National, Regional, & Global Dialogues

• Creating new communication channels and opportunities for dialogue
• Helping government and development agencies to formulate improved forest management policies
• Designing action research and policy analysis programs
• Encouraging cross-disciplinary and flexible programs that introduce new practices.

Processes for Enhancing Tenure Security

• Providing training workshops to develop capacity building for community organizations
• Building inter-agency cooperation and synergistic community forestry strategies
• Supporting community dialogues and participatory mapping
• Assisting communities to resolve conflicts and design sustainable forest work plans

Field Research

• Establishing community forestry research sites for assessing how policies and programs effect ethnic minorities and women
• Identifying communities of positive development and documenting their experiences
• Organizing seminars and workshops to exchange research information

Communication

• National & Regional Research Reports
• Working Paper Series of case study sites
• Website

The first Regional Meeting for the CFSP-SEA was held in Tagbilaran City, Bohol, Philippines from June 25^th through 30^th. Twenty participants from the five participating countries in the project, Cambodia, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam, gathered to present their national CF program support strategies, discuss support needs, and share ideas for regional exchange. A representative from the International Centre for Forestry Research (CIFOR) was also invited to explore program collaboration. The objective of this first meeting was to form a core group who could help guide the EC funded Asia Forest Network Community Forestry Support Program for Southeast Asia over the next three years. During the meeting, country participants met individually with AFN staff to explore activities that could be implemented through the regional support program.

In addition, the group spent one day on a field trip visiting Candijay Municipality to engage in dialogues with communities in the upper watersheds and those living near coastal mangrove forests to identify resource management issues and strategies. The visit was organized with the Philippine Working Group secretariat, Environmental was organized with the Philippine Working Group secretariat, Environmental Science for Social Change (ESSC). The visit culminated with a meeting of AFN participants and the municipal government. The visit highlighted community management of upland and coastal mangrove forests, as well as new efforts to protect and restore coral reefs and fisheries. The message of Madame Mayor Camacho of the Candijay Municipality to the participants was impressive, "we will not wait for Manila or outside assistance, rather, local government and communities are working together to restore our natural resources." AFN is in the process of writing up the visit to Candijay as a joint publication with Environmental Science for Social Change (ESSC) as the CFSP-SEA’s first case study of community-local government dialogue on resources management.

The response of participants to the meeting was very positive. By inviting only two to three persons per country, the workshop was small and intimate, with new personal and professional relationships formed. One participant noted that he had been to other regional meetings before, and even had seen some of the other participants from a distance but that this was the first time he really had an opportunity to meet them personally and learn from them. The meeting also identified a number of areas of common concern where regional CF exchanges should be pursued in the next two years. These included:

1. Formulating enabling CF Policies and Guidelines
2. Linking Communities with Local Government to enable Resource Management
3. Community Forestry Federations, Associations, and Apex Bodies
4. Community Forestry Field Methods and Research.

The meeting concluded that it would be important to reconvene the gathering by late February of 2002, and that field visits emphasizing community-local government relationships in resource management should remain a focus. Cambodia was proposed as a possible venue for the next regional meeting. The AFN support team will be traveling throughout the Southeast Asia region during the months of September, October, and November to negotiate small support grants with country groups, provide technical assistance, and conduct training in participatory research methods as part of our 2001 field workshop.