The first Network meeting panel reported on national community forestry strategies and explored policy and communication linkages that can bridge the gap between government and community interests in each of the six participating countries. There has been a preoccupation with "projects" to solve forest management problems. After decades of model "pilot" and "policy projects," little progress has been made in developing effective methods that actually support community initiatives attempting to stabilize resource systems. Despite well-intentioned efforts by governments, donors, and NGOs, projects tend to emerge from within the agencies, reflecting internal priorities rather than external realities; such projects are often unresponsive to community and local government concerns. The panel presentations and brief overview of the follow-up discussion highlight several approaches for overcoming the communication gaps between these groups.
Mr. M. F. Ahmed, India's inspector general of forests, provided an overview of India's forest policy history, current directions, and emerging priorities. The forest department, first established by the British in 1894, struggled to balance industrial demands with "serving agricultural needs for the benefit of the people." He noted that the present condition of national forestlands is a result of policies of the past century.
Over the past five years, India has moved rapidly, establishing a strong policy framework to support a transition to the participatory management of public forestlands. In formulating the new forest policy in 1988, the government of India has laid emphasis on the need to involve people, particularly forest-dependent tribes, in forest management. In following this policy the government issued an enabling order in June 1990, setting into motion a process to involve the people in regenerating and managing public forests. In this process, state forest departments are moving from isolated management to an increasingly open, participatory system that encourages active working relations with local communities, NGOs, and other forest-sector actors. While local forest protection initiatives have independent momentum derived from local concerns and based on community activism, sixteen states have formulated supportive policies and programs that have accelerated the spread of the movement. Community forest protection movements are currently concentrated in central India, particularly in the eastern region. The emergence of local resource management systems appears to be associated with high tribal population concentrations, areas with extensive but degraded natural forest tracts, and high-poverty zones. The states of Orissa, West Bengal, and Bihar each possess an estimated two thousand to three thousand village forest protection committees, allowing the rapid regeneration of over I million hectares of once-degraded natural forests.
Mr. N. H. Mathur, senior forester for the Society for Promotion of Wastelands Development, reported on the current spread of community forest protection in India. While much progress has been made by both communities and outside agencies in stabilizing India's forest cover, only 1-2 percent of the nation's total forest area currently benefits from effective community-based access controls. Further, most of this area is characterized as locally protected forest, rather than jointly managed. Forest departments need to gain more experience in working collaboratively with community user groups. New management systems and technologies are required to increase forest productivity to meet community requirements and national goals. Joint forest management policies and programs are currently primarily limited to degraded public forestlands. Discussions are underway to consider involving communities in the management of natural forests with good growing stock as well as national parks and conservation areas.
India faces a significant challenge in reorienting the attitudes and technical skills of over 150,000 professional foresters, as well as in training the next generation. Foresters are moving from more conventional roles as commercial managers and custodians to generating environmental awareness, community organizing, and technical assistance. Both in-service and formal training programs require teachers and new curricula that are only beginning to be developed.
Discussion Summary. An American forester asked the speakers if there was any joint forest management in protected areas in India. Mr. Mathur answered that there are villages involved in forest protection along the buffer regions of some parks, including Buxa in West Bengal and Simlipal in Orissa. There are also participatory rural appraisals (PRAs) being done to assess community interest in other protected areas. Donor agencies are encouraging that 4 percent of India's total land mass be put aside for protection, with local people participating in management of both the buffer and core areas. One of the Vietnamese members requested an explanation of how community people and the policymakers work together. Mr. Ahmed explained that the forest department was a highly structured bureaucracy with interaction and information flowing regularly from field-level foresters up to the policy-level foresters. Similarly, communities have their own hierarchical system of interaction, and foresters are working with community persons who have the authority to initiate change in management practice. In Orissa and Rajasthan, forest departments have successfully improved communications between the two sides by holding meetings with representatives from forest protection groups to review joint forest management policies. Such dialogues have been very productive, with policies periodically revised based on guidance from community protection groups.
Mr. Romeo Acosta, a director in, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), introduced the shift in forest management policies and strategies taking place within his agency. After experiencing rapid depletion of the nation's natural forest reserves over the past thirty years, the Philippines is currently engaged in a management transition, shifting away from an agricultural-industrial strategy to a social reform agenda that respects the rights of indigenous people to participate in forest management. The industrial sector is beginning to recognize this transition and is attempting to respond through appropriate projects and programs.
In the mid-1980s, a number of tenure mechanisms and programs were established to support community forestry. These include the Integrated Social Forestry Program, Community Forestry Management Agreement, Forest Land Management Agreements, and Certification of Ancestral Domain. Over the past ten years, however, progress in decentralizing public lands control has been slow. The policy instruments and programs were overdependent on government and non-governmental implementing agencies and failed to encourage local initiatives. Local government organizations and field staff did little to encourage forest communities to take advantage of new policies. The multiplicity of projects created confusion regarding which tenure mechanism to use and were often viewed as competing. Because community forestry was tied to projects, decentralized forest management occurred only in isolated project sites, creating an "island effect."
Based on this experience, there is increasing recognition that a sequential evolution is needed in policy development to deal with emerging issues and to more fully integrate project and program activities into broader social and political changes occurring in the Philippines. DENR is beginning to redefine its own role from one of commercial extraction to protection management, relying on the facilitation of NGOs and community-based activities. In the future, the DENR is considering a new approach to accelerate transitions in management to improve upper watershed protection. This strategy will rely heavily on the use of mass and local media to transmit information on forest management programs to wider audiences.
Mr. Gilbert Braganza of the Environmental Research Division of the Manila Observatory noted that new forest management policies provide the DENR with greater flexibility to decentralizing public forest management to the communities. Yet, these new management opportunities have not been well communicated to the rural public. There is a need to inform forest communities regarding emerging policies and to receive feedback from them to allow programs to be adapted to accommodate the diversity of cultures in the Philippines. Mr. Braganza stressed that it is important to shift away from the centralized "mega" -projects of the past, if such flexibility is to be created.
In response to this need for new communication channels, the Philippine Working Group was formed following the 1994 Asia Network meeting in Honolulu. The group selected ten field sites reflecting a broad range of ecological and cultural settings and DENR and NGO program approaches to participatory forest management. Over the past twelve months, the working group has been establishing dialogue with informal leaders and villagers to discuss resource management issues and the effectiveness of existing national community forestry policies and programs. Through this field-based learning laboratory, the Philippine Working Group hopes to capture new insights into ways to strengthen emerging programs. The group is also exploring ways to effectively disseminate their findings to other government agencies and NGOs, as well as to the larger public, in an effort to accelerate the spread of community-based, sustainable resource management systems.
Discussion Summary. An American NGO representative asked Mr. Acosta if there were any mechanisms to change commercial forestry approaches. Mr. Acosta answered that up to four years ago community forestry was not discussed by the industry, but recently commercial foresters are seeing village-managed, small-scale operations as the future. They view the community as a new resource to assist with timber production. They calculate that production costs will be much cheaper using community labor and expertise. Current problems involve issues of tenure; landownership and product rights must be defined. Many communities remain insecure regarding their long-term rights.
An Indian team member asked how the DENR monitored and protected communities from exploitation by commercial industry. He noted that in India, industry often takes unfair advantage of communities, both through exploitation of labor and in the extraction of natural resources; in response, there is now a firm policy that prohibits industry in areas where joint forest management is in place. Mr. Acosta answered that the Philippines has had similar experiences. The DENR hopes to help strengthen community organizations, increasing their capacity to make good marketing decisions. There is also a good partnership between NGOs and government, working toward a common goal of linking communities with environmental protection and regeneration.
One of the Chinese members expressed great interest in the innovative approach of integrating communities' perspectives into environmental policy assessment. He asked how the Philippines Working Group envisioned building channels of communication between DENR and communities at regional and national levels. Mr. Braganza said the group was currently experimenting with a combination of regular meetings, documentation of cultural knowledge, and joint mapping projects.
Mr. Lu Xing from the Yunnan Institute of Geography reported that China's current national forest policies encourage provinces to conduct reforestation and regeneration projects and expand protected forests. But new shifts in land use rights and market integration policies have systematically undermined efforts to sustain natural ecosystems. Provincial policies attempt to control access to forest resources, but are often undermined by the market demands driven by rapid economic development. While emerging policies support some decentralization of authority from the national to provincial governments, and from cooperative to private-sector management, planners have not yet found effective ways to engage and reestablish China's indigenous cultural groups in resource protection and management.
In Yunnan Province, the upper watershed of several of Asia's great rivers and home to twenty-four ethnic minorities, the decentralization process has allowed greater provincial autonomy in policy formation. The provincial forest department is using the opportunity to explore more flexible policy instruments that can better respond to the region's great physical and social diversity. Currently, the Network China team is active in Yunnan and considers the identification of indigenous land management practices a high priority. The team is documenting the variety of belief systems and cultural institutions that regulate community interaction with the forest environment, as well as local forest use technologies and manipulation strategies. To better communicate their findings to planners, the researchers have subdivided Yunnan into five major biophysical and cultural zones and conducted twenty in-depth studies of forest use practices across the province. They have used a classification framework to examine patterns reflecting forest conditions, the strengths of indigenous management institutions, and emerging resource needs and pressures. The team will link their individual case study areas to the zonal framework to identify regional patterns and needs. The team-hopes this spatial analysis of cultural and environmental zones will help inform planners regarding ways to adjust national and provincial programs to respond to the province's varying contexts. The team is also attempting to build community forestry management linkages with large government programs such as the Yangzi River Shelter-Belt Project, which includes fruit tree plantations and natural regeneration.
Ms. Wang Wanying, researcher with the Rural Development Research Center, gave an overview of one of the China team's research sites in the village of Mang Ying in northwest Yunnan. The study examines the impact of a 1981 policy that changed tenure rights from full authority by the collective commune to a new system that divided tenure rights between the household, the collective, and the township association. Management responsibilities were assigned in terms of personal, community, and provincial needs. This policy was the first to directly allow local people to determine forest resource use. Over the past fourteen years, according to the study, private households experienced the greatest successes in timber management. Forests managed by collectives and townships experienced greater disturbance and lower productivity. These problems reflect mismatches between policy and local realities, poor leadership in developing locally appropriate management practices, and changing market conditions that complicated the selection of appropriate tree species.
Discussion Summary. A Thai team member asked how much forestland communities normally protected. Ms. Wang answered that a village may manage forests up to three to four hours' walk from the settlement. A Vietnamese member asked if there was any community management of upper watershed areas. Mr. Lu explained that Yunnan is a border province adjoining Burma, Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam, and is the principal watershed for the Salween, Mekong, and Red Rivers. There is a national project for provincial watershed management, but currently no effort is being made to coordinate communities' activities in protecting watersheds.
Mr. Sopari Wangsadidjaja, chief of Forest Production Section of the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry, noted that his country is one of the few remaining nations with extensive old-growth natural forests. There are also millions of hectares of production forest, which while already selectively felled still possess good residual secondary growth. In the outer-island regions such as Kalimantan, Sumatra, and Irian Jaya, population densities remain low. Yet, scattered settlements of indigenous peoples and a growing influx of migrants provide a basis for integrating local communities into sustainable forest management systems.
In recent months, the Ministry of Forestry has issued new policy directives, mandating that much of the production forests be transferred from commercial to community management. During the current Five-Year Plan, a target of 450,000 hectares has been proposed for transfer to community control. The Consolidated Production Forest Areas (Kesatuan Pemangkuan Hutan Produksi-KPHP) has been designated as one of the primary vehicles to devolve management authority to local groups.
In moving from policy to implementation, the Ministry of Forestry faces a number of operational questions. It remains unclear what types of community organizations or institutions should be involved as field-level management units. The size of forest area to be protected and utilized by communities needs to be determined through village- level discussions. How the forests are to be managed, what products are to be extracted, and which technologies are to be used to ensure sustainable yields need to be clarified. Since the commercial timber industry remains active, processing and market linkages between community forest management institutions and the larger private sector will need to be developed. Finally, stronger communication and coordination relationships between national planning agencies, local government, and community groups require clarification and establishment. This last, critically important task assumes an ability to identify and interface indigenous cultural (adat) institutions with the formal governance sector.
Mr. Vu Van Dung, vice director of the Forest Inventory and Planning Institute (FIPI) of Vietnam's Ministry of Forestry, explained that in his country, attention is currently focused on accelerating their economic transition. Capital and technological investments in the industrial and agricultural sectors are streaming into the country. Yet the longer-term success of the economic transformation of Vietnam is heavily dependent on the stability of the nation's upland resources. The challenge the Vietnamese country team faces is to bring to the attention of planners the immense potential present in government collaboration with ethnic minority groups to stabilize the vast but degraded upland watersheds. Since current policy and project momentum is focused on lowland private-sector development, it is imperative that government planners explore strategies for integrating governance and private-sector efforts alongside the nation's diverse upland cultural groups. Over two-thirds of the country's land area is located in upland watersheds inhabited by fifty-eight ethnic minority groups.
FIPI's Mr. Vo Tri Chung reported that given the great cultural diversity present in upland Vietnam, finding ways to formally integrate these communities into national forest management strategies presents significant challenges. Earlier policies and programs promoting resettlement were socially disruptive and largely failed. More recent policy initiatives are encouraging the allocation of forestlands, yet while these strategies may be appropriate in highly populated, lowland agricultural zones, they may not reflect historic human-forest interaction patterns characteristic of upland cultural communities. The Vietnamese country research team has already reviewed current privatization policies with Hmong, Tai, and Dao minority groups in the Black River watersheds of the north and found villagers to be doubtful of programs that lead to fragmentation of responsibilities for protecting upper watershed forests. Villagers are, however, expressing considerable interest in restoring traditional community access to non-timber forest products within national parks, reforesting degraded lands with indigenous tree species, and strengthening cultural mechanisms of land use allocation such as the traditional tai yumpa or "forest keeper" system.
The Vietnamese team is working with district and commune officials, initially in Yen Chau District in the Da River watershed and around Bavi National Park, to create new approaches to collaborative resource management in upland areas. In the longer term, FIPI, in cooperation with other departments in the Ministry of Forestry, intends to develop an information base detailing indigenous forest management practices, both institutional and technical, of the majority of ethnic minority groups in the country. It was proposed that this information be fed into policy and planning formulation to better integrate Vietnam's upland cultural diversity and rich traditions with national forest management systems.
According to Dr. Komon Pragtong, director of the Royal Forest Department's (RFD's) Community Forestry Division, economic priorities have driven forest policy decisions in recent decades. Since 1985, however, policies encouraging community management of public forests gained support. By the end of the century, Dr. Pragtong expects new laws will support a transfer of responsibilities for much of the public forestlands from the forestry agency to community groups. However, while a policy environment supportive of community forestry is emerging, many earlier conflicting land laws remain in force that may constrain any major initiatives leading toward a broad-based public forestland decentralization. Broad-based regulations still require communities in steep upper-watershed areas to be resettled; villages situated inside national parks are also required to move. Within a policy and legal framework that has mixed implications for the role of communities in state forest management, the RFD's Community Forestry Division has attempted to develop a flexible strategy for enhancing local participation and understanding local cultural traditions that help sustain forest resources.
The RFD has enlisted the assistance of Thai cultural institutions to help strengthen local forest management initiatives. These have included involving members of the Royal Family, as well as the Buddhist clergy, in supporting community forestry. Encouragement from the king's family is often a powerful motivation to forest villagers to initiate management activities; Buddhist monks are also very influential in supporting villagers to carry out communal projects. New decentralized governance policies have also empowered district-level government to levy taxes on forest-related activities that can be channeled back to forest-based communities. This provides new financial resources to respond to community concerns, including support for forest protection, regeneration, and related management initiatives. The Community Forestry Division continues to build its national inventory of local forest management groups. Recent surveys indicate over ten thousand community forest organizations are actively protecting local ecosystems for ritual, hydrological, or production purposes. The RFD is exploring how to extend greater legitimacy to informal resource management institutions.