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Points of View
Community Forest Management
Mankind has been clearing forests since the invention of the stone axe but the loss of forests has greatly accelerated with increasing population. How serious is the problem? And if shrinking tree-cover is a threat to the environment and future timber resources, can community management of forests offer a route to sustainable exploitation?
Many rural communities have been managing forested areas for centuries, but the concept of communities managing state forests in some sort of partnership with their government, is a relatively new approach. However, although Community Forest Management is widely supported, some people argue that it does not offer equitable benefits to all. New Agriculturist investigated some Points of View among those involved in forestry management and research.
Poverty and deforestation
"The main threat is immediate gains. People want money but forest resources
don't grow as fast to match that demand, so many a time when an economic
benefit has been realised by the farmers, they will go and exploit forest
resources such that they are depleted, and there is a lot of deforestation."
Livai Matarirano, an agroforestry development facilitator with The
World Agroforestry Centre, (ICRAF) working in Zimbabwe
"Our forests are not under threat... In developing countries, forests
are sometimes managed in a thoughtless and irresponsible fashion, but a primary
solution
to this will be higher growth and better economic foundation so as to
secure the countries' resources long term."
Bjørn Lomborg, author of 'The Skeptical Environmentalist: measuring
the real state of the world'
"There are cases whereby communities are managing their resources in a sustainable
way, but in the majority of cases this is not the case. There is a lot
of deforestation, a lot of desertification that is coming on, as a result
of the removal of trees."
Livai Matarirano, ICRAF, Zimbabwe
A case for community forestry?
"Community forestry has succeeded in protecting the forest, but
has failed to provide the expected benefits to users."
Hakum Singh, Nepal-Australia Community Resource Management Project, Kathmandu
"Community forestry is undoubtedly a risky venture both for forest-dependent
communities and the agencies which seek to support them. Significant support
is needed not only at the point of attribution, but also in subsequent
phases. Any thought that community forestry is a low-cost means for donors
to hand over contentious problems of forest management to rural communities
should be very quickly dispelled. On the other hand, the benefits may
well be considerable. Though it is as yet early days, evidence is growing
that the approach stands to have a major impact on the livelihoods of
the poor, on the character of forest governance and on citizenship more
generally."
David Brown, Overseas Development Institute, UK
"With the concept of community forest, the land belongs to the community of
Jamburr, and more so to our clan, and this has been testified by our surrounding
people, all confirm that this land belongs to us. It has been documented
by the Department of Forestry Services that the land belongs to us as
a community forest. This has encouraged us as we are now assured of the
total ownership of the land, and we now embark on developing the land
to make it a successful community forest."
Momodou Bojang, head of Falaa Community Forest Park management committee,
The Gambia
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Tenure of indigenous fruit trees |
"There is growing evidence that local community-based entities are
as good, and often better, managers of forests than federal, regional
and local governments. In addition, biologists and protected area specialists
are beginning to change perspectives on human interactions with nature,
acknowledging that the traditional management practices of indigenous
peoples can be positive for biodiversity conservation and ecosystem maintenance.
This positive outcome is best gained by devolving control of forest land
to communities."
Andy White and Alejandra Martin, Forest Trends, USA
"Community forestry clearly has potential for contributing to poverty alleviation
and the improvement of rural livelihoods. However, for community forestry
to be genuinely successful in sustainable poverty alleviation, communities
need to be assured of some key conditions: 1. Full and enforced legal
protection; 2. Sufficient leverage to obtain and maintain ownership over
their own organisation and planning processes; 3. Adequate training in
organisational, administrative and technical skills; 4. Access to finance."
Timothée Fomété and Jaap Vermaat, Rural Development Forestry Network/ODI
July 2001
Equity-who benefits?
"Despite policy emphasis on generating consensus among users in Community Forest
management, there is no real consensus that actually incorporates the
aspirations and views of the weaker sections of the community. Forest
management and distributions systems are mostly controlled by the elites
in the community, and community forestry extension input alone may not
be expected to reorient the entire socio-political structure."
Basundhara Bhattarai and Hemant R Ojha, from 'Who is benefiting from Nepal's
Community Forests?'
"Despite the progress and hopes, the process of facilitating community-based
natural forest management is clearly not inviolable. It may be corrupted
on the one hand, or diluted through ever-accelerating replication, on
the other...it has not been uncommon at some point or another, for one or
two more powerful individuals to attempt to reconstruct control of the
forest to their own ends."
Liz Alden Wily, International Development Consultant based in Nairobi
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Commercial ventures on communal lands |
"Poor users are not actually benefiting [from community forestry management
in Nepal] when all opportunity costs are accounted for in the assessment
of costs and benefits. Rather, community forestry may be imposing extra
costs due to increased costs of participating in meetings and the costs
of collecting products."
Basundhara Bhattarai and Hemant R Ojha, from 'Who is benefiting from Nepal's
Community Forests?'
Supporting good management
"Without secure rights, indigenous and other local community groups lack
long-term financial incentives for converting their forest resources into
economically productive assets for their own development."
Andy White and Alejandra Martin, Forest Trends, USA
"If people have never realised anything important in the forest, it will
be very difficult for them to buy any ideas that you are selling. You
need to show people that if they manage their forest well, they will get
more income; if they manage their forest well, they can leave something
for their children; if they manage their forest well, they will have basic
natural resources constantly. But it is very difficult to sell sometimes."
Edgar Masunga, manager of the Meru Forest Plantation, Tanzania
"In developing countries globalisation has dislocated traditional systems,
impoverishing rural communities but also opening new opportunities to
eradicate poverty and increase standards of living. These [community forest
management] projects help local communities find new markets for sustainable
forest products, and find new ways to acknowledge and compensate the rural
poor for their role as stewards of the world's natural environments....
Well-designed and implemented forest management helps to maintain biodiversity
and conserve the natural functions of a forest, while also providing stable
incomes for rural communities."
World Wide Fund for Nature, from WWF website
"We realised very soon that we need to address the problem of agriculture
along with the problem of forest management. Because the main destruction
of the forest right now does seem to be people cultivating inside the
boundaries of government-managed and controlled forest."
Cecilia Polansky, Forest Advisor for the Co-operative League, USA,
working in Zambia
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Supporting agriculture to protect forests |
Sharing responsibility
"Forestry issues in Kenya are taking centre-stage. And we believe this
is out of improved awareness. This is a step forward. And also there are
a number of applications to the forest department, that communities living
around the forest, want now to participate in the conservation of the
forest. This is something that never used to be there. Now, despite the
fact that there is no law protecting them or supporting them to manage
the forest, we can see there are many, many applications from all over
the country to the forest department, that they want to participate in
the conservation of the forest, and this is I think, a step forward as
far as we are concerned."
Enoch Kanyanya, Technical Co-ordinator, Kenya Forest Working Group
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A Forestry Bill to legalise community participation |
"The extent to which the disappearance of forests over the coming century
may be slowed, and the extent to which forests will be effectively managed
over the coming century, depends first and foremost upon the extent to
which governments devolve their jurisdiction - and ideally ownership -
over these estates to the local level, albeit on terms which prevent the
conversion of forest to non-forest purposes."
Liz Alden Wily, International Development Consultant based in Nairobi
"The government needs to reaffirm its commitment to maintaining
the forests that they have already, and the key to doing that is going
to be involving communities surrounding those forests. And on the community
side, they need to also realise that if they are too selfish about their
own families' needs, and are not interested in improving their yields
per hectare, then we will have a problem with deforestation, that will
make it so that eventually, they won't even be able to get medicines out
of the forest, or those economic resources that both women and men depend
on to bring cash into their households."
Cecilia Polansky, Forest Advisor for the Co-operative League, USA,
working in Zambia
