0610-A1
Moses A. Eben [1]
The paper opens by introducing one of the World’s Twenty-five Hotspots for Biodiversity, The Upper Guinea Forest, situated in West Africa.
It goes on to explain that the concept of Collaborative Forest Management (CFM) can help poverty alleviation and/or reduction in West Africa. The concept of CFM is defined.
The paper then reviews CFM as a means of reducing poverty and attaining sector objectives of sustainable resource management. It will also look at CFM’s impact on rural livelihoods and forest resources.
The challenges of CFM will be reviewed, including, how non-governmental organizations’ and other stakeholders can facilitate CFM. Important observations and recommendations will be mentioned.
In conclusion, we will show that Sustainable Forest Management through CFM contributes to poverty alleviation and/or reduction/eradication because forest can contribute greatly to economic growth, development and livelihood opportunities for the poor, particularly in the rural areas where there are few other prospects.
The Upper Guinea Forest extends from Eastern Sierra Leone and South Eastern Guinea through Liberia, Cote D’Ivoire, Ghana, and into Eastern Togo is a biologically unique ecosystem that is considered one of the World’s priority conservation areas because of its high endemism of flora and fauna. It is one of the 25 (twenty-five) global hotspots for biodiversity, and this West Africa’s Guinea Forest ecosystem has the world’s highest diversity of mammals. The overall forest ecosystem is approximately 420,000 square kilometers.
The Upper Guinea Forest along with the adjacent coastal and marine ecosystems harbors the greatest concentration of biodiversity in the six countries namely Liberia, Cote D’Ivoire, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Togo.
Forests are severely fragmented; species are disappearing, and freshwater and coastal marine ecosystems are degraded. This undermines the natural resource base - the capital for economic growth and development, and the livelihood source of millions of people.
Impact of civil conflict on biodiversity is significant in West Africa. Forced migrations caused by war leads to refugees clearing forestlands, resource use intensifying when population increase to five, ten or more of their normal size. In these conflict zones, forests continue to be used for shelter, security, and sustenance in the absence of economic alternatives; exploitation of timber and minerals also generates income to fuel these conflicts. Environmental damage also occurs when forests are burned to flush out enemy soldiers, hunting is undertaken to feed soldiers, and agricultural lands are destroyed to displace villagers.
We see that in territories abandoned during wars, the absence of local government and weak national government permit mining and logging at unsustainable levels, as diamond, gold, rubber and timber are extracted by unregistered or unregulated companies. Environmental standards become irrelevant to the holders of the resource, with disastrous effects on wildlife, water quality, natural vegetation, and soils.
Population growth and influx of migrant populations lead to competition for land for settlement or agricultural production, and are often aggravated when competition is between ethnic groups. Ethnic tensions become flash points for increased conflicts as competition for resources increases.
There is intense pressure in the region and this threatens the biological integrity, if not the physical existence, of many West Africa’s remaining forest fragments. Mining, agriculture, and hunting occur at wide-ranging scales, from subsistence and household levels to commercial operations. Throughout the region, bush meat, medicines, building materials, and other non-timber forest products continue to be harvested wherever forest patches exist.
These forest fragments, forest habitats become targets for settlement, encroachment and illicit clearing, planting, and hunting. Also, the coastline, aquatic and marine environments are being degraded as urbanization expands and pollution increases.
Institutional barriers to successful Forest Management include inadequate funding, lack of trained personnel, and poor infrastructure. There are also weak legislative and judicial structures that provide little framework for effective Forest Management, and limit enforcement efforts including the political will of the respective government. Language and other barriers challenge Forest Management of the areas that straddle national boundaries. Universities are equally ill equipped to mobilize field teams and generate funds to carry out baseline surveys and monitoring of forest.
Participatory Forest Management (PFM) is an umbrella term to include shared forest management, joint forest management, collaborative forest management and community forestry. It tries to secure and improve livelihood of local people dependent on forest resources by involving all key stakeholders in the process of forest management, understanding their needs and situation, allowing them to influence decisions and receive benefits, and increasing transparency.
The concept of Collaborative Forest Management (CFM) is defined as the " working partnership between different stakeholders which enhances the management and development of the forest and wildlife resources and leads to equitable distribution of benefits."
Collaborative Forest Management is a process of consensus. It requires consultation and involvement of the community in the management of the resources. Collaboration will have to be exercised between actors and within institutions for Collaborative Forest Management to succeed. It requires the proper mechanism to facilitate the process of consensus building, sharing rights, roles responsibilities and returns.
Collaborative Forest Management includes incorporation of community-based natural resource initiatives in national programmes to promote rural development, wealth redistribution, employment, income and productive opportunities and infrastructure development. It also provides legislation to support community and other stakeholders’ roles in forest and wildlife management. Improvement of community access to resources and definition of roles of various actors in improved resource management is inclusive. Collaborative Forest Management creates and support viable forest for a with strong civil society presence and communication channels/networks. (There is up, down and lateral). It thus places heavy responsibilities on farmers and forest fringe communities.
As a result of implementation of Collaborative Forest Management government as one of the stakeholder will clarify the roles and responsibilities of the different stakeholders in forest resource management and pass legislation in this regard. Government’s land and tree tenure schemes will be clarified and document the ownership of trees which offer better incentive to tree planters. Government will now channel benefits accrued from off-reserve forest management to communities. There will be benefit-sharing arrangements to ensure that communities and farmers get equitable shares. Hence, communities will be made more responsible and accountable, since, timbers loggers will be made accountable to communities.
In most of the rural areas or the forest areas, there are little or no economic activities to provide income for the people. The daily subsistence of the people is depended on the forest. Hence, resources obtained from the forest include water, firewood, building poles, timber, medicinal herbs, vegetables, honey, fruits, and animals etc. There are also agricultural practices as well as extractive activities.
Collaborative Forest Management that allows in collaboration, government and communities to consider government mandates, standards, and guidelines, National interest Groups, (Environmental, Timber, Property, Rights etc), Scientific Forest Management principles, Resources available for forest management to develop alternative, prioritize and also implement in collaboration with the community. People learn by being involved, thus have effective community participation and commitment, including information. The more accurate information people have, the harder they work, and the more effective they will be.
Collaborative Forest Management allows people to harvest forest resources for their home use in a sustainable manner, hence, providing a means of income and their needs thus a means of reducing or alleviating poverty. Also, use of forestland for agricultural purposes where food crops as well as perennial cash crops plantations of cocoa, coffee, rubber, oil palm etc provide income and needs of the people. It is easy to build on indigenous management practices, as they allow local community to collect resources in "reasonable" quantities for their development.
Collaborative Forest Management gives the peoples’ expectation, which includes promotion of rural development, sharing of revenue, obtaining access to credit facilities and loans and assistance in marketing goods such as handicrafts and other products.
Collaborative Forest Management recognizes that local people depend heavily on these resources and have the interest and potential capacity within their institution to contribute to conservation as long as their rights, responsibilities and benefits are defined and consensus is built between the various parties. Hence revenue and benefits sharing from forest products are a good incentive for collaboration.
Collaborative Forest Management will uplift socio-economic status of the communities. There will be employment as a result of jobs created be it logging, extractive industry or self -employment (informal sector). There will be infrastructure development also. There will be personal intellectual development, as information will be shared through networking to facilitate effective participation of the communities. There will be slight infrastructure as telecommunication facilities at least during operation of extractive activities.
There will be some challenges to the implementation of collaborative Forest Management. These will include the difficulty in generation of direct benefit flows to communities; uncertainty of rights, responsibilities and roles in the collaborative Forest Management decision-making process- success will only be achieved if the process involves trust, transparency and commitment (all six countries have this problem); unclear tree and land tenure - legislation should provide for transparency in tenure, collaboration agreements, benefit sharing and private investment to facilitate the process of dialogues (Liberia has this problem); and ensuring institutional and policy support - There are policies for sustainable forest and wildlife management which are sound, however, putting them into practice is difficult due to limited financial resources. (Ghana, Cote D’Ivoire and Togo have this problem and or challenge). The institutional arrangement in the forest sector have different department operating independently in the management of forest and wildlife resources and the regulation without any coordination, leading to overlaps and inefficiencies. (All six countries have this problem or challenge). Most of the departments are part of the government, and do not receive the required budget or personnel resources to cope with the increasing pressures of forest and wildlife management. (all the six countries have this problem or challenge)
It is observed that Collaborative Forest Management in Africa will be new and should be donor-driven; can sustain forest resources, increase income through improved flow of benefits and reduce poverty; decentralize forest administration to the grassroots; and finally, requires transparency and accountability amongst stakeholders.
Recommendation will be, build capacity of communities to conserve forest resources and indigenous knowledge; negotiation is crucial, as well as reform of land tenure and tree ownership; foresters must shift from policing to promoting Collaborative Forest Management; and governments must accept bottom-up approaches to Collaborative Forest Management.
Bring the main public bodies and agencies that are responsible for forest management under one body, and modernize and restructure along business lines, that will deliver a forest and wildlife management and utilization service that is environmentally sound, commercially minded and customer focused. It should be runned like a business, which is vital in order to meet the needs of customers and support the growth and development of forests. Finally, its mission should be " provide service that guarantee the conservation, sustainable management and development of forest and wildlife resources for the maintenance of environmental quality and optimize their contribution to socio-economic development for the benefit of all segments of society.
FAO 1994. Introductory Guidelines for Country Report Proceedings of the International Conference on Programme for Plant Genetic Resources (ICPPGR), FAO, Rome.
Fisher, R.J. 1995. Issues in Forest Conservation: Collaborative Management of Forests for Conservation and Development. International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources and World Wide Fund for Nature, Gland, Switzerland.
Hoefsloot, H. 1996 Collaborative Management on Mount Elgon; an account of forest experiences (for publication). The IUCN Tropical Forest Conservation Programme.
Lawrence, A. and Warren, K. with Mason, T (1999) Researchable Constraints in Participatory Forest Management: A Survey of Issues and Opinions. Final Report to Forestry Research Programme. Reading. AERDD. The University of Reading.
Poffenberger, M. 1996. Communities and Forest Management. A Report of the IUCN Working Group on Community Involvement, IUCN, Washington. D.C.
Scherl, L.M., Casells, D.S. and Gilmour, D.A. 1994. Pluralistic Planning: Creating Room for Community Action in the Management of the Global Environment: Paper prepared for the Fifth International Symposium on Society and Resource Management, Colorado, June 7 - 10, 1994
Willy, E. 1994. Looking Again at Community-based Natural Forest Management. Is Participation Enough?
| [1] Executive Director, Center
for Environmental Education and Protection of Liberia, CEEP (Liberia), P.O.
Box 20-4364, Monrovia, Liberia. Cell: (231) 226888-331538; Email: [email protected];
[email protected] |