LIMBE CONFERENCE RECOMMENDATIONS

WORKING GROUP TWO

PARTICIPATORY APPROACHES TO FOREST MANAGEMENT AND CONSERVATION

Working Group Two noted that experience in participatory forestry was diverse, often strongly influenced by site-specific variables and was mostly relatively recent in origin, much was currently being learned. The Limbe Conference had provided the opportunity for a wealth of interesting work to be presented and the Working Group discussions had inevitably largely comprised interesting case-specific material. The broad findings of the Working Group are presented, and phrased as recommendations where appropriate.

When and why a participatory approach to forest management is appropriate

1. The Working Group identified three major reasons for adopting a participatory approach:
   • the pragmatic argument that:
     - the needs of local people cannot be ignored in areas of high human population
     - the involvement of local people in forest management is necessary to ensure long term sustainability
   • on the grounds of social justice/equity, local people should be given a voice in decisions over the management of forest resources used by them for their livelihoods, and conflicting claims and interests should be considered;
   • at international or donor level, pressure may be exerted to adopt participatory approaches.

2. Participatory approaches were considered likely to be particularly difficult to implement when:
   • the conservation need was urgent and immediate (since developing a participatory approach takes considerable time)
   • a very high human population was living in and/or around a very small forest resource (since demands on that resource will be very great)
   • different stakeholders were unwilling to negotiate (an example of an important stakeholder here is the government. If there is no national policy support for local people's participation in forestry, implementation is likely to be blocked until a change in policy is forthcoming).

3. Following from the above, the Working Group strongly recommended that government and donor support be given to participatory approaches wherever reasonable areas (the definition of which will be situation-specific) of forest production and/or conservation interest are located in areas of high human population.

   Note: A substantial number of participants in the Working Group considered that a participatory approach to forest management and conservation should always be advocated, regardless of circumstances.

Stakeholders in the forest resource

4. The Working Group noted that participatory and community forestry are often considered to be synonymous. However, care was needed in the use of the term 'community'. With regard to forest use, a community may be defined according to:
   • geography (i.e. physical location; this being commonly used in legal definitions)
   • interest in the forest resource (a more useful term when investigating the various stakeholders, but which could also mean that the user community was spatially dis-aggregated, with groups sharing a common interest being located even in different countries).

5. The Group felt it essential to understand the complexities of forest use before embarking on participatory forest management. For this reason, a detailed stakeholder analysis was recommended. A practical definition of a stakeholder was suggested as 'anyone who may act against the participatory process if he or she was not included in discussions'. Stakeholder analysis could particularly assist in clarifying:
   • the linkages in forest use (both conflicts and convergences of interest of different users)
   • power structures.
     Stakeholder analyses could not be conducted in a hurry; they required time and careful thought. Particular care was needed not to interfere or alter power structures in the process of analysis through bringing into the public domain information that was sensitive and valuable to other parties (especially when concerned with matters such as land tenure).

6. The Group strongly recommended that considerable time be allowed for discussions with stakeholders and that ways be sought of including in this process those who might otherwise be left out, for example:
   • absentee groups (in some cases, highly influential community members who might spend much of their time away, yet retain a strong influence on local decision-making
   • the less powerful and the vulnerable (in many societies, these may be predominately women, although this should not be assumed automatically)
   • those whose activities are technically illegal, and who thus have something to hide (for example, hunters and collectors of endangered plant or animal species).

7. The Working Group recognised the existence of traditional authorities in many local communities and recommended that ways of working with them be established as appropriate to individual circumstances. (The role of traditional authorities varied in the case studies discussed at the meeting, as did the extent of their equity, accountability and representativeness of the existing population; ways of working thus need to be taylored to specific circumstances.)

Planning a course of action

8. In working with local people, the Group noted that it was important to try to achieve consensus in developing a course of action and it therefore recommended that time and effort was put into building such consensus. However, it was also recognised that in some circumstances it may not be possible to reach consensus, and that compromise was needed.

9. At a broader level, the Working Group recognised that participatory approaches to forestry may also entail shifts in power, and effectively taking sides (an obvious example being a logging company interested in quick profits versus local people interested in sustainable forestry development). In such cases, reaching consensus was not an issue.

10. The Group recommended that considerable thought be given to the role of incentives in any participatory forestry initiative. Overall, it was felt that at the local level there should be no need to use incentives if the approach being adopted was truly participatory. However, the provision of alternatives for goods or services foregone was recognised as often being necessary, as long as such provision was strongly linked with project/forest management objectives.

11. The Group recommended that the assumed link between the development of alternatives and reduced forest utilisation was closely monitored, since early evidence from a number of projects indicated that the link may not occur in practice.

12. The use of incentives as far as government staff were concerned was a somewhat different issue, and depended on national circumstances. It might be necessary for projects to provide staff with subsistence payments when making field visits

Implementing participatory forest management

13. Since the experience of most of the Working Group participants lay in the earlier stages of participatory processes; the practicalities of implementing participatory forest management were not discussed in any depth. It was noted that the level or mode of local people's participation was likely to vary, and indeed should be tailored to local circumstances. However, it was recommended that local people should be involved as much as possible in all aspects of forest management, including:
    • boundary demarcation and patrolling
    • forest resource assessment
    • development of forest management plans
    • harvesting and monitoring.

14. The Group strongly recommended that care be taken to clearly define management objectives (conservation, production, multiple use, etc) and to link activities directly to them. In the case of multiple objectives, it should be made clear how each objective relates to the others.

15. The need for knowledge on sustainable rates of harvesting of a wide variety of forest products was recognised, and the Group recommended that participatory investigations with local people were carried out.

Forest policy and legislation

16. Existing forest policy and legal frameworks vary widely amongst the countries represented in the Working Group. That said, it was recognised that there was often a lack of respect for the legal system, and it was recommended that existing laws were better implemented, and greater accountability demanded of those responsible for their implementation.

17. The Group further recommended that where new participatory approaches to forestry were being adopted, an appropriate legal framework was developed. Importantly, this should be open to modification or clarification in the light of field experience.

18. Where changes in policy and legislation were being implemented, there was a substantial need for staff re-training (possibly amounting to complete re-orientation) and the Group strongly recommended that adequate provision be made for this

19. Finally, the Group recommended that greater effort be put into the dissemination of information about forest legislation, as often this was poorly understood or unknown at the local level.