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Commonwealth
Forests | | |
 Participation by local people in forest management
A significant shift in thinking in the last 20 years about the management of all types of forests
has been the development of participatory processes, which has involved reduction in
centralised government management of forests. It has often been accompanied by political
decentralisation or devolution of responsibilities2. A great many Commonwealth countries
have
reported experience in developing and implementing community and participatory management
schemes. India, which has a long history of local participation in forest management, was
among the first to formalise the arrangements for community involvement in recent years, with
the concept of Joint Forest Management (JFM) in 1990 (Bahuguna, 2005 and Singh 2006).
Before then the previous Social Forestry and Wastelands Programme, which had aimed to
support reforestation under the supervision of the authorities, had failed to arrest deforestation
and degradation. The objective of JFM was still to rehabilitate depleted state forests but with
the direct involvement of forest-dependent communities in their protection and management,
although the government has retained ownership of the land (Singh, 2006 gives a very full
account of the development of participatory forest in India). The criticism has been made that
bureaucratic attitudes still influence the implementation of JFM. A recent study of several
hundred senior and middle-level managers of four state forest services which are implementing
JFM shows a disparity between the participatory ethos of JFM and the value system of
bureaucracies (Kumar and Kant. 2003). The study points out that the implementation of a
participatory policy requires also the reform of legal and administrative frameworks, while a
study in Cameroon notes the need for conflict resolution between the various interests. Before
decentralization such conflicts were vertical, afterwards they were horizontal (Madingou 2003).
Another example comes from Tanzania where it is estimated that more than 90% of people
use firewood for domestic energy (Meghji, 2003). Strategies have been introduced which
involve communities and stakeholders in forest management under Participatory Forest
Management (PFM); high priority has been given to the implementation of these programmes
in the national forest policy and in the National Forest Programme, with legal and institutional
changes to support implementation. Over 900 out of 10 000 villages practise PFM, with nearly
442 000 ha of woodland under Community Based Forest Management, and over 396 000 ha
under Joint Forest Management.
But participatory forestry is not only about wood. Cameroon has reported a project (supported
by UK) in the development of community participation in wildlife management, including the
lucrative bushmeat trade (Akumsi, 2003) while Mozambique has revised forest policy and laws
to create an environment to enable community forestry and wildlife management in 61
community-based pilot initiatives (Mansur and Zacarias 2003).
The management of woods by communities is by no means confined to developing countries.
The UK started to facilitate the management of former state-owned woodland by communities
almost twenty years ago, and now there are 230 woods fully or partially-controlled by
communities in Scotland. One of the features of management by local groups in Scotland has
been the emphasis on native broad-leaved species, with long-term plans for the conversion of
several of the former commercial conifers to broadleaved species and the encouragement of
native wildlife such as otters. Some examples include http://www.wooplaw.org.uk
and http://www.creetown-walks.co.uk
2 Decentralization refers to the shift of power to a lower level - often within the
same
organization. Devolution refers to the shift of power out of the original organisation, generally
to
a lower level. The latter is the sounder basis for participatory management.
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