1. On behalf of the IUCN, I attended the 15th Commonwealth Forestry Conference in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe from 12-17 May 1997. My primary goal was to gain an understanding of the direction of the Commonwealth Forestry Conference. Additionally, it was an opportunity to broaden the membership of the working group on Community Involvement in Forest Management (WG-CIFM) and further the network of practitioners in the development of specific recommendations for community forestry policy. This community forestry policy project is being run through an electronic conference of the working group on CIFM and the Sustainable Development Institute (SDI), a Washington-based NGO with a policy research project focusing on community forestry. The recommendations and results of this electronic conference will be directed to a number of international and independent bodies, including the World Commission on Forests and Sustainable Development (WCFSD).

 2. Most of the participants at the Commonwealth Conference were foresters, members of the Commonwealth Forestry Association, or members of the Commonwealth, including officials from the newly joined Cameroon and Mozambique. Also attending were representatives of academic, research and policy institutes, foundations, and donor agencies.

 3. The conference was organized around three sub-themes: The Interface Between the Community, the State, and the Private Sector; The Technological Means of Ensuring Sustainable Forestry; and The Products and Service of the Forestry. These themes were a departure from the traditional venue for the Commonwealth Forestry Conference, of mainstream forestry science, particularly with its first theme which focused on the political and social context for forest management. The conference commenced with an opening speech from the President of the Republic of Zimbabwe Cde. R.G. Mugabe and a keynote address from the Secretary General of the Commonwealth Chief Emeka Anyaoku. In their addresses, both emphasized the importance of community involvement in forest and wildlife management, setting the tone for the conference.

 4. Three working groups were established to discuss papers presented on the sub-themes. I followed the working group on the Interface between the Community, the State, and the Private Sector which had three discussion topics: (1) Participatory Forest Management; (2) Political Pressures and Socio-Economic Demands on Forest Ecosystems. Dr. Yemi Katerere, Director of the IUCN Regional Office for Southern Africa (ROSA), and former Director of the Zimbabwe Forestry Commission started off the discussion with an iconoclastic piece. He opened by saying, "I will preface my presentation by reminding you that you should really have had the views of the communities themselves represented." And he presented three cartoons that show what is wrong with the way foresters and communities perceive one another. His main message was that the only way to stabilize forest management is by securing community tenurial rights over land and forests, and that resource tenure drives broader issues.

 5. Dr. Katerere said that communities and forest management are part of a traditional production scheme guided by local institutions. New rules and administrative systems significantly alter traditional relationships of communities to the forest. Forest departments have been part of the problem, he argued. For example, the status accorded to the DFO (district forest officer) assigned to work on a gazetted protected area is higher than that of those assigned to work with communities. He raised a number of questions that need to be answered in order to articulate the interface between communities, the state, and the private sector: e.g. (1) How do we secure community rights?; (2) How to disengage the state control over woodlands?; (3) How to make the FD responsive to people's needs?;

 6. He argued that there has been a fundamental misunderstanding of traditional systems, as well as an unconscious conspiracy of development assistance donors in the language used in trying to create something new. The concept of participation has become meaningless with overuse. The recognition of traditional systems of management and use is critical as well as the need for tenurial security whether under common property or not. But given the way that traditional management systems are steadily breaking down, there is a need to focus on community needs and the basic relationship with the state, and the forest department in particular. A synthesis of traditional and modern resource management strategies needs to be achieved.

 7. Papers presented over the next few days reiterated many of these points, not nearly as dramatically, but clearly indicating a shift in the way this group of foresters is beginning to view the relationship of the community to the state. A few papers were presented on the need for more private sector involvement in innovative initiatives working with communities. Most exhilarating was the question and answer period where a lively debate centered around the concepts of devolution, the emerging patterns of new partnerships in forest management, the importance of the process in genuine participation, changing donor approaches, and the critical role of training institutions.

8. Interestingly enough, many of the younger foresters with experience working with communities were dismayed saying, "We aren't making as much progress as we should. There is a need to create a vision that politicians can understand and buy into." At the same time other seasoned advocates of community approaches reminded them that there has been a sea change in the way foresters are talking even since the last Commonwealth Forestry Conference. However, there were plenty of remarks from the old style foresters anxious to defend their profession. An Indian forester said, "If we give the forest land to communities and individuals, how can they get the technical assistance in silviculture they need? How can we conserve biodiversity and still give people their rights to forests resources?"

9. The salient points emerging from the debate were that the nature of forestry extension services is changing. Forestry institutions need to begin to manage forests in response to local needs recognizing the legitimacy of traditional management systems. States can play a useful role in mediating and managing conflicts over forest resources. Civic education and public awareness are probably the only way to build political commitment which reflects the spiritual values of people.

 Efforts must be given to consider how we can better support local entrepreneurship to move to a qualitative use of forest resources. Priorities should come from the national level to the international level and not the other way around. The devolution process should be supported not to devolve authority to the lowest level, but to strengthen the capacity of local institutions and adapt them to modern situations, including building a capacity for bringing views to bear on negotiations and policy formulation. Continuous review of forest policy is necessary.

 10. Ms. Pippa Bird of the British DFID/ODA delivered a paper reflecting upon the changing faces of donors, based on the ODA Review of Participatory Forest Management (PFM) and on a growing body of evidence. The paper emphasized that donors are in unique positions to explain their goals and objectives to governments and play a number of roles: (1) support an enabling environment for participation; create space for PFM by building positive examples; supporting networks for information flows; supporting institutional change; supporting institutional links; and taking risk, the kinds attached to shifts in power. Ms. Bird underscored the importance of a continuous learning process for both sides, as each needs to accept the shifts in power and learn from criticism. Basic principles that donors can adopt to begin to better support transitions to more participatory forms of forest management include a shift from project to program, longer time frames, identifying and monitoring process-type indicators of progress. This delivery was a refreshing break from the sorts of things donors have said repeatedly in the past.

 11. Two papers were particularly controversial and sparked lively debate. These concerned the role that the private sector can play in supporting sustainable forest management and rural development. Ms. V. Pelembe, a woman from the Mozambique Forestry Commission looked at the potential for the private sector in Mozambique to have a major role in rural development, involving local communities in their forest industry and taking responsibility to ensure that forestry is done sustainably. She said they are borrowing from the model of the Campfire Program for participatory wildlife management in Zimbabwe. Jeannette Clark, formerly of the Zimbabwe Forestry Commission, has been working in South Africa on the role of the private sector and people's participation. She reported that South Africa possesses a major plantation resource base, comprising 2 percent of the GNP and employing 250,000 people. She underscored the importance of social auditing and certification schemes as means to ensure equitable sharing of benefits.

 12. A flood of comments followed the presentation of these two papers questioning the argument that the private sector can be responsible for rural development and forest protection. James Mayers of the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) expressed concern about relying on large-scale industry and proposed a very careful approach based on localized high value products like veneer factories. Ms. Pelembe said, "Industries are not the main users of the forest, but they can pay for the management. The local communities use the forest for cash and cannot pay for the sustainable management of native forests." She added that the industries want to invest in Mozambique now that the political situation is finally relatively stable. The government plans to require industries to take steps toward sustainable forest management.

 13. Jeannette Clark emphasized the importance of the political changes in South Africa to the role of communities in forest management saying, "Since the change in government, the forests have been opened once again to communities with a focus of forest production." She described the efforts to have value-added production for communities to benefit. This issue of responsible private sector activity in respect to local communities and sustainable forest management practices will be of increasing importance. Jeanette flagged the importance of certification efforts around the world to local communities. The subject was not discussed in any detail at this conference, but will be increasingly important.

 14. On the final day of the conference, the rapporteur of the three working group sessions reported the summary findings of the groups. Then presentations were made by the new President of the Commonwealth Forestry Association, Mr. Jag Maini; by Mr. David Harcharik, Director of the FAO Forest Division, and from Mr. John Spears of the World Commission on Forests and Sustainable Development. Jag Maini described the complexity of forests and difficulty for politicians in dealing with them; then he indicated the five countries in the world which contain most of the world's last remaining contiguous forests: Russia, Canada, Brazil, Zaire, and the USA. The rest he said are in varying degrees of decline, but with important biodiversity. He described the efforts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Forests, and praised the work of the IUCN among others of bringing the importance of communities in forest management to bear on the deliberations of the Panel.

 15. David Harcharik described the importance of democratic processes in determining forest management, and the need for political dialogue on forests, to make politicians more comfortable with the debates on forests. He offered the FAO as a fora where more work can be done to (1) Broaden participation to include local communities, the NGO community, and the private sector; (2) provide information and technical inputs. He listed the Forest Resource Assessment, the review of non-wood forest products, Sectoral Reviews, and the State of the World's Forests; He described the importance of using the available technologies to strengthen the understanding of the forests and their social and political contexts.

 16. John Spears presented the main goals and findings of the independent World Commission on Forests and Sustainable Development (WCFSD). His main conclusions were that a Plan of Action will reflect the message that has emerged from the series of five regional hearings that civil society non-government actors (including the business community) will play a dominant role in managing forest resources.

 17. The enabling framework for civil society to manage forests will require radical restructuring and reform of existing consultative mechanisms and political decision making processes. An overriding goal will be to ensure more equitable representation of all stakeholder groups in forest policy dialogue and benefit sharing. Substantial obstacles remain to people's participation in management of public forest lands such as inequitable property and land use rights; negative impacts of state controlled marketing boards, gender imbalances, inflexible national government and donor agency financing mechanisms. While some transnational timber corporations are moving toward more sustainable practices, the companies involved in corruption and illegal practices need to be monitored and their unsustainable practices halted. Finally, there is a need for focused national and global level action that can tackle the economic distortions and market failures driving forest loss and degradation.

 Conclusions

 18. The 15th Commonwealth Forestry Conference marks the passage into a new era of thinking on forests. Papers presented at the conference demonstrate that local communities with a long term stake in the sustainability of forests are at the forefront and foresters must learn how to engage them. The context for forestry has become highly politicized, thus it is imperative that communities are brought into the dialogue on forest policy. Furthermore, politicians must come to understand the forest debate and learn the importance of communities to forest management. Discussions at the conference revolved around the means for increasing the capacity of both foresters and communities to manage forests at the local level. Conflicts over resources will always be present and need to dealt with through establishing mechanisms facilitating ongoing processes of dialogue among interested parties including: local communities, foresters, industries, environmental organizations, and government. Training and information flows are key factors.

 19. The IUCN plays a key role through its regional offices and programs in establishing mechanisms for dialogue. With its convening power, the IUCN could play a potentially larger role in mediating conflicts over resources. The forest conservation program of the IUCN should look at the conclusions and recommendations of the 15th Commonwealth Forestry Conference and further publicize and circulate these learnings.

 (The proceedings and conclusions of the Commonwealth Forestry Conference will be distributed by the Commonwealth. A complete set of abstracts of papers presented at the conference should also be available from the Commonwealth.)

 20. Glossary of Terms

ADB Asian Development Bank

• AFAN African Forest Action Network
• CIDA Canadian International Development Assistance
• DFID British Department for International Development
• EDI Environmental Development Institute
• EU European Union
• ICRAF International Center for Research on Agroforestry
• IIED International Institute for Environment and Development
• IPF Intergovernmental Panel on Forests
• ITTO International Tropical Timber Organization
• IUCN International Union for the Conservation of Nature
• NGO Non Governmental Organization
• ODA (British) Overseas Development Administration
• Official Development Assistance
• ODI Overseas Development Institute
• UNCSD United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development
• UNDP United Nations Development Program
• UNEP United Nations Environment Program
• UNGASS United Nations General Assembly Special Session
• USAID United States Agency for International Development

The Sustainable Development Institute (SDI), a non-governmental, non-profit organization funded through the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, has been studying the trends in policy among the major donor agencies, including the World Bank, that support the role of communities in managing forests and natural resources. SDI identified a number of the newer projects that have a major community forestry component and emphasize village level development. We selected the newer projects because they also should reflect the participatory policies introduced in recent years by donor agencies and we are interested to see how these policies are being implemented on the ground. SDI's main purpose is to improve the understanding of the pivotal role of local communities in sustaining environmental quality and economic development. Thus the participatory policy of these major donors is of particular interest to us.

I paid a ten day visit to India, in February 1996, to gain a sense of what is happening at the village level in the state of Madhya Pradesh where a statewide World Bank Project has adopted Joint Forest Management to combat increasing crisis of forest resource degradation.

National parks, wildlife reserves and other types of protected areas are a crucial means of conserving biological diversity. Local communities living within or adjacent to these areas have been excluded from the management plans in the past. The ensuing conflict of interest between the local people and the typically underfunded park management has caused people to question this traditional approach to conservation. In recent years, there has been a growing recognition that the management plans for protected area systems must include local people. This shift in approach has come from the discovery that the park management cannot work through policing by the park staff alone. Without attention to the underlying causes for continued exploitation of forest resources by local communities, the protected area systems will ultimately be diminished to a point of no return.

In tropical Southeast Asian protected areas, where the local communities are relying on the forests as a source of livelihood, removing access to the forest by setting park boundaries cannot succeed in eliminating forest exploitation without the creation of alternative income generation. Apart from the fact that the national park staff cannot police the hundreds of thousands of hectares of park, there is a need for regional and spatial planning in these areas where park systems have been set aside. Thus the concept of integrated conservation and development projects applies to the local and regional level, and attempts to find a balance between the needs for the conservation of biodiversity and economic development.

The Kerinci Seblat National Park is one of the largest reserves in Indonesia, spanning four provinces across the southern part of Sumatra. The area was identified in the 1980's as an important area for wildlife and biodiversity. Much of the area had been set aside from Dutch colonial times. In the past fifty years since independence, settlers have been pouring into the richly forested area from all over Sumatra and from Java. In the mid-1980's, the World Wide Fund for Nature together with the Indonesian government, set aside this area to become a national park. In 1988 WWF established an office worked with the provincial, regional and local government to develop park boundaries. In 1992, due to increasing encroachment, the boundaries were redrawn. By this time, the site had been proposed to become a World Bank and Global Environment Facility pilot project for the integrated conservation and development project concept.

In the state of Orissa, in Eastern India, village-based forest protection committees are taking matters of forest management and conservation into their own hands. This community forest protection in Orissa is fundamentally a decentralized grassroots movement initiated by small villages to protect local natural forests from further degradation. In many places in Orissa, communities, on their own accord, are forging unions or federations representing hundreds of villages to protect and regenerate forests, and even push for policy reforms. Orissa may have the most progressive forest policy of any Indian state; yet, inconsistencies in state forest policy and incentives for forest commercialization present obstacles for practical implementation of sound and equitable management. The vitality of these village-based movements demonstrates that implementation of sound forest management practices by forest communities is leading the policy transformation in this region; it is the forest department that needs to catch up with the local communities managing forests and not vice versa.

In a recent visit to the vast state of Orissa, Claudia D'Andrea, Program Associate of the Sustainable Development Institute investigated the rising phenomenon of the formation of unions or federations by visiting with four non-governmental organizations involved at various levels with some of the communities organizing themselves into very large federations. Ms. D'Andrea visited the grassroots organization People's Institute for Participatory Action Research (PIPAR) active in the Dhenkanal district of Orissa with the highest number of forest protection committees in the state; the Bhubaneshwar-based Regional Centre for Development Cooperation (RCDC) active in Western Orissa and the neighboring state of Eastern Madhya Pradesh; Vasundhara Institute, a forestry sector support organization active at both policy level and on the ground near to the state's capital; and OXFAM (India) Trust, which works all over the state but supports some activities of the Movement for Trees and Living Beings, known as BOJBP, one of the oldest and most conservation-oriented of the federation movements.

After the Earth Summit in Rio de Janiero, a special organizing committee was set up to establish an independent global commission addressing the problems of the deteriorating status of the world's forests. The idea for an independent commission developed out of a proposal from Ambassador Ola Ullsten of Sweden at the Global Forest Meeting held in Bandung, Indonesia in 1992. The goal of the Commission is to examine the use of the world's forests in the context of sustainable development. The WCFSD was launched by the InterAction Council of Former Heads of State in June 1995. A series of five regional Public Hearings are to be held around the world to identify the regional and international institutional, legal, and policy reforms that will lead to more equitable and sustainable forest management. The first of these five hearings was recently held in Jakarta, Indonesia for the Asia region. The next regional meeting will be held in Winnipeg, Canada, September 29 through October 5, 1996, and will address the problems of forests and sustainable development in North America and Mexico, the NAFTA region. Subsequent meetings will be held for the Latin American region, in Georgetown, Guyana in early December; the African region, either in the Congo Basin or the Dry Zone countries of Africa in early 1997; and in Russia for the European region in mid 1997. The following is a report by the Sustainable Development Institute which had the opportunity to attend the first Asia regional hearing and meeting.

The World Commission on Forests and Sustainable Development (WCFSD) is an independent body of experts that was established after the Earth Summit of June 1992 to examine the problems of the deteriorating status of the world's forests. The Commission is holding five regional public hearings around the world to hear the views of different "stakeholder" groups on these issues. The Secretariat and the Commission will produce interim reports, and a final report will be issued in mid-1997.

The North American hearing was the second of the five regional hearings, following the model of the 1980's Brundtland Commission, planned by the WCFSD. The Sustainable Development Institute was invited to attend all meetings and speaking events along with the panel of experts. The Commission aimed to examine three areas: the sustainable use and management of forests; trade and export of forest-related products, and financial mechanisms and instruments needed for sustainable development.

The North America hearing focused on Canada, Mexico, and the United States. The abundance of Canadian stakeholders tended to dominate the hearing and detracted from the concerns over forests and sustainable development in Mexico and the U.S.. However, despite the smaller numbers of Mexicans and U.S. participants, an overwhelming message emerged that greater local and community-based control over forest resources may lead to wiser and more sustainable use and management of forests. Less decisive conclusions were reached on the other two areas of focus.

It was the intent of the Commissioners to have the participants address several questions in each panel that might indicate areas where international agreements might be strengthened, or recommendations might be formulated for the development of wiser use of diminishing global forest resources.

The WCFSD is concerned that progress is not being made in stopping forest loss and degradation due to a variety of realities on the ground that are frequently not discussed at international forest meetings. Thus the Commission has attempted to examine problems of forests and sustainable development not being addressed in the major global forest policy fora such as the UNCSD's IPF; Montreal, Helsinki, & Tarapoto Processes; the COP to the Convention on Biodiversity; and ITTO; At each of the regional hearings, the Commission has raised four basic questions:

• How much and what type of forest should be managed and protected?
• How should forests be managed and protected?
• By whom should they be managed and protected? and
• For whose benefits?

On behalf of the IUCN, I attended the 15th Commonwealth Forestry Conference in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe from 12-17 May 1997. My primary goal was to gain an understanding of the direction of the Commonwealth Forestry Conference. Additionally, it was an opportunity to broaden the membership of the working group on Community Involvement in Forest Management (WG-CIFM) and further the network of practitioners in the development of specific recommendations for community forestry policy. This community forestry policy project is being run through an electronic conference of the working group on CIFM and the Sustainable Development Institute (SDI), a Washington-based NGO with a policy research project focusing on community forestry. The recommendations and results of this electronic conference will be directed to a number of international and independent bodies, including the World Commission on Forests and Sustainable Development (WCFSD).

Overview

In the complex world of international forestry, often what transpires in the field is barely reflective of what has been designed on paper. Whether site-specific donor-backed projects, national government attempts to reform institutional and sector policies, or local community-generated protection activities, even the best-intentioned efforts to achieve more sustainable and equitable management of the world's forests fail miserably to realize their goals. For the growing number of people concerned with forest protection, particularly in the tropics, a key factor to sustainable management is the full involvement of forest dwelling peoples and those living near forest areas in the planning and implementation of forest management schemes. Not surprisingly, perspectives abound on what actually constitutes "local participation" in forest management processes, running the gamut from sporadic "consultations" with local communities by donor agency staff to extensive engagement of local community ideas and activities throughout the life of a given project.

As part of SDI's attempt to conduct a "comparative analysis" of forest management policies designed by the chief international lending agencies - World Bank, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Asian Development Bank (ADB), and the InterAmerican Development Bank (IDB) - and forest management practices on the ground that depend on local community participation, I have examined institutional policies, countless project reports and evaluations, and spoken with agency staff and consultants to gain some insight into the links and gaps between policy and practice. While what has emerged is a disjointed, rather unclear picture of how donor policies concerning forest management and local community participation have translated into reality, some notable shifts in policy thinking and trends have appeared.

Generally, there is increasing language in some donor agency portfolios about the need to incorporate local communities and NGOs into forest and protected area management plans. The World Bank and USAID seem to have made the greatest strides in this area, with the ADB having recently formulated an official forest policy (3/95), and the IDB only just beginning to consider lending for environmental projects.

(In March 1997, the Sustainable Development Institute and sent e-mail queries to some 150 people, from twenty-six countries, with a professional interest in promoting the idea of community forest management. The World Conservation Union (IUCN) kindly agreed to provide SDI with the e-mail addresses of its Working Group on Community Involvement in Forest Management, a multi-stakeholder network facilitated by IUCN. We asked for suggestions and comments about the kinds of national and international level actions and policy shifts that could best strengthen current moves toward greater local control over forests. On the basis of the many useful responses received, we have modified and sharpened the inventory of ideas we initially circulated.)

What follows is a new draft statement on community forestry's importance and needs. Before putting this document in final form, we once again invite your reactions.)

Communities and Forests: Strengthening the Field

Roger D. Stone and Claudia D'Andrea
July, 1998

Overview

In March 1997, the Sustainable Development Institute sent email queries to some 150 people, from twenty-six countries, with a professional interest in promoting the idea of community forest management. The World Conservation Union (IUCN) kindly agreed to provide SDI with the email addresses of the Working Group on Community Involvement in Forest Management, a multistakeholder network facilitated by IUCN. We asked for suggestions and comments about the kinds of national and international level actions and policy shifts that could best strengthen current moves toward greater local control over forests.

On the basis of the many useful responses received, we modified and sharpened the skeleton inventory of ideas we initially circulated.  To the extent possible, the recommendations for actions that follow represent the collective opinion of our respondents.  While they were most generous with their time and thoughts, however, these people were not asked to help form the analysis that backs up the recommendations. For these sections of the paper, the authors are solely responsible.