THE International Centre for Integrat¬ed Mountain Development (ICI¬MOD) has completed two years of ope¬ration and "is off and running", according to its Director, Colin Rosser. The difficult ground-breaking activity is complete, he says, and the Centre is already into the "second phase" of its existence, carrying out substantive activities which will be¬nefit the mountain people of the Hindu-Kush Himalaya and elsewhere. Although the Centre´s work so far is appreciated, however, the course has not been set and locked. Within ICIMOD and among observers there is debate and also an undercurrent of unease as to what it is and what it should do.
"We started with a handicap right away because too much was expected of us, especially at our base here in Nepal", says a senior staff member. There are other, perhaps more serious constraints – regional politics, limited finances and the inability to attract recognised names from ouside the region because of low pay scales (by international standards). Regionally, ICIMOD has not been able to reach out to three countries named in its statutes – to Afghanistan. Bangladesh and Burma – though it is not for want of trying.
ICIMOD was inaugurated at the culmination of a week-long symposium in December 1983. attended by international luminaries such as UNESCO´s embattled chief Amadou-Mahtar M´Bow and Maurice Strong, Canada´s environment and development pundit. The Centre was established to benefit the hill farming community of the Himalaya Hindu Kush and elsewhere, one of the most neglected segments of the world´s population. It was decided then that the first couple of years after starting operations in September 1984 should be a period of stock-taking, and institution building.
During the time, ICIMOD had assembled a gifted staff of 25 from the region, set up shop in a "campus" of seven buildings in Patan, organised five major international workshops (on watershed management, rural energy, "rural-urban linkages", off-farm employment and national parks), begun collaboration with other agencies, awarded its first Senior Research Fellowship (US$25,000 to Nepali botanist Tirtha Bahadur Shrestha), and established a computerised documentation centre.