[Ej-planet] [wrmfriends] WRM Bulletin 81

[Teresa Perez]

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WORLD RAINFOREST MOVEMENT
MOVIMIENTO MUNDIAL POR LOS BOSQUES

International Secretariat
Maldonado 1858; Montevideo, Uruguay
E-Mail: wrm at wrm.org.uy
Web page: http://www.wrm.org.uy
Editor: Ricardo Carrere
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W R M   B U L L E T I N  81
April  2004 - English edition

This bulletin is also available in French, Portuguese and Spanish. Please
let us know if you wish to receive it in some of these languages.
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THE FOCUS OF THIS ISSUE: Community-Based Forest Management

The fact that forests continue to disappear does not mean that the direct
and underlying causes of deforestation are not well-known. They are. What
are much less well-known are the causes of forest conservation. However,
in the tropics it is quite clear that wherever there is a forest in good
condition, in most cases there is an indigenous or local community living
there. They need the forest and hold the knowledge to use it sustainably.
The obvious solution for the forest crisis is thus to empower local
communities and to create the necessary conditions for enabling them to
manage forests adequately. By sharing analyses and concrete experiences on
community-based forest management, we hope that this bulletin will be a
contribution to that aim.

* OUR VIEWPOINT

- The time of truth for the United Nations Forum on Forests

* COMMUNITY FORESTS: AN OVERVIEW

- Community-Based Forest Management: Beyond "Resources"
- Forests and communities: Idealization or solution?
- Two initiatives for Community-Based Forest Management
- Community forests' on-going battle with corporate forestry
- Community forests in international processes

* SHARING LOCAL EXPERIENCES

AFRICA

- Kenya: Using Participatory Forest Management Plans to further
Community-Based Forest Management
- Uganda: Collaborative and Community-Based Forest Management are not
synonymous

ASIA

- India: Oppose World Bank and Save Forests
- Indonesia: The Contribution of Communal Ecosystem Management Systems

LATIN AMERICA

- Chile: Private conservation and communities
- Colombia: An example of a community-managed forest

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* OUR VIEWPOINT
************************************************************

- The time of truth for the United Nations Forum on Forests

The Fourth Session of the United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF 4) will be
held from 3-14 May 2004 in Geneva. The session will consider
implementation of the proposals for action of the Intergovernmental Panel
on Forests (IPF) and Intergovernmental Forum on Forests (IFF) in five
areas: social and cultural aspects of forests; traditional forest-related
knowledge; scientific forest-related knowledge; monitoring, assessment and
reporting, concepts, terminology and definitions; and criteria and
indicators of sustainable forest management.

The first two items on the agenda are -or at least should be- at the core
of forest conservation: forest communities' livelihoods and culture are
dependent on forests and those communities hold the necessary knowledge to
use them sustainably. The question is: what have governments done to
implement those proposals for action aimed at strengthening communities'
rights over forest management? For instance, how have they moved forward
regarding the "recognition and respect for customary and traditional
rights of, inter alia, indigenous people and local communities" and in
providing them with "secure land tenure arrangements" as stated in IPF
proposal for action 17a?

Indigenous peoples organizations and members of the Global Caucus on
Community-Based Forest Management will be participating at UNFF4, trying
to convince government delegates about the need to move forward in
creating an enabling environment for sustainable forest management by
local and indigenous peoples' communities. Those organizations' arguments
were further strengthened by commitments made by governments at the 2002
World Summit on Sustainable Development to carry out "actions at all
levels" to "recognize and support indigenous and community-based forest
management systems to ensure their full and effective participation in
sustainable forest management." (article 45 h of the WSSD Report)

At the same time, another group of organizations will be presenting an
"open petition for the UNFF" to establish a "global ban on
genetically-modified trees". The petition states that "instead of
establishing plantations of genetically modified trees, we should strive
to restore the forest cover of our planet towards its former riches and
abundance. Diverse, healthy and vital forests can best safeguard the
ability of our living planet to adapt to the ongoing climate change. They
also form the best basis for a diverse, healthy and vital forest economy,
now and in the future." (http://elonmerkki.net/dyn/appeal).

The UNFF is defined as "an intergovernmental forum to develop coherent
policies to promote the management, conservation and sustainable
development of all types of forests." When it addresses the agenda item on
definitions, will it define monocultures of genetically-modified trees as
"forests" -as it has already done with other types of tree monocultures-
or will it have the vision -and the courage- to exclude them as such?

The time has come for the UNFF to define if its work is aimed at
conserving forests or at serving the interests of the powerful that
continue destroying forests and promoting tree plantations. If the former,
it should begin by acknowledging the rights and knowledge of forest and
forest-dependent peoples to manage their forests and by promoting the
implementation of an enabling environment for the spread of
community-based forest management. If this were to happen, the UNFF will
have played a central role in the conservation of the world's forests. If
it doesn't and if it chooses to ignore the call to ban
genetically-modified trees, it will have shown that it does not care about
forests or forest peoples. The obvious question would then be: what's the
use of having such a UN Forum on Forests?

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* COMMUNITY FORESTS: AN OVERVIEW
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- Community-Based Forest Management: Beyond "Resources"

What are we talking about when we speak of "community-based forest
management"? 

First, there is the term "management". According to the VOX dictionary, it
refers to the "art or practice of training horses" and also "to conduct,
control, take charge of." The "forest management" which arose in Europe in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was a corollary of the process of
fencing in communal forests and, later, the application of state control
over forests. Finally, the term became closely associated with the
production of timber for commercial purposes. 

Then there is the term "resources", which so often goes together with
"management". This too is a very culturally specific word. Most
communities who use and care for their local communal forests are not
"managing" them as "resources". Management implies control, unilateral
exploitation and separation between the subject and the object (the
"expert" and the forest to be "managed"). Knowledge becomes fragmented and
specialized and techniques to address forests are applied more and more
from outside. Integration among systems breaks down, and in the cracks,
local knowledge and its ways of relating with the world are buried.
Specialized techniques acquire the status of universal paradigms,
excluding other practices. What Vandana Shiva calls a "monoculture of the
mind" takes root, finding one expression in the separation of "scientific"
agriculture and "scientific" forestry, which, in many local knowledge
systems, are an ecological continuum.

"Natural resource management" should be recognized as a relatively
recent, largely Western construction. "Resources" implies that the
significance of whatever is to be exploited rests with an end "product".
It is a term belonging to industrial capitalism, going back to around
1800. Before then, no one spoke of "resources." Even now, in many parts of
the world, if not in most parts of the world, people do not look at trees,
land, seeds or water as resources. Communal goods are not resources. They
are used, they have a use value as food, housing, medicine, etc., but not
in the way in which a resource is used, as a raw material for an
industrial market. Furthermore, the term "natural" presupposes a specific
industrial form, historically determined, of separating people ("not
natural") from nature.

Talking about our surroundings in terms of "natural resources management"
encodes certain ways of valuing, preserving, and exploiting land, water
and living things. These values and categories are not universal, and
practical problems and conflicts result when this point is overlooked.
Local people often have different ways of categorizing, valuing, and
exploiting their natural surroundings. This means that the local
population and outsiders arriving with a technical or "scientific"
training to "manage natural resources" may not be "talking" about the same
thing - even though they may be using the same language.

The vision according to which all stands of trees are "timber resources",
for example, is one root of the confusion between industrial monoculture
tree plantations and forests that has constantly been denounced by WRM. 
 
The local significance of practices regarding what experts call "natural
resources" in a given community will only be fully revealed when they are
linked with other aspects forming part of the cognitive world of that
community, such as its ways of getting food and shelter, of preserving and
transmitting knowledge, of conceiving cycles, of relating to the
environment, and of conducting spiritual, family and community life.

Should we then try to adapt the definition of "community-based forest
management" to different livelihood practices? Or should we abandon the
term altogether as having a dangerous practical bias? What models can link
local practices, including local knowledge, to national and international
efforts to preserve biodiversity?

To attempt to integrate the concept of "community-based forest management"
with contrasting local practices would at least have the merit of forcing
"outside" organizations to make implicit definitions explicit,
transforming them into an object of debate. Otherwise, it could turn out
that communities who are the victims of ideological, economic and historic
exclusion - which are often made to appear, from an "expert" or
"specialist" standpoint, as "lacks" - would become subject to yet another
form of exclusion. People who work to identify, document and reconstruct
local ways of forest use must in any case learn to listen in ways that
have not yet been institutionalised -- that is, to break away from their
"monoculture of the mind" to detect not what is known, but what is not
perceived because of deafness. 

In the great diversity of traditional practices and, in spite of the
differences, it is possible to identify some characteristics that are
common to many societies in their use of biodiversity: 

* They tend to be based on principles of reciprocity and give and take;

* They tend to be holistic, not distinguishing what is material from what
is spiritual, perceiving the forest in its complex weave of interacting
ecological systems in which the community is yet another element, implying
that the forest's significance goes much beyond the confines of economy
and maximization of individual profit;

* They generally have a close link with cultural identity and local
self-determination. For some peoples, the characteristics of a landscape
contain meanings (expressed both textually and orally through folklore,
myths and songs) that are an integral part of the way in which they
reproduce their culture. Forcibly changing the landscape (by environmental
destruction or alteration), or forcibly separating people from their
environment, can have devastating effects.

The modern concept of "community-based forest management" includes the
idea of "participation". However, "participation" may not be the same as
consensus, democracy or self-determination. Attempts are sometimes made to
plug this gap through formalities aimed at "prior informed consent", but
control may still remain in the hands of external agents (who may be
"experts", NGOs, state officials or all of these working together), who
often become empowered by local knowledge but do not share their own local
knowledge with the community. It must be ensured that this relationship -
like relationships with ecosystems - is reciprocal. Genuine
"participation" would involve a "dialogue of knowledges." 

To quote Vandana Shiva once again, "Alternatives exist, but are excluded.
Their inclusion requires a context of diversity. Shifting to diversity as
a mode of thought, a context of action, allows multiple choices to
emerge."

One way of starting to back away from noxious paths is to become aware of,
and to shift, some of the terms we use. In place of terms such as "natural
resource management", it can be stimulating to experiment with terms such
as "community relationships with the forest" and similar terms that
reflect the community ecological practices that now, more than ever, must
be sustained and built on, not only for the welfare of forest communities,
but to safeguard what is left of the biodiversity on which we all depend.

Article based on information from: "Integrating Culture into Natural
Resource Management: A Thematic Essay," Kenneth D. Croes,
http://www.icimod.org/iym2002/culture/web/reference/integrating_culture/part1.htm;
"Monocultures of the Mind", Vandana Shiva; and comments and ideas by Larry
Lohmann, e-mail: larrylohmann at gn.apc.org.
************************************************************

- Forests and communities: Idealization or solution?

Why was it that millenary practices for forest use, now known as
"Community Forest Management" arose in traditional communities? Why have
these practices been so natural for them?

Perhaps we should start by talking about the ecosystem. Fritjof Capra, in
"Ecology, Community and Agriculture,"
http://www.ecoliteracy.org/pdf/ecology.pdf , defines it very clearly: "An
ecosystem . . . is not just a collection of species but a community, which
means that its members all depend on one another. They are all
interconnected in a vast network of relationships, the web of life."

The following concepts -summarized from Capra's work- allow for a better
understanding of the issue. 

For the community to perpetuate itself -says Capra- the relations it
maintains must be sustainable. Since its introduction in the early 1980s,
the concept of sustainability has often been distorted, co-opted, and even
trivialized by being used without the ecological context that gives it its
proper meaning. What is sustained in a sustainable community is not
economic growth, development, market share, or competitive advantage, but
the entire web of life on which our long-term survival depends. In other
words, a sustainable community is designed in such a way that its ways of
life, businesses, economy, physical structures, and technologies do not
interfere with nature's inherent potential to sustain life.

Furthermore, when we begin to understand the principles of ecology at a
deep level, we see that they can also be understood as principles of
community. Indeed, you could say that ecosystems are sustainable because
they are living communities. So, community, sustainability, and ecology
are inseparably connected.

This is taken up by western science in the new systemic theory, in the
recognition that there is a basic pattern of life that is common to all
living systems. That basic pattern is the network. There is a web of
relationships among all the components of a living organism, just as there
is a network of relationships among the plants, animals, and
microorganisms in an ecosystem, or among people in a human community.

Systems theory is not needed for this understanding. Throughout the ages
without developing a scientific framework in our sense of the term,
Indigenous cultures have had an ancestral systemic understanding of nature
and of their place in it - an understanding in terms of relationships,
connectedness, and context -what some have called 'systemic wisdom.' They
based their relationships on this knowledge, following a model of
cooperation, partnership and networking that made the beginning of life
possible three billion years ago.

The above concepts developed by Capra serve to establish a theoretical
framework for the concept of "Community forest management" and to
dissipate doubts that it originates from a romantic vision - that
presently would not be "politically correct."

The world has changed. Globalization has reached nearly all the corners of
the planet to convert nature into just another merchandise, forests have
been invaded, altered and deteriorated - if not destroyed - and
traditional cultures run the risk of being demolished. This cannot be
ignored.

Many of us watch this process with alarm and put our efforts into
identifying the causes of this state of things. Delving deeply into the
underlying causes enables us to reflect on the path we must take to find a
way out. We know that situations are diverse and all have their
complexities, but it is also true that along the path with its many
branches, a point is finally reached where a simple and dramatic option is
faced: this way or the other, yes or no. We say this to explain positions
that may sometimes seem Manichaean or simplistic.

Our point of reference is forest defence in the broad sense, with a
political and social vision, integrated to the peoples who have belonged
to the forests, who have depended on them. These peoples forged the
diversity of their cultures around the forests, they achieved their
livelihoods conserving them, and they hoisted up their identity and
dignity. Now, still in a common destiny with the forests, they are
persecuted, displaced, robbed.

It is now these communities that, in preparing strategies for forest
conservation or restoration, can contribute with their traditional
knowledge, their culture, their sustainable practices for the use of
nature. WRM does no more than follow them, support them, and amplify their
voices. We are not demanding that the communities continue living in the
same way as their ancestors did - it is possible that some now no longer
want to. There is no doubt that modern life has brought amenities to which
an equitable access would be valid. But although we are conscious that at
this point in many cases the proposals for community forest management
will only be partial solutions to totally deteriorated situations, this
does not prevent us from highlighting - and a theoretical framework is
useful for this purpose - what we consider to be the ultimate causes of
destruction, thus tracing a generic referent in the search for solutions.

It is not a question of goodies and baddies. Applying a systemic analysis
makes it possible to analyze the relationships established by the actors
in our planetary community. In this respect, at the root of the processes
of forest and culture destruction, time and time again we have identified
the artifices of globalization with all its ingredients: large-scale
production, uniformisation, loss of diversity, market monopolization,
capital accumulation, mega-projects, profit and commercialization invading
all spheres of life, together with all the impacts we endeavour to
denounce in our bulletins, publications and information material.

Likewise, the intention is not to dictate solutions (each case will search
for its own) but to identify what we consider to be the ingredients of
these solutions: the establishment of structural conditions to recreate
the values of cooperation and partnership that enable communities to
exist, redefining relationships between individuals in conformity with
those values (this is where equity, inclusion and participation come in)
and with the environment (which is equivalent to evicting commercialism
from nature with its corollary of exploitation and degradation on the one
hand, and to restoring cycles, exchanges, interrelationships and
diversity, on the other). 

This is what we are working on.
************************************************************

- Two initiatives for Community-Based Forest Management

In 2002, a number of organizations and individuals working together to
influence the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), created the
Global Caucus on Community-Based Forest Management, which was successful
in influencing government delegates to "recognize and support indigenous
and community based forest management systems to ensure their full and
effective participation in sustainable forest management." (article 45h of
the WSSD Report)

The overall goal of the Caucus is "to create political spaces to advance
community based forest management at the local, national and global
level", within a vision where "local communities and Indigenous Peoples
assert their rights and assume their responsibilities to manage and use
their forests. The stated mission of the Caucus is to advocate and promote
"the rights of local communities and Indigenous Peoples to manage their
forests and forest resources in ways that are socially just, ecologically
sound, and economically viable. (see full Caucus description at
http://www.forestsandcommunities.org)

In January 2004, a number of organizations concerned about forests and
forest peoples' rights held a strategy meeting at the World Social Forum
to discuss ways of moving forward on those issues. The result was the
Mumbai Forest Initiative, a statement of principles aimed at creating a
global movement based on a common approach to forest conservation and to
the respect of forest peoples' rights. That approach is detailed in a set
of 10 principles, the first of which states that "the people living in and
using forests for their survival needs are the true managers and governors
of these forests and enjoy inalienable rights over forests.", while the
second principle underscores that "the protection and conservation of
forests demand that these rights be ensured. (see Mumbai Forest Initiative
at http://www.wrm.org.uy/statements/Mumbai.html)

These two recent processes are a ray of hope in a world where mainstream
forestry continues empowering power and disempowering local communities.
Regardless of their different origin and possible differences, they
clearly share a common approach and aim at similar objectives. Welcome
both!
************************************************************

- Community forests' on-going battle with corporate forestry

A long way from the tropical rainforests of Amazonia, British Columbia
(BC), the western most province in Canada, has been characterized as
"Brazil of the North" for its rate of forest liquidation. The British
Columbian forests are dominated by large corporate tenures and large scale
extraction. But there is a glimmer of change as community forests emerge,
and with them, a new way of doing forestry and forest management. One of
these community forests belongs to Kaslo, a small town on the shores of
Kootenay Lake, in south-east British Columbia. 

In 1997, the Kaslo community was awarded a community forest, giving the
people of the community a greater say in managing the local forest. This
forestry operation started with a wide range of people, much wider than
the people traditionally involved in BC forests (BC forests are about as
male dominated as a bachelor party, with only the token female stripper).
One of those people is Susan Mulkey. 

Susan Mulkey came to the Kaslo community forest as facilitator with a
background in social work, with no direct experience in forest management.
As a board member for five years, Susan helped the community forest get
off the ground - and put her facilitation skills to work. The Kaslo
community forest operated using consensus for decision-making to negotiate
between the vastly different perspectives that make up small communities. 

The Kaslo Community Forest began to have some success: they were
profitable, improving participation and democratic involvement, managing
for a diversity of values including ecological, consumptive water use,
visuals and recreation, and primarily local people were employed in the
forest - directly benefiting the local community. The old boys club
dominating management decisions began to slowly include broader and more
inclusive perspectives. 

But this was not a smooth transition, as Susan explains it, "The dominant
groups in the community, the ones who have traditionally held control -
the mill owners, contractors - many were, and some still are very
threatened by our work. Here I am, a short, female social activist,
talking about doing things differently in forests, talking forest
management, talking consensus, talking diversification. The old guard is
terrified of all that stuff." Some people in the community, particularly
ones who have traditionally held all the power, strongly resisted these
changes, resenting the so-called "women's build relationships approach",
which was less valued, and often seen as soft, or unnecessary. 

The corporate, industrial forest forces are still very strong in Kaslo, as
in all of British Columbia. At the last Kaslo Community Forest election,
the 'old boys' managed to wiggle their way onto the board (the main
decision-making body), and now they are once again dominating the local
forest, bringing a totally different approach to forest management than
the past few years. 

So, what happens when industrial forestry takes over the community forest?
One thing is for certain, the Kaslo community forest is definitely at
threat of remaining a 'community' forest, as Susan Mulkey reports: "All
those things that make a community forest different than corporate forest
management are being eroded - the decision making system, stewardship
education, gentle forest management approaches, increased public
consultation and participation." But, Susan goes on, "This has been an
enormous learning experience. We have learned how important governance is,
and setting up governance regulations in a way that will not allow one
interest to dominate over all the others. We should have built in
mechanisms to avoid this sort of situation, while remaining attentive to
the need for a democratic process. For example, we should have entrenched
in our by-laws the governing principles and values such as consensus
decision making process, mechanisms to ensure diverse community
representation."

For some of us it is difficult to view community forests, or community
based forest management as a threat, when it seems to be the ideal way to
put democracy, social justice and ecology back into forestry. But to some
of the people and institutions who have profited and gained from old
corporate forestry, community forests and the new people they can bring to
the decision making table (particularly women) are threatening. The
challenges for changing forestry and forest management does not stop at
gaining community forestry tenures, or increasing participation in
management. Challenges are on-going - particularly to ensure that
community forests, or community based forest management do actually mean
something different in the relationships of people at the community level;
to ensure that they truly are contributing to a democratization of
forestry. 

By: Jessica Dempsey, e-mail: jdempsey at interchange.ubc.ca , based on an
interview with Susan Mulkey, a member of the Kaslo Community Forest, and
an executive member of the British Columbia Community Forest Association. 
************************************************************

- Community forests in international processes

For years governments have been discussing about forests and making
"legally-binding" and "non legally-binding" agreements with the stated aim
of protecting the world's forests. It is therefore a useful exercise to
look into those agreements in relation with community-based forest
management, to see what role -if any- governments have assigned to the
communities actually living in or depending on the forests.

The 1992 Earth Summit 

The forest crisis was one of the major issues at the root of the global
concerns that gave rise to the convening of the United Nations Conference
on Environment and Development (the Earth Summit), which was held in Rio
de Janeiro in 1992. However, what governments did commit themselves to do
on forests (Chapter 11 of Agenda 21) was totally insufficient and so was
what they actually did not agree to make commitments on (the Forest
Principles). One of the reasons for finding those two documents so poor is
precisely the fact that they practically ignore the rich experience in
forest management held by indigenous peoples and local communities.

Agenda 21, Chapter 11: Combating deforestation

Agenda 21
(http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/documents/agenda21/english/agenda21toc.htm)
was the plan of action agreed upon at the Earth Summit to deal with some
of the major environmental and social problems being faced by humanity. It
contains 40 chapters, among which number 11
(http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/documents/agenda21/english/agenda21chapter11.htm)
is specifically focused on the issue of deforestation. This chapter is
divided in 4 programme areas, the second of which deals with "Enhancing
the protection, sustainable management and conservation of all forests,
and the greening of degraded areas, through forest rehabilitation
afforestation, reforestation and other rehabilitative means".

One would assume that this is where communities would come into the
picture but, unfortunately, that assumption is wrong: communities are only
assigned -at best- a marginal supportive role or -at worse- are perceived
as part of the problem.  

The term "community forestry" is in fact only used once and only in the
context of "Carrying out revegetation in appropriate mountain areas,
highlands, bare lands, degraded farm lands, arid and semi-arid lands and
coastal areas ... "

As an example of marginal supportive role, the first point in the section
on "management-related activities" states that "Governments, with the
participation of the private sector, non-governmental organizations, local
community groups, indigenous people, women, local government units and the
public at large, should act to maintain and expand the existing vegetative
cover wherever ecologically, socially and economically feasible, through
technical cooperation and other forms of support." 

Another example: the need to undertake "supportive measures to ensure
sustainable utilization of biological resources and conservation of
biological diversity and the traditional forest habitats of indigenous
people, forest dwellers and local communities" is only addressed within
the framework of protected area systems. 

Shifting cultivation is highlighted as part of the problem when chapter 11
states the need of "Limiting and aiming to halt destructive shifting
cultivation" and of "including data on shifting cultivation and other
agents of forest destruction." The solution is simple: "to support ... in
particular women, youth, farmers and indigenous people/shifting
cultivators, through extension and provision of inputs and training."
However, that "solution" implies that shifting cultivation is not
perceived as a traditional and sustainable system used by communities
throughout the tropics and that they need to be "educated" to make them
abandon that system. 

Government delegates that negotiated this chapter, while unwilling to
empower local communities and indigenous peoples, did acknowledge that
they hold knowledge and one of the activities to be implemented is to
carry out "surveys and research on local/indigenous knowledge of trees and
forests and their uses to improve the planning and implementation of
sustainable forest management." The question then is: if they do hold
knowledge, why are they not empowered to manage their forests?

The Forest Principles

At the Earth Summit, governments did not manage to reach an agreement on a
Convention on Forests and they eventually made public a "Non-Legally
Binding Authoritative Statement of Principles for a Global Consensus on
the Management, Conservation and Sustainable Development of all Types of
Forests." (http://www.un.org/documents/ga/conf151/aconf15126-3annex3.htm)
The length of the title does not correspond to the depth of its substance.
As in Agenda 21, community forest management is not mentioned as the
solution to the problem of deforestation.

On the contrary, the solution lies on States, which "have the sovereign
and inalienable right to utilize, manage and develop their forests ...
including the conversion of such areas for other uses within the overall
socio-economic development plan and based on rational land-use policies." 
Which basically means that governments have the sovereign right to destroy
"their" forests -which in the tropics were owned by local communities
before the modern states even existed.

Forest people can of course -if the government so wishes- be allowed to
participate: "Governments should promote and provide opportunities for the
participation of interested parties, including local communities and
indigenous people, industries, labour, non-governmental organizations and
individuals, forest dwellers and women, in the development, implementation
and planning of national forest policies." However, the true managers of
the forest are not only put in the same basket as those who destroy it
(industry), but they can only "participate" in decisions to be taken by
government.

The Forest Principles do go a step further than Chapter 11 of Agenda 21 as
regards to forest communities by stating that "National forest policies
should recognize and duly support the identity, culture and the rights of
indigenous people, their communities and other communities and forest
dwellers. Appropriate conditions should be promoted for these groups to
enable them to have an economic stake in forest use, perform economic
activities, and achieve and maintain cultural identity and social
organization, as well as adequate levels of livelihood and well-being,
through, inter alia, those land tenure arrangements which serve as
incentives for the sustainable management of forests." 

Although not clearly evident, the above can be understood as meaning that
indigenous peoples and local communities should be assigned clear rights
over forests as a means of ensuring forest conservation. If this were so,
it would have meant a major step in the right direction. However, this
approach was not promoted in the international processes that took place
during the following ten years. 

The Forest Principles also go beyond Chapter 11 on indigenous peoples'
knowledge when they say that "Appropriate indigenous capacity and local
knowledge regarding the conservation and sustainable development of
forests should, through institutional and financial support and in
collaboration with the people in the local communities concerned, be
recognized, respected, recorded, developed and, as appropriate, introduced
in the implementation of programmes. Benefits arising from the utilization
of indigenous knowledge should therefore be equitably shared with such
people." Here again the question: if indigenous peoples' knowledge is so
important, why not put them in charge of managing their forests?

United Nations processes on forests

In 1995, the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development
established the Intergovernmental Panel on Forests (IPF), which in 1997
came up with a set of Proposals for Action regarding the conservation of
forests
(http://www.un.org/esa/forests/pdf/ipf-iff-proposalsforaction.pdf).
Subsequently, in 1997, ECOSOC established the Intergovernmental Forum on
Forests (IFF), which finalized its work in 2000, with an additional set of
proposals for action
(http://www.un.org/esa/forests/pdf/ipf-iff-proposalsforaction.pdf).
Although not legally-binding, these proposals were the result of long
negotiation processes that governments agreed to implement.

Neither the IPF nor the IFF put community forests at the core of the
solution to the forest crisis. Although they do include some aspects that
were totally absent in the Rio processes, they are clearly insufficient
for ensuring forest conservation through community involvement. In this
respect, it is interesting to note, that while the IPF contains a section
on "Proposals for action to enhance private-sector investment", it does
not include a section on enhancing community forest management.

The IPF proposals include some positive wording regarding the "recognition
and respect for customary and traditional rights of, inter alia,
indigenous people and local communities" and "secure land tenure
arrangements", which we strongly believe to be the starting point for
enhancing community forest management, but the IPF waters down its own
wording by adding "in accordance with their national sovereignty, specific
country conditions and national legislation." The translation of this UN
language is that those countries whose legislation do not recognize
customary rights can use this excuse for not respecting those rights and
that "national sovereignty" will be used to counter any international
pressures to do so.

Governments are of course "encouraged" to allow participation -"where
appropriate"- of "indigenous people, forest dwellers, forest owners and
local communities in meaningful decision-making regarding the management
of state forest lands in their proximity, within the context of national
laws and legislation", which is basically meaningless in the vast majority
of tropical countries, where the land where those communities have lived
since time immemorial is considered -by national laws and legislation- to
be state land. 

Much emphasis is put in article 40 on TFRK (Traditional Forest-Related
Knowledge), but not as a reason for handing over forest management to
those who actually possess that knowledge. On the contrary, TFRK is
perceived as something very useful that should be handed over to
government experts for the planning, development and implementation of
national forest policies and programmes. Of course, government delegates
visualize knowledge as money (intellectual property rights) and dedicate a
number of points to discuss how to share that money and with whom. 

Indigenous peoples, forest dwellers and local communities are given a
larger role in the most difficult -and economically less attractive-
areas, such as in countries with low forest cover "to promote the
regeneration and restoration of degraded forest areas", including them in
their protection and management.

The farthest the IPF is willing to go is to "invite" (the weakest possible
wording in UN language) governments "to consider supporting indigenous
people, local communities, other inhabitants of forests, small-scale
forest owners and forest-dependent communities by funding sustainable
forest management projects, capacity-building and information
dissemination, and by supporting direct participation of all interested
parties in forest policy discussions and planning."

The following forest forum (the IFF), did little to ensure the
implementation of the IPF proposals and added little in the new set of
proposals it put forward. 

As respects to the issue we are analyzing, one of the few points that
deserve highlighting is one that calls on governments to "Support
appropriate land tenure law and/or arrangements as a means to define
clearly land ownership, as well as the rights of indigenous and local
communities and forest owners, for the sustainable use of forest
resources, taking into account the sovereign right of each country and its
legal framework." But here again, it uses the weakest possible language
("support") and adds the usual wording on sovereignty and national law to
enable governments to disregard this proposal. 

The same type of weak wording is used in another apparently positive
proposal to "Support and promote community involvement in sustainable
forest management through technical guidance, economic incentives and,
where appropriate, legal frameworks". The last two words of this proposal
(legal framework) are watered down with the addition of "where
appropriate". Will it ever be appropriate?

World Summit on Sustainable Development 

The World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) was held in
Johannesburg, South Africa in August-September 2002. Ten years had passed
since the Earth Summit, forests had continued to disappear and what was
needed was a new approach to the issue. None of this happened at the
summit and the section on forests of the WWSD report
(http://ods-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N02/636/93/PDF/N0263693.pdf?OpenElement)
is probably the weakest of the four analysed here. 

There is however an exception in article 45 (h), where governments commit
themselves to carry out "actions at all levels" to "Recognize and support
indigenous and community-based forest management systems to ensure their
full and effective participation in sustainable forest management." 

This is the first and only such clear statement from governments on this
issue.

That would appear to be a major step forward and should be the starting
point for government action in forest conservation. However, the fact that
it is included as paragraph "h" (and not "a"), is already showing that the
issue is not at the top of the agenda. Nevertheless, it is important for
forest campaigners to bear this article in mind when dealing with
international processes and actors related to forests to ensure that it is
taken on board.

Conclusions

The obvious conclusion resulting from the detailed analysis of the main
international agreements and processes on forests is that community-based
forest management is basically absent in the governmental approach to
forest conservation. Even the positive article highlighted above that came
out from the WSSD (45 h) was not the result of an internal change in
approach by governments but the outcome of lobbying by the Global Caucus
on Community-Based Forest Management, that managed to introduce that
article in the process' last PrepCom in Bali.

However, it is very clear that in most cases it is communities that
protect the forests, usually struggling against government decisions that
open up forests to unsustainable exploitation. 

It is difficult to believe that so many government delegates -and their
advisors- who have been discussing the problem for so many years, can
still be so ignorant on the causes of deforestation and on the actors that
either protect or destroy the forests. It is much easier to believe that
they have opted to ignore reality and to play the game expected from them:
to favour national elites and corporations. 

This would explain why processes supposed to be dealing with forests have
put so much emphasis in the promotion of monoculture tree plantations
disguised as "planted forests" (which are big business for corporations)
and so little emphasis in addressing the direct and underlying causes of
deforestation (whose ultimate beneficiaries are also corporations). It
would also explain why they insist in empowering governments (that have
proven to have completely failed in forest conservation ) instead of
empowering those local communities that are both able and willing to
protect the forests. 

One overall conclusion therefore seems to be that that little can be
expected from government-led international processes unless a strong
community forest movement at the grassroot level is able to put sufficient
pressure on national governments to completely change course and devolve
ownership and management of forests to communities -where it should have
always stayed.

************************************************************
* SHARING LOCAL EXPERIENCES
************************************************************

AFRICA

- Kenya: Using Participatory Forest Management Plans to further
Community-Based Forest Management 

Among practices that are emerging in the conservation of Kenya's forests
is the participation of communities in forest management. Although the
communities are at the moment being involved at a minimal level, many
communities living next to forests now want to make decisions and benefit
from sustainable use and management of forests. 

This desire for participation has been fueled by provisions of the soon to
be enacted Forest Bill that will replace the current Forest Act, as well
as the work of non-governmental organizations such as the Kenya Forests
Working Group (KFWG). 

Kenya's forests fall under different management and have different legal
status. However, the majority of the closed canopy forests are gazetted
forest reserves under the Forest Act managed by the government's Forest
Department, to the exclusion of other stakeholders including local
communities. 

Exclusion from forest affairs has resulted in communities' perception of
forests as belonging to the government. This has led to increased illegal
activities in forests, as communities look the other way. At the same time
the Forest Department is limited in resources to manage forests on its
own.

The challenge of rapidly declining forests has thus necessitated
rethinking of the best approaches to forest management. This has led to
the thinking that forest adjacent communities and other stakeholders
should be involved in forest management and conservation. This is what the
new Forest Bill now supports. 

The Bill however still considers the Forest Department or Service as the
forest authority and requires that a stakeholder wishing to participate in
forest management should have a management plan to accompany an
application to the Chief Conservator of Forests (CCF). The Bill has gone
through all stages of development and is awaiting publication for
enactment in Parliament. 

In anticipation of the enactment of the Bill, KFWG has been working with
forest communities in five forest areas to prepare participatory forest
management plans to guide future conservation efforts in these forests.
Forest adjacent communities in Eburru, Kereita, Rumuruti, Ngangao and
Kitobo have benefited from this assistance. Ford Foundation has supported
the work.

The management plans seek to involve the communities and other
stakeholders in forest management and to facilitate the improvement of
community livelihoods through improved forest management and building of
social capital. The plans are jointly prepared with the communities
involved, putting the local needs in the forefront and making use of local
resources. The vision and objectives of forest management are set by
involving the community and the process requires that there is consensus
on the proposed activities. 

The plans are now at an advanced stage. As the Forest Department is in the
process of developing guidelines for participatory and collaborative
forest management, agreements have been drawn in line with these
guidelines - to be effective once the Bill is passed- to enable these
communities to participate in forest management. 

One outcome of this process has been the formation of cohesive local
communities institutions that did not previously exist to manage forests.
There is also a marked reduction in illegal activities in the forests with
communities willing to participate more in their protection. Although the
delay in enacting the Bill has sometimes discouraged the communities
involved in planning, as a whole the process has led to both forest
authorities and communities considering community-based forest management
as an alternative to the single authority management of earlier days.

It is hoped that the plans will assist to manage, conserve and utilize the
five forests in a sustainable manner, while furthering the concept of
community-based forest management. Small steps perhaps compared to the
strides made by neighbouring countries such as Tanzania, but steps
nevertheless. 

By: Liz Mwambui, Kenya Forests Working Group, e-mail: liz at kenyaforests.org
, http://www.kenyaforests.org
************************************************************

- Uganda: Collaborative and Community-Based Forest Management are not
synonymous

Forests and woodlands cover about 24% (or 5 million hectares) of the total
land area of Uganda, of which 80% is woodland, 19% moist high forest and
1% commercial plantations. Approximately 30% of such forests and woodlands
are gazetted mainly as protection forests directly under various forms of
government jurisdiction. The 70% outside the gazetted forest domain exist
under various forms of private and customary control.

Forests and woodlands are land-based resources and thus land tenure has
important implications on access to land and its resources. Although no
formal (written) policies were in place during the pre-colonial era,
localized tribal kingdoms reputedly ensured environmental regulation
through a system of customary controls that were informed by local
indigenous knowledge systems. Without necessarily romanticizing,
human-environment relationships in typical Ugandan pre-colonial societies
evidence largely appears to suggest the context of people living in some
form of "harmony with nature".

The incipient phase of the colonial period saw a marked influx of foreign
forces including explorers and missionaries, and later fortune seekers and
business interests, and it culminated in colonial conquest and the advent
of capital led development policies. In the forest sector, new
entrepreneurs sought to expand their fortunes through the commercial
extraction of timber, wild rubber and coffee, which in the absence of some
form of regulation, resulted in rapacious destruction of forests. The
introduction of cash crops and taxation further aggravated forest
destruction through clearance for cultivation and other cash generating
activities. Protected forests were invariably created through the eviction
of some peasant communities from their ancestral homelands. 

Forest policy during the early post-colonial period (1962-1980s) was "more
of the same". Later, in 1988, a policy review apparently instituted at the
behest of external donors, emphasized on new initiatives to halt
deforestation, the need for forest sector rehabilitation, the creation of
awareness on environmental issues and a multiple stakeholder approach,
which is thought to have spawned the emergence and mushrooming of local
environmental NGOs. 

Uganda collaborative forest management policy reflects a conceptual bias
that appears to equate community forest management with collaborative
forest management, a spatial bias that appears to focus on the forest
margin zone, and a project bias. Because of their project proclivity and
related requirements, including the need to demonstrate tangible impact
within restricted timeframes, collaborative forest management initiatives
lose a considerable measure of the flexibility of social-learning
experiments that they are supposed to be.

The collaborative forest management policy was further enhanced by an
emphasis on decentralized governance, whose initial phases appear to have
been dominated by the political and fiscal aspects of the policy, with
environmental aspects apparently occupying backstage. On the ground,
collaborative forest management in state forests under the Forest
Department is being pioneered at 7 sites, with all of them using
project-based approaches relying on donor funding. 

There are two types of forest reserves when discussing management powers
decentralized under collaborative forest management arrangements. There
are those forest park reserves such as Mt Elgon Forest Park, which have
been closed to commercial exploitation. Here communities can access some
subsistence resources, whose extraction is deemed environmentally benign,
through collaborative community management schemes. Here power over the
forests is either under Uganda Wildlife Authority or Uganda Forest
Department. Collaborative management schemes are kinds of agreement in
which ultimate directive power rests with the state wildlife and forest
bureaucracies. 

The second type of forest reserves are those from which commercial
harvesting of resources can be undertaken. Power over the management of
these forests is supposed to be distributed between the central government
and the local governments. The latter is supposed to be responsible for
forest reserves less than 100 hectares in size while the state deals with
those of bigger sizes. Even in this arrangement no effective decision
making powers have been devolved to the local governments. Power over what
can be exploited, who can exploit and when, is in the hands of the central
government forestry officials. 

Decentralisation under collaborative forest management arrangements,
therefore, largely does not go beyond allowing communities' access to a
circumscribed range of resources. In spite of the rhetoric of community
empowerment, the gulf between the interests of the so-called local
communities and other stakeholders is more often than not quite
conveniently understated. For instance, the European Economic Community
made the eviction of peasant communities that had encroached onto
protected areas a condition for the disbursement of funding support for
collaborative resource management activities.

In Mbale National Park collaborative forest management involved
restoration and conservation of the forest through tree planting in an
initiative supported by the Uganda Wildlife Society - Forests Absorbing
Carbon Emissions (FACE), funded by a Dutch electricity generating
consortium. An audit of how much carbon dioxide had been sequestered was
then done in response to which the sequel Greenhouse Gas Verification
Project was commissioned. In commenting on how such ideas were so out of
sync with the realities of their everyday social life, Kanyesigye and
Muramira (2001:35) quote a 75-year old villager arguing "...we grew up and
found our parents and grandparents depending on the forest. The forest is
our father, our mother...How can some stranger come and pose as one who
knows more about what has long been our own".

The impact of collaborative forest management initiatives on poverty has
been weak. It is generally the relatively richer farmers that have been
able to invest land, labour and cash who have been able to benefit from
these initiatives, which it seems have not reached the poorest of the
poor.

The above excerpts from Mandondo's research clearly show that, although
collaborative forest management may in some cases improve local peoples'
livelihoods, it has very little in common with community-based forest
management, where people are empowered to make decisions on the management
of their forests.

Excerpted and adapted from: "Learning from international community
forestry networks - a Synthesis of Uganda Country Experiences", by Alois
Mandondo, 20 August 2002, a draft study carried out as part of the CIFOR
project "Learning from International Community Forestry Networks", e-mail:
mandondo at africaonline.co.zw
************************************************************

ASIA

- India: Oppose World Bank and Save Forests

At the end of a National Conference on Community Ownership of Forests
(April 2-4, 2004), organised by Jharkhand Save the Forest Movement,
National Forum of Forest People and Forest Workers, and Delhi Forum, held
in Chalkhad, a forest village in the Indigenous Peoples majority State of
Jharkhand in eastern India, around two hundred indigenous Munda (a central
Indian indigenous ethnic group) representatives resolved in unison to
"Oppose World Bank: And Save Forests". Chalkhad is the ancestral village
of the legendary Munda rebel leader Birsa Munda who led a struggle against
the British colonial government in 1899-1900 popularly known as the Ulugan
(great tumult) of Birsa Munda against erosion of khuntkatti (community
ownership rights to forests) in Jharkhand. Birsa Munda was arrested and
died in Ranchi prison.

When the British foresters came to this tribal area more than 600 Munda
villages were already enjoying khuntkatti rights and had the control over
management of the forests. The communities had formulated strict rules and
regulations about how to manage and use the forests. Livelihoods depended
only on that amount of produce including timber regularly harvested from
forests that would be replenished every year. The guiding principle
appears to have been what we now call sustainability. It was not a mere
coincidence, therefore, that the British found vast areas of forest in
prime condition. 

The basic colonial approach was to declare forests state property and
curtail forest people's rights to areas with commercially valuable
species. Clear-felling of vast areas of forest was the method of forest
operations, followed by complete closure to grazing and other human
activities such as collection of firewood, fodder, medicinal plants,
bamboo, etc. A Forest Department was created in 1868 to oversee these
operations. 

Colonial rule and its accompanying commercialization affected tribal
societies in a variety of ways. It strengthened penetration of tribal
areas by outsiders from the plains (moneylenders, traders, land grabbers,
labour contractors, etc.). It enforced alien concepts of private property.
It forced sale of land out of sheer desperation of those in the vicious
grip of debt. It ruthlessly exploited indigenous people as cheap
indentured labour. It led to alienation that was not just economic or
material, but cultural, spiritual and identity-related as well. Ulugan of
Birsa Munda was the culmination of a series of revolts in response which
forced the British to think back and devise some safeguards and protection
for the indigenous people and forest communities resulting in the
enactment of the Chotanagpur Tenancy Act in 1908.

Chotanagpur Tenancy Act (CNT) prohibits transfer of land to non-tribals
and ensures community ownership and management rights of forest
communities over khuntkatti areas. In essence, the private forests under
the zamindars (landlords) were reverted back to the Munda community. But,
immediately after the independence, by dint of the Bihar Forest Act, 1948
(this area of Jharkhand was within the State of Bihar till September
2000), the khuntkatti land was converted into private protected forests
thereby depriving the Mundas of their ownership of and management to the
forests. The entire land belonging to 600 villages was vested to the State
Forest Department (FD). Although the subsequent Munda resistance forced
the State Government to give the community back its land, management still
rested with the FD. 

The next forty years was a story of loot and plunder of the forests in
Jharkhand with active connivance of the FD officials and gradual
alienation of the indigenous people from their forests. The primary forest
cover was almost destroyed.

In the later part of the twentieth century, since the mid-eighties, when
the movement for a separate Jharkhand State gained momentum, the question
of social, economic and cultural rights along with political autonomy was
also raised by the indigenous people. The forest dependent indigenous
community started asserting their rights over the forests. On many
occasions the FD officials were not allowed to enter the forests and the
villagers themselves initiated measures to save and regenerate forests.
This movement was particularly strong in the khunkatti villages of Ranchi
and West Singhbhum districts. The initiative also spread to other areas of
Hazaribagh and Santhal Parganas inhabited by Santhal, Oraon and Ho tribes
with no such khuntkatti rights.

With the new Jharkhand Government not fulfilling the forest communities
rights over forests, the movement took the formal shape of Jharkhand
Jangal Bachao Andolan (Jharkhand Save the Forest Movement). With its
objective of restoring community ownership and management of forests, the
movement is spreading like wildfire in the State. Forest communities in
non-khuntkatti areas are also demanding implementation of the same
khuntkatti model in their areas and are resisting encroachment of the FD.
Simultaneously, forest protection committees have been established in
villages which meet once a week and implement the ground rules established
regarding usage of forest produce by the community including timber for
fuelwood.

The deliberations in the three-day National Conference in Chalkad,
attended by more than 300 representatives of indigenous forest communities
from several Indian States, reflected the threat posed by the forthcoming
World Bank forestry project, particularly in the context of the khuntkatti
system in Jharkhand. The World Bank project to be implemented in Jharkhand
during the next 16 to 18 months, talks of participation of forests
communities in conservation of the forests and in the same vein proposes
alternative livelihood for these communities to alienate these communities
from the forests to save and conserve them. In other words, the World Bank
programme, rather than empowering the forest communities with ownership
and management rights, aims to deprive them and economically, socially and
culturally alienate from the forests. 

Therefore, the forest communities in Jharkhand today, have decided to
oppose and resist World Bank demanding:

a) restoration of the khuntkatti system;
b) implementing the khuntkatti model in other forest areas of the State;
and
c) vesting the management of the forests to the gram sabha (lowest tier of
the village self-governance model) in the indigenous Fifth Schedule Areas
as per the Central Act of 1996 (extension of panchayati raj in scheduled
areas). 

By: Souparna Lahiri, Delhi Forum, e-mail: delforum at vsnl.net
************************************************************

- Indonesia: The Contribution of Communal Ecosystem Management Systems

Indigenous communities have been practicing sustainable community-based
ecosystem management for centuries. These systems incorporate local
knowledge and beliefs that are based on the wisdom and experience of past
generations. They also contribute to the economic well being of local
communities, as well as to the well being of the Indonesian nation. 

By growing paddy rice on their farms, sago palm in the "dusun sagu" (areas
within the villages in the coastal areas in West Papua and all over
Molluccas designated by the communities for sago trees to grow), as well
as an array of other edible crops such as sweet potatoes, indigenous
people are contributing to national efforts to achieve food security and
self-sufficiency. Without support from any government sponsored
agricultural extension services, they have been cultivating rattan,
rubber, and tengkawang, raising honeybees, and collecting swallow nests. 

Most indigenous communities have also been managing the resources
communally, a fact that does not imply the absence of individual customary
rights. These communities rely on indigenous systems of natural resource
management, which include adat or customary laws for allocating,
regulating, and enforcing property rights.

Indigenous ecosystem management systems are based on community knowledge
about appropriate and productive land and natural resource use. Most
indigenous communities have developed specific terms for different uses of
land and other natural resources, including terms for different types of
vegetation and tenurial arrangements. For example, in central Sulawesi an
indigenous community called the Kaili have developed zoning and land use
systems within their adat system. There are designated areas known as tana
polidaa for rice fields and tana pobondea for orchards. Tana popamba
refers to home gardens and herbs, popa tana to burial places, suakan
ntotua to forests, pancoakan rodea to extractive forests, viyata nubulu to
sacred areas, suaka viyata to sacred forests, etc.

Indigenous ecosystem management systems vary, and each community is
different. Although well known within a community, there has been little
written documentation about indigenous natural resource systems, as well
as traditional land tenure rights and practices. A collaborative customary
land tenure study coordinated by the Agrarian Reform Consortium was
conducted in 1997 with some indigenous communities in Bali, Lombok, West
Papua, Central Sulawesi, East Kalimantan and North Sumatra. One of its
major conclusions is the need to recognize and respect the pluralistic
nature of Indonesia's indigenous natural resource systems and tenures.
This will require Indonesia to develop pluralistic agrarian and forestry
legal systems, instead of uniform ones.

The problems, rights and potentials of Indonesia's indigenous people,
however, have yet to be officially acknowledged or addressed by the
government.

At the same time, Indonesia's indigenous and other local people continue
to play an important role in the conservation and sustainable management
of the nation's forests. As Indonesia has reeled under a deepening
economic and political crisis, including spreading food scarcity, many
indigenous peoples and communities have been faring relatively better than
other rural Indonesians. The Baduy community in West Java, for example,
managed to have ample food stocks and reserves. Their rice barns were
full. That this oasis of food abundance have existed amidst spreading food
scarcity is largely due to the Baduy's local knowledge and ecosystem
management. They have been consistent in following the philosophy of their
ancestors such as "lojor teu meunang dipotong, pondok teu meunang
disambung." This can be translated as meaning: "things which are too long
should not be cut off, and things which are too short should not be added
to".

Excerpted and adapted from: "Advocating for Community-Based Forest
Management in Indonesia's Outer Islands: Political and Legal Constraints
and Opportunities", Sandra Moniaga, Lembaga Studi dan Advokasi Masyarakat,
The Institute for Policy Research and Advocacy,
http://www.iges.or.jp/en/fc/phase1/1ws-13-sandra.pdf 
************************************************************

LATIN AMERICA

- Chile: Private conservation and communities

Over the past few years, private conservation has covered close to a
million hectares in the South of Chile, surpassing the forest areas under
regulated community land tenure, and making it comparable to the previous
expansion of pine and eucalyptus plantation companies, today exceeding 2
million hectares. 

Unexpectedly, as an explosive phenomenon led by corporate executives and
organizations mainly originating from the United States, Chilean society
has witnessed the appearance of a private land conservation movement that
has spread to large national companies and other groups of Chilean
society. 

In the surroundings of this land recently acquired for conservation, the
communities observe their new neighbours without knowing what to expect.
Previous waves of change in land tenure have made them understandably
mistrustful.

The challenges for the forest newcomers include overcoming the category of
enclaves or conservation strongholds that protected forest areas
established by the Chilean State are considered to be. It has taken the
National Forestry Corporation a long time to change its image vis-à-vis
the neighbouring communities, but it has eventually come to recognize that
national parks are not viable if they have neighbouring communities as
their enemies, or if they exclude them from conservation plans.

Beyond national parks, from the standpoint of conservation at a landscape
scale promoted by international organizations, a set of protected areas,
like islands in the sea shared with tree plantations and communities with
degraded forests, is not a viable proposal.

According to a report commissioned by WWF on community forest management,
conservation without people has shown itself to be unsustainable. This is
the situation in wide zones of inhabited forests in the South of Chile and
is in no way any exception in the Latin American context. The slogan at
the recent World Parks Congress held in South Africa was that benefits
must go beyond the limits of protected areas. The active involvement of
local and indigenous communities in planning, implementing and managing
protected areas must be ensured and the benefits generated by these areas
must be shared.

Now, this seems clear, but how is it implemented? What mechanisms should
be put in place to make conservation effectively benefit communities that
depend on forests? And what incentives are effective to encourage
communities to join conservation efforts? 

Probably single and simplistic formulas are not the solution; usually a
problem as complex as this has many solutions. The way to find them starts
by informing and strengthening the communities and their organizations,
generating conditions for the establishment of real negotiation, both at
local level and at national level, involving community representatives,
private conservation promoters and the governments.

Support to communities in these negotiation processes cannot be given from
the perspective of the myth of the "good savage" defending the intrinsic
conservationist role of forest inhabitants, but rather from the
perspective of backing organizations defending the rights of indigenous
peoples and local communities and their essential role in the
implementation of conservation strategies. 

A point that requires special attention in this process is that of the
different perceptions of conservation, from the standpoint of the
communities and from the standpoint of private conservationists. It is
probable that for the inhabitants of forests and forest zones,
conservation would appear to be difficult to detach from sustainable use,
materialized in community forest management. 

Where should private conservation meet community forest management? In
conservation landscapes in which community rights are respected and where
these communities share forest-generated benefits.

By: Rodrigo Catalán, e.mail: catalan at terra.cl
************************************************************

- Colombia: An example of a community-managed forest

The Uitoto peoples in the Araracuara region, in the mid course of the
Caqueta River show some common socio-cultural characteristics, among which
a production system based on the sustainable use of three spaces: the
forest, the river and the "chagra" (a clearing in the forest used for
poli-culture plantation).

This system is established on the basis of an organization of knowledge
handed down from generation to generation, over thousands of years, on the
structure of the forest, alternating with the use of different landscape
units, the sowing of a large diversity of species and the indigenous
people's own land-use techniques.

The establishment of the "chagra" culminates after a five-stage process,
demonstrating all the knowledge of the indigenous farmers regarding the
forest around them. These stages in order are as follows:

1. Election of the soil according to what will be sown
2. Elimination of lianas, small plants, etc.
3. Felling of large trees
4. Burning of the remains of vegetation
5. Sowing of the various traditional species

The forest production and use system is composed of areas with transitory
crops, usually for periods of less than 2 or 3 years, known as "chagras,"
and areas of stubble in a stage of regeneration. 

The community has a production for subsistence and self-consumption,
mainly based on traditional crops, hunting, fishing and gathering fruit
from the forest. The system is characterised by the presence of a great
diversity of species and varieties that they establish in the ecosystem in
a staggered way. The result is permanent availability of food and material
for other uses.

Iris Andoque describes the process: "One plants cassava over all the
'chagra' (sweet cassava, wild cassava and manicuera); manicuera (this is a
type of cassava used to prepare a slightly sweet beverage of the same
name) in the lower part, the sweet cassava in the middle because of the
animals, and the one to grate on the river banks to be picked quickly.
Then we have vegetables: sweet potatoes, beans, old cocoyams (taro), new
cocoyams (yautia) and dale dale. These are planted where the land was most
burnt and there are ashes. Coca has to be planted in furrows in the high
part and transplanted after 3 years. Pineapple is also planted apart. One
always organizes work; you have to start at the bottom and work up, never
from the hill towards here, at the bottom there is canangucho (a type of
palm, Mauritia flexuosa) that does not dry up the sources of water, then
tobacco in the damp part and also manicuera, in the middle, grapes,
guacure and other fruit trees, up on the banks there is no problem, on the
hill go and plant chontaduro (a palm with edible fruit)".

Forest management is regulated by their own ecological calendar, adjusted
to annual cycles, the phases of the moon and environmental changes -
climatic and hydrological changes - showing the capacity for observation
possessed by all the indigenous peoples.

The forest is a space that may culturally be defined as the centre for
settlement, experimentation, learning, transformation and adaptation of
the ethnic peoples who live in the region. 

Hernando Castro says: "From the beginning, all things were created and
ordered by a father creator, reproduced and harmonized by mother nature
and administrated by human people. The creator handed us the word of how
to look after and manage it to avoid imbalance". 

According to the indigenous vision, the forest originates from the air,
the clouds, water and tree-grass, which leads to the traditional knowledge
of the Uitoto world, an east, a west, a down (south), an up (north);
dimensions that require spaces such as the forest and the river for their
definition.

Aurelio Suárez adds that "According to the principles of each ethnic group
comes reality; the origin has a single beginning, but the tradition
depends on each ethnic group, the clans, it is different; tradition brings
management most of all of the soil, the ecological part depends on the
tradition of the ethnic group; the origin is one, both for animals and for
humans; naturally mother nature guides, administrates and cares for the
knowledge part, the human part is what is guided here".

For indigenous peoples, all is interrelated, all has an origin, a history
and a management that must be known and practiced. The animals and plants
are intimately related as one comes from the other, making them
complementary, and a relationship that is impossible to break because it
would attack the vital balance that enables the environment to operate
adequately and to prevent diseases from coming.

The capacity of the indigenous groups in the region to obtain their food
support from a strip of transformed forest, where they have learnt to
manipulate and benefit from seeds, soils and environmental conditions, is
yet more evidence of their millenary knowledge, very rich and useful in
the context of sustainable forest use.

The indigenous vision of temporal land use makes it possible for species
of fruit trees or other species to be found long after the chagra has been
installed, even in mature forests, showing the inhabitants' phased
management of their surroundings. Diversity is conditioned to the species
with most significance and advantages, but even so, there are numerous
varieties of fruit-trees to be found in the stubble lands of an indigenous
family. This makes them farmers with wide knowledge and very considerable
agricultural experience.
 
The different species are sown year after year in order to obtain a range
of plants at different stages of growth; they also intervene on
regeneration processes, making them farmers that enrich the forest.

The presence of fruit-trees in the forest in the stage of regeneration is
not by chance; the replacement of their wild equivalent is a typical
characteristic, responding to the need for reciprocity with nature in the
hope of a good yield.

Hernán Moreno says that "When one is going to make a "chagra", one asks
for permission, it is like an agreement. In the forest, there are wild
grapes, forest calmo, guamo, chontaduro de monte, which is a thorny
coconut palm; these fruit-trees belong to the animals. One says I am going
to fell and then replace the trees I felled by domesticated fruit-trees,
if I cut a wild laurel tree, I plant laurel, if I cut down palm trees I
plant canagucho or chontaduro. So, when these trees grow in the stubble,
they are shared with the animals".

The selection of seeds, the techniques for sowing and distributing the
trees in the plantation are the contribution of indigenous farmers to
enable these species to be useful resources to the family and the means
for the forest to be enriched after it has been restored.

In words of Hernando Castro, "Within the indigenous cosmo-vision, the
relationship between human beings and nature is fully appreciated; the
territory is our mother, we are her children and therefore we take care of
it with the word, the inheritance of our forefathers and food for
knowledge, growth and development of life in harmony with nature. The
recovery of the traditional knowledge of our elders as to the use of
natural resources, taking them to different designs, it is what the elders
say: make the word dawn".

Extracted and adapted from: "Conocimiento y manejo del bosque a través de
las chagras y los rastrojos. Visión desde los Uitotos, Medio río Caquetá
(Amazonia colombiana)", Hernando Castro Suárez, Uitoto indigenous
inhabitant of the "El Guacamayo" community in Aracuara, and Sandra
Giovanna Galán Rodríguez, Ecology student, Pontificia Universidad
Javeriana, published in the Journal "Semillas," August 2003, e-mail:
Semil at attglobal.net,
http://www.semillas.org.co/articulos.htm?x=24046&cmd%5B172%5D=c-1-20





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World Rainforest Movement
International Secretariat
http://www.wrm.org.uy