Community forestry strategies for sustainable forest management in Africa
Participatory forest management: a strategy for sustainable forest management in Africa. 2000. Proceedings of the International Workshop on Community Forestry in Africa, Banjul, the Gambia, 26-30 April 1999. Rome, FAO.
Community forestry refers to the collective or individual activities and practices regarding trees and forests that are carried out by local communities for the sustainable satisfaction of their wants. This publication presents the proceedings of an international workshop on community forestry in Africa sponsored by FAO and the German Agency for Technical Cooperation (GTZ) in collaboration with the Government of the Gambia. In attendance were 120 participants from 25 African countries representing government forest services, projects, community-based organizations and NGOs in the area of community-based natural resource management.
The proceedings are presented in both English (Part 1) and French (Part 2). They include an overview of the workshop discussions, including strategies and recommendations; 13 case studies presented at the workshop; and ten voluntary case studies submitted for inclusion in the proceedings, presented in their original language only.
The presented case studies illustrate the variety of approaches used in community forestry and cover topics such as the principles, prospects and impacts of community forestry and the villagers' perspectives of forest management. They also provide information on policy and legal bases for community forest management, incentives and land tenure arrangements, the degree of transfer of authority to local communities and different institutional arrangements.
The voluntary case studies discuss the evolution of community-based forest management and experiences gained in the United Republic of Tanzania, Mali, Mozambique, Benin, Uganda, Zambia, and Côte d'Ivoire. The workshop agenda, list of participants, a paper on the Gambian experience, an overview of the field visit and summaries of the working group sessions and panel discussions are also included as annexes.
These proceedings provide an excellent overview of the growing and evolving efforts towards developing and implementing community forestry in Africa. The information shared from all regions of the continent will help others to develop and apply such strategies to management of their own natural resources.
Devolving forest management in Asia
Decentralization and devolution of forest management in Asia and the Pacific. T. Enters, P.B. Durst and M. Victor, eds. 2000. RECOFTC Report No. 18. RAP Publication 2000/1. Bangkok, Thailand, FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific. ISBN 974-7946-02-5.
Governments throughout the Asia and the Pacific region are decentralizing authority and responsibility for resource management as part of efforts towards achieving sustainable forest management and biodiversity conservation goals. Throughout the region, innovative legislation and policies are increasing the power of local governments and communities in managing forest resources. The trend to decentralize is being driven by a range of factors, including efforts to reduce central bureaucracies and cut budgets, a history of less-than-successful government forest management programmes, increased economic liberalization and market orientation, and growing commitment to more equitable forest management.
This publication is based on papers presented at the International Seminar on Decentralization and Devolution of Forest Management in Asia and the Pacific, held 30 November to 4 December 1998 in Davao City, the Philippines. The seminar's main objectives were to review decentralization and devolution experiences in forest management, discuss emerging issues associated with different approaches to forest management, identify and analyse constraints and opportunities, examine gaps between policy and implementation, and explore the expansion of successful pilot efforts.
The papers are organized into five main sections. The first deals with the key issues and emerging trends of decentralization and devolution in forest management; it includes a conceptual overview and discusses principles and dilemmas, pluralism and empowerment. The second section discusses the diverse approaches used to achieve the similar objectives of forest management in various countries or regions such as New Zealand, China, the Lao People's Democratic Republic, Viet Nam and West Africa. Institutional adaptation and dealing with change is the topic of the third section, which provides specific examples from Indonesia, Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries. The fourth section explores the role of community-based enterprises and monitoring as well as the relationship between people and protected areas in a discussion focused on forest conservation. The final section presents the Philippine experience as a case study on the process of decentralization.
This publication will assist those in charge of devising and carrying out forest management policies better to understand the key issues and challenges that underlie effective implementation of decentralized forest management.
Social science research into tropical resource dynamics and conservation
Tropical forest resource dynamics and conservation: from local to global issues. K.F. Wiersum. 2000. Tropical Resource Management Papers No. 33. Wageningen, the Netherlands, Wageningen University.
This publication is a compilation of recent and ongoing research by social scientists in the Netherlands on the conservation and management of tropical forests.
The articles are divided into four sections representing the dominant fields of social science research on tropical forests. The introductory section discusses recent trends in social science research of tropical forests and the increased interest in this field, particularly within the Netherlands. It describes various theoretical perspectives such as the actor-oriented approach, common property resource management, legal pluralism, political ecology, induced innovations and conflict negotiation.
The second section presents two articles examining human perspectives on forests. An investigation of Bulu forest tenure and the 1994 Cameroon Forest Law illustrates how management and exploitation rights for forest resources are conceptualized. The other article discusses the use of storytelling as a new tool for expressing local and supralocal environmental views.
The third section contains three papers regarding land-use processes at the forest fringe. The first discusses different approaches used to assess the transformation of rain forests into domestic landscapes, with examples of pioneer shifting cultivators in the Philippines and Indonesia. The other two papers include a historical view of the cultural and social aspects of variable resource use in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, and a historical examination of changes in land use in an Indian region in Chiapas, Mexico.
The final section explores forest conservation in the context of political and economic processes through comparison of the activities and experiences of four countries, namely Senegal, Ecuador, Costa Rica and Sierra Leone.
Companion publications on forest history
Forest history: international studies on socioeconomic and forest ecosystem change. M. Agnoletti and S. Anderson, eds. 2000. IUFRO Research Series No. 2. Oxford, UK, CABI Publishing.
ISBN 0-85199-414-9.
Methods and approaches in forest history. M. Agnoletti and S. Anderson, eds. 2000. IUFRO Research Series No. 3. Oxford, UK, CABI Publishing.
ISBN 0-85199-420-2.
These two books together present edited and revised versions of more than 50 papers selected from those presented at a major conference on history and forest resources, held in Florence, Italy in 1998. The conference was organized by the Italian Academy of Forestry Science and the working group on forest history of the International Union of Forestry Research Organizations (IUFRO). One of the most important achievements of the conference was to bring together scientists from different research fields and different cultural backgrounds, stimulating an interdisciplinary approach to forest history.
As a whole, the papers present detailed analyses of the interrelationships between forest ecosystems and socio-economic development from countries around the world. Main economic and social factors, techniques and local practices, as well as legal and political aspects related to forest changes are discussed, according to the latest achievements in forest history research.
