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Handbook

SOURCES FOR APPLYING ETHNOBOTANY
TO CONSERVATION AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

Issue 6 - Managing Resources

GARY J. MARTIN, SASHA BARROW,
ANTHONY B. CUNNINGHAM AND PATRICIA SHANLEY,
EDITORS

Editorial

Community-based Conservation by Anthony B. Cuningham and Patricia Shanley

Over the past forty years, the protected area concept has broadened from focussing on strictly protected sites to viewing protected areas within a bioregional or ecosystem framework. It is widely recognized today that the future of most conservation areas largely depends on the support of the surrounding local communities. As a result, there is added emphasis on sustainable resource use and a broader approach involving land-users in bioregional management at an ecosystem level.

This change in approach is evident in the IUCN categories of Protected Areas developed in the mid-1980s. These range from Strict Nature Reserves/ Wilderness Areas (Category 1) to Managed Resource Protected Areas (Category 6), which require co-management of resources within designated zones. These changes have increased the need for new approaches to resource management and conservation, the main reason that we have written methods manuals for researchers (Cunningham 2000) and local communities (Shanley et al. 1998) that pragmatically integrate local and scientific knowledge.

Sustainable development policies are fine on paper. The challenges arise with their implementation. In their review of conservation projects, Michael Wells and Katrina Brandon (Wells and Brandon 1992) found very few buffer zone models that were working well. As usual, the devil is in the details. If implementation results in resource degradation rather than sustainable use, then the likelihood of land use conflict between national parks and local people is likely to increase, as the recent book Parks in Peril points out (see the Viewpoints and Issues section of this Handbook).

A key question is how we go beyond the rhetoric of policy on human needs and sustainable resource use without jeopardizing the natural resource base. This is no easy task.

The more harvesters there are, the scarcer a popular slow-growing species becomes. The more uses a species has, the more likely it is that resource managers and local people will become embroiled in a complex juggling of uses and demands. In theory, sustainable harvesting of plants from wild populations is possible, but is often more complex than policy-makers think, depending as much on an understanding of the biological component as on the social and economic aspects of wild plant use.

Good management requires wide social acceptance

In many ways, the term `natural resource management' is misleading, for it entails more about people than natural resources. There is no doubt that we need to prioritize the most valued or vulnerable species, or determine sustainable harvest levels. For good science to become good management, however, requires wide social acceptance of management plans and regulations. Achieving this requires an understanding of the social, economic, ethical, religious and political factors that either encourage resource conservation or lead to resource depletion.

What do religion and social issues have to do with conservation and resource management? A great deal when viewed from a local historical perspective. Although the first African national park was proclaimed a century ago (1897), most were established since the 1960s. Similarly, 76% of protected areas in Central America, 65% in the Caribbean and 38% in South America were declared in the 1980s. Much of the land on which national parks have been established has a much longer human history, often with complex cultural links to the present. Anthropologist Parker Shipton (1994) eloquently describes this link between land and culture:

"Religion, ritual and cognition on one hand, and adaptation, sustenance, and production on the other, cannot be kept pure of each other. Landholding is at the centre of the confluence. Nothing evokes more varied symbolic connotations or more intricate legal philosophies. Nothing excites deeper passions or gives rise to more bloodshed than do disagreements about territory, boundaries or access to land resources. Nor is anything more likely to prevent misunderstandings across cultures,

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harmful to both humans, and their habitat, than are thoughtful definitions of landholdings in the first place".

Conservation is inescapably bound to the social world of politics and religion ­ and whether we like it or not, these have to be better understood to achieve conservation objectives. Market-based approaches which ignore critical social factors of resource management can fail to detect imbedded cultural reasons as to why people continue to use and value certain species and the non-quantifiable benefits of forests for communities.

Understanding people's behavior in terms of `what they conserve, why, where, when and how' forms an important step in reaching conservation objectives. In theory, this seems straightforward. In practice, it is far from simple. There has been too much generalization on a range of very diverse and dynamic situations. For every claim that `rural people have sophisticated systems of natural resources management which have maintained bio-diversity for thousands of years' are cases where local peo- ple have destroyed high diversity habitat.

It is critical to understand what makes people comply with customary controls and what leads to their breaking down. Laws, whether an oral tradition of customary law or regulations written into national legislation, are only effective when a small minority of the population are likely to break those laws. How long are these systems of customary conservation likely to last when conservation goals are based on long (ecological) time scales and when cultural change is often rapid?

A useful analytical framework for fieldworkers to sort out the complex issues surrounding conservation are the design principles for community-based resource management (CBRM) developed through the work of Eleanor Ostrom (1990) and Robert Wade (1987). There is no magic formula for success, however. What can be done is to highlight cases where there is a greater likelihood of success (or failure) while also developing site-specific methods and approaches to CBRM. Looking at a range of differ- ent situations from more remote to less remote areas, where communities are less homogenous and commercial trade more prevalent, can also lead to useful insights.

To ensure CBRM does not become yet another extractive enterprise, we need to differentiate among land use agendas driven by local, national and international constituencies. Emphasis will need to be directed towards supporting processes and providing technical input through which local people are empowered to manage the resources upon which their own livelihoods depend.

Cunningham, A B. 2001. Applied Ethnobotany: people, wild plant use and conservation. London, Earthscan.

Ostrom, E. 1990. Governing the Commons. The Evolution ofInstitutions for Collective Action. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Shanley, P., M. Cymerys and J. Galvão. 1998. Fruíteras da Mata na Vida Amazônica. Belém, Editora Supercores.

Shipton, P. 1994. Land and culture in tropical Africa: soils, symbols and the metaphysics of the mundane. Annual Review of Anthropology 23:347-377.

Wade, R. 1987. The management of common property resources:collective action as an alternative to privatisation or state regulation. Cambridge Journal of Economics 11: 95-106.

Wells, M. and K. Brandon. 1992. People and Parks: linking protected area management with local communities. Washington DC, The World Bank.

Jargon

Community-based conservation and sustainable resource management ­ new terms in themselves ­ have spawned a specialized vocabulary that may be confusing for people who are just beginning to grasp these concepts. The `documents list' of the Forest Stewardship Council website (see page 11 of this Handbook) contains a useful glossary that provides standard definitions of many key terms. As the FSC notes, "the precise meaning and local interpretation of certain phrases (such as local communi- ties) should be decided in the local context." GJM

Biological diversity. The variability among living organisms from all sources including, inter alia, terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are a part; this includes diver- sity within species, between species and of ecosystems (see Convention on Biological Diversity 1992).

Biological diversity values. The intrinsic, ecological, genetic, social, economic, scientific, educational, cultural, recreational and aesthetic values of biological diversity and its components (see Convention on Biological Diversity 1992).

Chain of custody. The channel through which prod- ucts are distributed from their origin in the forest to their end-use.

Criterion (plural Criteria). A means of judging whether or not a Principle (for example, of forest stewardship) has been fulfilled. Customary rights. Rights which result from a long series of habitual or customary actions, constantly repeated, which have, by such repetition and by uninter- rupted acquiescence, acquired the force of a law within a geographical or sociological unit.

Indigenous lands and territories. The total environ- ment of the lands, air, water, sea, sea-ice, flora and fauna, and other resources which indigenous peoples have traditionally owned or otherwise occupied or used. Landscape. A geographical mosaic composed of interacting ecosystems resulting from the influence of geological, topographical, soil, climatic, biotic and human interactions in a given area.

Natural Forest. Forest areas where many of the principal characteristics and key elements of native ecosystems such as complexity, structure and diversity are present.

Non-timber forest products. All forest products except timber, including other materials obtained from trees such as resins and leaves, as well as any other plant and animal products.

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Plantation. Forest areas lacking most of the principal characteristics and key elements of native ecosystems, which result from the human activities of either planting, sowing or intensive silvicultural treatments.

Principle. An essential rule or element; for example, of forest stewardship.

Silviculture. The art of producing and tending a forest by manipulating its establishment, composition and growth to best fulfill the objectives of the owner. This may, or may not, include timber production.

Tenure. Socially defined agreements held by individu- als or groups, recognized by legal statutes or customary practice, regarding the "bundle of rights and duties" of ownership, holding, access and/or usage of a particular land unit or the associated resources there within (such as individual trees, plant species, water, minerals, etc.).

Use rights. Rights for the use of forest resources that can be defined by local custom, mutual agreements, or prescribed by other entities holding access rights. These rights may restrict the use of particular resources to specific levels of consumption or particular harvesting techniques.

Contents

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Leaves...

Leaves of Paper: Letters to the Editors

16 Febrary 2000

The term `community-based management' is currently used for a range of conservation approaches, including ones that are not completely accepted by indigenous communities. Presently, in the Philippines, there is a resurgence of repressive forest policies reintroduced under apparently benevolent rubrics and acronyms such as CBFM (Community Based Forest Management) agreements. CBFM is a DENR (Department of Environment and Natural Resources) policy that allows local communities to manage forests that have been converted to non-timber uses. Its ultimate objective is to develop self-sustaining production systems in the uplands by substituting indigenous swidden practices with permanent forms of agriculture.

A closer look at CBFM reveals that this policy perpetrates government control over indigenous peoples' life. Through the implementation of such policies, indigenous peoples' role in their own territory is reduced to that of stewards of the public land. For instance, in one of such agreements entered between PENRO (Provincial Environment and Natural Resources Office) and the Association of Batak of Tina it is specified that the indigenous beneficiaries should "immediately assume responsibility for the protection of the entire forest-land within the CBFM area against illegal logging and other unauthorised extraction of forest products, slash and burn agriculture (kaingin), forest and grassland fires, and other forms of forest destruction, and assist DENR in the prosecution of violators of forestry and environmental laws". Clearly, the contract mandates that Batak themselves must guard their area from their own practices, such as swidden cultivation. In brief, it places under governmental control indigenous forest management practices, and uses the people as subcontractors of DENR. This kind of project must be differentiated from ones which are truly community-based and participatory.

Mr. Dario Novellino, Department of Anthropology, Eliot
College, University of Kent, Canterbury CT2 7NS UK;
E-mail dn6@ukc.ac.uk. [Mr. Novellino is a PhD Candidate in
the Anthropology Department of the University of Kent at
Canterbury and the international advisor of Bangsa
Palawan-Philippine, which is described in this Handbook.]

12 August 2000

Tony Cunningham and Trish Shanley argue that policies for community-based conservation can be fine on paper but the real challenge is their implementation. This relates directly to conservation efforts in southern European countries, where the desertion of rural areas has left practitioners wondering on whose knowledge conservation strategies will be based and who shall be willing to realize them at the local level. Managing protected area buffer zones demands activities that do not result in resource depletion, activities that have been abandoned as people moved to large urban centers. The remaining populations are losing traditional knowledge of non-intensive resource management. Rural workers would rather get involved in profitable, intensive land uses such as high-productivity agriculture or in mass tourism, than be engaged in time-demanding, low-profit occupations such as sustainable harvesting of wild resources ­ unless the latter are subsidized, in which case many will question the sustainability claims. And the situation is getting thornier when land designation for protection has been based strictly on biodiversity criteria without considering socioeconomic needs of resident people. In many cases such areas are adjacent to intensively farmed and profitable agricultural land. The question becomes what type of local knowledge and what buffer zone activities are suitable. Indeed, there is no magic formula for success and solutions for sound community-based conservation are tricky. The challenge is greater when rural communities have already been conditioned to market economies and have developed social and economic values not significantly different from the values of people living in large urban centers.

Mr. Yorgos Moussouris, P.O. Box 18003, GR 116 10,
Athens, Greece; Tel./Fax: +30.1.7241806, E-mail
yormous@eexi.gr. [Mr. Moussouris is an independent
consultant ­ in rural sustainability and certification issues
­ to "Alcyon", an Athens-based firm that specializes in
research and applications for sustainable development.]

20 August 2000

As Tony Cunningham and Trish Shanley point out in the editorial of People and Plants Handbook Issue 6 on community-based management, the tasks of translating the rhetoric and theories of resource management in pro- tected areas or community controlled areas to practical conservation in the field are formidable. I would like to describe some of the challenges being faced by indigenous groups living in the diminishing rainforests of the eastern Brazilian Amazon. My opinions are based on several years I spent with the Tembé Indians researching the sustain- able harvest of marketable non-timber forest products (NTFPs) in the Alto Rio Guamá Indigenous Reserve in Pará state. The initial challenge to conserving forest resources stems from threats to the forest by invasion of the reserve by non-Indians. More recent challenges are due to internal factors.

Historically, the Tembé Indians and other related tribes in the Tupi-Guaraní language family occupied vast areas of the eastern Brazilian Amazon. As they came into contact with white settlers, diseases such as flu, smallpox and malaria decimated their numbers. In the wake of

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these losses, the majority of traditionally held territory was abandoned. In 1942 the Pará government created a reserve for the Tembé between the Guamá and Gurupi Rivers, but its boundaries were neither respected by outsiders nor enforced by the government. The Tembé sold a number of forest products to outside traders, especially through destructive harvesting of medicinal oil from copaiba (Copaifera spp.) trees.

In the early 1970s, the process of making the Tembé reserve into a federally demarcated indigenous reserve began, but the process was far from smooth. While the Indian Agency (formerly the Indian Protection Service (SPI); now the National Indian Foundation (FUNAI)) was ostensibly working to secure land rights for the Indians in the region, the Land Reform Agency (INCRA) allowed a rancher to extend his property into a large section of the reserve. Over the protest of the regional Indian Agency office, this rancher was then given permission to build an access road to his ranch that bisected the reserve. This predictably allowed a large-scale invasion of the reserve by thousands of land-hungry colonists and loggers. The deforestation and occupation of the mid-section of the reserve cut off contact between villages located in the northern and southern parts and deprived them of a large area of forest resources. As this occupation expanded, local politicians almost succeeded in carving this section out of the reserve for newly created municipalities.

Beginning in the 1980s, an invigorated cadre of young Indian leaders and reform minded Indian Agency officials pushed back against the invasion in the forest and the courts. After 20 years, a regional judge finally ruled that the rancher should leave and the access road should be closed. The decisions are awaiting review by a higher court, however, so neither action has occurred. As deforestation has claimed most intact forest in the region, illegal logging in the reserve is rampant. Periodic enforcement actions have failed to slow its pace. Some colonists from the central area have been resettled by the Land Reform Agency outside the reserve, but new ones have quickly taken their place. Drug growers occupy another area of the reserve between the colonists and southern Indian villages. Police have so far been unable or unwill- ing to confront these people. While marijuana growing does not appear to cause extensive deforestation, growers' violent tendencies dissuade Indians from accessing resources in a large area. In addition to invaders located permanently in the reserve, numerous poachers come into the reserve to take fish, game or forest plant resources.

The other significant agent of forest degradation that originates from outside activities is fire. Repeated logging and forest clearance for farms and pastures leaves remaining forest drier and vulnerable to the spread of fire. Such fires do not respect political boundaries any more than human invaders.

Internal factors are increasingly contributing to difficulties in conserving forest resources. In the name of assisting community development, Indian communities, the Indian Agency and outside funders have all supported the installation of water systems and more durable schools, infirmaries, food production, electronic communication and transport equipment. More fuel-consuming boats and machines are used for commercial and everyday tasks. Agricultural technical assistance is being offered to expand production of cash crops such as beans, rice and corn. While such improvements could conceivably be made in any village, the lack of resources has led to the concentration of them in only a few places. More people are moving to these villages and staying.

The impact of this process on neighboring forest resources is predictable. More people are clearing more forest to plant subsistence and newer cash crops. As older plots are left to fallow, newer plots are cleared and burned at increasing distances from the village. More people also means additional pressure on local fish, wildlife, and plants used for food, construction and generating income. The diminishing supply of one herbaceous plant traditionally used as roof thatch is prompting an increasing number of families to cut down trees for wooden shingles.

While an area used for agriculture is typically reserved for the farmer's family, other forest resources are open to anyone in the tribe. As Indians desires to buy more material from the city increases, their interest in generating more income through collection of forest products and other enterprises increases the pressure on all forest resources. One of the richest areas remaining for the harvest of titica vines (Heteropsis spp.) sold to wicker furniture makers is located near one village that is a full day's journey by boat from most other villages. Discussion about the need to regulate the harvest of some of these vital resources in some way has only reached the stage of occasional discussion. The cultural hurdles that would need to be overcome to institute such a system would be very high.

Plans have been formulated for some time to establish new villages or outposts in border areas or areas left by non-Indian settlers as a means of preventing new invasions. In spite of the depletion of resources near some villages and the availability of outside resources to support some of these projects, it has been difficult to get them going. One reason may be that some families are understandably reluctant to separate from their extended families. Another is that it is difficult to leave behind the new conveniences in larger villages for an outpost without amenities. Finally, the difficulty of making decisions within villages, between villages, between tribes and between Indians at all these levels and government agencies makes initiating any new project very hard. The previous modes of decision making that functioned in former times has not yet evolved into new modes that can smoothly deal with the greater complexity of internal and external pressures. My attempts as an outsider researcher to make a positive contribution in this realm of conflicting interests met with decidedly mixed success. But that is another story...

Mr. Campbell Plowden, Dept. of Biology, Penn State
University, 208 Mueller Lab, University Park, PA 16802,
USA; Tel. +1. 814.8655895, Fax +1.814.8659131,
E-mail jcp149@psu.edu. [Mr. Plowden is a PhD Candidate
in ecology at Penn State University.]

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28 August 2000

By definition, community-based conservation projects draw together actors with different histories, perceptions, needs and wishes. Not uncommonly, for example, a conservation project will involve a number of government agencies, NGOs, scientists, conservationists and different local communities. The complexity of this encounter is further enhanced by two tendencies. First, none of these institutional actors are homogeneous entities. Government institutions, scientists, NGOs and local communities are fractured "communities", in the sense that they frequently include individuals who operate under different, and at times contradictory, philosophical, political or epistemological premises. Second, conservation has not only become an increasingly important component of the service industry, as Cunningham and Shanley point out, but it has also become increasingly internationalized and globalized.

One way to approach community-based conversation therefore, is to examine it in the context of contact; contact between societies, cultures, sub-cultures, communities, institutions and countries. An important element of this contact is frequently intervention: the State, NGOs, scientists or conservationists approach communities or local actors with the specific intent of creating a particular outcome, be it ecological and expressed in terms of sustainability, or social, in terms of community organization and participation. Because intent is inevitably constructed and articulated on the basis of particular needs and perceptions, because such needs and perceptions reflect particular historical and cultural experiences, and because such needs are expressed and embedded in a web of unequal local, regional, national and international power relations, it is no surprise that conservation projects frequently form an important arena for the expression and creation of conflict.

I think it behooves us to approach community conservation projects as acts or processes of contact and intervention, if nothing else because this may give us a better chance at establishing socially and politically sustainable initiatives and better options at managing conflict in these areas. Cultural anthropology is ideally situated to inform such an approach, as many of the issues that emerge from contact and intervention are central concerns of cultural anthropology. Beyond using cultural anthropology as a tool of "translation" and in effect implementation, we can establish more effective means of dialogue, negotiation and of critical self-evaluation.

Dr. Miguel Alexiades, Institute of Economic Botany, The
New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, NY 10458, USA;
E-mail malexiades@nybg.org. [Dr. Alexiades is an honorary
research associate in the Institute of Economic Botany of
the New York Botanical Garden, and in the Anthropology
Department of the University of Kent at Canterbury.]

20 September 2000

I wish to raise some points from experiences of Community-Based Natural Resources Management (CBNRM) programs of southern Africa, particularly Namibia. I focus on my concerns regarding the long-term sustainability of initiatives falling under this umbrella ­ in terms of both resource conservation and of local empowerment and development.

First, they actually tend not to build on resources on which people's livelihoods depend. Generally they focus on animal wildlife, primarily large mammals with high international conservation value, from which Africans typically have been stringently divorced throughout this century ­ via the creation of National Parks, the instituting of various colonial Game Laws, and the resultant criminalization of non-state-sanctioned consumption of wildlife resources. CBNRM thus attempts to reinforce links between resources and livelihoods that often have not existed for decades. As well as developing new resource management institutions (see below), the primary way in which new links are created is via encouraging the establishment of wildlife-based tourism enter-prises for visitors, usually from high-income countries. In this respect, in seems that it is tourists who are more directly linked to wildlife via their consumptive and non-consumptive uses of `game'. Local people are expected to benefit indirectly from wildlife resources via income generated by these enterprises. In other words, links between resources and livelihoods in CBNRM initiatives frequently are indirect, new, and created on the basis of suggestions and advice from donors and project implementers rather than reflecting long-term uses of resources.

Second, while policy has been developed to devolve ownership and decision-making power over natural resources to local `communities', this `power' is extensively proscribed. This is not surprising when considering rare species with high national and international values.

But it does call into question the extent to which CBNRM can be said to genuinely address power and ownership differentials over natural resources. As Novellino asserts in his letter, CBNRM in this respect can amount to the continuation or even extension of government control. I would add to this that, because of complex relationships between donors, NGOs and government departments, CBNRM can wind-up extending hegemony of `north' over `south', and of `expert' over local knowledge (also see Alexiades' letter). Given unequal power relations, it becomes rather difficult for local people to voice dissent.

A case in point has occurred recently in north-west Namibia where I have several years' research interest. In February this year, a substantial local faction organized a protest march against various activities of the primary CBNRM implementing organization (the WWF- and USAID-funded NGO Integrated Rural Development and Nature Conservation (IRDNC)). Many of the grievances they raised were not new having constituted some of the major sticking-points since 1994 in establishing a locally- run `conservancy' as a new wildlife-management institu- tion in the area. The NGO response was to threaten with a lawyer's letter court action against local leaders. Not sur- prisingly, the situation is extremely complex. But apart from anything else, it raises questions regarding the legit- imacy of a national NGO invoking formal law against local and customary leadership; and of how local people, with- out institutional or donor-backing, can voice grievances, legitimate or otherwise, against a donor-NGO-state CBNRM machinery.

Third, and as noted above, CBNRM initiatives frequently are combined with policy reform to devolve rights to natural resources to local people. As well as the problems raised by the ways in which these rights may be proscribed, it has to be acknowledged that these policy changes do not amount to the provision of land rights to local `communities'. This situation has generated confusion in many southern Africa countries where land distribution is extremely unequal and increasing rights to land is a priority for many people. Again in Namibia, the whole issue of gazetting locally-run `conservancies' ­ defined areas with a defined membership, a written constitution and a management plan ­ has resulted in conflict (both between `communities', and between local people and NGOs) because the relationship of conservancies to land rights has not been clearly defined. On the one hand, it has been hoped by conservationists that the forthcoming Communal Lands Reform Bill would recognize conservancies as a form of group-tenure over land ­ but, despite considerable lobbying of the Ministry of Lands by Ministry of Environment personnel, the latest version of the Bill does not appear to recognize conservancies as such. On the other hand, I would argue that local uptake of the conservancy concept has been driven in part by the asserting of claims to land in the absence of any other means of doing so. The legal reality apparently is that the conservancy legislation only confers certain rights to animal wildlife.

My final observation relates to the economic assumptions underlying many CBNRM initiatives. Generally, it is assumed that financial benefits accruing to local `communities' from wildlife-based enterprises, once rights to these resources have been ascertained, will provide local people with the incentive to conserve these resources. But there are a number of inconsistencies. First, both new resource-management institutions established under CBNRM programs and wildlife-based commercial enterprises have required heavy subsidies from donors and NGOs to become up-and-running, which, as Moussouris also points out, calls into question their sustainability claims. Second, the in-hand per capita monetary receipts remain tiny in most cases, and would be negative if subsidies were factored into the equation. Third, little mention is made of the fact that CBNRM programs also transfer the costs of resource conservation on to local people ­ for example, the running of new resource management institutions and the policing of valuable resources (see also Novellino's letter). Given the above, I believe that greater attention should be paid to the possibility of making direct payments to land- and resource-users for providing the service of conserving resources and habitats of international conservation value (on this point, also see Simpson and Sedjo, 1996, Environment and Development Economics 1:241-257).

The overriding issue, of course, is that natural resources with conservation value frequently occur in low-income countries where conservation goals are understandably low on the list of priorities for many inhabitants. Nevertheless, approaches to conservation, including CBNRM, continue to expect this structurally-entrenched poor to protect wildlife and wild areas and increasingly to shoulder the costs. At the same time, the primary beneficiaries and consumers of these services appear to be those from high-income countries. Isn't it time that those living with valuable natural resources are treated as equal actors in recognition of the power they potentially hold over these resources? Otherwise, I feel that we will see increasing local resistance to donor-led programs ­ initiatives which proscribe uses of resources while speaking of empowering users; and via which only small financial benefits accrue to those conserving resources even though large sums of money are visibly available for conservation purposes.

Dr. Sian Sullivan, Department of Anthropology, School of
Oriental and African Studies, Thornhaugh St., Russell Sq.,
London WC1H 0XG, UK; Tel. +44.207.8984433,
Fax +44.207.8984439, E-mail ss71@soas.ac.uk.

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International Programs

Center for International Forestry Research

See the Advice from the Field section of this Handbook for information on the world comparison of non-timber forest products, a project of CIFOR's Forest Products and People program. GJM

The Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) is an international organization committed to enhancing the benefits of forests for people in the tropics. Its research, done in partnership with networks of collaborators around the world, provides a scientific basis for managing tropical forests to ensure a range of goods and services while protecting the base of forest resources for the long term. The Center's research results lead to policies and technologies needed to achieve sustainable forests. By emphasizing collaborative research, CIFOR also helps developing countries strengthen their capacity to solve national and regional forest problems.

CIFOR's core research program consists of six overlapping areas of focus. Despite their differ- ent strategies, these programs all aim to support a new style of forest management that is gaining favor around the world. It centers on the recog- nition that forests must be managed to balance the multiple functions they provide, rather than serving only single interests such as logging or conservation, and that the needs and interests of forest-dependent communities must be taken into account.

The Underlying Causes of Deforestation, Forest Degradation and Changes in Human Welfare Program analyzes factors that affect for- est conditions and the livelihood of forest-dependent people, as the foundation for developing policies to minimize negative social and environmental impacts. The Sustainable Forest Management Program works to develop models and techniques for integrated management of forests and more ecologically sound use of their resources. Similarly, the Biodiversity and Genetic Resources Program seeks ways of integrating conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity into landscape-scale management of forests, while the Program of Plantation Forestry on Degraded or Low-Potential Sites pursues strategies for using tree plantations to restore the productivity of degraded forest land and increase economic opportunities for poor rural communi- ties. Innovative techniques emerging from the relatively new Local People, Devolution and Adaptive Co-Management Program will help forest stakeholders work cooperatively in managing the forests around them to improve both human well-being and long-term forest condition.

Finally, CIFOR's Forest Products and People Program looks at how people respond to changes in the availability and relative cost of forest resources, land and labor, and to new opportunities that may arise as a result. The program focuses particularly on the use and development of forest products under varying socio-economic conditions. In one project now underway, based on an international comparative study, CIFOR scientists and their colleagues in several countries are developing a new analytical method that could be used to help determine whether various forest products are amenable to commercialization.

An index of all CIFOR publications is available on the center's Website. The complete text of many of the publications (in PDF format) is also available online, as well as on an annually updated CD-ROM. To obtain a copy of individual publications, send a request to: n.sabarniati@cgiar.org.

Center for International Forestry Research
(CIFOR), Office Address: Jalan CIFOR, Situ Gede,
Sindangbarang, Bogor Barat 16680, Indonesia;
Mailing Address: P.O. Box 6596, JKPWB, Jakarta
10065, Indonesia; Tel. +62.251.622622;
Fax +62.251.622100;
E-mail cifor@cgiar.org, n.sabarniati@cgiar.og
(mail order enquiries),
Website http://www.cgiar.org/cifor/.

Among the many authoritative books and scientific papers that CIFOR publishes is the newly issued Incomes from the Forest: Methods for the Development and Conservation of Forest Products for Local Communities, edited by Eva Wollenberg and Andrew Ingles. The book is a compilation of articles that describe in detail how a number of communities have sought to develop forest products. By analyzing the factors that have influenced the results of these efforts, the contributors provide important lessons for other groups interested in using non-timber forest products as a means of boosting local income. Hank Cauley, executive director of the Forest Stewardship Council in the United States and former director of the Biodiversity Conservation Network, praises the editors' selection of "analytically rigorous and practical" articles that he says "fill a gap in the existing literature for planning and assessing the feasibility of development of forest products and monitoring and evaluating the impact of these activities." For example, a chapter titled "Assessing the Profitability of Forest-based Enterprises", by Mary Ames, shows the level of analysis that community leaders and planners need to exercise in assessing the income-generating potential of a forest product. Ames provides an in- depth discussion of four scenarios typically characteristic of forest product enterprises. Commenting on the book's importance, Cauley observes: "Too often in the past, broad-brushed and significantly less rigorous methods have been proposed that can mislead planners and result in faulty conclusions on NTFP venture feasibility. Such failures undermine overall conservation goals and, more importantly, lead community leaders to doubt their ability to create lasting ventures within their communities that can continue to improve overall living standards." He suggests that the editors should consider applying their judgment and skill to similar efforts that would provide better insight into other aspects of forest product development, such as linking community NTFP enterprises to specific downstream markets, identifying and supporting entrepreneurship and risk-taking at the local level, and understanding the evolution of community ventures in response to dynamic markets for the products.'

Parsell, D. Personal communication from CIFOR staff writer on publications with excerpts of H. Cauley's unpublished review of Wollenberg, E. and A. Ingles. 1998. Incomes from the Forest: Methods for the development and conservation of forest products for local communities. Bogor, CIFOR.

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International Programs

The Ford Foundation

The Ford Foundation sees itself as a resource for innovative people and institutions worldwide. What I have seen ­ and have been incredibly impressed by over the past ten years of contact with the Ford Foundation's program officers in China, Kenya, India and South Africa ­ is how this equally applies to the Ford Foundation's staff. In no other organization have I encountered program officers of such outstanding quality in all cases and continents: insightful, innovative, multilingual and creative. The Ford Foundation must have a very special recruitment process to find such rare individuals. ABC.

Founded in 1936, The Ford Foundation is an international source of support for institutions and individuals working in charitable, educational or scientific activities. It supports projects related to its seven programs, grouped in three broad areas: Asset Building & Community Development, Peace & Social Justice, and Education, Media, Arts & Culture. The Community & Resource Development program, which focuses on the development of sustainable and equitable communities, provides funds for environmental and community development projects. Aiming to encourage initiatives by those living and working closest to where problems are located, to promote collaboration among the non-profit, government and business sectors, and to ensure participation by diverse communities at all levels of society, the Foundation make grants or loans that build knowledge and strengthen organizations and networks.

The Foundation has no grant application form but seekers of a grant or program-related investment (PRI) should first send a brief letter to the Foundation outlining the proposed project. Applicants with projects satisfying the Foundation's funding criteria will then be asked to submit a full proposal. Applications are considered throughout the year and an indication is usually given within six weeks of whether a pro- posal will be successful. In 1999 the Foundation received 38,200 grant requests and made 2,252 grants of which 22% were first-time grant recip- ients. Support is not normally given for institutional routine operating costs, religious activities or building construction and maintenance. Although primarily supporting organizations, the Foundation does also award some grants to individuals, though not to undergraduate stu- dents, mostly through through publicly-announced competitions or on the basis of nominations from universities and other nonprofit institutions. Grant applicants from the U.S. should contact the head office in New York; any others should contact the appropriate regional office, for which contact details are given in the website.

Secretary, The Ford Foundation, 320 East 43
Street, New York, N.Y. 10017, USA;
E-mail office-secretary@fordfound.org,
Website http://www.fordfound.org/.

The Foundation funds the National Support Group for Joint Forest Management at the Society for Promotion of Wastelands Development as well as research, training and advocacy institutions examining ecological, economic, and institutional aspects of JFM. Among the issues addressed through Foundation support studies are community institution building and participatory micro-planning; innovative silvicultural approaches to enhance productivity and meet multiple objectives; equity issues ­ with special attention to gender dimensions; income generation through processing and marketing of non-timber forest products; the management of village funds generated from forest product revenue, and understanding the causes of conflict and the tools for its resolution...

The Foundation's folklore program seeks to use culture as a mechanism to bridge the divide between segments of society separated by narrow linguistic, regional and religious perspectives. In Indian folklore we can hear the voices of those who are far removed from the centers of power and influence. Folklore carries alternative views and systems, and comments continually on official and orthodox perspective and practices in India. It speaks to us about local diversity as well as the dialogues and exchanges among cultures. It is thus able to combat both exclusionary and homogenizing cultural perspectives...

The recent enactment of new Panchayati Raj legislation in India provides an exceptional opportunity to strengthen local self-government and to increase the accountability of development activities to rural people. A significant proportion of the membership of panchayats is reserved for women and scheduled castes and tribes. However, extensive training in decision making and other skills is needed if council members are to exercise effective control over the use of community resources and the allocation of development funds.'

Anonymous. The Ford Foundation, New Delhi Regional Office, Website http://www.fordfound.org/.

10

International Programs

The Rainforest Alliance

For information on companies that manufacture or sell certified products, visit the `Marketplace' section of the Rainforest Alliance website, http://www.rainforest-alliance.org/marketplace. GJM

Founded in 1986, the Rainforest Alliance is an international nonprofit organization dedicated to the conservation of tropical forests for the benefit of the global community. Its mission is to develop and promote economically viable and socially desirable alternatives to the destruction of endangered habitats and biological diversity. It pursues this mission through education, research in the natural and social sciences, and the establishment of cooperative partnerships with businesses, governments and local peoples. In recent years, the Rainforest Alliance has been a leader in establishing certification programs for forestry operations, forest products and agricultural crops.

The SmartWood CM Certification Program conserves forests by identifying and promoting environmentally sound forest management practices. It awards its seal of approval to responsible forest managers who adhere to strict environmental and social standards. The first worldwide forestry certification program, SmartWood has certified almost 100 forestry operations as well-managed ­ covering an area of over five million acres. In addition, it has approved approximately 200 forest products companies for their production of a wide range of items using certified wood, including furniture, musical instruments, flooring and frames. In 1996, the program developed the SmartWood Rediscovered Program, which certifies salvaged or recycled wood from buildings under demolition or those being laid to waste, as well as underwater log recovery operations. All of these initiatives rely on the SmartWood Network ­ a partnership of regionally based conservation organizations around the world ­ to implement certification services in tropical, temperate and boreal (far northern) regions.

The Conservation Agriculture Program brings together environmentalists, community members and industry to develop guidelines for agriculture practices that minimize ecological impacts and emphasize human values. In 1998, the Rainforest Alliance helped to create the Conservation Agriculture Network, a coalition of leading conservation groups that manage the ECO- O.K. agricultural certification program. The ECO- O.K. ® and Better Banana Project seals of approval have been awarded to various Latin American producers of bananas, cocoa, coffee, oranges and other crops.

In addition to these initiatives, the Rainforest Alliance has established several other programs. The Conservation Media Center in Costa Rica teaches the basics of public information and media relations to grassroots groups in the tropics, and alerts local journalists to breaking environmental news. Diverse grassroots conservation efforts are supported through the Catalyst Grants Program, through grants of $3,000 or less. The Allies in the Rainforest Program gives concerned citizens, schools and community groups a chance to contribute directly to local conservation efforts. The Rainforest Alliance passes on their donations to carefully selected "allies" ­ grass-roots organizations in Latin America. Information on new programs in development (including initiatives on ecotourism, carved wood, and cut flowers and ferns) is available on the RA Website.

The Rainforest Alliance has sponsored many publications, including Justice and Conservation / Insights from "People, Plants, and Justice: The Politics of Nature Conservation," (1999) written by Charles Zerner (former director of the Natural Resources and Rights Program). The Rainforest Alliance's newsletter, The Canopy, is produced six times a year and is available online.

Ms. Sofia Perez, Communications Manager, Rainforest Alliance, 65 Bleecker Street, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10012-2420, USA; Tel. +1.212.6771900, Fax +1.212.6772187, E-mail canopy@ra.org or sperez@ra.org, Website http://www.rainforest-alliance.org.

Mr. Richard Donovan, Director, SmartWood, Goodwin-Baker Building, 61 Millet Street, Richmond, VT 05477, USA; Tel. +1.802.4345491, Fax +1.802.4343116, E-mail info@smartwood.org, Website http://www.smartwood.org.

Mr. Chris Wille, Director, Conservation Agriculture Program, Apartado 138-2150, Moravia, San José, Costa Rica; Tel. +506.2409383, Fax +506.2402543, E-mail can@ra.org.

In its efforts to certify forest management operations and forest products companies around the world, the Rainforest Alliance's SmartWood program has covered a lot of ground, but now, for the first time, some of that ground is underwater. In March 1999, Wet Wood Underwater Fiber Recovery Ltd. in British Columbia, Canada became the first underwater log recovery operation to be certified under the SmartWood Rediscovered Wood Program...

SmartWood seeks to encourage the reuse of wood by awarding the SmartWood Rediscovered Wood CM seal of approval to products made from acceptable reclaimed wood ­ including wood carefully retrieved from rivers, lakes and demolition projects as well as wood from landfills or even from fruit tree orchards where unproductive trees are cut for replacement...

As part of the public review process, the company also addressed several cultural implications of the operation that were raised by the local Native American community. At their request, the Hupacaseth Nation will be supplied with some cedar logs ­ if found ­ to be used for ceremonial purposes. Wet Wood has also agreed not to operate in areas containing underwater petroglyphs.'

Sofia Perez. 1999. Smartwood dives into underwater log recovery. The Canopy May/June:1-2.

11

International Programs

Forest Stewardship Council

Although its main focus has been the certification of forest management, FSC has been grappling with the issue of developing guidelines for non-timber forest products in recent years. GJM

Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is an international non-profit organization founded in 1993 to support environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial, and economically viable management of the world's forests. Its more than 300 members from 50 countries include representatives from environmental and social groups, the timber trade and the forestry profession, indigenous people's organizations, community forestry groups and forest product certification organizations.

FSC has developed rigorous procedures and standards to evaluate whether organizations (certification bodies) can provide an independent and compe- tent forest evaluation (certification) service. This process is known as `accreditation'. FSC-accredited certification bodies are required to evaluate all forests aiming for certification according to the FSC Principles and Criteria for Forest Management. Accredited certification bodies may operate internationally and may carry out evaluations in any forest type. Certified forests are visited on a regular basis, to ensure they continue to comply with the Principles and Criteria. The performance of the certification bodies is closely monitored by FSC. Products originating from forests certi- fied by FSC-accredited certification bodies are eligible to carry the FSC-logo, if the chain-of-custody (tracking of the timber from the forest to the shop) has been checked.

The FSC is run on a day-to-day basis from a head office in the city of Oaxaca, Mexico by an executive director and twelve full-time staff. It is controlled by an elected Board which consists of people from environmental, social and economic interests. Membership is open to all individuals and non-governmental organizations who are involved in forestry or forest products and share the FSC's aims and objectives. FSC Notes, the newsletter of the Forest Stewardship Council, is sent to members and other people interested in sustainable forest management and certifica- tion.

Dr. Timothy Synnott, Executive Director, The Forest Stewardship Council, Avenida Hidalgo 502, 68000 Oaxaca, Oaxaca, Mexico; Tel. +52.951.46905 or 63244, Fax +52.951.62110, E-mail fscoax@fscoax.org, Website http://www.fscoax.org.

The FSC logo, which represents a half tree, half tick (or check) with the initials FSC, indicates that the forest product has been evaluated as meeting FSC's principles and criteria and certification guidelines. The accreditation logo is an internationally registered trademark and its use is controlled by legally binding contracts.

Principles for Forest Stewardship

Principle 1: Compliance With Laws And FSC Principles
Forest management shall respect all applicable laws of the country in which they occur, and international treaties and agreements to which the country is a signatory, and comply with all FSC Principles and Criteria.

Principle 2: Tenure And Use Rights And Responsibilities
Long-term tenure and use rights to the land and forest resources shall be clearly defined, documented and legally established.

Principle 3: Indigenous Peoples' Rights
The legal and customary rights of indigenous peoples to own, use and manage their lands, territories, and resources shall be recognized and respected.

Principle 4: Community Relations And Worker's Rights
Forest management operations shall maintain or enhance the long-term social and economic well-being of forest workers and local communities.

Principle 5: Benefits From The Forest
Forest management operations shall encourage the efficient use of the forest's multiple products and services to ensure economic viability and a wide range of environmental and social benefits.

Principle 6: Environmental Impact
Forest management shall conserve biological diversity and its associated values, water resources, soils, and unique and fragile ecosystems and landscapes, and, by so doing, maintain the ecological functions and the integrity of the forest.

Principle 7: Management Plan
A management plan ­ appropriate to the scale and intensity of the operations ­ shall be written, implemented, and kept up to date. The long term objectives of management, and the means of achieving them, shall be clearly stated.

Principle 8: Monitoring And Assessment
Monitoring shall be conducted ­ appropriate to the scale and intensity of forest management ­ to assess the condition of the forest, yields of forest products, chain-of-custody, management activities and their social and environmental impacts.

Principle 9: Maintenance Of High Conservation Value Forests
Management activities in high conservation value forests shall maintain or enhance the attributes which define such forests. Decisions regarding high conservation value forests shall always be considered in the context of a precautionary approach.

Principle 10: Plantations
Plantations shall be planned and managed in accordance with Principles and Criteria 1 ­ 9, and Principle 10 and its Criteria. While plantations can provide an array of social and economic benefits, and can contribute to satisfying the world's needs for forest products, they should complement the management of, reduce pressures on, and promote the restoration and conservation of natural forests.

The principles have been excerpted from the document (revised January 1999) FSC Principles and Criteria, available on the Forest Stewardship Council website under `Documents list'.

12

National Programs

The Overseas Developments Institute

The Overseas Development Institute (ODI) is a research institute and independent think-tank on international development and humanitarian issues working with both public and private sectors. With a focus on applied research, practical policy advice and policy-focused dissemination and debate, ODI's activities are grouped into five major research and policy programs including Rural Policy and Environment, Poverty and Public Policy, Forest Policy and Environment, International Economic Development, and Humanitarian Policy. Committed to the belief that environmental and social equity issues are closely connected, ODI's Forest Policy and Environment Group (FPEG) takes a livelihood-oriented approach in all its forestry activities, drawing on its expertise in both the social and natural sciences. An important outreach component of the FPEG is the Rural Development Forestry Network (RDFN) which acts as a forum for exchange between decision-makers, researchers and practitioners. Information is disseminated to its 2,500 members in over 120 countries through twice yearly `mailings' comprising a newsletter and four to five papers on a particular theme. Recognizing that projects are often the primary site for (generally unpublished) creative thinking and experimentation in forestry, RDFN mailings include both case-study reports and policy-level overviews. Over 150 of these past papers ­ in English, French and Spanish ­ are now available on the ODI website. RDFN membership is free of charge. Members are, however, requested to send copies of their own research papers by way of exchange. This has led to the creation of a unique gray literature collection, documenting the development of people- oriented forestry, much of which is currently in the process of being put on the website. A further four networks are organized by the ODI, associated with research and policy programs whose research dissemination and communication commitments they help to fulfil. ODI publications include books, policy briefings, working papers, network papers and two journals (Development Policy Review, Disasters).

Dr. Kate Schreckenberg, Network Coordinator, RDFN, ODI, Portland House, Stag Place, London SW1E 5DP UK; Tel. +44.20.73931600, Fax +44.20.73931699, E-mail forestry@odi.org.uk, Website http://www.odi.org.uk.

The early 1990s witnessed an apparent sea-change in government attitudes towards the management of common-pool resources (CPR) in India and elsewhere. The state, hitherto controlling and managing most CPR such as forests and water bodies in a paternalistic manner, appeared finally to have opened its doors to people's participation. In forestry, within seven years of the historic 1990 directive from the Government of India, 17 States had issued orders enabling `joint forest management' (JFM). Several States had, with bilateral/multilateral funding, initiated forest sector projects with JFM as the stated cornerstone in all of them. Seminars, workshops, and training programmes on JFM abounded (and continue to do so)...

...Although acronyms, government orders and programmes abound, and many non-governmental activist and advocacy groups have shed their initial scepticism and joined in the implementation of these programmes, the picture on the ground is not that rosy. After the ini- tial hyperbole, progress has in many cases been slow, or has resulted in potentially unsustainable outcomes. The gap between rhetoric and reality is promoting re-examinations of JFM in different ways: typically institutional analyses of the structure of JFM or sociological analyses of `community' itself.'

Lele, S. 2000. Godsend, sleight of hand, or just muddling through: joint water and forest management in India. ODI Natural Resource Perspectives 53. Also available as a PDF file on http://www.odi.org.uk/nrp/53.html.

Centre de Coopération Internationale enrecherche Agronomique Pour Le DéVeloppement

CIRAD (Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement) is a French scientific organization specializing in agricultural research for the tropics and subtropics of the world. Its mission is to contribute to rural development through research, experimentation, training, and dissemination of scientific and technical information. Its work covers agricultural, veterinary, forestry, and food sciences. With over 1800 employers, including researchers posted in 50 countries, CIRAD's activities cover over 90 countries in Africa, Asia, the Pacific region, Latin America and Europe. Activities in 28 research programs are grouped into seven departments: annual crops, tree crops, fruit and horticultural crops, animal production and veterinary medicine, forestry, territories, environment and people, and advanced methods for innovation in science. Research activities on certain themes, including `Crop Protection' and `Crop, Environment and Natural Resource Management', are coordinated by specific, cross-departmental delegations.

The forestry department, CIRAD-Forêt, focuses on trees and plantations, forest products and natural forests. The Forest Product Program aims to acquire and transfer knowledge to ensure more effective use both of wood products and of forest product waste and by-products, to develop products and processes suitable for tropical woods, to improve wood quality control and quality prediction techniques, and to contribute to the economic development of those involved in the forest product sector in developing countries, from the informal sector to small-scale processors and industry. Current research in knowledge of natural woods include a database of 1,000 tropical species, a wood library of over 3,000 species, and studies of the technological properties and processing characteristics of 40 marketable Amazonian species and of the potential of South American wood production sectors. Current research into competitiveness of primary processing is involved in technical support to the primary processing sec- tor in Cameroon, development of a methodology to monitor the drying performance of tropical species, and application of molecular meth- ods in the identification of wood fungi and detection of fungal attacks. The Natural Forests Program aims to analyze stakeholders' strategies and issues in an international context, to develop economic, institutional and legislative tools upon which to base rational locally-applicable forestry policies, to assess forestry resources and understand forest ecosystem dynamics, and to develop management plans for natural areas with forestry potential, while specifying conditions to promote production and biodiversity conservation. Current research activities in forest ecosystem management include development of a pilot forest management project at Dimako, Cameroon, aimed at balancing sustainable forest use and multiple custom land uses, and development of methods to improve coordination, negotiation and involvement of all key natural resource management stakeholders in Madagascar. Current activities in forest resource assessment include development of a forest resource planning and management system in Indonesia and analysis of biophysical factors and genetic diversity in French Guiana.

CIRAD-Forêt publishes the quarterly review, in French, with English and Spanish abstracts, Bois et forêts des tropiques, which focuses on the interface between research and development, offering topical scientific and technical articles, news, document analyses and fact sheets in 80 illustrated color pages. A list of articles published since 1947, when the journal was founded, can be sent free of charge on request.

Sylvie Sabatier, Assistante Mission Valorisation, CIRAD-Forêt, TA 10/C, Campus International de Baillarguet, 34398 Montpellier Cedex 5, France; Tel. +33.4.67593792, Fax +33.4.67593732, Email sylvie.sabatier@cirad.fr, Website http://www.cirad.fr.

For a publications catalogue, contact CIRAD- Forêt, Publications Department, P.O. Box 5035, 34032 Montpellier Cedex 1, France; Tel. +33.467615800.

13

Sounthern Alliance for Indigenous Resources

Through their keen and active Zimbabwean fieldworkers and awareness of local resource needs, SAFIRE has established field projects which deal with people-plant interactions away from the Zambezi valley geographic focus of the better known and longer established CAMPFIRE program. Examples are its research on ilala (Hyphaene coriacea) palm harvesters, baobab fiber, oil and nutriceuticals, the role of the musau tree (Ziziphus mauritiana) in household economies, traditional uses of, and economic opportunities from, makoni herbal tea (Fadogia ancylantha), and work with communities in the Chipinge area on re-establishment and agroforestry production of the medicinal tree muranga (Warburgia salutaris). With support from the People and Plants Initiative, SAFIRE is the national contact point for ZEN (Zimbabwe Ethnobotany Network), which links into the African Ethnobotany Network of AETFAT (Association for the Study of the Flora of Tropical Africa). ABC.

14

Resource Centers

The Regional Community Forestry Training Center

Attjala Roongwong, a staff member of RECOFTC's Thailand Community Forestry Outreach program, was a participant in the Southeast Asia Certificate Training Course in Applied Ethnobotany offered by the People and Plants Initiative in 1998 ­ 1999. As part of her current responsibilities, Attjala is exploring linkages between community forestry and ethnobotany in Thailand. GJM

15

Bangsa Palawan-Philippines

Dario Novellino, international advisor to BPP, is associated with the Department of Anthropology at the University of Kent, Canterbury (UK), and is a Visiting Research Associate at the Institute of Philippine Culture in Manila. He set up the South-East Asian section of the ethnobotanical museum at the Orto Botanico in Naples, Italy. Since 1986 he has lived and worked among the Batak and Pälawan peoples of Palawan, where he has promoted various initiatives for the recognition of their ancestral domain claims. In addition to other writings on the region, he has recently finished a report on "Wetlands and Indigenous Rights in Palawan", in coordination with the UK-based Forest Peoples Programme. GJM

Bangsa Palawan-Philippine (BPP) is a non-profit association of indigenous people registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of the Philippines in June 1998. In the Pälawan language, Bangsa refers to a large community of people ­ the Pälawan, Tagbanuwa, Batak and the Molbog peoples on the island of Palawan ­ who share a common country and history. Formed by a group of Pälawan who were dissatisfied with the government response to their claims over ancestral domains, BPP campaigns to protect land from a variety of threats, including encroachment by immigrants, mining, illegal logging and unsound conservation measures. BPP is represented by its founders and members in their own communities and at the `barangay' (village) level. BPP officials are elected annually and field volunteers are appointed by their own communities and by BPP staff in the four southern `barangay' (Panalingaan, Taburi, Latud, Canipaan) where the organization currently operates.

BPP envisages development that holds the concrete needs and aspirations of indigenous people and their environment at the heart of its agenda. These needs are not restricted to food security and economic stability but also include a range of other social elements, including cultural integrity, ethnic pride, self-esteem, equity of access to development opportunities, and living with dignity. BPP supports initiatives to make the indigenous people in Palawan active negotiators in the process of change rather than passive `targets' of top-down development and conservation programmes. BPP also assists affected communities with those bureaucratic procedures essential to the protection of their land from mining activities and other forms of encroachment.

Taking a participatory approach, BPP prioritizes community-based activities suggested by the communities concerned and later evaluated by the board of BPP officers. BPP activities include the establishment of village stores, supplying primary commodities at affordable prices to those communities vulnerable to the pressures of declining agricultural production, partic- ularly during El Niño years, static prices obtained for local products (such as resin, rattan, fish) and increasing prices of imported food commodities. It is hoped that BPP stores will relieve indigenous communities from the negative economic loop that forces them to over-exploit forest resources in order to survive. Another BPP initiative has supported the distribution of maize seed to the Batak community of Tanabag, which lost most of its local maize varieties after a government ban on shifting cultivation. Following the success of this project, BPP is currently reintroducing local varieties of upland rice, maize, and sorghum to other communities.

The European branch of the organization, temporarily based in Italy, acts solely as an inter-locutor and facilitator of BPP national initiatives by disseminating information on the organization's goals and encouraging direct links between project holders and donors.

BPP, P.O. Box 263, Puerto Princesa City, Palawan, Philippines; E-mail bangsait@yahoo.com. BPP European Support Office, Via Castello 41, Maranola di Formia, 04020 Latina, Italy; E-mail Bangsa.nove@dimensione.com.

In the mangroves we collect the tuwaj, we eat their inner flesh and make lime from the shells. We chew the lime with areca nuts and betel leaves. Bungäl bungäl shells are also found here, and are very tasty. The tamiluk worms live in the inner part of the decaying mangrove trees and are good to eat. We also catch usäd (mangrove eel), the sumbiland (catfish) with harpoons and by means of tubli (Derris elliptica, a fish poison). The balud pigeon (Dacula aenea) makes nests in the mangroves, and it is easier to hunt birds here, because trees are not so tall like in the rain forest. When we are bitten by the salubay (jellyfish), we pound the bark of the bakaw (Rhizophora sp.) and place it on the affected part. The decoction of the bark is also good against scabies and to prevent wound infections. We boil the mangrove bark until the water becomes red, and we use it to dye ropes and clothes. The katungan (the area between mangrove swamps and dry forest) is the place where we get all these things. The outsiders are destroying this source of life. No one can make a forest again, so we appeal to the government to stop the plunder of our mangroves now!'

Oral testimony from a Pälawan speaker of the community of Sagi, Barangay Canipaan, Municipality of Rizal.

16

Forest, Trees and People Programme

Founded in 1945 with a mandate to improve levels of nutrition, standards of living, agricultural productivity, and conditions for rural populations, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is now the largest autonomous agency within the United Nations (UN) system. Working through the head office in Italy and many regional offices and field projects, the FAO offers development assistance, collects, analyses and disseminates information, provides policy and planning advice to governments and acts as an international forum for debate on food and agriculture issues. Active in issues of land and water development, plant and animal production, forestry, fisheries, economic and social policy, investment, nutrition, food standards and commodities and trade, the FAO is committed to encouraging sustainable agriculture and rural development, and to the development of long-term strategies for the conservation and management of natural resources.

Coordinated by FAO's Community Forestry Unit (CFU), the Forest Trees and People Program (FTPP) is a decentralized, international programme funded primarily by a multidonor trust fund that includes the governments of Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland, with additional support for national activities from various national institutions and local organizations. Taking a participatory approach, including all stakeholders from local people to policy makers, the FTPP aims to develop appropriate tools, methods and approaches to strengthen the ability of local and national insti tutions to work in participatory forestry and related fields and to share information and experiences in these areas. FTPP publications, including books, videos, slide sets, training materials and field manuals, are developed and distributed in each region by FTPP's Global Component, based at the CFU. The FTP Newsletter is a quarterly publication, produced in English, Spanish and French, which informs the wide FTP network of improved methods, community forestry activities and initiatives, and is distributed free of charge to relevant field projects, institutions, organizations and individuals.

FAO, Viale delle Terme di Caracalla, 00100 Rome,
Italy; Tel.: +39.06.57051, Fax +39.06.57053152,
Website http://www.fao.org/.

FTPP, Dr. Katherine Warner, Community Forestry
Unit, Forestry and Planning Division, Forestry
Department, FAO, Via delle Terme di Caracalla,
I-00100 Rome, Italy; Fax +39.06.52255514,
E-mail katherine.warner@fao.org, ftpp@fao.org,
Website http://www.fao.org/forestry/fon/fonp/
cfu/ftpp/en/ftpp-e.stm.

Collaborative management is something that is done by multiple stakeholders. This feature alone represents a major difference in relation to more conventional forms of management, where one party retains sole responsibility for decision-making and other stakeholders remain at the periphery.

Commonly, the approach to management is tied to tenure, which defines the bundle and allocation of rights and privileges to use the resource. In general terms, various tenure systems can be grouped into the four categories of state, private, communal and open-access property. Of course, the recognition of tenure depends on who you are. The state may not recognize some private or communal rights that are accepted by local resources users, and conversely, local users may not respect some claims of ownership made by the state through its various government bodies. At various times, new claims emerge and old ones are questioned. When disputes about rights and privileges exist, management is problematic because there will be a lack of confidence in whether decisions made by either party will be agreed to or followed.

Collaborative management implies that government and resource users agree about tenure, thus providing a foundation of confidence and legitimacy for management. If disagreements arise, collaboration implies that there will be a willingness to resolve differences and an effort to negotiate an acceptable tenure agreement. Whether it is active or passive, the hand of government is usually present in some way in collaborative management systems, even if it is restricted to approving the allocation of rights and privileges for using and managing the resource.

Often, governments are interested in setting limits on use rights and the way resources are exploited by those who hold rights. These limits can be set and imposed by the government alone, or they can be established through a negotiation process that allows the participation of those who will be affected. Collaborative management implies that a participatory process is followed because rights and limits to exploitation are central to management, as they determine who will benefit, by how much and under what constraints.'

Ingles, A., A. Musch and H. Qwist-Hoffman. 1999. The Participatory Process for Supporting CollaborativeManagement of Natural Resources: An Overview. Rome, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

17

The COAMA Programme

COAMA, represented by Martin von Hildebrand, received the Right Livelihood Award in Sweden in December 1999 for its work on the protection of biological and cultural diversity in the Colombian Amazon. The jury declared it "one of the most compelling examples in the world today of the contribution to a sustainable future that can be made by indigenous peoples". ABC

18

Upland NGO Assistance Committee

Tamano Bugtong of the the Kalahan Education Foundation was an active participant in the 1997 ­ 98 Certificate Training Course in Applied Ethnobotany organized by the People and Plants in Southeast Asia program. The KEF has been active in marketing forest fruit jams and other non-timber forest products in the Philippines and abroad through its "Forest Farms Development Project". For an overview of this initiative, consult the project report on the Biodiversity Conservation Network website at www.bcnet.org/projects/kalahan.htm. GJM

The Upland NGO Assistance Committee (UNAC), established in 1989, is a partnership between eight NGOs and academic institutions, namely, the Institute of Philippine Culture (IPC), Kalahan Education Foundation (KEF), Philippine Association for Intercultural Development (PAFID), Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP), Philippine Partnership for the Development of Human Resources in Rural Areas (PhilDHRRA), Social Development Research Center (SDRC), Structural Alternative Legal Assistance for Grassroots (SALAG), and University of the Philippines at Los Baños ­ Agroforestry Program (UAP).

Its goal is to promote upland development in which organized groups of local residents, both women and men, are responsible stewards of their resources. UNAC strengthens the community organizing capabilities of NGOs, and their technical competence in forest management, agroforestry, land tenure, and marketing of upland products. It also works at increasing NGO awareness of the importance of cultural integrity and indigenous knowledge systems and helps them promote their organizational devel- opment and sustainability. The Committee provides help in all stages of commercialization of agricultural and forest goods, including harvesting, processing and selling of products.

UNAC aims to improve and develop policies and legislation related to the uplands. Within the land tenure program, it assists indigenous communities with the legal documentation and surveys needed for land claims. In addition to disseminating information and providing advice, UNAC seeks to build capacity in NGOs through workshops, exchange visits between projects and short training courses.

The Kalahan Educational Foundation (KEF) was established to protect the ancestral lands of the Ikalahan, a forest-dwelling people living in the northern Luzon mountains, and preserve its indigenous culture. It has the first communal lease agreement in the country, giving it the legal right to develop its land into a multi-use forest. It manages 14,730 hectares of ancestral lands as part of a 25-year renewable lease entered into with DENR. KEF is into fruit, vegetable and root crop production, using value-adding techniques to market forest resources. It has also successfully adopted new technologies for producing and selling jams, marmalades, jellies and preserves of its forest products, as well as paper, brooms and other products from forest sources. Through the help of the Upland Marketing Team of the Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP), it has successfully penetrated the Metro Manila market.

From the Upland NGO Assistance Committee brochure.

Coordinadora Indígena Campesina de Agroforestería Comunitaria Centroamericana

The FAO Forest, Trees and People Programme provides rotating funds, farmer to farmer training and other forms of support to various cooperative movements through CICAFOC and their affiliated organizations in Central America. GJM

Indigenous, campesino and Afroamerican organizations ­ interested in networking, sharing experiences and developing communal activities ­ developed the concept of the Coordinadora Indígena Campesina de Agroforestería Comunitaria Centroamericana (CICAFOC; Peasant and Indigenous Coordination for Central American Community Agroforestry). It was officially established in 1994 during a meeting on Central American community forestry in Turrialba, Costa Rica. CICAFOC is now recognized by the Consejo Centro-Americano de Bosques (CCAB; Central American Council of Forests) as an advisory committee through which farmers can articulate their priorities and suggestions in order to influence forestry policies. The primary goal of CICAFOC is to promote the rational use of natural resources and the restoration of degraded habitats. In addition, it encourages management alternatives that are compatible with community development and conservation of the environment. Since its founding, CICAFOC has implemented, regionally and locally, a five-part agenda consisting of: (1) agroforestry; (2) community organization; (3) exchange of experiences; (4) law and policy; and (5) research. At present, CICAFOC comprises 119 grassroots organizations that share the common focus of man- aging and maintaining access to their agricultural lands, forests and natural resources.

Among other regional initiatives, CICAFOC is active in promoting the Corredor Biológico Mesoamericano (CBM; Mesoamerican Biological Corridor), which crosses the seven Central American countries (Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama and Mexico's five southern states (Campeche, Chiapas, Quintano Roo, Tabasco and Yucatan). A region of diverse climate, geography and geology, it is considered to hold seven percent of global biodiversity.

Alberto Chinchilla Cascante, Regional Coordinator, CICAFOC, Junaforc, A.P. 1720-2050, San Pedro, San Jose, Costa Rica; Tel. +506.2568248, Fax +506.2223371.

Benjie Navarro, Program Officer, Upland NGO Assistance Committee, 59 C. Salvador Street, Loyola Heights, Quezon City, The Philippines; Tel. +63.2.961335, Fax +63.2.987538.

For the majority of Central Americans, the name Darién is associated with an impenetrable forest that impedes the passage between the north and the south of the continent, and with the fact that at one time this tropical forest served to train rangers of the American army and contra-insurgency troops of Latin American armies. But what most Central Americans do not know is that Darién Province, located in the extreme south of Panama, is the region of the country with the lowest standard of living. It is also the place where the fight for the use of forest resources, the weakness of the Panamanian government in the face of large forestry concessionaires and the implantation of a socially exclusive, privatized model of conservation converge with structural problems of production and marketing. This opens the way to a potential conflict whose manifestations and results are difficult to predict.'

Carlos Cruz, J. 1996. Darién: El tapón de la paciencia está por explotar. Pages 17 ­ 24 in Herrera Bolaños, F., editor, La Agroforestería Comunitaria: Una Alternativa Indígena y Campesina para el Desarrollo Humano Sostenible en Centroamérica. CICAFOC Memoria del proceso 1995-1996. San José, CICAFOC.

20

View Points to Consider...Issues to explore

For the Viewpoints section, we have chosen four excerpts from key books of the 1990s that present general reflections and specific case studies (from Africa and Latin America) on the challenges of community-based conservation. ABC

Misreading the African Landscape

Detailing the material aspects of environmental history provides evidence against which to assess diverse representations of landscape. Nevertheless, it is also fundamental for comprehending inhabitants' landscape readings, since it is in part these changing material conditions and responses of landscape to use which villagers reflect on. Put another way, the relations of production of `knowledge' and local discourse concerning landscape of the Kissidougou area (which forms part of the "forest-savanna transition zone" in Guinea, West Africa) are rooted in lived history and its experience. Such experiential and historical issues are all too often overlooked by `discourse' analyses in their focus on how things are represented. This basis in lived historical experience is, furthermore, a key feature differentiating villagers' representations of landscape history from the discourse of scientists and policy-makers. For in constituting the problematic of forest-savanna transition, natural scientists have formulated historical scenarios on the basis of deductive methods without using historical methods or data sets. The essence of this study is the challenge which ecological history and local experience and comprehension of it make to these `scientific' meanings. As a landscape, the forest-savanna mosaic of Kissidougou has been read backwards: reversing this reading will simultaneously suggest reversals of power.

A central aim of this book is to recover the landscape readings of Kissidougou's inhabitants, and to put them into wider circulation. In establishing competing claims to truth about forest-savanna dynam- ics and landscape history, and in carrying very different implications for the control of rural resources in their links to particular institu- tions, inhabitants' landscape readings might also be considered as part of (a very different) discourse. Yet during investigation we heard less a single truth than contested opinion. Among the prefecture's Kissi- and Kuranko-speaking farmers, there is a plethora of ways of representing landscape history and dynamics which can vary in their implications for different people: for example for the resource control and claims of different women and men, and of longstanding citizens or recently arrived strangers. It would thus be wrong for us to portray a homogeneous `local' perspective on landscape and its making. Rather, we attempt to give a sense of the terms, operation and discur- sive structuring of focal debate.

In addressing landscape representation in this way, this book joins a theoretical alignment across a number of areas of social sci- ence. Cultural geographers have recently retheorised `landscapes' as not only the material outcomes of historical interactions between society and environment ­ a longstanding focus of geographical work ­ but also as open to ­ in a sense constituted by ­ diverse interpreta- tions. Often treating landscape metaphorically as `text' or `spectacle', this geographical work examines how its reading or viewing is embedded within discursive fields linked to particular institutions, and how these in turn help to shape socio-cultural processes. In social anthropological inquiry, elucidating particular local representations of landscape has long been an issue, although often tangentially when considering other issues. More recent studies have, however, focused directly on ecology and landscape, and dovetail with those of geogra- phers in considering how representations are the effects of discursive formations and are deployed in political relations.

In the case of Kissidougou, the past century has seen some major changes in the wider political economy. These include the effects of three severe political regimes: the rise and decline of Samori Touré's Dioula state (1860s ­ 1893 in Kissidougou), the French colonial administration (1893 ­ 1958), and the state socialist `revolutionary' First Republic under Sékou Touré (1958 ­ 1984). They include some major economic changes: for instance the early use of Kissidougou as a labour reserve during nineteenth-century slavery and early colonial rule, and the rise and fall of rubber, oil palm product and coffee export economies. In some periods populations have increased, but in others they have declined due to war and economic or political outmigra- tion, and seasonal migration patterns have altered. Our historical analysis will trace how these changes have articulated with local social relations in influencing land use, and in the making of the for- est-savanna landscape.

As we came to comprehend villagers' readings of the forest- savanna landscape, and the sense these made of the historical evi- dence of vegetation change, their contrast with the readings preva- lent in policy circles forced us to consider the latter more critically. While we had originally treated scientific and policy knowledge broadly as `empirical reality', grounded in a large body of scientific lit- erature, we now had to see it as emanating from a particular soci