breaking laws of the host country? Making ICIMOD a battleground of Nepali and Non-Nepali staffs?