0355-C1
A.E. Luloff, James C. Finley, Courtney Flint and Richard Stedman[1]
Forests are a dominant landscape feature and have played a role in meeting energy, housing, and other basic demands in nearly every culture. Despite the declining relative number of people who rely solely on forests for economic stability, dependency on forests for timber and non-timber products continues. Such dependence should empower those who live in forest-dependent communities to play a role in decision-making processes about forest uses. However, what should occur and what has occurred are two different things. Local communities have not always had a voice in local decisions; this has contributed to the emergence of community-based forestry efforts to focus attention on such lack of standing.
Community-based forestry is based on legitimizing local citizen involvement in the forest decision-making process. At its core, it challenges private-rights perspectives, traditional industrial-government interests, and environmental agendas. Citizens engaged in community-based forestry can and should meaningfully engage in dialogue with others, inside and outside the community, with legitimate claims and interests in decisions that affect shared resources.
In this paper we address current issues affecting community-based forestry in the United States of America, emphasizing the community concept. Further, we provide local examples to demonstrate the community-based forestry process. While community-based forestry is not offered or seen as a panacea for community or ecological change, we suggest that careful attention to the prospect of community-based forest interaction may yield important insights for both sustainable forests and sustainable communities.
In this paper, we identify mechanisms for incorporting community perspectives into community based forestry (CBF). Skepticism is evident in broad and contradictory claims made by advocates for and detractors from CBF. These differences are derived from different group’s perspectives on the association between community-based determination of forest resources and broad environmental, economic growth, and community-strengthening objectives. Critics have fixed on the fact that such an approach is both unproven and perhaps unworkable in the United States (US). Further, many fear community participation in public sector decision making as a threat to hard-fought gains made in protecting the nation’s natural resources from degradation.
Because forests cover nearly 25 percent of the earth’s habitable surface, they have played a central role in the development of numerous economies and cultures. However, their value and use has been contested, reconstituted, and revised in disputes that have increased in scale, scope, and vitriol over time (Williams, 1989). In the US, the impacts of these debates have been felt in rural communities, where social norms, cultural rituals, and economic livelihoods related to the forest are commonly found. Traditionally, these community-associated forests served as a source of shelter, warmth, food, and raw materials, produced mainly by local populations for their use (Western and Wright, 1994). Today, while these forests still provide such materials, the relationship between the local populations and the resources has changed. Decisions about access to and use of forest resources are often made by business managers, politicians, environmental groups, and other non-locals. Distant from the landscape, and driven by bottom-line economic agendas or the perceived need to protect the resources from further exploitation, the priorities of non-local decision makers bear little resemblance to those held by local people (Kusel, 1996).
Many people living in forest environments believe they should participate in decision-making regarding local forests. The tension between such beliefs and the decision-making authorities found elsewhere has led to conflict and contributed to an increasing "us-them" mentality among stakeholder groups. Our concern is with the roles of local citizens, especially their involvement in decision making and their interactions with the forest. This parallels the emergence of CBF, premised upon empowering local resident participation in decisions about how local forest resources, timber and non-timber, are managed, used, and preserved. This approach is founded on the belief that those who live with resources have significant knowledge that cannot be dismissed by corporate, environmental, or government actors. Such individuals often share a commitment to sustaining their local environmental resources, while maintaining economic opportunities. By acting in this manner, local people are often able to preserve more than their jobs; through such community action important cultural and social structures are maintained and enhanced (Stedman 1999).
The contemporary forest experience emphasizes the visual aspect, the scenic, the ecological, the photogenic. We are not to touch, much less pick up and carry away, any object we find of interest. We are tactfully told that we are not at home but in a museum .... The risk of vandalism and destruction helps justify this hands-off policy, though the influence of current environmental policy - the determination to preserve nature totally undisturbed by man - has had its effect .... humanity’s closest and most productive relationship with nature derives from personal, physical contact, and from a desire to appropriate whatever attracts us (Jackson 1994:101-102).
For many rural communities who have traditionally depended on forest resources for economic and cultural livelihoods, this emerging cosmology towards forest landscapes has been detrimental to social and economic well being (Kusel 1996). Perhaps in response, CBF has been seen as a way to change the balance of views among individuals, communities, and the forest landscape. As Daly and Muir (1998:33) commented: "CBF advocates are proving themselves to be inventive, tenacious, and totally determined to save and restore both their communities and the surrounding forests."
Little applied work has examined the dynamics of CBF in the US (Brendler and Carey, 1998). A framework for understanding the complex issues involved in its use is vital to assessing its utility for natural resource planning. The microscope under which such programs will be viewed by funding agencies, governments, and other organizations demands such work (Gray and Kusel, 1998).
Largely because CBF in the US is in its relative infancy, clues regarding its efficacy and successes may be obtained from the experiences of nations of the south. Pardo (1995:20) noted that "so successful has the concept of people managing their own forests become, that in a growing number of developing countries the program has evolved into full community-based resource management." He suggested a three-stage process: (1) local people become engaged in decision making on public lands (social forestry); (2) government relinquishes control of public forests, allowing local people to manage these lands to meet their basic needs; and (3) communities engage in value-added activities using their local resources. Through this process, localities are empowered to enhance quality of life for local citizens, including opportunities for jobs and improved environmental conditions.
Unfortunately, the CBF literature for the US is neither well developed nor clear as to how such programs might be manifested successfully across diverse ecosystems, land-use frameworks, and political landscapes. These problems are compounded by an inability to reach consensus on the implementation of environmental policies that reflect diverse values and perspectives on resource use. While case studies have helped to clarify the diversity of approaches and issues, a comprehensive analysis is lacking.
Drawing from the extant literature on CBF, a number of important, normative features of model programs have been identified. Brendler and Carey (1998:21) suggested that processes such as access, participatory management, and forest restoration were essential. Pardo (1995:23) stressed the presence of an identifiable community area, a strong commitment from central government, an accepted set of management objectives, and a means of monitoring management. While all of these elements clearly play a role in CBF, not all are easily achieved by communities. At a minimum, researchers and policy makers alike need to be aware of issues related to community and geographic scale. How is community identified or defined? What is the relevant geographic scale and scope of analysis for particular programs? These are difficult questions, and merit systematic study. It is also essential to remain cognizant of extreme politicization of our forested landscapes (Strum, 1994). Contemporary debates focus on the use of public lands (e.g., U.S. Forest Service policies) and on private rights movements. Future research must specify some of these issues more clearly in the context of the US through systematic evaluative study of CBF programs, including a focus on its impacts on communities, regions, and ecosystems. Central to this effort is the delineation of the context of CBF. This framework is laid out in the next section.
A community framework emphasizes community purposefully. Community is not found everywhere, all of the time, but emerges through the concerted actions of locals tied to places by shared values, concerns, interests, and actions. Only in such places can a commitment to CBF-or more importantly, community-based anything-occur. Kaufman (1959) and Wilkinson (1970, 1991) developed the interactional conception of community. This framework emphasizes a common space, shared way of life, and collective actions, whereby local citizens are able to overcome differences and special interests for the common good. In such places, community emerges when the conditions are right-and lasts as long as the people in an area continue to care about each other and the place, and express this caring in the actions they take to enhance general well-being (Luloff, 1998). The mobilization of locality-based, collective human resources is a significant but generally ignored feature of community. Indeed, it is the signal characteristic of place, as well as the vital ingredient in explaining what makes a place a community (Luloff, 1998; Luloff and Swanson, 1995).
There is an important temporal dimension to collective identity. A common identity presupposes connections to one’s forebears. Such connections are integral parts of life in resource-dependent areas. Bridger suggested (1996; Bridger and Maines, 1998) that people make these connections through narratives which give people unity through time. By telling the story of a people and a community, a "We" is created and maintained. Without this kind of symbolic connection between the present and past, collective action is difficult to sustain over time. Of course, the kind of social action suggested here is so vital to the community that it presupposes a sense of collective identity-and this identity is place-based. It depends in large part on a narrative that links people to place over time.
Our framework for the community in CBF emphasizes that community emerges from social interaction. Community, from this perspective, occurs in places and is place-oriented, but the place itself, strictly speaking, is not the community. Instead, community is the processes of place-oriented social interactions that express shared interests among residents of the local society, and are expressed in local narratives. The interactional approach in rural settings directs attention to forces that block or retard the emergence of the interactional community (Luloff and Swanson, 1995; Wilkinson, 1986, 1991). Without such interaction, the bottom-up processes essential to involving local people in decision making are stymied.
Unfortunately, a perople vs. place distinction has emerged in practice and theory. Development policies, for example, have focused either on the human capital needs of residents or on improving the local labor market. Rarely have people and place been considered together. As Agnew (1984) argued, a distinction between people and place can only be made if one adopts an economic ideology that commodifies each. By following such an ideology, it is arguable that both people and places are made worse off because we don’t see that they mutually constitute one another.
Much extant research and policy work related to community development has tended to focus on the more visible characteristics of place. Such an approach simply ignores the capacity of people to manage, utilize, and enhance those resources available to them. We call this ability to act "community agency" and define it as the capacity for collective action (Luloff, 1998; Luloff and Swanson, 1995). It is one of the most important dimensions of a community’s social infrastructure. The term community agency focuses attention on the coming together of people in a local society to address local needs. These folks may have intense conflicts or be of like mind, but the will to act collectively comes from their recognition of shared needs and concerns.
This is not to suggest or assume that these people share a full range of interests or even a common understanding of a problem. Nor should community agency necessarily conjure romantic notions of strong local solidarity. The collective capacity of volition and choice, however constrained by structural conditions, makes community agency a central element in local well-being, and in understanding what makes a place a community. That is, communities make choices and act on them. Knowing how these choices are made, how perceptions of local issues are constructed, and the ability of members of such communities to access and process information, are essential to the utilization of economic, social, and natural resource endowments.
Penn State University designed a CBF monitoring and assessment project for The Ford Foundation. Space limitations preclude a detailed description, but the project includes 12 case studies of community-based organizations involved in local natural resource management and economic development. These organizations represent a variety of geographic areas and include a wide range of ethnic and racial groups who have come together for a variety of purposes including advocacy, reforestation efforts, and enhancing business opportunities. Together, these represent a broad spectrum of on-the-ground CBF efforts in the US.
Penn State’s case study approach was systematically applied, but flexible enough to respond to each unique local context. Our work included regularly scheduled interviews with the project principals identified in the proposal to Ford, interviews with a cross-section of community leaders, review of relevant local and state documents, and analysis of project documents.
Monitoring and assessment activities focused on the community, the forested landscape, and economic conditions. It also focused on the processes used by the projects to launch their Ford-funded work. To establish a general context for each project, our basic protocol depended on key informant interviews with community stakeholders. This process was designed to gain understanding of community perceptions of CBF potential and perceived strengths and weaknesses for successful implementation of the Ford Initiative.
From a process perspective, attention was given to organizational and programmatic learning, facilitated among the 12 communities by Ford’s Managing Partners. This approach facilitated interaction among community participants, helped them share "discoveries" emerging from individual community programs, encouraged mid-course adjustments, and lead to strategies for learning, not just by the involved communities, but by the larger population of communities that will benefit from the process. This learning process is perhaps the most critical component of the entire Initiative, as learning is the key to enabling organizations to develop capacity for change.
Using perceptions distilled from site visits, case studies, analysis of primary and secondary data, and a review of all written reports and evaluations, the monitoring and assessment team attempted to discern shared and unique elements among the projects that would convey the applicability of CBF to a broader set of stakeholders. Central to this process is the role of community identity, particularly as evidenced by place-oriented social interactions as measures of community agency.
The use of community agency as the framework for analysis of the CBF Initiative dictated that the monitoring and assessment process engage a broad cross-section of stakeholders. The need to develop a clear description of the initial social and resource conditions and to establish an understanding of those opportunities as well as the constraints that may ultimately define IP success, allowing others to grow from this experiment in CBF, is critical to this endeavor.
Five themes emerged from a cross-site analysis:
(1) The extent or reach of CBF efforts depended upon the development scope of community;
(2) Different strategies of CBF illustrate its diverse options;
(3) Controversy, conflict, and power struggles inherent in communities transferred to CBF efforts;
(4) Quality of life was perceived as largely non-economic and strongly tied to local natural resources and sense of community; and
(5) The relative isolation or independence of a community could either be an asset or a liability for CBF.
Despite variations in scope, strategy, geographic location, and inner tensions, CBF efforts are seen more positively and as more likely to succeed in communities where people come together, from different and often competing perspectives, to address community problems. In such places, there is a common attachment to the ideals of stewardship and sustainability despite different agendas and strategies for CBF. Natural resources, especially forests, play important roles in these communities and regions. Their importance is not only for economic development, but also for quality of life and community identity. CBF efforts, which embrace the important connections among economic, social, and aesthetic values of natural resources, are more likely to be successful.
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| [1] Assistant Professor of
Rural Sociology, Pennsylvania State University, 111B Armsby, University
Park, PA 16802, USA. Email: [email protected] |