Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition (FSN Forum)

HLPE - High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition

Contribution to: eConsultation on the Scope of the Study: Sustainable Forestry for Food Security and Nutrition

Note:

1. Submitted: on February 25, 2015, Tuesday to: High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE), Email: [email protected] & [email protected] & posted online on: http://www.fao.org/fsnforum/cfs-hlpe/Sustainable-Forestry-Scope
2. Contributor: Dr. Santosh Kumar Mishra (Ph. D.), Technical Assistant, Population Education Resource Centre (PERC), Department of Continuing and Adult Education and Extension Work, S. N. D. T. Women's University, Patkar Hall Building, First Floor, Room. No.: 03, 01, Nathibai Thackerey Road, Mumbai - 400020, Maharashtra, India. [Email: [email protected]   Institutional Web Link: http://sndt.ac.in/  Skype: mishra5959 Tel.: +91-022-22066892 (O) +91–022–28090363 (R) +09224380445 (M)]

Towards Strategies for Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) for Equitable Development

Abstract

Forests play a critical role in supporting the livelihoods of people worldwide, particularly in meeting the daily subsistence needs of the world’s poor. Sustainable forest management can contribute to economic development by providing income, employment, food security and shelter where it is most urgently needed. Finding ways to balance human needs with concerns over the long-term sustainability of forest resources is the very essence of sustainable forest management. This paper aims to give an insight into the strategies for “sustainable forest management” (SFM) which, in turn, will result in “equitable development”. It also discusses components of good governance needed for SFM. The paper concludes that “SFM will not resolve the violent conflicts that devastate forests”. However, in reducing the impact of war on forests, ensuring tenure security and promoting SFM and its capacity to contribute to sustained livelihoods, forests can make an important contribution to peace and stability. This will require development and strengthening of institutions for negotiation, conflict management and forest-related decision-making, and measures to address inequities that generally lie at the root of conflicts over resources, including forests.

1. Introduction:

The need for sustainable management of forests is well recognized. Since the Earth Summit of 1992, the need to manage forests sustainably has been well-recognized by the international community. The principal focus of the UN forest-related forums since then has been to implement the aims of the Summit through promoting Sustainable Forest Management (SFM). The most recent of such proposals was in 2006, when the UN Forum on Forests (UNFF) set four Global Objectives on Forests that are central to SFM. These include:

• addressing the loss of forest cover and forest degradation, forest-based economic, social and environmental benefits; and
• protecting forests, as well as mobilizing financial resources for the implementation of sustainable forest management.

But progress towards SFM on a global scale has been weak. For several reasons, past efforts to achieve sustainable forest management at the global level have not been very successful. Among them is the lack of broad recognition of the value of well managed forests for society in the long term. Another is the unique feature of forestry where the same unit of forest may represent a variety of sometimes conflicting values. In such a situation, pursuing one objective implies sacrificing another. However, choosing one objective over the other may lead to debate, particularly in regard to public forests, given the very different objectives of the various stakeholders. Other complicating factors are the uncertainty associated with interventions in complex forest ecosystems, and the long time dimension. Different forest management approaches not only result in different ecosystems, but also in different combinations of outputs of products and services, over time.

Many factors, along with a number of conceptual and practical problems, have made it difficult to agree upon what sustainability means, especially for the practitioner. These factors range from forest management issues related to determining the objectives of sustainable forest management to balancing and prioritizing which objectives should be pursued when there are many conflicting expectations among different stakeholders. In addition, risk and uncertainty associated with interventions in complex forest ecosystems and wide-ranging impacts of different timeframes and spatial boundaries, further complicate the issue.

Among current definitions, the Brundtland concept – meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs – has remained the most commonly recognized. Although the Brundtland definition does not offer any practical guidance on implementing sustainable forest management on the ground, many countries have incorporated elements of the concept in their forestry legislation.

Some organizations have substituted a more operational concept of “responsible forest management”. This concept includes managing forests based on a number of key principles such as compliance with laws, respecting tenure and user rights and Indigenous Peoples’ rights, taking into account environmental impact and protecting high-conservation value forests. Certificates issued, reflecting responsible management, have been used as proxies in the marketplace.

A sharper focus on implementing SFM is needed urgently. The already distressful situation with world forests is likely to worsen with the predicted rise in global population and the further forest destruction predicted over the next 50 years, unless effective action is taken, and without delay. It is necessary to overcome limitations and find a way forward to make progress in achieving the Global Objectives on Forests and, eventually, toward sustainable forest management.

2. Components of “Good Governance”:

Since the early 1990s, the notion of “good governance” has gained widespread currency as a yardstick against which institutional arrangements should be measured. In a broader sense, the aim of good governance is to create mutually supportive and cooperative relationships among government, civil society and the private sector. Essential dimensions of good governance and key measures include:

• Strengthening the local rule of law:

• Work towards establishing clearly specified and documented legal rights on land, management and use
• Pay attention to proper rights for the less-powerful affected on local levels, particularly women and the poor
• Promote regulatory reform towards fewer, clearer, simpler and more feasible rules wherever possible, recognizing limited capacities
• Clarify the legal status of community bodies in relation to forest use and establish clear mechanisms vis-à-vis the central government
• Establish and strengthen local enforcing mechanisms to secure ownership and tenure rights through empowering people and using modern technology

• Improving local accountability and transparency:

• Establish clear mechanisms for the provision of and access to information
• Establish mechanisms and procedures for reporting grievances and misbehavior
• Establish clear mechanisms for debate, decisions, judgment and sanctions
• Involve businesses, “civil society” organizations (NGOs) and disadvantaged groups

• Strengthening local participatory planning and decision-making:

• Help unorganized groups to assemble in associations, and give them a voice
• Promote platforms that encourage local coordination and conflict-management
• Encourage and assist in participatory land-use planning, policy-making and budgeting

• Improving local governance effectiveness and efficiency:

• Shift from “supervising subjects” to “supporting and activating citizens”
• Increase responsiveness through reorienting agencies towards tailored rural service providers
• Develop effective monitoring and evaluation systems at local and central levels

3. Improving Governance:

Changing governance arrangements typically is a slow and more or less deliberate and difficult process of changing existing rules. Whereby modifying informal rules is more difficult and takes more time than changing formal ones. Effective change requires political will and knowledge of local governance tradition. Common reform strategies in governance are:

• Maintain strategies, which involve improving control mechanisms.
• Modernize strategies, which involve improving management (managerial modernization) and/or to fostering participation by citizens and user groups (participatory modernization).
• Marketize strategies, which involve reforming the public sector through transplanting techniques common to the private sector.
• Minimize strategies involve privatizing public functions. Privatization, where it works, brings about new enterprises and new markets that are more efficient and better performing.

Governance reform strategies can use different means to improve current governance:

• Instrument approaches focus on improved steering in the short- to medium-term by changing legal arrangements (law, regulations, etc.), using economic instruments (economic incentives and disincentives) and informational means.
• Interactive approaches emphasize improvements in cooperation and interactions between individuals and organizations, with the aim to reach satisfying policies in consensus, in order to make programs and projects more effective.
• Institutional approaches focus on changing institutional and network structures and arrangements with a strategic view to institutionalize key interests and relationships, and thereby achieve more “stable governance” over the long-term.

4. Challenges and Issues for Future:

Effective governance of forest ownership and tenure arrangements is both critically important and an ongoing challenge. Governing both the rights and the responsibilities of an increasingly diverse group of public and private stakeholders requires that different stakeholders are aware of their respective rights and responsibilities. It requires effective arrangements to enforce regulations, monitor implementation and impose sanctions, while at the same time ensuring the provision of adequate means to defend the rights of individual parties. In cases of major transfers of ownership and tenure rights, e.g., in a land reform, a cost-efficient and fair process is needed for rights transfer, as well as capacity-building for administrators and the new rights holders to fulfill their new roles.

As governments commonly have the right to regulate forest management in all forests, governments need to find a balance between the responsibility to ensure overall sustainability and the rights of owners and tenure holders. The latter need the freedom to make management decisions that allow forestry to be an attractive land-use option. More consistent data and information on ownership and tenure is a critical step towards effective governance of forest ownership and tenure arrangements. Current data on forest ownership is limited, and more so when it comes to tenure arrangements. This lack of data is perhaps one of the most urgent challenges.

5. Changing Role of Governments in Local Development:

Successful development is intensely local, despite the fact that most policies, development actions and investments are planned, implemented and evaluated centrally. However, the challenges are many. Promoting local-level development means understanding and meeting the needs of hundreds of millions of small-scale producers, in addition to state forest administrations, large-scale concessionaires and forest industry. A high proportion of these small-scale producers has no formal titles or rights to the land and water resources on which their livelihoods and most of their production depend. Moreover, much of the production and market exchange are embedded in complex, risk-prone and diverse environments, often in the informal parts of the local economy.

Over the last decade, a number of key principles have emerged on the role of government in economic development. Its role in relation to the private sector is to develop the frameworks and “rules of the game” which permit space and opportunity for the private sector to operate:

• building essential capacity,
• delivering key public services, and
• promoting standards and competition.

Key principles guiding government’s role in private sector development include:

• Focus on core competencies: areas which only government can deliver, not the private sector
• Appropriate for capacity: priorities according to resources and hierarchy of importance
• Don’t crowd out markets: seek to develop rather than supplant private sector activity
• Improve equity and access: address market failures that limit access of the disadvantaged
• Influence values and culture: policies, education and other government ‘signals’ to encourage enterprise and competition.

6. Key Approaches for Rural Development: Livelihoods, Asset Building & Innovation:

Individuals and households on the poor end of the wealth spectrum have to cope with fluctuating incomes from different sources for survival. According to an often-cited study of the World Bank (2001), more than 1 billion people depend to varying degrees on forests for their livelihoods. Only over time can people adapt and accumulate assets. Rural development strategies need thus to be more holistic than just focusing on one sector, and they are to start from the perspective of households or people. This was the idea behind the development of ‘asset and capability’ focused concepts, in particular the sustainable livelihoods framework and the less well-known asset building framework. The innovation-centered approach, in turn, focuses on situations where livelihoods are secured and basic assets are given, but where competitiveness is an issue.

The three development approaches outline paradigm shifts that are wide-ranging if applied in a forest policy context. For instance, the sustainable livelihood approach re-focuses from forest resources to people’s needs across sectors. The asset-based approach focuses on people’s access to diverse assets, and the development of capabilities to use them. The innovation approach focuses on adaptive capacity and learning in order to exploit new opportunities for profit and to gain competitiveness.

7. Measures to Strengthen Enabling Environments for Local Forest-Based Development:

The many different development concepts have in common that respective governance arrangements and actions must deal with three similar issues. The following outlines the main strategies and measures to address these:

• Reducing uncertainty: security of rights, financial risk, information:

• Ensure security of rights by establishing formal ownership and tenure rights and legal status of community and micro-enterprises, by enforcing contracts and effective monitoring and control of forest management, forest products and trade.
• Reduce financial risks by promoting local initiative and investment, helping mitigate costs and risk and by supporting investment and risk-pooling.
• Reduce uncertainty through enabling easy access to information and knowledge, learning, e.g., through practitioner networks, and improving business development services.

• Increasing opportunities: assets-pooling, value chains, market access:

• Pooling local assets by promoting producer cooperatives and company – community partnerships.
• Promoting value chain cooperation and regional cluster-building.
• Promoting market access to local, regional and international markets:

1. Promoting physical market access: transport and market exchange infrastructure,
2. Promoting market-based resource allocation and pricing mechanisms, and
3. Facilitating international market access through quality certification and trade promotion.

• Support market-building by investing in, experimenting with, and helping to develop viable business models for new markets, including for non-wood goods, payment for environmental services (carbon, biodiversity, water), bio-energy and eco-tourism, as well as using certification as an instrument to gain access to higher-value markets.

• Reducing friction: adjusting regulation, coordination and conflict management:

• Reducing overregulation and addressing gaps.
• Supporting coordination and conflict management mechanisms.

8. Bottom Line: Support Markets, Recognize Diversity and Promote Empowerment of People:

There is a widely-shared agreement on the complementary role of markets and state institutions, and the need for policy to build proper institutions that support well-functioning markets. This includes the development of markets, their support through promoting competition, regulation and legitimization. It is also increasingly recognized that the form that such institutions can or even have to take are very different in different circumstances.

Another clear focus is the increasing emphasis on people and the need for learning and knowledge build-up. Facilitating better access to opportunities, or creating a situation that allows individuals, households and firms to create their own opportunities, is likely to be more cost-effective for improving livelihoods than focusing support on a particular sector or sub-sector or rural economic activity.

9. Summing Up:

In summary, many of the critical issues related to ownership and tenure highlight the need for developing better governance. This includes issues such as:

• Ensuring clarity and long-term security of ownership and tenure rights,
• Proper enforcement of rights and responsibilities, and cost-efficient arrangements for rights transfer,
• Capacity-building for administrators and rights holders, particularly new rights holders,
• Facilitating stakeholder participation, e.g., in developing management rules
• Promoting efficient markets and market access for small producers,
• Balancing the need for overall sustainability with the profit interests of owners and tenure holders, and
• Improved access to information on forest ownership and tenure.

Sustainable forest management will not resolve the violent conflicts that devastate forests. However, in reducing the impact of war on forests, ensuring tenure security and promoting SFM and its capacity to contribute to sustained livelihoods, forests can make an important contribution to peace and stability. This will require development and strengthening of institutions for negotiation, conflict management and forest-related decision-making, and measures to address inequities that generally lie at the root of conflicts over resources, including forests.

Academic Profile of Contributor (Dr. Santosh Kumar Mishra)

I am researcher & demographer employed (since August 1987) with the Population Education Resource Centre (PERC), Department of Continuing and Adult Education and Extension Work, S. N. D. T. Women's University, (SNDTWU, http://sndt.ac.in/) located at Mumbai in India. I underwent training in demography from the IIPS, Mumbai, India (http://www.iipsindia.org/) & acquired Ph. D. in 1999. Also, I completed Diploma in Adult and Continuing Education & HRD, and Certificate Course in Hospital & Health Care Management. My subject areas of interest / research include: population & development education, issues pertaining to population-development linkages, education for sustainable development, adult & continuing education/non-formal/extension education, etc. Responsibility at the PERC, SNDTWU is assistance in: (a) research studies, (b) training/ orientation for various levels of personnel, (c) curriculum development, (d) material production / publication, (e) monitoring/ evaluation, and (f) other extension program on population education & allied subjects. My work experience includes (a) helping PERC in research studies, material preparation, data collection, documentation & dissemination, preparing reports, organizing training/orientation programs/workshops, monitoring & evaluation of population education programs, and curriculum design; (b) publications (articles, technical papers, etc.); (c) contribution of papers in national and international seminars/ conferences; documentation and dissemination of population information; (d) review of papers for national and international journals (in the capacity of reviewer / editor); (e) review of conference sessions; (f) preparation of educational materials (print version) for other organizations, (g) assistance in preparing evaluation tool; (h) assistance in evaluation of Ph. D. theses, dissertations & projects reports; (i) editing and proofreading of book, book chapters, etc.; & (j) mentoring students in their studies & counseling students & parents in career planning matters during informal interactions – both at workplace and outside. I am Reviewer/Editorial Board Member for over 40 international journals. I have also reviewed papers for 7 international conference sessions, including EURAM 2014 Conference (4-7 June 2014, University of Valencia. I have authored (some co-authored) 5 research studies (published by SNDTWU); 32 papers for national conferences & 11 papers for international conferences; 5 handbooks/booklets (published by the SNDTWU); 5 books, & 11 book chapters. In addition, I have 32 articles published in national journals and 22 in international journals, besides 2 monographs.   I was awarded Government of India fellowship at the IIPS & travel scholarship for sharing my research views at international conferences and summits held in Pakistan, Tanzania, Sweden, USA, Tajikistan, Australia, & Philippines. I am Advisory Board Member of the American Academic & Scholarly Research Center and Reviewer-cum-International Advisory Board Member for the AASRC 2013 International Conference-Beirut, Lebanon. I can be reached at: Email: [email protected], Skype: mishra5959, & Tel.: +91-022-22066892 (O) +91-022-28090363 (R) +09224380445 (M).