The implementation of the NFP for Namibia has been in operation for just under 4 years and happening within a historically neglected sector some “teething problems” could be expected to affect the effectiveness of the programme. A few of these are described here.
During the planning process and up to the third year of implementation, there were very few Namibians who grasped the concept of strategic planning. The process of planning was, run by expatriate civil servants, consultants and a few Namibians. This was because some were in training and the ones who were present were slow to adopt the new thinking required top think in strategic terms and order their priorities and annual operational plans to achieve the objectives. Today a number who have attained degree level of education have returned. However, it takes time for them to fully understand the concepts involved in strategic planning and the concept of performance management which is behind the definition of strategic objectives, result areas, indicators and annual operational action plan. Hence the NFP has been frustrated by inadequate internal capacity. This is changing slowly and is helped by our induction programme, which attempts to address the earlier shortcomings.
In addition to inadequate numbers of trained staff, existing staff have, had difficulty adopting a new way of thinking and acting. This means that members of the directorate have had to be convinced that their individual actions ought to lead to the collective achievement of the directorate’s objectives over a defined time period. Before that people have assigned a lot of their time on activities, which are not coherent and have no clear objectives in mind.
Despite our efforts as a directorate to gain legitimacy as a provider of public goods and services, the forest sector is still underrated by many, especially because most of its goods such as energy, construction materials, ecosystem value and so on, are not traded formally and because of the absence of traditional industrial plantations. Despite this shortcoming the image and appreciation of the sector is slowly improving. The often- expressed sentiment that the forest sector can only demonstrate its worth through plantations, even if environmentally controversial is still an issue that we have to tackle.
Despite the fact that most forest problems are caused by activities outside the sector such as cultivation, fires, poverty, population pressure, forestry development is still seen as the responsibility of the Directorate of Forestry. This is quite evident in the control of fires, which for convenience is viewed as forestry’s problem, even if fires burn huge pastures that should concern range management specialists in the livestock division of agriculture.
A major issue related to the management of forests as a biological and physical entity is that, other than fire management and control over harvesting, virtually no substantial area of natural forest is under a well tested and sustainable harvesting regime. With the implementation of our the community based forest management programme associated with the establishment of community forest reserves, and with the greater capacity to generate inventory data for management planning, the situation is likely to change and by the year 2005 we expect to have at least 5 major community forest reserves to be under sustainable management regimes.
