9. Emerging Issues: How does the Political and Institutional Setting Influence the Achievement of SL Objectives? (a)

HARP Achievements

While it is difficult to separate the impact of HARP from other interventions, it appears that the project has had some key successes in demonstrating ways in which institutional change can be achieved in agricultural research and technology development in Nepal:

• Recognition of the need to involve many actors in research: institutional pluralism;
• Providing an incentive framework and continuity of funding to scientists to carry out more development-oriented research into agriculture;
• Through the establishment of a competitive grant system, researchers are drawn to be more output oriented (i.e. produce a relevant and useful technology that is adopted by farmers), to ensure that there is demand for the research or technology being developed and to specify the target group;
• Reforming the research planning process (structure for technical review of research proposals to meet fund objectives);
• Helping scientists plan research projects effectively and providing technical support for implementation; and
• Encouraging increased research in farmers' fields.

However
As the project, and especially the research fund, are young it is still unclear how HARP and the HRP are specifically contributing to the production of more appropriate technologies, increased farmer participation and better livelihood outcomes. Further, promoting institutional change has deep political and cultural ramifications that are beyond the capacities of one short term project to address alone. Various issues emerge and these can be broadly divided into internal (to HARP and NARC) and external.