WWF-Indonesia

Meeting with Director of Kerinci Seblat National Park
Meeting with Local NGO Forum WARSI
The Village of Muara Hemat
Visit to Sungai Keruh

Meetings with Bappeda
Problems with the Project

Background

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.

The ICDP Project (back to contents)

The Integrated Conservation and Development Project at Kerinci Seblat National Park is a six year project to be financed by the GOI, the GEF, and the World Bank. This project supports biodiversity conservation within the park and surrounding areas through a series of phased investment activities. These activities are designed to link park management with spatial planning and rural development investments in target villages on the park boundary. The project is designed to strengthen biodiversity conservation through improved resource management and services, institutional strengthening, and integrated planning and monitoring. By addressing the income needs of the rural communities living adjacent to the park and dependent on the forest for their livelihood, the project hopes to reduce deterioration of the park by striking at the root causes of exploitation.

Total project cost has been estimated at US$47.3 million. The bulk of the financing comes from the World Bank loan of US$21.3 million; a GEF grant will provide US$ 15.5 million; and the Government of Indonesia (GOI) will provide US$10.5 million. Because the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has been working in the area for such a long time already, WWF will continue as the facilitator for village level participation. WWF has an established working relationship with the communities around the park and has a strong role vis-a-vis the Forest Protection and Nature Conservation Agency (PHPA) and the local government. From my brief visit to the area, I can say that WWF is also widely known and highly regarded in the area.

Meetings in Jakarta (back to contents)

My first stop was in Jakarta, Indonesia. I had the chance to meet briefly with Erwin Perbatakusuma, the WWF staff who established the WWF presence in the Kerinci Seblat area. In many ways his approach set the stage for the integrated approach to conservation by the way he worked with the local communities to establish protected forest areas based on traditional or customary law or drawing up agreements with local communities along the boundary to the park enlisting their support of conservation. Because the Kerinci Seblat park is a tourist destination, ecotourism has been one of the key approaches to providing the locals with alternative employment that strengthens their commitment to protecting the natural beauty of the area.

Erwin established a team of highly committed locals that could develop a deep sense of trust among the surrounding communities. He also encouraged the involvement of a local forum of non-governmental organizations that had evolved from university hiking clubs or nature-lovers clubs. These organizations came together in 1992 from the five provinces of southern Sumatra: West Sumatra, Jambi, Bengkulu, Lampung, and South Sumatra. By this time the proposed plans for the development of the ICDP with World Bank funding were well known and this forum, called WARSI (Warung Informasi Konservasi) - Conservation Information Forum, had decided to take a proactive role in the development of this project.

The forum, WARSI, is part of the larger national group of NGOs, the Indonesian Environmental Forum, known as WALHI (Wahana Lingkungan Hidup Indonesia). WALHI is the leading environmental NGO in Indonesia and has in recent years taken an increasingly critical role in environmental advocacy on behalf of local communities. Through its nationwide network, WALHI has been actively monitoring the environmental and social impacts of private sector development ventures and multilateral development bank projects. WALHI produces policy studies and has played an important role in strengthening the capacity of the NGOs within its network. Maintaining a critical role vis-a-vis the government and the World Bank, WALHI was initially hesitant about getting involved in the ICDP Project. However, particularly in the initial planning stages in 1991-92, WALHI directed a lot of energy into developing a working plan and supporting WARSI's decision to be involved in the project.

In Jakarta, I also met with Asmeen Khan, Resident Staff of the Environmental and Social Impact Unit of the World Bank who has been involved with the project since 1993. She is probably one of the few people working with the World Bank who has seen the project through from its original concept. She is also someone who is familiar with both the region and with the individuals and NGOs involved in the project. In her eyes the biggest problem has been all the deal making with local governments to get them to agree to the ICDP concept.

There are four provincial governments, nine districts, and thirty-six sub-districts that the project affects. In addition to the activities along the park boundary to improve the local economy, the ICDP has limited the development of some infrastructure projects, including a major North-South highway. The project has also required the reevaluation of some logging concessions that lie adjacent to the park in addition to the institution of more stringent controls on logging permits. These requirements, among others, present some conflicts of interest for provincial governors. So, the World Bank has been involved in appeasing the local government with development projects in exchange for commitment to the park and its boundaries. Asmeen said these include provisions for agricultural development plans, infrastructure development roads, water and irrigation projects, credit programs, for example, a World Bank team headed out to Bengkulu to assess the feasibility of upland agricultural development.

To be sure there have been lots of problems with the project, being a new approach for the Bank to have participation of local people as one of the main goals of the project. A lot of consultants have been involved in the project. It is difficult to say what the outcome of the project will be and for that reason, monitoring will be of key importance particularly in the first couple of years. The World Bank will have an open bidding process for the evaluation of the project. I asked if WWF will be involved in that process and Asmeen answered that while WWF will have a chance at that evaluation, most likely a more experienced consulting firm will win the contract.

At the point I visited Kerinci Seblat, mid-March 1996, the final project was being negotiated in Washington, DC. Unfortunately, many of the key people from the local and regional government were either in Washington, or out of town. At the time of my visit, the role that WWF and the local NGOs would play in the final project was still not defined. A lot would depend on the outcome of the pre-implementation project being carried out by WWF and WARSI. This pre-implementation consisted of placing community organizers in ten key villages to draw up village conservation plans and prepare villagers for the project. Each of the organizers was to work with a local villager who could help them to identify the needs of the villagers and help explain the goals of the project to the villagers. These local organizers would play an important role in the future, if the project concept continued as planned. The experiences gained from the pre-implementation stage of this project would be applied to the actual project and would determine a lot of details for how WWF and WARSI will be involved at the village level.

There are 134 villages of crucial significance along the boundary of the park. The project would have local organizers from WWF develop conservation agreements in each village. The idea is based on what WWF has successfully done in six villages in the area, and what WARSI has done in four villages. The villages that are included in the pre-implementation phase of the project are the villages with which WWF and WARSI have already had contact. The idea of the project is that relationships like the ones with the first ten villages will be developed with all the target villages along the park boundary. But clearly, given the time constraint of the project, this small number of experienced community organizers cannot reach all the villages to the same degree that they have the initial ten villages.

Hiring new community organizers is also problematic because they must be possess a unique set of skills and understand the concept of the ICDP; they should probably be from the region to facilitate communication and cultural understanding; they must be used to living in villages; and they need to be able to develop a conservation agreement; and finally they must be willing to live in the village over an extended period of time. The WWF office has a limited staff. WARSI also has a limited number. Finding skilled individuals who are willing to move to a village is also not easy. So, human resources present one constraint and the time factor involved presents another. If the local government approves the involvement of the local organizers from WARSI/WWF, locating staff and expanding operations to a sufficient level will require institutional capacity strengthening through training and increased resources for both organizations and particularly for WARSI.

Finally, there is the question of whether it is even possible to approach 134 villages and develop sustainable work plans in such a limited time. The plan is that there would be new 10-15 villages reached a year. The terms of reference engaging WWF as a subcontractee for the project have laid out a total of 40 villages to be reached over the first three years. The sustainability of these plans as well as the sustainability of the project as a whole are in question. With public works projects in the middle of the park, population growth, and the pervasive cinnamon plantations, it seems the project is up against a lot of forces that favor development over conservation. Will this project be able to reverse that trend or will it just hold off complete degradation for a few years?

WWF-Indonesia (back to contents)

WWF's Indonesia office has been going through some reorganization in the past year. It has had a presence in Indonesia since---but has recently begun a process of bringing the Indonesia office under the direction of Agus Purnomo, an Indonesian national, as Country Representative. Over the next few years, WWF will be setting up a trust fund for the environment and ultimately hopes to develop Indonesian sources of funding for its projects. Currently, WWF has about 300 staff persons across Indonesia working on 24 projects in important biodiversity regions. Recently, Sukianto Lusli, the director of the office in Sungai Penuh, where the WWF-Kerinci office is located, was promoted to become the regional director for Sumatra. Erwin Perbatakusuma was moved to northern Sumatra's Gunung Leuser National Park to develop an ICDP Project there. These changes have left Duddy in charge of the Sungai Penuh office where about 20 energetic young field workers and support staff run the Kerinci Seblat project.

I met with Dudy in Jakarta before I left for Sungai Penuh. He gave me some background on WWF's involvement in the project. WWF has had a presence there since 1988 working with communities and with the PHPA and Kerinci Seblat National Park management. Much of the work that WWF has done since 1988 has been gazetting land and establishing protected forests to secure the forest watershed by reinforcing traditional or customary law. He said that the local communities also asked them for help in getting their land titled. Basically WWF was involved in numerous levels of activity much of which already reflected the same goals as those of the ICDP concept. It seemed a natural match that WWF should carry out the implementation and coordination of the ICDP Project.

In 1993, the DHV Consultants, a consulting company based in the Netherlands, was contracted by the World Bank to do an assessment of the ICDP Project at Kerinci Seblat. In partnership with a team of Indonesian organizations and the World Bank, DHV carried out an assessment of the proposed project. From 1994-95, a grant from the Japanese Grant Facility, the Japanese section of the GEF, gave a grant to WWF through the World Bank to carry out a series of dialogues and studies in preparation for the ICDP. In November 1995, the pre-implementation stage began as a pilot project for the larger ICDP that consisted of community organizing in the initial ten villages and training of the community organizers and local level government officers from the PHPA, Park Management, and from the Regional Planning Boards (Bappeda). This stage was set to run until June 1996, but since the funding began to flow two months later than planned, it is conceivable that the pre-implementation will run though August 1996.

During this pre-implementation phase, WWF Kerinci will also work with the Center for International Forestry Research to carry out a rapid ecological assessment within two HPHs, or logging concessions. The result of this assessment should be available by April 1996. One of the strengths of the ICDP Project is its emphasis on spatial planning. While GIS has been used before, the application of GIS combined with mapping and the ecological assessment may result in a radical new approach to land use planning. There is an exceptional level of regional government support of efforts to reduce conflict with local people over resources. Much of this is only due to the steady work of WWF. Local NGOs do not have the same access to government resources or logging concessions for that matter because there is a much lower level of trust for the local NGOs than for WWF among the government. Government officials perceive WWF as a neutral and moderate conservation organization.

Visit to the Field (back to contents)

I flew from Jakarta to Padang on March 19th and climbed on a bus from Padang that arrived twelve hours later in Kayu Aro where I stayed in one of the ecotourism homesites that had been set up by WWF. The home stay was run by a family of native Kerinci people. They told me a little of the history of the park formation. They had lost their traditional land but they had been compensated well enough to buy a plot outside the park boundaries and were able to set up a home stay and send their oldest son to study law at the University of Padang. They understood exactly what WWF was trying to do and they accepted that if the park was not established that the area would be degraded. However, they did tell me there were plenty of people who were removed from their land who were not doing as well as they. In general, everyone I spoke with, on the buses and at the rest stops, and in the town where WWF Kerinci is based, knew of WWF.

I arrived at the WWF Kerinci office on the morning of March 20 and met with Dudy's assistant, Nurhalis Fadhli, called "Al" for short. My arrival coincided with the hurried preparation of a two week training titled "Community Participation in Conservation and Development" to be delivered by a Jakarta-based NGO called Bina Swadaya that specializes in training in community development. The training would start on the following Monday, March 25, and the participants included all ten of the community organizers, two people from the park management staff, six regional development officers from Bappeda Level II, four WWF staff from other park systems, and eight WWF Kerinci staff. While it was a terrific opportunity to meet them all in one place, I had to move fast to get out to the field before the ten community organizers all came to Kerinci for the training.

Dudy had suggested three locations that would be fairly accessible by main roads that I would have time to visit. I met with Al who has been with WWF for three years. Al said that there are two main problems they face in conservation of the park vis-a-vis the local people. First is the collection of forest products; second is the amount of forest land. Al feels the emphasis on spatial planning in this project, combined with according usufruct rights to the local people, may be able to overcome these problems. The determining factor is the approach taken. The difficulty is that each of the villages along the park boundary is very different. A cookie-cutter approach will not work. Very much depends on the incentives for the villagers to participate. If they do not see any benefit in participating, they are not going to participate. So, in this project, a consensus of agreement on the details of usufruct rights has to be developed based on the individual characteristics of the village. Then there is the question of what the village needs in terms of development and all the complications of forming a cohesive group and organizing the community to be involved in their own development. The complexity involved means that extra care must be taken with each village. Furthermore, most of these villages have been promised so many things for so long, it is likely that they will not trust outsiders in the first place. So, the process of trust building is very important.

There are a number of complexities that the WWF Kerinci office deals with at the local level. The Kerinci staff is responsible for planning, implementation, monitoring, and follow-up for each village. Usually, WWF works in one village in a very thorough way. This project will require a change in method to encompass from ten to 134 villages, which is bound to be unsettling. Al said there is a possibility that the quality of WWF's involvement at the village level will decrease, but on the other hand maybe this project will strengthen WWF's capacity.

Recruiting people that can manage as community organizers and conservation educators is not easy. Al says this is one reason why WWF has relied on WARSI people who already possess this unique combination of skills and are still young and unmarried and willing to try living in a village for a while to see what they can do. However, realistically it is difficult to keep people on living in a village paid at a minimum for a long period of time. They can do it for a while, but it is quite rare that WWF will find someone who will do it for all six years of the project. So, there is potentially a problem of continuity in personnel.

Meeting with Director of Kerinci Seblat National Park (back to contents)

I met with the Director of the Kerinci Seblat National Park that afternoon. He told me there are big problems with this park. The area of the park is about 1.5 million hectares and he has only 69 men to manage the park. It is impossible to even know what is leaving the forest illegally until it is gone. He told me his biggest concern is the degradation of the park by planting of large cinnamon plots. Since the late 1980's, everyone started planting cinnamon around the park, and then within the park. There were huge enclaves of settlers within the park which were legalized in the most recent redrawing of the boundaries in 1992. Even excluding those areas there are approximately 12,000 hectares of cinnamon within the park. He said it is embarrassing to look over the vista of the park and all you can see is the distinctive red leaves of the cinnamon trees. The GIS maps do not see the difference between the monocrops of cinnamon, but the presence of the cinnamon is also diminishing wildlife habitat. It is a serious ecological problem.

According to Pak Wawan, eighty-five percent of the cinnamon is exported overseas. Small farmers use cinnamon as money in the bank. And it is better than money in the bank. With an absolutely risk free investment of Rp. 200 (US$ 0.10) per seedling, a farmer can pick some up at the market, throw them in his basket and hike up to his plot of land throw the cinnamon seedling in a hole and without fertilizers or chemicals, without mind to how many centimeters deep the seedling is planted, without concern for the steepness of the hill, the cinnamon will grow. Within five years, the bark on that tree is worth about Rp. 30,000 or US$14.00. In ten years it will be worth twice that and three times that in fifteen years. There is no risk involved for the farmer. Once the farmers clear the land, they can plant other crops beside them like soybeans, cassava, and chilies, for their own consumption. After a season they will plant coffee plants beside the other crops and the coffee plants will begin to produce beans in a few years. After four or five coffee harvests, the farmer can plant cinnamon seedlings. Once the cinnamon trees are taller they will shade the coffee plants which lowers their production but within a five years they can harvest the cinnamon trees, sell the bark, and use the trunk and branches for fuelwood. They can also harvest the branches without chopping down the tree. At any rate, the farmers sell the cinnamon bark on the local market and they have money in their pockets. They usually harvest them a little at a time to pay for a wedding or customary ceremony. On a small scale, the cinnamon is like a security bond, according to Pak Wawan. He told me that after the devastating earthquake in the area last year. The farmers who had cinnamon growing harvested some trees sold the bark and with the money they made they were able to rebuild their houses. The farmers know what they are doing by planting cinnamon. I asked Pak Wawan about the risk of depending on the international price, like what happened to the ginger farmers. Ginger was a major export crop that was very popular in the eighties for the farmers across Sumatra. Once the international price fell the farmers were ruined because they had to harvest the ginger and they couldn't sell it. Unlike ginger, if the same scenario were to occur, cinnamon trees can stay in the ground until the price rises again. The longer the tree grows, the more the tree is worth.

Pak Wawan told me the problem is not with the small holder farmers who are after all making a wise investment. The problem is with the large holder investors who pay migrant workers to clear hundred of acres to plant cinnamon. Some of the local people can work on the plantation, but for the most part the harvesting requires migrant workers who are not living in the area. Regardless of where they come from the people the park staff encounter do not know or do not want to say who owns the fields. For all they know it could belong to a local government official, or worse the army. And what is the park staff supposed to do about that? The park staff cannot blame the workers for the clearing; the workers are just trying to make a living; but the park staff also do not have the resources to track down the owner and the damage is already done; the forest has already been cut. The problem grows more complex when the planting has been done within the park, or in certain areas adjacent to the park, for example, in the village of Muara Hemat which I visited.

In some places within the park, the park staff has made agreements that the people can wait for the first harvest, and then they must leave. But meanwhile, some settlement near the plantation means that in ten or fifteen years, the park staff will have to ask people to resettle. According to Pak Wawan, the problem of cinnamon tree planting will not end without some change in the international market. He is hoping that ecolabelling will prevent the cinnamon from within the park boundaries from having a market and ultimately that will affect the local economy, and people will stop planting cinnamon.

Pak Wawan was quite pessimistic about the survival of the park. He told me that all the factors: illegal logging, development of roads, population growth in the area, lack of alternatives for the local people, the influx of migrants in search of work, the profit that can be made from poaching and illegal harvesting from the park, all combined mean the problems of the park will never end. They will end for him only when he is moved to another national park. He was very clear about this. He hopes that the investment in this project can make a difference, but he doesn't really believe it can happen soon enough. Investments in concessions along the border, road construction, will erode the park. The project calls for agreements to be mad with the provincial governments to hold off this development. But for how long can they hold it off? Three years? The question of roads is also conflictual. What people want are roads to connect them to the markets and improve their incomes. But once the roads are open, access to the forest is facilitated, making it easier for people from far away, who have no stake in maintaining the forest, to come and plant cinnamon, for example. The questions of roads and investments become very political.

Meeting with Local NGO Forum WARSI (back to contents)

Next, I met with the Executive Director of WARSI, named Firdaus. He told me the story from the beginning how WARSI's involvement in the project evolved. In fact, the forum WARSI was formed of the local NGOs in anticipation of the ICDP at Kerinci Seblat. The local NGOs understood that unless they made concerted efforts to prepare for the project, the World Bank would choose to work only with WWF. There has been in the past a strong resentment of WWF among the Indonesian NGOs because of WWF's proximity to the government and because of its involvement in project in the seventies and early eighties that involved the resettlement of local indigenous peoples. Aware that this lingering resentment was counterproductive to their own work, WARSI unanimously voted to get involved to ensure that the ICDP would benefit local people. Recognizing that WWF also has technical expertise and a favorable reputation among the government and the local people, WARSI's members also hoped to gain some of the expertise that WWF has in mapping and regional planning and gain some practical experience working with them. Firdaus began by choosing a village along the border of the park to study. He lived in a village near Solok in West Sumatra and learned from the villagers. He studied the way they feel about the park and what their incentives are. Others in WARSI also did this sort of practical research. Firdaus moved to another area along the border and continued to study the villagers' incentives for conservation.

By now, the community organizers from WWF and WARSI are working as a team, not distinguishing between their organizational affiliations. However, because there is no clear idea of what will happen after the pre-implementation stage, the WARSI organizers are not counting on sticking around. They are looking at the development of a conservation plan as a six month project. It seems to me from my field visits that the high degree of suspicion among the villagers, whether in the highly homogeneous towns or in the heterogeneous towns, requires the constant presence of a community organizer. It is difficult to imagine that the project will work without these young organizers at the village level. In many ways, the success of the project depends on them.

The Village of Muara Hemat (back to contents)

Thursday morning, March 21, Firdaus, Sam, and I drove to Muara Hemat, a village that lies along the main road to the province of Jambi, along the border of the park. As we drove out to Muara Hemat, the hills as far as the eye could see were covered with the distinctive brilliant red leaves from cinnamon trees (cassiavera montana). This village is one of the most difficult to organize. Stretching along thirty kilometers of the main road and comprising settlers from all over Sumatra, Muara Hemat is about as spread out and heterogeneous as villages get along the park border. The population is difficult to estimate because so much of the land around Muara Hemat belongs to people who live in towns or cities far away and have workers take care of their land, paying men about Rp. 4,000. per day (US$1.75) and women Rp. 3,000. per day (US$1.20). During the harvest season, Muara Hemat is flooded with migrant labor. Many of the houses along the road stand empty most of the year, to be inhabited only when the landlord is in town.

The local government is not very effective at managing the clusters, or Dusun, the smallest government unit of a village. Of the total 300 families that appear during the year for work, only some 50 families of settlers are permanent and they are divided by ethnic and cultural barriers and separated by large distances from one another.

These are not gentle forest people. They are frontier settlers. On the day I arrived, there had been an incident where someone found out that one of the large plots of cinnamon was being sold. The man who wanted to sell his plot was stabbed almost fatally because the assailant thought that the person was carrying the money in his pocket. The West Sumatran settlers told me that this happened up in the North Sumatra part of "town", where people are more brutal. These people do not claim customary rights to the land, nor do they seem to want land certificates, because they say then they would have to pay taxes. They will continue to clear forest to plant cinnamon until another option becomes a surer way to gain an income. It seems very unlikely that any coherent village land use plan could come out of Muara Hemat. They are not interested in organizing. The large holders have little vested interest in Muara Hemat. They are not simply forest dependent people who need access to the non-timber forest products for their livelihoods.

WWF/WARSI decided to address half the village first and half later and this first half still seems to be too much. So, the community organizer, Damsir, of Minangkabau ethnic background is bonding with the Minang Dusun to begin with. His first step is to try to revive the LKMD, a form of local government through town meetings. As a first step toward a village conservation plan, he is meeting with whomever is willing to meet and talking with them about conservation. One of the problems he faces is that only a few, if anyone, understands why he is there. He said that people do not tell him what they honestly think. He is trying to build trust, but he feels that there have been so many people that have been in and out of Muara Hemat talking with people about WWF, that they do not expect anything to come of this. So, why should they waste their time? The week before I arrived, all the target villages had received a letter from the district government stating that they were to be included in a World Bank project. These local level officials do not know what the difference is between a bank and the World Bank. So, one of the things the community organizers were suddenly facing when I visited was the problem that everyone was now envisioning that all the villagers would be getting big bank loans, or something along those lines. So, the understanding of the ICDP is still quite limited. That in and of itself i not a problem. But it adds to the confusion in a place as scattered as Muara Hemat.

My visit to Muara Hemat was much too short. I have to rely on the impressions I got from speaking with the Head of the Dusun ; with Damsir, the organizer; and with the other locals that happened to be around when we arrived. All the same, I did get an impression that the level of intensity required for organizing at the village level requires some serious thought about whether the organizing can fit into the rubric of the World Bank.

It is important to realize that project creates a partnership between WWF and the local governments. This partnership shares the risks of failure and success equally in that the project cannot be done without the government's involvement as provider of official development, but it also cannot be done without the involvement of WWF with its expertise in biodiversity conservation. This marriage of development and conservation should be a fundamentally new approach for both parties, but we cannot underestimate the difficulties involved. And from my perspective, after seeing several of the villages and speaking with government officials, WWF, and with many of the local community organizers, I see that the project hinges on the village organizer. His role is actually the most complex in helping the villagers to see what this project really means for them; why this is not just development; why they are being asked to make an agreement to protect the park; trying to find the right incentives for conservation and the right formula for development and conservation. Each village is strikingly different. Each village land use plan must be custom designed.

Visit to Sungai Keruh (back to contents)

On Friday, March 22, the community organizer for Sungai Keruh accompanied me to the village where he has been living for the past three months. Sungai Keruh is located in a lush green valley just 10 kilometers from the main road to Padang, an hour and a half from Sungai Penuh by bus (sungai penuh means "full river" and sungai keruh means "clear river"). Sungai Keruh is actually a dusun of the village of Pesisir Bukit that is closest to the border of the park. Pesisir Bukit (which means literally "at the bottom of the hills") is spread out along the border of the park along the edge of the old protected forest from colonial days. We set off on the muddy footpath at dusk with the clouds threatening rain and hiked up to Sungai Keruh. We passed a few other dusuns , including the administrative center of Pesisir Bukit that had its official status removed in 1988 because it lies within the border of the park. The government simply removed itself and its obligation to administer the village, and tried to force the villagers to resettle. Slowly many of the people have left for other places where they can access more services. Of the villagers that remain, the largest number are living in Sungai Keruh. About 55 families live there working the fields and managing their upland "ladang" fields. All of the villagers have at least one hectare of cinnamon trees growing in the hills above the village adjacent to or within the park, depending upon which boundary line considered.

There was talk of removing the status of Sungai Keruh, but most of the inhabitants of this village are Kerinci natives who traditionally held this area as a sort of reserve for population overflow. There are still strong connections with the villages of their origins, the main one being Siulak Deras. Nonetheless, in 1988, there was strong pressure from the government for the villagers to enter transmigration programs in the nearby province of Jambi. Many of the villagers who did enter transmigration programs became plantation workers in Jambi and were given land and materials to build, as is standard for transmigration programs. The ones who have come back to visit Sungai Keruh have told the other villagers that they are happy in Jambi, but they do not necessarily believe them.

We reached the house of Pak Wun, the Head of the Dusun that Desrizal, the community organizer for Sungai Keruh. The village elders gathered there to meet me and then went off to pray and gather the other villagers. We talked to Pak Wun while we waited. He told me about the history of Sungai Keruh. Although he spoke Indonesian, most of the meeting that followed when the villagers got to his house took place in Kerinci, Des translated for me. We talked about the conflict over the boundary of the village and in general about conservation and their customary traditions. There were women present at the meeting, but they did not take too active a role in the discussion. The woman with the most authority when she did speak owns one of the two little stores (warungs) in the village. I slept at her house. There must have been about five women, nine men, and a few children. They filled the small room. But they told me that if it were not for the wedding at the other end of the village, the whole town would have come to meet me. The main attraction of the wedding was a band. After a few hours of talking, we finally went over to join the rest of the villagers.

The next morning, we set off to see the upland fields of Pak Wun and the markers of the park border. The original boundary of the park lies an hour's hike from the village on the edge of the forest. A cement marker was installed in 1988 together with the local and provincial government and the people to indicate the boundary they had all agreed upon. We hiked up to see that boundary marker. It took some time to find it on the dense forest floor; it was hidden by a nicely decomposing tree that had fallen a while ago. In 1993, there was a decision by the government to move the boundary closer to the village to prevent further cutting adjacent to the upland fields that were already opened. The government had also decided to use what they called a living boundary line. This living marker was to be made by planting Red Sugar Palms (Aren) in a line ten trees thick along the boundary to remind the villagers of where the boundary was. This tree was chosen because it is strikingly different than any of the other trees around the park with its distinctive orange-yellow fruit, and the villagers could harvest the aren to make sugar. The only trouble was that the trees did not survive in many of the higher elevations, and there was much resentment in the way that it was done. The army hired migrant workers and brought them to the villages and directed them to plant the trees. The local people were not consulted at all, and in result many had a ten tree thick swath of aren palms growing through their fields. Most importantly, the villagers say they are still unsure of which boundary is the real one. They told me they want land certificates to prove that the land they are working is theirs. They told me they were respecting that original boundary line and only using the forest for very limited forest product needs, rattan for hanging laundry, medicines, fruits, etc. The villagers say they are afraid to cut any trees, except for repair work on their houses every few years. Pak Wun pointed out a patch of original forest that is still standing surrounded by fields in between the disputed boundaries, as proof that the villagers are respecting the new boundary, just in case. They seem sincere in their concern over the boundary and their desire for land certificates.

I heard from a primate researcher who is stationed relatively near this village that the villagers are lying. She said she knows that the villagers from Sungai Keruh are saying they don't touch the forest, and leaving all the trees near their village. But they are going into the park and clearing land to plant cinnamon a few miles away where no one can see unless they are flying overhead or are doing some extensive forest surveying. And, according to her, the villagers usually burn the area they are clearing because it is too difficult to get the logs out of the forest, and even if they could, it would raise questions if the logs are seen by local authorities. This researcher, Debbie Matyar, has been there for a year in and a half. She is not impressed with the local villagers understanding of conservation. She has hired ex-poachers to work for her because they know every inch of the forest. So she learns a lot of the tricks of the trade. She does not think any incentive will outweigh the planting of cinnamon unless the park management starts offering the villagers monetary incentive and training them to grow seedlings of some of the hardwood varieties that logging companies need for reforestation. She thinks the park management could start a business guaranteeing the purchase of the seedlings from the villagers and then selling them to the logging companies or using them for reforestation within the park. This would be, she suggests, and excellent way to spend village resource development funds.

So, there are a lot of levels of deceit going on. The community organizers know they are not getting the full story; the government officials aren't getting the full story; I certainly got to hear what they wanted me to hear or what they thought I wanted to hear. It is very difficult to know what is going on. But one thing is clear. There is an essential conflict between the goals of conservation and development. The villagers say they want official development to come to their village. They say they feel left behind by the government because they don't have electricity or paved roads. The government faces a dilemma. If they are to give the villagers what they want, and what they choose by consensus, then the village will only become more permanent and eventually will grow. Because it is on the border of the park, growth means further degradation of the park.

The local government officials told me their rationale is that if they give a lot of resources to the villages along the main road, and continue to deny the boundary villages basic services, the villagers living at the edge of the park will move to the villages with electricity. But the idea of the ICDP is also to create incentives for the villagers living along the boundary of the park to conserve the park, protect the forest from degradation. So, if they move to the nearby more developed villages and towns, then their essential role as protectors of the forest is lost.

It is very difficult to say what will happen in this village and the ones nearby. The teenagers I talked with did not necessarily want to stay in Sungai Keruh. They did not necessarily want to be farmers. The village elders told me they thought education was more important for their kids than clearing more land for cinnamon. It is hard to know where the truth lies, but it seems likely that the village elders see that their children will not be clearing new land the way their parents did. Certainly, those families already living in some of the bigger towns are hoping to do something besides farming. This project could have a huge impact on determining what the next generation decides to do. The question is how to really devote enough resources to determining the best path for each village on the park border.

Participation Workshop (back to contents)

When we got back from Sungai Keruh, the other community organizers had already gathered in Sungai Penuh. I had the chance to talk with at least half of them and hear their stories. Each organizer had a different problem in his village. All of them complained of the same problem that the local government had sent out letters that stated there would be a World Bank project and the villagers were suddenly expecting money to be handed to them. They also complained that the villagers did not see development as something they could create themselves; they were waiting for development to "come" to their village. In Sungai Keruh I asked if they had ever heard about micro-hydro power for electricity, and explained how it was probably the easiest way to get electricity. But they complained they wanted the real thing. It struck me that the gap between the villagers and the development officers from Bappeda is huge. Without these organizers, the project has no chance of addressing conservation and development.

I spoke with the trainers from Bina Swadaya who had come from Java to give the community organizers and the local development officials and park managers some training in participatory approaches, ZOPP methodology, participatory rural appraisal (PRA), etc. The trainers are very experienced in community development. The lead trainer has been working with WWF over the past six months to develop training that would specifically address the problems of the ICDP at Kerinci Seblat. I feel that the mixing of the young organizers with the park managers and development officials was a very effective means of getting them to learn more about each others perspectives and approaches. The development officers and park managers I spoke with were very frank about the causes of degradation of the park. They said cinnamon is a problem, but it wouldn't be a problems if there were not large investors behind it. The development officers told me that as in illegal logging operations, the army, or some government official is behind it all which makes it difficult for any low ranking official to assert authority. Then one of them gave me his card and showed me that he also owns a small timber company. The other officer boasted that he also owned a large plot of cinnamon that is worked by locals. They are proof that no one is missing out on the money to be made from exploitation along the park boundaries.

A park manager, the director of communications and public relations, pulled me aside to talk about what is really going on in the park. He told me that the local people are not going to be enticed by any other economic opportunity. The only thing that will stop them from illegal cutting and clearing within the park is fear. He said the problem is that the park managers do not care enough about protecting the park. They aren't taking their jobs seriously. It is easier for them to take bribes and look the other way or get a cut in the illegal operations. Or they just do not bother to track down the criminals. He said what is lacking in the park management is not resources or even numbers of rangers, but discipline. This man is willing to send me data on what is going on. He said that he alone is one of the park managers that patrols his beat rigorously and that the people are afraid to come near. And he said the only way to patrol is on foot. I found his comments to be sincere with a tinge of self-importance, but he is a Batak, the ethnic group notorious for their frankness. I imagine the two-week workshop will be a good opportunity for all this information to be exchanged, and a lot to be learned.

Meetings with Bappeda (back to contents)

I tried to meet with the Director of Bappeda Level II, Yasid Idrus, who is based in Sungai Penuh, but he was out of town for the entire week that I was in Sungai Penuh. Bappeda is the Regional Development Board. I went to the office in hopes of speaking with the Deputy Director. He was suspicious and visibly nervous to speak with me. He wanted a letter from the District government (the Bupati). He said it was impossible to talk about policy without a letter. After trying to find a way to convince him that I had friendly motives, I realized that the man really was afraid to say anything because he didn't know very much about the project, and didn't really understand what the World Bank was in the first place, let alone its policy on participation.

According to WWF, his Director, Pak Yasid is always willing to meet with them and there is never any talk of letters. The woman from WWF who accompanied me to Bappeda felt certain he was using it as an excuse because he really did not know anything, or was afraid to get it wrong. We stopped at the Department of Forestry to use the phone and talked to some officers about the incident. They all agreed the talk of a letter from the District government was absurd. He must not have known anything. This in and of itself is indicative of the fact that there is a need for some information sharing within the Bappeda.

I left for Jambi that afternoon and arrived the next morning to try to speak with the Director of Bappeda Level I, Pak Siras Abidin. Jambi is the provincial capital. The Director was out of town and due back any day, according to his deputies. They were more than willing to meet with me. I carried a letter from WWF Kerinci just in case. The deputies told me they did not know many details about the project but could talk with me in general about the problems of the park. So, we chatted for an hour or so and established a good rapport, when finally, one of the deputies asked me if I could explain to them what WWF was. Now this I found very interesting. We had been talking about WWF but they asked me if it was a company and why it wanted to save the forests. Well, I explained WWF to them and then I threw in an explanation of the World Bank and explained how the concept of ICDP developed. We translated ICDP into Indonesian and talked about what it meant and why it was an important new approach. I was fascinated that they didn't know these things. Clearly, they also did not know much about the World Bank's policy. Well, I hoped my explanation helps them in their work. I suppose it is really the Bappeda Level II officers that will work directly on the project at the village level. But, I was not favorably impressed with their knowledge of the project either. I think there is a huge need for information sharing within these bureaucracies. There are a lot of assumptions that everyone understands what this project is about. There is very little understanding. I went to the two Bappeda offices I did because staff from WWF told me that the other offices were hopeless, The Director of Bappeda Level I in Padang, for example did not know what was going on.

There is a difference in commitment among the four provinces that probably has some connection to the level of detail that these Bappeda officers understand. According to Pak Wawan, the province of West Sumatra is more populated and more interested in development than conservation. The province of Jambi is more interested in conservation than development. Consequently, the trick is to play the provincial government development interests off one another. At any rate, there is clearly an unevenness in the level of commitment and understanding of the project among the four provinces, nine districts, and thirty-six sub-districts. This is something that will have to be addressed once the project begins.

Problems with the Project (back to contents)

When I returned to Jakarta, I was unable to meet with Asmeen Khan again but I did get to meet with Agus Purnomo, the new Indonesian Country Representative for WWF Indonesia. He had just returned from a marathon planning session with WWF International, et al for the future of WWF Indonesia.

His main concern about the project is the basic conflict between conservation and development. There are so many conflicting interests in the four provinces at two levels. At the macro level there are mining and logging interests; there are infrastructural developments; population growth; plantation expansion; industry; and paper manufacturing plants, all of which affect the park. At the microlevel, if people are benefiting from maximizing the short term profits, they will continue to do so. He does not believe there is enough incentive for people to give up the short term benefits in favor of the long term, being the conservation of the park.

If these conflicting interests are to be negotiated, the results will be disappointing to both the conservationists and the developmentalists because this is the nature of negotiation. But, he asks, what does this mean for the future of the park? Improving the welfare of the villagers living along the border in the traditional sense of development conflicts with conservation. Restrictions on access to the forest face difficulties of enforcement. Ultimately, the stability of the area is questionable. Inevitably, the communities living along the border will ask for more land, more access, as their populations grow. It might be better to define strict boundaries now. Agus Purnomo added that the problem becomes political. Ask politicians in the area. Ideally they want to respond to the local communities and give them more land (or give out more concessions to the logging and mining companies); but, there is a political reality that if the local people do not vote for the leading party Golkar, and Golkar does not win in the area, the people will lose.

Enforcement is a problem. Seemingly community involvement is the only solution. WWF has been trying to promote community mapping as the way out. But are the communities living along the border stable? Not in all cases. The accountability of the communities is questionable. Will the local behavior of the communities change? If we are speaking about traditional communities with a strong sense of identity and association with an area, like the Dayak or the Amungme peoples, then we can believe that the local people can have a commitment to protection of their natural resource base. But the communities living around the Kerinci Seblat National Park are of an entirely different nature. What will motivate them to conserve and protect the park? Agus Purnomo asks. They are driven by the market forces that are at play. Likewise the level of expansion of population and development in the area are going to be determined by market forces.

The idea that the local people can be educated about the benefits of conservation is in many ways patronizing, according to Agus Purnomo. It is not that they don't know about conservation, but rather that their needs are more immediate. How can WWF guarantee that by agreeing to community mapping and certain restraint in their consumption that they will benefit in the long run? These are not stable communities, and neither are the forces at play. How will we determine the maximum sustained yield for every activity? These are the question Agus Purnomo asks.

Working with the regional development boards and the local governments is not something entirely new for WWF, but there is an incredible need for preparation for this project. Shifting staff in these government offices complicates matters. The level of commitment to conservation or development from these officers is not high, in general. Agus Purnomo asks, how do we as WWF carry the burden of pushing sustainable development. We are supposed to be a conservation organization. We are now finding we cannot do conservation without addressing development and politics. We are faced with a task that is not within our mandate. While WWF as a whole is finding the same problem wherever it is working, the members that support WWF are not asking for integrated conservation and development programs they want to see WWF saving the Sumatran Tiger. How far can the definition of wildlife habitat be stretched to accommodate the need to address these larger questions?

The most troubling question is, are we facing a losing battle? Agus Purnomo queried. The land and natural resources in those provinces are rich. Those who can are creaming the profit from the source. There are many opportunities to develop industries on a large scale. The people are anything but passive, they are actively engaged in trying to increase their sources of livelihood. They know what they have and request high levels of compensation if they are offered it. The incentive for conservation is very small. It is quite possible that within twenty to thirty years, there will be nothing left of the park, according to Agus Purnomo.

For WWF, the Sumatran Tiger Program, which is supposed to save the tiger, can't deliver. The habitat is shrinking too quickly. Between poaching and the loss of hunting grounds, the tiger will die out soon. "We don't know how many tigers are left. But there have been no sitings recently, " said Agus. WWF has to address the regional scope of development in order to save the tiger. This is an enormous task. We require forestry advisors, natural resource economists, regional planners, foresters.

WWF's relationship with the local NGO forum is working well. The finance aspects are not a problem. Personal relationships play a role in determining how these arrangements run smoothly. The strategic approach of working with WARSI is to get them to solve the complicated problems of community development and conflicts over community mapping. WWF is trying to increase their technical skills and improve their capacity. Agus feels that WARSI should be playing the role that WWF is playing, but they do not have the institutional capacity to do what WWF is doing. Perhaps this project will give WARSI the opportunity to grow in that direction.

There are a lot of complicated questions at task. In many ways, this project offers an incredible opportunity to develop a new approach. It is hard to say whether all this effort comes too late so that it will only delay the process of erosion of biodiversity in the park by ten or twenty years. But we have to try, says Agus.

Conclusions (back to contents)

It is clear that the World Bank has taken a very serious approach to emphasizing the role of the local communities in this project. The project is very participatory. There is a need to address the specific needs of women in these villages. There is no element in the project design that incorporates women specifically. However, clearly they are not being excluded. The main problem is whether the scale and the scope of the project can be accommodated. Because the project depends on the community organizers, the scale of the participatory nature of this work may outweighs the quality of the interaction at the village level over time. Can WWF and WARSI carry out that scale of community organizing? The second main question is whether the scope of the project, covering four provinces, will prove to be too much. There is a lot of need for information dissemination regarding the project among the government departments.

At a basic level, can incentives be created for the local border communities that will convince them to change their patterns? And if so, what will stop migrant labor from coming in to work the cinnamon plantations of the large holders? Finding incentives will be difficult. On the large scale, concessionaires can be declined. Development of infrastructure and industry can be put on hold as they have been by the requirement of the World Bank, but for how long?

The challenge is immense and a lot will depend on improving the enabling legislative environment for the project; clarifying the land tenure for the people living adjacent to the park; improving the institutional capacity of those who enforce the park boundaries, and creating local access to credit for the formation of community level cooperatives that can provide some alternatives to cinnamon. It should be interesting to see how these questions are resolved. No doubt the conflict over resources will precipitate social changes that should have to take place eventually. I have purposefully left out many of the ICDP components because I am focusing on the participatory aspects of this project, not the scientific and regional development plans or policy. I will address these in a future report.

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.