Since the early 1980s, there has been growing interest in exploring the potential of natural regeneration as a management option for degraded forests. Local communities across Asia are taking on direct responsibility for abandoned and degraded neighboring forest areas to ensure protection while natural regeneration occurs. Network members are developing new models for assisting communities in determining optimal time frames for protection and future sustained resource extraction, based on a variety of methodologies. India and Thailand are both involved in studies of natural regeneration cases that substitute traditional forestry time-sequenced research with space-sequenced research, by comparing the regeneration patterns of different cultural groups' abandoned swidden plots. Vietnam and China are examining indigenous community forest management systems within critical watersheds. Indigenous classification systems have helped reveal local land use patterns, allowing for a variety of typologies to evolve, with significant implications for government support programs. Learning from these research activities was presented and discussed in Panel II.
Mr. Chaleo Kanjunt and Mr. Uli Oberhauser of the Sam Mun Project in Chiang Mai, Thailand, gave an overview of a research project on the study of forest regeneration on abandoned farm plots of the Karen, Lisu, and Hmong ethnic minorities. Thai scientists are using a series of variously aged abandoned swidden fields to chart forest succession patterns. For each of the ethnic groups, three fallowed sites have been studied, ranging from three to eighteen years of natural regeneration. Research findings note significant regeneration patterns in the different sites, due to varying farming practices of each group. Preliminary findings indicate that Karen fields regenerate more quickly, with a greater yield of harvestable wood and a denser crown cover. By contrast, abandoned Lisu fields recover slowly, with a longer dominance of grasses. The research team plans to involve the ethnic communities in manipulation trials of regenerating forests to explore ways of accelerating reforestation and raising the production of important forest-based goods. Community participation in forest management research offers opportunities to orient study agendas to reflect local concerns, as well as incorporate indigenous knowledge. Emerging forest manipulation techniques are also more likely to be adopted by communities if they participate in their development and evaluation.
In a related Network study in Northern Thailand, Chatt Chamchong found that non-timber forest product (NTFP) incomes range from 4,420 baht (US$177) per year among Karen, 3,485 baht ($139) for Hmong, to 1,909 baht ($76) among the Lisu. Generally, only 10-20 percent of the value of the NTFP comes from cash sales, while most products were consumed in the home. The main categories of NTFPs included bamboo poles and shoots, rattan, fibers, vegetables, fruits, fodder, edible insects, mushrooms, honey, medicinal plants, and wild animals.
In Northeast Thailand, researchers Wisoot Yukong and Wuthipol Hoamuangkaew reported that they have monitored a large tract of regenerating forest in Dong Yai with community members over the past four years. The study indicates that community members extract large quantities of non-timber forest products from the forest, including twenty-nine species of mushrooms with a total annual volume of 104,000 kilograms. Mushrooms are an important market commodity in the area, and trials are now under way with bamboo-shoot enrichment planting in the forest. In Dong Yai, mushroom collection has been open to all neighboring communities, creating difficulties for families who wish to intensify production through enrichment planting. Throughout Asia, more information is needed concerning how collection right systems could provide greater security to communities and families to invest in natural forest production activities.
Mr. Buared Prachaiyo gave an overview of the research in Kalasin Province, Northeast Thailand, where Network members have spent several years monitoring the impact of fire on the regeneration of dry dipterocarpus forests. The study shows that both biomass levels and many important soil nutrients decline by over 50 percent in forests experiencing burning. Yet, because forests that burn annually generate higher mushroom and fodder yields, communities prefer to use yearly firing. Fires also appear to assist natural regeneration by facilitating the germination of many species. At the same time, annual burning may suppress the growth of saplings. Further investigation of the "burn ecology," both in terms of the effects on natural regeneration and the ways communities perceive the value of firing the forests, are considered priority topics for investigation in many parts of Asia.
In India a group of researchers led by Dr. N. H. Ravindranath of the Center for Ecological Science have established twelve forest study sites throughout the country to examine disturbances affecting forest ecosystems and monitor forest regeneration in areas under community protection. The group is particularly interested in how the flow of important forest products changes during succession and what types of manipulation strategies might be used to raise productivity. In rural India with its high forest-dependency levels, it is important to determine how natural forests can be sustainably managed to optimize the productivity of fodder grasses, non-timber forest products, as well as wood. The India team is using a number of methodological innovations in their study to quickly generate management guidelines regarding sustainable rates of extraction. By examining the species composition, species frequency, and productivity of regenerating forests of different ages, the team is attempting to anticipate future production trends. This information is shared with village forest management groups for resource-use decision making. The India team also plans to involve local community members in designing and monitoring forest manipulation techniques to assess management options. The research team intends to use their findings to help define simple "rule-of-thumb" sustainable harvesting guidelines for village forest utilization.
After Dr. Ravindranath's presentation, one participant expressed the need for caution in using "rule-of-thumb" methods for measuring extraction levels. Dr. Ravindranath answered that people have to use the forest and need some estimations of sustainable yield levels; consequently the team felt introducing such guidelines was more beneficial than having none in place. Another participant asked if they were documenting traditional "rule-of-thumb" practices. Currently there is an ongoing study classifying traditional listings, measurements, impact understanding, and process procedures that will be ready for presentation at the Network's 1996 meeting in Orissa.
Mr. Chuck Encarnacion of Manila Observatory's Environmental Research Division (ERD) reported that ERD's Community Forestry Support Program in the Sierra Madre Mountains of eastern Luzon finds the indigenous Dumagats and the migrant Tagalog people are interconnected through their common interest in rattan collection. In this setting, the development of community watershed management systems will necessarily be based on the allocation and utilization of the rattan resource. Dumagat collection practices are distinctively different from those of the Tagalog. Dumagats live deep within the watershed for extended periods, harvesting in more remote areas, while the Tagalog have different collection zones that they visit on short trips. The Philippines team is exploring with local communities in the Dupinga watershed ways to develop an intensified rattan management system, building on these different resource extraction patterns.
One participant asked why watersheds are emphasized as a unit of management. He noted that in India most community protected forests are located along the plains, and the forest boundaries are determined by traditional use rights. Thus, what was the significance of a watershed as the focal point for village protection? Mr. Encarnacion explained that most of the remaining forest areas in Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, and China were located in steep upland watersheds, and village communities in these regions frequently use ridgelines and riversides as natural boundary indicators. Watershed stabilization is an essential activity for communities to work toward, as deforestation will impact rapidly on their homes and livelihood. Forests in the flat lowlands are less-visibly defined topographically by watersheds, and maybe less important to communities in determining territorial boundaries.
In Bavi National Park in northern Vietnam, researchers Nguyen Huy Phon, Vu Van Dung, Nguyen Huy Dung, and Vo Tri Chung of the Forest Inventory and Planning Institute (FIPI) are working with Dao community members to document over two hundred plant species that form the raw materials for indigenous medicines; community members prescribe these medicines to patients living as far as 100 kilometers from the village. Network scientists from the FIPI hope to establish a long-term collaborative research program with Bavi villagers to determine the micro-ecological zone that each species inhabits, what plants are becoming scarce, and ways to propagate them within or outside the national park.
In Vietnam, FIPI is effectively using ethno-land use typologies as a way to identify and document indigenous resource interaction practices. The FIPI team is working in the Da River watershed with Tai and Hmong communities, collaboratively drawing transacts that indicate how forests are used and zoned by local villages. Figure 4 provides an illustration of a land use transect from the Tai minority village of Ban Tat in Chieng Hac Commune. According to the Tai people of the area, padong forest is classified as a critical watershed protection area where timber felling is not allowed, and this should remain under their traditional yompa community protection system. Both pa bamboo groves and pakai secondary forests are production forests managed for building materials, but also under community control. Palau lands, while having early scrub regeneration, are actually long-rotational agricultural lands; private rights need formal registration. The FIPI team is talking with the villagers regarding ways to strengthen traditional forest management as well as improve current production systems.
FIPI and Ministry of Forestry researchers are also working with Yen Chau District communities reestablish the traditional yompa (forest watcher) system of the Tai ethnic minority. Tai community members living in the Da River watershed are eager to reinstate the institution and desire to make it even stronger than in the past, to deal with growing population and commercial pressures on their watershed forests. The Vietnamese team intends to hold extensive discussions with many of the twenty-eight other ethnic minorities in the watershed to document any present indigenous institutional mechanisms of resource use and control. In cases where ethnic minorities do not have local resource management institutions, such as with the Tai, the research team is interested in exploring whether local cultural systems may be adopted by neighboring ethnic minorities. Over the coming year, FIPI and the Da River Project staff want to assist the community to develop micro land use plans and maps that can be integrated with larger programs to stabilize the Da River watershed. FIPI intends to develop an inventory of indigenous land use systems and terminologies for most of Vietnam's ethnic minorities.
Questions to the Vietnam presenters included how does research on cultural diversity help policymakers? Mr. Chung explained that by developing an ethnic classification system that charts the cultural land use practices and traditional knowledge of the ethnic minorities, government will be able to make policy that fits local resource use patterns and interests.
Figure 4
Transect of Ban Tat village lands, Chieng Hac Commune, Vietnam, with traditional land use classification
Following the paper presentation, Network members joined in a roundtable discussion. The group recognized two common methodologies that Network members were developing: (1) using traditional land use classifications to explain and understand resource interaction patterns, and (2) studying forest regeneration and productivity changes through participatory research. Three sets of data were being collected: (1) the identification of forest user communities and their spatial domain, (2) the documentation of indigenous land use systems using local terms and transect drawings, and (3) the inventorying of community strategies for natural regeneration, sustainable extraction, and watershed protection.