F.F Korten
Frances F. Korten is Assistant Representative of the Ford Foundation in Manila, the Philippines.
An analysis of the increasingly important role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the shaping of forestry policies and programmes.
Forestry issues, once viewed by the general population as technical and remote, have recently ignited public interest. In developed and developing countries alike, such interest has stemmed from a growing awareness that forests not only serve to satisfy society's need for timber, but also play a critical role in local and global ecological balances, constitute a rich storehouse of biological diversity and provide a home for indigenous groups and other marginalized people. As forests come under increasing threat from land-hungry farm families, timber exploitation and development projects as diverse as hydroelectric dams and golf courses, the professional forestry sector finds itself embroiled in a growing controversy.
The professional forestry sector has been dominated for years by three key actors. Government forestry agencies have set policies and regulated the exploitation of forests. Forestry schools have developed a science of forest exploitation and conservation and have provided a steady stream of forestry professionals to both government and industry. Forest industries have applied forestry and wood processing technologies to generate jobs, capital and products. In developing countries, the past two decades have brought other actors into the sector, i.e. the international aid agencies and multilateral banks, both of which have had important direct and indirect impacts on the forestry sector.
More recently, as concerns about forests have intensified, a new type of organization has won a place among these protagonists. In negotiations at as high a level as the Tropical Forests Action Programme (TFAP) or as down-to-earth as a Peruvian village, NGOs are playing increasingly critical roles in the shaping of forestry policies and programmes.
The relationship between NGOs and the forestry sector is complicated by the diversity among NGOs. NGOs differ in their scope (local, national or international), financial orientation (profit or non-profit), the individuals to whom they are ultimately accountable, the issues they bring to the sector and the roles they play in addressing these issues. This article focuses primarily on voluntary organizations (non-profit NGOs driven by a sense of values and a mission), as opposed to public service contractors, (organizations driven primarily by market opportunities).
Generally, NGOs share a common zeal to address needs for which other societal institutions have been ineffective (Brown and Korten, 1991). Their focus on issues that have not been adequately addressed makes them potentially creative contributors to the solving of important problems, but it can also cause them to be seen as troublesome dissidents disrupting the time-honoured approaches of more established institutions.
In the forestry sector, NGOs offer distinctive perspectives, partly because they do not start with the concern for timber that dominates so many of the sector's established institutions. Some NGOs focus on the environment and are active in forest protection because of the critical role forests play in ecosystem conservation. For other NGOs it is poverty - the plight of people obliged to eke out a subsistence living in or near the forest that draws them into the forestry sector. Still others start with a concern for social justice, particularly for indigenous and other marginalized forest dwellers whose cultures and rights have been abused by the larger society.
The concerns these NGOs address are not new to the forestry sector. Academics in forestry and other schools have helped build awareness of environmental, poverty and social justice needs while some governmental leaders have urged more responsive public policies. But such needs have been slow to become integral parts of the agenda of mainline forestry institutions and, in the real world of power and politics, have often been sacrificed. NGOs have become the front-line advocates of these sacrificed needs. Because of their independence and relatively small size, NGOs ate often able to take more controversial stands, act more quickly and innovate more easily than their larger, more established counterparts.
The issues that NGOs highlight - people and wildlife, soil and water, sustainability and justice - have taken on a greater urgency as the world comes to realize that human demands have filled our planet's ecological space and that the continuation of careless exploitation will have devastating consequences for us all. As environmental and social issues related to forests and forestry hit the headlines, the growing crisis is spurring NGOs, influencing public opinion and strengthening the hand of innovative thinkers within the traditional forestry sector. These forces have enabled NGOs gradually to win a respected place at the forestry sector's table.
What are the contributions that have enabled NGOs to earn their place at the table? One is the questioning of long-held assumptions in the light of new realities; a second is the development of new policies that respond to current needs; and a third is on-location work, implementing programmes consonant with NGO concerns. Each role creates a distinct context for the relationship between NGOs and the traditional forestry sector.
In Brazil, NGOs are indigenous groups derive mom benefits from non-wood forest products
Questioning assumptions
The most uncomfortable relationship is in the first role. No one likes to have long-held assumptions and doctrines challenged, and forestry sector actors are no exception. Consequently, relationships between NGOs and foresters, whether in the government, industry, academia or aid agencies, tend to be tense when NGOs question fundamental forestry creeds.
NGOs have raised poignant questions regarding the judgement of governments in declaring state control over forested lands that were previously under common or local jurisdiction. In many nations, vast areas have been proclaimed state-owned forests even though they are inhabited by people whose ancestors lived there even before the state existed. NGOs, such as the Legal Rights and Natural Resources Center in the Philippines, have questioned the legality of such moves and have urged the recognition of ancestral domain for people who have lived in forested areas since time immemorial (La Vina, 1990). Generally staffed with young human rights lawyers, these NGOs are beginning to win broader rights for indigenous peoples (Durning, 1991). Their arguments rest on a combination of long-term occupancy as a determinant of rightful claim and the environmental benefit of having indigenous peoples conserve and manage the forested lands.
Another assumption NGOs have questioned is the appropriateness of timber harvesting in primary forests. If current harvesting rates were to continue, they note, within the next several decades the world would consume all of its primary forests and would be forced to meet its needs from other sources. They argue that it would be better to make that transition now and retain the remaining primary forests for their vital recreational, biological and cultural value.
In their efforts to stem the destruction of primary natural forests, such groups employ a wide range of approaches. In Thailand, when logging was perceived as having contributed to a devastating flood and landslide, The Project for Ecological Recovery and other leading Thai NGOs responded by successfully promoting public pressure for a total ban on commercial logging in primary forests.
Consumer boycotts are a relatively new and controversial tactic being used by NGOs in developed countries in the effort to conserve forests. An alliance of United States environmental NGOs threatened a public boycott of Scott Paper in response to the company's plans to set up a huge pulp and paper mill in the virgin forests of Indonesia's Irian Jaya. Legal actions have become a favourite strategy in the United States where several environmental groups have used the Endangered Species Act to obtain injunctions against logging in parts of the country's northwestern forests, which harbour the spotted owl (Strix occidentalis).
Assumptions about the appropriate royalty rates for governments to charge timber concessionaires have become another target of NGO challenge. Indonesia's leading environmental group, Wahana Lingkungan Hidup Indonesia (WALHI), recently produced an economic analysis of the government's "rent capture" from the forestry sector. Their report received widespread publicity and stirred considerable debate. It showed that the government was recovering between 17 and 22 percent of the potential economic rent from the nation's logging operations. They compared this with the 85 percent rent capture specified in the government's oil contracts and noted that the difference would have amounted to an additional US$2 500 million in government revenue in 1990 alone (WALHI, 1991).
A forest protection committee in Southwest Bengal, India
Such challenges to fundamental assumptions have ruffled feathers in the forestry sector but they have also raised questions that need examination in any society concerned about sustainability and justice.
Developing new policies
As forestry-related environmental and social crises have deepened, government leaders, academics, aid officers and even industrialists have become increasingly receptive to NGO concerns. In many countries NGOs now find themselves with expanding opportunities to help shape forestry policies.
One arena where NGO contributions are increasingly being sought is in the creation and protection of parks and nature reserves. For example, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), concerned about the threat to biological diversity in
Madagascar, worked with the government to develop an action plan. Published in 1986, the plan set out clear priorities and programmes related to the nation's parks and nature reserves. WWF then helped the government arrange a US$3 million debt-for-nature swap which enabled the Directorate of Waters and Forests, together with WWF, to implement the action plan (WWF/Conservation Foundation, 1990).
Another area in which NGOs are playing active roles is in developing or modifying policies that grant or protect local people's access to forest resources. In Brazil, NGOs have played an important role in winning similar rights for rubber tappers. The National Rubber Tappers Council (a grassroots organization renowned for its martyred leader, Chico Mendez) and the Institute of Amazon Studies (a local NGO comprising mostly human rights activists) teamed up to press the government to stop the forest destruction caused by cattle ranchers who burn the forest when clearing land. They advocated the establishment of a new type of land designation - the extractive reserve which would give them the right to protect the area while sustainably exploiting it for non-timber forest products (Allegretti, 1990). Two United States-based environmental NGOs, the Environmental Defense Fund and the National Wildlife Federation, helped to gain this cause international attention. By 1990 the Brazilian government had responded positively to these demands, eliminating the subsidies that had favoured deforestation by ranchers and designating over 3 million ha of Amazon rain forest as extractive reserves (Anderson, in press).
A women's group In Malawi being trained In tree seed treatment by FAO project staft
At the international level, NGOs also have an increasing role in determining forest policy. They are becoming increasingly involved with the Tropical Forests Action Programme (TFAP), launched in 1985 by FAO, the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the World Resources Institute. The TFAP was intended as a framework to respond to the growing forestry crisis, but many NGOs felt it was flawed by some of its initiators' bias toward timber as the focal problem and large international loans as the preferred solution. They criticized the TFAP's lack of attention to social and institutional issues as well as its call for massive investments in the forestry sector (Winterbottom, 1990). Their criticisms helped bring about substantial revisions in the Programme, including greater attention to the rights and needs of forest dwellers. Some NGOs, however, feel these changes have not gone far enough and are urging further reviews. [Ed. note: see article by Cabarle, p. 30.]
Implementing programmes
As forestry policy has become more responsive to their concerns, NGOs have found themselves with a new major role that of helping to implement the programmes and specific activities inherent in the sector's changed policies. In the past, government forestry institutions have commonly carried out a policing role and their personnel are sometimes feared by local people. Yet, as government policies change, these agencies need to relate more positively to village people, and many are turning to NGOs for help. In Indonesia, when the State Forest Corporation decided to organize farmer groups to participate in reforestation and management of state forest lands, it contracted Bina Swadaya, a major poverty-focused NGO, to train its personnel in community development skills (Seymour 1990).
In other cases NGOs respond on their own to the opportunities afforded by the new policies. Improved land-tenure options for farmers on public forest lands have encouraged numerous NGOs in the Philippines to assist farming communities with sustainable agroforestry methods (Upland NGO Assistance Committee, 1991 a). In the case of Brazil, cited above, the Woods Hole Research Center has been working with rubber tappers to use satellite photos for demarcating the boundaries of the new extractive reserves. Meanwhile, a local NGO, EcoTech, is also working with the rubber tappers on appropriate technology for processing non-timber forest products from the reserves. Cultural Survival, a Boston-based human rights NGO, has helped the rubber tappers export such products as Brazil nuts for sale in developed country markets under an environmental label.
The strip clear-felling system in Palcazu, Peru, where NGOs and government workers are collaborating
The examples cited above are only a small sample of the rich array of forestry-related activities that NGOs are undertaking around the world. Missing in most NGO activity, however, has been the issue that remains the forestry sector's central concern - supplying people's wood, pulp and paper needs through timber production. In their pursuit of other issues, NGOs have generally ignored that legitimate need, but a growing number of organizations are beginning to combine their interests in people and the environment with the need for wood and timber production.
Some efforts have been at the policy level, such as those encouraging trade in logs only from forests that are sustainably managed. The Rainforest has developed a checklist of criteria for well-managed timber operations and gives their "Smart Wood" seal of approval only to tropical hardwood exports from sources that meet those criteria. Hopes for elevating such standards to national levels have been dashed by a recent ruling of a dispute-settlement panel of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The panel ruled that no country may discriminate against the products of another country on the grounds of their method of production. The GATT panel viewed such discrimination as a barrier to free trade. That ruling is now bringing NGOs to the fore in examining and questioning the basic assumptions of the GATT negotiations (Rainforest Action Network, 1991).
Other NGOs base their timber-related efforts at the community level. The community forestry models they have developed are beginning to influence national policies that have a bearing on timber production. For example, in the Philippines, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) has invited NGOs to help organize communities to participate in its new Community Forestry Programme which encourages people living adjacent to forests to inventory and manage the forest and harvest logs on a sustainable basis. The- effort is part of the government's overall forestry master plan in which community-based forestry is projected to play an important role in timber production (DENR, 1990).
In the Palcazu rain forest of Peru, a Costa Rican NGO, the Centro Científico Trópical, and the Ministry of Agriculture are working with the Yanesha Indians in a pilot effort to harvest timber from narrow swaths (a technique called strip clear-felling, developed under an Agency for International Development-assisted government project) designed to encourage rapid forest regeneration and to use animals for extracting the logs, thus minimizing damage to the forest (Cabarle, 1991; Hartshorn, Simeone and Tosi, 1987). In India, the West Bengal Government is encouraging the formation of village forest protection committees, which receive direct benefits including the use of non-forest timber products and a sharing arrangement with the government for the sustainable harvest of the sal (Shorea robusta) forest at the end of a ten- to 1 5-year rotation (Malhotra and Poffenberger, 1989).
These programmes base their hope for success on the fact that local communities depend on the forest to meet basic needs for water, fuel, fodder and building materials. They expect that these groups' high stake in sustaining the forest will lead them to exercise their new management authority more responsibly than have large timber concessionaires, who are usually far removed from the forests they exploit. Whether such enlightenment will prevail at the local level will depend partly on the effectiveness of NGOs in organizing strong community organizations and encouraging them to take a long-term view of the future.
This article reveals that NGOs have become increasingly effective in acquiring recognition for traditional land rights, obtaining usufruct rights for forest areas on behalf of local people, promoting agroforestry practices, assisting with the marketing of non-timber forest products and encouraging the sustainable harvesting of logs. Their role in questioning assumptions, developing new policies and implementing programmes is likely to expand even further in the future.
The type of assumptions NGOs question may move to even more fundamental issues as it becomes increasingly apparent that virtually all activities now have wide-ranging environmental and social consequences on our "ecologically full" planet. At the NGO forum that paralleled the World Bank's 1991 annual meeting in Bangkok, some NGOs that had previously criticized specific World Bank projects began to question the broader development model advocated by the Bank. They were concerned that the encouragement of trade liberalization, foreign investment and the creation of foreign debt could, in many cases, accelerate the exploitation of natural resources so damaging to both the environment and people (People's Forum, 1991).
In terms of policy development, NGOs are also likely to broaden the scope of their forestry-related concerns. For example, NGOs have recently convinced the Philippine Government to include them in the new Forestry Sector Coordinating Committee, where they will join industry and government representatives in reviewing all forestry policies - not just those related to community-based programmes where previous NGO efforts have been focused.
In programme implementation, NGOs are likely to find that government policies increasingly encourage their involvement, particularly in helping villagers who live near forests and in protecting endangered environments. In 1990, India's Ministry of Environment and Forestry issued policy instructions encouraging all State Forest Departments to work with NGOs to develop village forest protection committees throughout the country (Poffenberger, Bhatia and McGean, 1990). Such an invitation is daunting even for as vigorous an NGO community as is found in India.
This secure place at the table in the forestry sector creates both challenges and dangers. In their continuing efforts to question assumptions, NGOs will need to think carefully and thoroughly about the alternatives they propose and the potential negative effects of what initially may seem to be improvements on existing policies. In policy development they will need to address not only the human and environmental needs in forested areas, but also the needs for timber products outside forest areas. They will need to learn to compromise, without losing their idealism and integrity, as they respond to the complex web of societal interests. They will need to find ways to keep in solid contact with ground-level realities, even as they operate increasingly in high-level policy fore. In their implementational roles, NGOs will need to pursue new strategies to increase their impact dramatically, not by simply multiplying the number of NGOs but by encouraging spontaneous village organization and people's participation through appropriate policies, people-to-people exchange and self-managing federations of people's organizations.
Success nearly always opens the way to new dangers, an obvious example of which is overexpectation. While NGOs have achieved some remarkable successes in specific communities, their reach is spotty and there remain whole countries with weak or non-existent NGO movements.
Government and aid agencies cannot hope to pass off the basic tasks of systematic national outreach to NGOs, which lack the massive infrastructure or secure funding of governmental agencies. Careful blends of NGO and government efforts will be needed, with government allowing NGOs a greater space to perform their distinctive roles while not overburdening them with the basic functions of government, ted. note: see article by Maniates, p. 21.]
A threat to the very meaning of NGOs is posed by policies that encourage the formation of groups that style themselves as NGOs but that are primarily oriented toward profit-making as opposed to development. Poorly conceived programmes that make major funds available to NGOs are a particular threat. The very vagueness of the term "NGO" - a sector defined by what it is not - encourages such distortions and potentially dilutes the contributions that have won NGOs their standing in the forestry sector.
The Philippines provides an example. Under a US$240 million forestry sector loan from the Asian Development Bank and the Japanese Government, NGOs were encouraged to apply for contracts to reforest barren areas. The availability of such funds prompted the formation of numerous groups calling themselves NGOs but whose primary motivation was to make money from the contract. Many such groups were able to meet their short-term targets for planting trees, but their relationships with the people living next to the reforested areas were generally poor, as was the prognosis for the trees' long-term survival (Upland NGO Assistance Committee, 1991b).
Responding to the danger of programmes that encourage the formation of bogus NGOs is difficult but crucial if NGOs are to maintain their distinctive function in achieving a more sustainable and just world. Curtailing such dangers requires responsible leadership from all the key actors. Particularly critical is the need for an organized response from the NGOs that are truly development-oriented.
In the case of the Philippine programme, the Upland NGO Assistance Committee, a consortium of seven leading NGOs and academic groups active in the forestry sector provided such a response. The Committee commissioned research to examine the problem, analysed the resulting data in a workshop with government officials, and formed a joint task force with government to modify the programme's policies.
The new policies encourage the government to make its contracts for planting, maintaining and harvesting trees directly with the people living in the reforested area. The role for NGOs has been recast from being direct implementors of reforestation to supporting the development of the peoples' organizations required for obtaining such contracts. It is expected that by placing the NGOs in a support role, the value of the NGO contracts would be diminished and, therefore, the interest of those who do not truly share a commitment to people and the environment would decline correspondingly.
The traditional forestry sector institutions -government, and academia are increasingly interacting with a new group of players, the NGOs. In some cases the relationship is tense, as long-held approaches are opened to scrutiny. In others it is amicable, creating innovative solutions to previously neglected problems. As our world becomes evermore crowded and environmentally threatened, NGOs' attention to issues of environment, poverty and social justice will be even more urgently needed. Their roles are likely to expand at the village, national and international levels. Yet, they cannot substitute for the vital functions of the forestry sector's established institutions. The challenge for these established institutions will be to learn to draw on the independence and flexibility of the NGOs without destroying those qualities with the weight of unreasonable expectations.
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