0201-C1
Qingkui Lai 1
In China, since the beginning of the 1990s, co-management as a new and preferable approach to and measure for the management of protected areas has been accepted and adopted by research institutes and natural resource management departments. Due to differences in social, economic, cultural and historical contexts, as well as in understanding and experience, co-management practice in China inevitably encounters problems of various kinds. In order to properly introduce the philosophy of co-management into the management of protected areas, this paper, based on a review of past experiences and lessons, described and analysed the existing problems and misunderstandings in co-management practice and proposed measures for improvement from the perspective of sustainability and community development.
In order to effectively protect the conservation targets and authentically achieve the goals of reserve establishment, it becomes as urgent as necessary that the reserve management institutes change their management strategies by building up partnerships with the communities living within or outside of the nature reserve and properly addressing their needs for forest and other resources for life and production. It is under this context that co-management approaches have come into being which are intended to integrate natural resources conservation and the subsistence and development of local communities and are a concrete embodiment of the principles of community forestry in nature reserve management. In recent years, the author has been applying the theories and tools of community forestry to the researches of the resources management and utilization in and around nature reserves in Yunnan Province. This paper presents the experiences and reflections of the author on the co-management practice in the Daweishan Nature Reserve, southeastern Yunnan province, which the author wish could arouse the interest of those working in the same fields and draw precious recommendations from the readers.
"Co-management" is originated from community forestry, and is a concrete application of the community forestry concepts in forest resources and nature reserve management. Other related terms carrying similar meaning include "forest co-management", "participatory management", "collaborative management", "facilitated management", " partnership management" and so on. Different as the names are, the underlying ideas are the same, that is, to effectively conserve and manage the forest resources or nature reserves, it is essential to give sufficient considerations to the demands of the community people living within and around these forests or reserves. Community participatory management of nature reserve should comply with the goal of the reserve establishment, namely, to conserve the biodiversity harbored within the reserve, and should follow the following principles: (1) To benefit local people and satisfy their needs for forest and related resources. (2) To formulate master plans on the basis of the practical situations of the nature reserve. (3) To formulate clear management objectives for different zones of the reserve on the basis of related state policies and the requirements and status of the specific conservation targets. (4) To formulate adaptive management plans suitable for community participation. (5) To strengthen inventory and researches on the species resources of the nature reserve. (6) To strengthen the institutional capacity and develop human resources of the nature reserves and promote exchanges between reserves. (7) To strengthen awareness building so as to obtain public support.
Presented below are the findings of the author in an investigation made in and around the Laojunshan Provincial Nature Reserve in Wenshan Prefecture, Yunnan, China. Before the adoption of co-management practice, more than half of the villagers living around the nature reserve got their incomes mainly by harvesting timber and bamboos from the collective forests and nature reserve and selling them in the markets, especially in fall and winter seasons. Since the initiation of the logging ban in 1998, the villagers lost their economic sources and had to live in extreme poverty. Most of the villagers just did not have enough to feed and clothe themselves, and more and more children had to quit their schooling. This has aggravated the conflicts between the reserve and the adjacent communities and made it more difficult to manage the nature reserve and the surrounding collective forests. To ease the tension between the reserve and the communities, it is essential that efforts also be made to address the problems of the villagers in their life and production and motivate them to participate in nature reserve management. In 2000, integrated community management plans were implemented in the communities around the nature reserve, which has not only considerably eased the conflict between the nature reserve and the communities but also remarkably reduced the illegal cases related forestry administration. What is more, the enthusiasm of the villagers in forest management has also been mobilized and the vegetation of the forests rendered under co-management has been effectively recovered.
To actively involve the community people in reserve management and effectively conserve the wildlife resources of the reserve and to successfully implement co-management activities, it is necessary to redefine the functions of the managing departments and the responsibilities of the managers. To be more specifically, this expansion and shift of mandates and responsibilities is mainly reflected in the following aspects: Firstly, the reserve management stations, rather than purely patrolling and supervising law enforcement as they did before, have to expand their duties to law enforcements, community development service and collective forest management; secondly, tasks of community development and technical extension functions are added to the reserve management departments; thirdly, the jobs and functions within the reserve managing system need to be redefined. Tasks such as patrolling, guarding and law enforcements previously implemented by the management offices are delegated to the management stations at township levels or forest guards at villages. The management offices at county level are now mainly responsible for supervising law enforcement, intermediating conflicts, providing technical service to the adjacent communities and coordinating between related departments.
Improving the functions of the managing departments, changing the attitudes and perspectives of the reserve staff toward their work, and giving more attention to the life and production of the adjacent communities does not mean that we may in any way slacken our efforts in reserve management and wildlife conservation. Rather on the contrary, systems and regulations on reserve management have been further strengthened and completed. Since the commencement of the community participatory reserve management project in the Daweishan Nature Reserve, the project team, the reserve staff and community people have jointly formulated or improved a series of regulations or rules on the management of forest resources in the nature reserve and its adjacent communities. With full respect to the local customs and habits, reserve management rules and regulations have been incorporated into the "village rules " of the related communities.
Through researches, demonstrations, training, tour studies and awareness building activities in nature reserves like Daweishan and their adjacent communities, the community people are deeply moved by the work of the researchers and the reserve staff and becoming increasingly interested in co-management approaches. Besides, through these activities, most of the villagers have realized the importance of forest conservation and reserve establishment and the relations between the reserve and the adjacent communities have been enormously improved.
As most of the nature reserves are located at remote areas with inconvenient transport, poor information access and underdeveloped economy, people living in and around these nature reserves have an extremely heavy dependence on the reserve resources for their life and production. The establishment of the nature reserves had remarkably reduced their land areas, limited their sources for subsistence and their scope of activities, and to a great extent, brought inconveniencies to their life and production. To diminish the needs of the villagers for the forests and non-timber forest products of the reserve, actives measures and multiple approaches must be adopted to satisfy their demands for forest resources in their cultural and economic development activities.
Even within the same nature reserve, physically, socio-economically and culturally different areas can still be identified. In management, these areas should be treated differently; rules and management plans reflecting the difference should be formulated and implemented in order to achieve the expected goals. At the same time, the physical, social and economic conditions of an area may subject to constant changes; therefore, management requirements must also be timely revised to suit the changed situation.
Practice has proved that the efforts of the reserve management departments alone are not enough to fulfill the aforesaid tasks. Partnership and cooperation should be sought as much as possible to develop cooperative and joint management and share the benefits so as to authentically realize the objectives of effective management of nature reserves and the sustainable development of community economies.
The experiences of the demonstration programs in the two natural villages adjacent to the Daweishan Nature Reserves suggested that "seeing is believing" should be the basic principle in promoting co-management. At the same time, to achieve the expected results, it can only be developed in a gradual manner with full consideration to the will and receptive capacity of the villagers.
In the Laojunshan Nature Reserve, to conserve the forest resources of the nature reserve, households from 11 villages immediately adjacent to the nature reserves were contracted as the forests guards by the local government and were offered 100yuan to 200yuan per month. Honestly, contracting forest guards and offering monthly salaries should not be a controversial issue. In doing this, local governments have greatly solved the urgent need of the villagers for cash and no similar practice is found in other places of Yunnan and even in the whole China. But the author has some doubts on this. Indeed, regular payment is a stable economic sources for the villager forest guards but the payment in cash will not only add to the financial difficulties of the local government but also encourage reliance of the villagers on such income sources and thus may make them lose the opportunities for real development due to the following reasons: Firstly, in this pattern of joint forest guarding, the government of Wenshan County (a county under the Wenshan Prefectrue) has to input 560,000yuan each year. As a typical national-level poverty county, such an investment can hardly be sustainable; secondly, the villagers are not really satisfied with their 100yuan or 200yuan of monthly payment, which can never solve any of their problems. In their own words, this little sum of money is hardly enough for the monthly living cost of a junior high school student; thirdly, this practice has in some way sharpened the conflicts between the nature reserve and the communities. Villagers from villages not covered by the program complained that they should also have the same opportunities and treatment as the other 11 villages because their conditions are similar. Driven by this retaliating psychology, they resorted to more serious illegal harvesting of reserve resources. A leader from local conservation bureau once said " even though many villages are enjoying monthly subsidies and biogas pits have been constructed, but the villagers still turn to the nature reserve, stealing trees and collecting fuel woods from the nature reserve, so we just don't know that to do with them"
To facilitate the reserve management, it is a provincial, nationwide and even worldwide practice to relocate people so as to eliminate the conflicts between the reserve and the adjacent communities in land uses, resources management and conservation. After surveys in Laojunshan, Nangunhe, Gaoligongshan and many other nature reserves in Yunnan, the author found out that relocation is a good way to address the reserve related problems. Relocating villages or villagers often leads social, economic and cultural changes, and improper handling of such changes can easily result in social problems. After relocation, the villagers have to adapt themselves to the new environment, which is quite hard for them and sometimes makes their life even harder; for the nature reserve, the area may have been expanded and the illegal harvesting of reserve resources by the relocated people may have been eliminated, but the expanded nature reserve is sure to have new boundaries and new villagers that are just reacting similarly to the reserve sources as the relocated people. Thus, the same problem still remains.
In the process of discussions and surveys, villagers and forest guards kept asking " why different policies and regulations are applied in the same nature reserve"? For example, Daweishan Nature Reserve is located in Pingbian and Hekou counties but the two counties differ greatly in managing tsaoko planting and hunting activities in the reserve. This has brought about great difficulties for the forest guards and reserve staff in the process of law enforcement and has aggravated the conflicts between reserve management departments and the communities. The author holds that in spite that a nature reserve may administratively cross several counties, prefectures, or provinces, the same management mode should be applied. In this sense, besides formulating and implementing unified management policies, management offices or stations in different administrative areas should strengthen their exchange and cooperation so as to minimize conflicts arising from within the management departments.
First of all, it should be noted that "buffer zone" here refers to certain area outside the boundary of a nature reserve. Without doubt, communities located at the adjacent areas are quite different from those living farther away from it in that their way of management, utilization and development of the forest and the related resources has a direct impact on the protected wildlife and plant species and their habitats. In this sense, reserve managing departments and local government should give special attention to the communities in the buffer zone and their way of land use and development. An issue to be addressed is the development of plantations by the communities adjacent to the Daweishan Nature Reserve. Since 1980s, driven by economic interest or the need for timber, communities in both counties around the nature reserve began to create with large scale Chinese fir tree plantations or cash crop plantations such as pineapples, bananas, and rubber trees by removing the original secondary shrubs. In terms of economic return, this management mode has greatly promoted the rural economy in the local area. But if such plantations are developed without a general planning giving considerations to biodiversity conservation, it will not only limit the extension and regeneration of the protected species outside the nature reserve, but also makes the reserve an isolated island amongst the plantations, causing new conflicts and problems. While giving considerations to the needs of the villagers for forest resources and economic development, detailed studies are needed to determine how to properly display the role of the "buffer zone".
Based on previous discussions, if the work scope of the reserve management department is to be expanded to cover the adjacent communities and their duties be extended to issues such as technical service, resources management, fuel-efficient stove construction, rural development and so on which used to be and should be the responsibilities of the functional departments of government, then what will these functional departments do? Thus, the functions and role of the reserve management departments need to be clearly defined so as not to overlap with those of the governments.
Based on the aforesaid arguments, the following immature recommendations are proposed for reference:
1) Lai Qingkui, Wang Liping. Problems to Participatory Management of Forest Resources Conflicts: Journal of Southwest Forestry College.1998，18(2)，91-96
2) Lai, Qingkui, Conflict Management and Community Forestry: A Case of the Nangun River Nature Reserve, Yunnan, China, the Proceedings of Conflict and Collaboration Workshops on Community Management of Forest Lands, East-West Center, Honolulu, Hawaii. 1997.
3) Lai Qingkui, Community-based Income generation and Bio-diversity Conservation: A New Challenge of Integration of Conflict Management into Forestry Policy. Proceedings of a Satellite Meeting to the XI World Forestry Congress, FAO, Rome, 1998.
4) Western D. and Wright R. M. Natural Connections: Perspectives in Community-based Conservation. Washington, D.C.: Island Press. 1994.
1 Center for Community Forestry Studies, Southwest Forestry College, Kunming 650224, China. [email protected]