In his opening statement, Michel Oksenberg, president of the East-West Center, noted that the forces driving deforestation in Asia are complex and need to be "recast" to better illuminate both problems and possible solutions. A. Terry Rambo, director of the EWC's Program on Environment, stated that the fundamental resource conflicts between local communities and the state are apparent not only in Asia, but also in other parts of the world, as evidenced by the recent peasant uprising in Chiapas, Mexico. He stressed the need to understand the relationships between resource degradation and social unrest, which threaten both the environment and the region's social and economic stability.
According to Network Director Mark Poffenberger, the world's tropical forest ecosystems have suffered from extensive, successive disturbances over the past century. Today their existence is threatened in many developing nations. The forces driving forest destruction have been poorly understood. While it is statistically possible to calculate the estimated rate of deforestation in hectares per day, month, or year, this exercise conveys the impression that forests are present today and gone tomorrow. Although some forests do disappear abruptly through clear-felling or devastating fires, most Asian forest ecosystems instead suffer a sequential process of degradation. This occurs through a series of human interventions that result from a lack of management controls. While it is convenient to lay the blame for deforestation on a specific user group, whether it be loggers, swidden farmers, or women fuelwood headloaders, more often there are multiple actors involved in disturbing the same tract of forest at different points in time. Hundreds of millions of hectares of forest land in South and Southeast Asia are overexploited through selective logging, illegal cutting, grazing, migrant farming, and fire. Poffenberger reported that as a consequence most of Asia's forests are degrading over time, "ratcheting down" biologically as they lose biomass, diversity, topsoil, and their complex structural and functional integrity.
Attempted solutions to the problems of deforestation are often misguided and ineffective. Too commonly they are defined in terms of capital investments, state-of-the-art technologies, and enhancement of modern professional capacities. Yet the huge foreign investments and new technological fixes of past decades have had relatively little impact, as witnessed by unabated rates of forest degradation. A recent World Bank report (Ritchie 1992) noted that after spending US$1.5 billion on forestry projects in Asia between 1979 and 1990, "the Bank's investments have had a negligible impact on borrowers' forestry sectors as a whole." Even in the well-funded, best-protected "Project Tiger" parks in India, the amount of forest land classified as degraded increased an estimated 186 percent between 1983 and 1989, while good quality forest, with canopy closure of over 40 percent, declined by 50 percent during the same period (Cherail 1993). If the most intensively "managed" and heavily funded wildlife parks in India are deteriorating at such a relentless pace, reserve and protected forests with far fewer guards and much smaller budgets appear to have even less chance of surviving.
Forest management systems evolving since the nineteenth-century colonial era are still largely premised on models of unilateral, centralized state control; their primary objective has been timber extraction. With the rapid expansion of human populations and the transformation of national politics and economies, however, the world has changed dramatically.
Public forest lands cover anywhere from 25 to 75 percent of Asian countries' total land areas. Currently, most South and Southeast Asian governments still possess sole legal rights to virtually all of their national forests. The forest agencies entrusted with the protection of these lands are composed of only thousands or tens of thousands of staff, most of whom are office-bound and heavily burdened with administrative duties. Despite their limited field time, these staff are responsible for monitoring the forest use of tens of millions of rural inhabitants and migrants, as well as loggers and livestock. The ongoing failure to stem forest degradation Asia-wide indicates that forest departments alone are simply incapable of such an unrealistic mandate.
The Asia Sustainable Forest Management Network has identified a growing number of foresters and planners who acknowledge that the most promising strategy to stabilize forest resources may be through the creation of partnerships between rural people and forest agencies. Network field studies indicate that when given clear rights and responsibilities, disempowered forest communities are proving they can work as allies with government field staff and NGOs to establish effective access controls and install regulated forest use systems. This strategy, however, implies a massive transfer of responsibility to hundreds of thousands of forest communities throughout the Asia region.
A strong political commitment is essential from government if it expects to successfully devolve and delegate authority to rural communities. Often this transfer will require a shift away from powerful, private commercial interests at the risk of alienating them. Many Asian forest departments are just beginning to understand the advantages of working with forest communities to build coalitions that can protect and rehabilitate forests. Yet government agencies tend to lack experience in dealing directly with forest communities. There is even less precedent in these agencies with cooperative endeavors involving rural people as equal decision makers and partners. Past alliances of foresters have been primarily limited to industry. Techniques, procedures, and institutional norms for decentralizing forest management are not yet well developed or tested.
Nonetheless, the transition is under way and, more than likely, will be irreversible. Certain governments are starting to reorient their focus from absorbing large loans for technically oriented plantation projects to addressing the more fundamental institutional and political problems driving forest destruction. While the process urgently needs to be accelerated, Asian foresters, NGOs, and social scientists are collaborating and making positive headway in adapting their strategies to meet a changing forest management environment entering the twenty-first century.
Network research has established that the strength behind these initiatives is emerging in the village. Many thousands of communities in Asia today are taking action to protect their threatened natural forests. In India, Thailand, Philippines, and Indonesia, tribal communities are building upon traditional resource management practices as well as developing new strategies to gain authority over forest lands and water. Not surprisingly, these grassroots environmental efforts are most common in the poorest regions, where villagers are suffering most from growing resource scarcities. In India's eastern tribal belt, Santhats and other tribal people are dependent on forest tubers as a staple food for six months of the dry season each year. If the forest cannot be stabilized to meet such compelling subsistence needs, its disappearance may eventually dismantle entire villages, forcing them to migrate to urban slums and destroying their economy, community, and traditions in the process.
Asia's forests are critically important. Natural forests directly contribute to the survival of over 100 million of Asia's poorest tribal people. Another 500 million rural people heavily depend on forest-based livelihoods (Ritchie 1992). More than one billion lowland farmers in Asia rely on upland forests and the watersheds they Protect to control flooding and provide a stable supply of irrigation water. Asia's vast population of city dwellers is dependent on water and electrical power originating far upstream. The region's forests are also distinctive for their rich biological diversity. The tropical moist forests of Southeast Asia alone possess 20-25 percent of the earth's plant species.
Yet, Asia's forests are among the world's most threatened, noted Network Coordinator Betsy McGean. Pressures on the forests stem from the burgeoning human populations that surround, inhabit, and directly depend on them, as well as from the region's rapid economic growth. These forces are amplified by inappropriate government policies that fail to ensure sound forest management. Asia's population is expected to climb sharply, from the current 2.8 billion to 4.8 billion by 2025 (
FN 2). Today it is estimated that 80 percent of all Asian timber is used as subsistence fuelwood (Lean and Hinrichsen 1992) (FN 3). Furthermore, energy demands in Asia are doubling every 12 years.In upland areas of the Philippines, Vietnam, and other mountainous forest regions with high concentrations of ethnic communities, watershed degradation is perpetuating a counterproductive migration cycle. Due to deteriorating upland conditions, communities are forced to migrate to the lowlands. Simultaneously, fast-growing lowland communities are flooded out from upland ecological destruction and have nowhere to move but to the marginal uplands.
Forest degradation causes obvious environmental and economic destabilization to the larger society. Its potential to create social and political turmoil is less realized but equally threatening. Past insurrection movements in Asia have often been centered in upland forest areas. Disempowered tribal and migrant communities in conflict with the government over access to critical resources may be driven to armed resistance. Conflict frequently results in further land alienation and acceleration of forest destruction.
At present, nearly one-third of South and Southeast Asia is still covered by forests. But these ecosystems are disappearing at an estimated rate of 3.5 million hectares annually (
FN 4). Even more significant in scale, hundreds of millions of hectares are being degraded annually through excessive cutting, hacking, overgrazing, burning, and other human-induced activities. The era of unsustainable timber extraction is coming to a close. Forest stocking levels in India, Thailand, and the Philippines are already so exhausted that these countries are now increasingly dependent on imports. Even with billion-dollar investments in plantation establishment, it is projected that Asian timber and forest export revenues will decline steeply from 1988's US$8.25 billion, and reverse to become import expenses of an estimated US$20 billion by the year 2000 (Ritchie 1992).Unfortunately, aside from gross deforestation statistics, little information is collected regarding processes and rates of biological change within Asia's forest ecosystems. A brief review of national forestry statistics for select countries dramatically illustrates the extent of the problem.
Summaries of the current conditions of national forest resources were presented by Romeo Acosta from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources in the Philippines, eminent Indonesian forest ecologist Kuswata Kartawinata, Komon Pragtong from the Thai Royal Forest Department, and Arvind Khare, director of the Indian Society for the Promotion of Wastelands Development.
The rich tropical forests that covered one-half of the Philippines in 1934 were reduced to 20 percent by 1990. According to Korten (1993), less than 3 percent of the Philippines is currently under old-growth forest. Driven by massive logging (particularly accelerated in the 1970s and 1980s), combined with the conversion of forests to agricultural land by a swelling rural population, this loss of forest cover continues to extend to even the steepest and most fragile watersheds. Of the nation's 15 million hectares of public forest land, an estimated 10-14 million hectares are degraded to varying degrees. Romeo Acosta commented that in the post-Marcos era, hundreds of millions of dollars have flooded into the country in the form of environmental loans. Most of these resources have been allocated for contract reforestation of such fast-growing species as Gmelina arborea and Albizzia falcateria. But such programs have been highly disappointing in their poor rates of survival, inability to cover large areas, and lack of responsiveness to the needs of the 13-18 million people who inhabit the uplands.
In Indonesia, 144 million hectares of land are legally designated forests, representing almost three-fourths of the nation's land area. Kuswata Kartawinata noted that by 1989, nearly one-half of the country's forests had been leased out to 562 timber concessions, and 50 percent of all concession areas had already been logged. Local population pressures have contributed to the progressive forest disturbance. Indonesia's population is currently growing at a rate of 1.7 percent annually. This growth contributes three million new citizens each year, 64 percent of whom are rural and often forest-resource dependent. Kartawinata explained that currently approximately 44 percent (67 million hectares) of Indonesia's total forest area has been transformed to logged-over or secondary forest (45.6 million hectares), swidden (11.4 million hectares), or grasslands (10 million hectares). While the government proposes an ambitious target of reforesting 8 million hectares with fast-growing species under its industrial forestry scheme (HTI) and other programs, no concrete rehabilitation plans exist for the remaining 59 million hectares of degraded forest lands. Strategies to similarly reforest this additional area through plantations would be highly impractical, requiring at least 66 years with an investment of $300 million annually. Indonesian planners, scientists, and NGOs are increasingly convinced that more rapid, less-costly alternatives should be identified to regenerate degraded forests in ways that respond to local communities. Indonesia's second 35-year National Plan, beginning in April 1994, might seriously consider a broad-based program of forest rehabilitation through natural regeneration under community protection.
Komon Pragtong, director of the Community Forestry Branch of the Thai Royal Forest Department, noted that in forest coverage Thailand was 53 percent in 1961, but had declined to 27 percent by 1991. Of a total 23 million hectares of forest land, it is estimated that 9 million are in an advanced stage of degradation, and up to another 7 million hectares lie in various earlier phases of degradation. In response, between 1987 and 1991 government plantation reforestation schemes have replanted 27,500-45,000 hectares per year-less than 1 percent of the degraded lands in need of rehabilitation (
FN 5). Considerably more promising was the belief of Lert Chuntanaparb, a leading Thai forest scientist, that if forests were allowed to naturally regenerate under effective community protection, it would only require 14 years for 80 percent of the forest land to recover.
Arvind Khare reported that the Indian subcontinent faces an equally daunting challenge in reversing the process of forest degradation. Recent estimates indicate that "good" forests may cover less than 10 percent of the national territory. He noted that even where forest canopy density exceeds 40 percent (the official Indian indicator of healthy forest cover), forest productivity may be as little as one-eighth its capacity due to continuing disturbance from grazing, cutting, and fire (
FN 6). While the productivity of India's natural forests is steadily declining, demands grow as the nation's population approaches one billion people. India, already the largest wood consumer in the world, uses over 90 percent of its wood products as subsistence fuel.Competition between rural communities, commercial interests, and government agencies for scarce forest resources in Asia has historically resulted in countless social conflicts and tensions. Hundreds of millions of dollars invested in private and community forest plantations in the 1970s and 1980s have failed to slow natural forest degradation or respond significantly to local domestic needs for fuel, fodder, and other biomass and non-timber products. Instead, eucalyptus and other fast-growing species continue to end up in urban markets, either sold for construction purposes and pulp, or lying unused and wasted due to regional market gluts. The panelists concluded that new approaches were desperately needed to ensure the productive and sustainable management of Asia's natural forests. Strategies need to emphasize natural regeneration under community management, rather than large-scale commercial timber exploitation or monoculture plantations.
The panel on natural regeneration comprised Pat Dugan, Alex Moad, and Ajit Banerjee. Pat Dugan managed commercial timber operations in the Philippines for twenty years before assisting the government and donor agencies to better design sustainable forest management systems. Alex Moad, a tropical forest ecologist, works with the International Forestry Program of the USDA Forest Service. Ajit Banerjee pioneered community forestry programs in West Bengal before joining the World Bank.
Ajit Banerjee defined natural regeneration as the processes through which all vegetative constituents of a forest ecosystem renew themselves after disturbances, with or without outside manipulations. Both time-tested, indigenous systems of forest management and commercial timber-stand management practices of the past have been largely dependent on processes of natural forest regeneration. After a year or two of swidden farming or selective felling, forests were normally left to regenerate naturally with varying degrees of manipulation. Only during the last two to three decades have foresters emphasized "reforestation" through artificial plantations, typically fast-growing, monoculture systems. In recent years, however, plantation forestry has come under increasing scrutiny as the dominant and favored forest management strategy.
According to Banerjee, the establishment of plantations of exotic timber species was adopted because degraded forests were failing to regenerate naturally. Natural regeneration was frequently slowed by ongoing disturbances within the ecosystem. Forest agencies and concessionaires were unable to adequately protect forests after initial logging. At the same time, overexploitation eroded the natural resilience of the ecosystem to generate new growth. Traditional community forest use practices and protection systems also broke down as indigenous rights declined and local authority to control access and protect forest lands was lost. Simultaneously, growing local and migrant population pressures often reduce fallow periods, diminishing soil fertility and pushing rural farmers onto more marginal forest lands. Without effective protection to prevent further exploitation and allow for a period of recovery, the natural process of secondary forest succession is slowed, or ceases entirely with even further ecological degeneration occurring.
As poorly protected natural forests repeatedly failed to regenerate, and as industrial demands for raw materials rose, foreign donors and national governments began advocating the adoption of fast-growing plantations and increased capital investments. Banerjee mentioned that, ironically, the lack of access controls driving the degradation of natural forests also generated similar management problems for plantations. In both cases, effective protection was a fundamental prerequisite for forest stability. In fact, monoculture plantations of exotic species often proved to be even more vulnerable to natural disturbances and far more costly to establish.
Alex Moad stressed that artificial plantation forests and natural forests are not interchangeable systems. They differ fundamentally in terms of composition and function. Comprising simple, spatially distinct, and single-tier stand structures of even-aged trees, plantations are characterized by one, or at most several, species. Species selected for planting are often fast-growing exotics. Plantations typically yield poles and pulp for industry. In contrast, natural forests in the tropics are complex, species-diverse biological systems that are spatially integrated within the larger agro-ecological landscape. Natural forests form multiple tiers of herb, shrub, and canopy layers, and generate a wide variety of timber and non-timber forest products. Non-wood products from natural forests are used by forest communities to meet subsistence food, fuel, fodder, medicine, and other basic requirements. Natural forests simultaneously serve multiple ecological functions far more effectively than plantations, including rapid nutrient cycling and turnover, topsoil stabilization, groundwater retention, and improved surface water regulation and quality. The synergistic combination of these protective services significantly enhances agricultural land productivity.
According to Moad and his colleagues, because they are typically imported from temperate zone contexts, both the species selected and the silvicultural techniques adopted for plantation systems are often ill-suited to the natural environments of many tropical sites. Field evidence suggests that the success of these plantations depends on a certain set of conditions. For one, plantation forests in the tropics generally require biologically productive sites with fertile soils in order to flourish. As agricultural expansion has converted the vast majority of optimal land from forest to field already, the world's remaining tropical forests are surviving on marginal sites with poor soils. Plantations usually do poorly on such lands. Banerjee reports that the dry deciduous forest soils of southwest Bengal, for example, are characterized by nutrient deficiencies and a series of lateritic bands that hold little water and obstruct root systems. In this region, experience shows that native sal (Shorea robusta), with aggressive root systems adapted to these soil conditions, consistently outperform and even outcompete exotic plantation species such as eucalyptus.
Dormancy periods in temperate climates, Moad suggests, appear to fortify seedling resistance and reduce risk of pests and disease in imported species. The lowland humid tropics lack a distinct dry season when seeds can lie dormant. Consequently, plantation systems in the humid tropics have proven highly vulnerable to pests. Outbreaks tend to spread rapidly and often spell the destruction of an entire stand. Finally, when plantations are established on public forest lands, the management rights and responsibilities of local communities are often unclear, leading to local conflicts and misuse. Due to these limitations, plantation forestry has proven to be neither ecologically sustainable nor responsive to local social and economic conditions.
In contrast, the rejuvenation of natural forests by relying on the natural processes of secondary forest succession has distinct socio-institutional, economic, and ecological advantages over plantation strategies. Unlike plantations, which tend to be tightly constrained by budgetary and bureaucratic constraints, the process of natural regeneration is not tied to a "project cycle" and is free to begin as soon as the community is empowered to protect. As a no-cost (or low-cost) option, natural regeneration offers scope for rapid and widespread replication. In forest succession, pioneering species have been naturally selected to adapt to marginal conditions, colonize rapidly, and mature and reproduce early. Natural regeneration offers an efficient system of vegetative recovery closely adapted to local site conditions and much more likely than plantations to survive over the long term.
The inherent resilience of disturbed forest systems to recover has been well documented. Small-scale disturbances, species dieback, and rapid regrowth in patches are an integral part of a tropical forest's natural dynamics. According to Pat Dugan and his colleagues (Dugan et al. 1989; Uebelhor 1989; J. Jarvie, pers. com., 1993), in Asia's remnant forests the natural regrowth of seedlings five to ten years after logging ranges from 2,000 per hectare in the mixed teak/dry deciduous forests of North Thailand to 7,500-10,000 per hectare in the moist dipterocarp forests of Mindanao and Kalimantan. However, as forests undergo a progressive series of larger, more severe disturbances from outside forces, their biological resilience and capacity to regenerate is diminished. Banerjee noted that beyond a certain stage of ecological deterioration, the potential "window of opportunity" for these forests to recover naturally through rootstock and seedling regeneration is lost (see Figure 2, Stages 5 and 6). Intervention is crucial before this advanced process of topsoil and biomass impoverishment is reached. In India, this late stage of degradation often involves digging up tree roots for fuel -- the final act in destroying the forest's biological capital. In upland Southeast Asia, the analogous phase would involve severe sheet and gully erosion on devegetated watersheds. In both cases, establishing effective community-resource use controls before severe degradation occurs can facilitate rapid regeneration; however, once precious topsoils are lost, much more costly, time-consuming technical approaches are required.
Figure 2
Unlike plantations, natural regeneration reestablishes a multiple-tier, mixed natural forest that increases biodiversity and supports indigenous germplasm. In turn, this biodiversity helps sustain cultural diversity, specifically in traditional forest users who are heavily dependent on the forest for their survival and highly knowledgeable about its ecology and ethnobotany. Secondary forest succession also has related equity and gender implications. Unlike plantation forests, the gestation period for early benefits from natural regeneration is short; non-wood products and biomass for local consumption are almost immediately available. Natural forest product flows, especially non-timber forest products, are characteristically diverse, seasonal, and subsistence-oriented (versus market-based). The benefits of forest regeneration tend to channel disproportionately to those villagers most reliant upon forest products for their livelihoods. These include the poorest and most marginalized subgroups of society-tribals, landless, and women - who often serve as the primary collectors and processors of non-timber forest products. Tribal populations often depend on the tubers and fruit as a primary food source and as their sole "famine" food in periods of drought. The Thai research team found that in the dry dipterocarp forests of Dong Yai in Northeast Thailand, villagers rely on a wide range of forest flora and fauna to supply 80 percent of their daily diet.
Throughout the developing world, as forest ecosystems are destroyed, entire cultures have been lost. The panelists repeatedly stressed that there are no substitutes for natural forests in terms of their biological, hydrological, or economic functions, nor in their ability to ensure the continuance of forest-based culture.
Natural forest regeneration under decentralized community management will not necessarily solve all forestry needs, including the demand for highly intensive industrial plantations. However, in cases where such community-based systems have been initiated and allowed to spread, they are proving an important alternative to address the vast tracts of logged-over forests lying in various states of degradation throughout Asia. The great advantage of participatory forest management is that it offers a flexible framework for protection, rehabilitation, and sustained management. Given the complexity of tropical forest systems, combined with the cultural diversity of community user groups, an adaptable strategy that can be fine-tuned to locally specific contexts is essential. The participatory strategy allies and promotes two powerful potentials: nature's ability to regenerate itself after disturbance, and community capacity to control access and protect against unsustainable forest uses. This major shift in concept -- from centralized control to decentralized management favoring communities -- shifts radically the economies of scale. The process requires a move away from mechanization and extensive, standard silvicultural prescriptions to maximize wood, and toward small-scale, innovative strategies that ensure a steady, intensively managed flow of wood and non-wood products in a holistic, sustainable ecosystem.
As Pat Dugan commented, "Management concepts and systems continue to be reexamined in terms of their underlying philosophies, effectiveness, and capability to respond to change. One manifestation of this general trend is the devolution of decision-making authority to small groups of individuals. In forestry, there has been this 'big is beautiful' concept which just hasn't worked." Dugan explained that the ecological impact of large-scale conventional timber extraction methods, such as soil compaction resulting from the use of heavy logging equipment, suppresses forest regeneration. Consequently, it may be far better to rely on environmentally friendly technologies for smaller timber extraction, such as animals and lightweight tools used by local communities, facilitating more labor-intensive, cost-effective timber management.
Dugan notes that household-based, intensive timber-stand management systems are well-illustrated in Imazu, Gifu Prefecture, Japan. Viewing forest management as a long-term, intergenerational investment, local households gain substantial income from holdings of only 0.8 hectare. For more than 250 years, communities have practiced a labor-intensive, highly selective logging in which growth and yield data have been carefully recorded. Coniferous species in the natural forest are intensively "cultivated." To ensure that at least 80 percent crown density is retained, harvest is limited to one tree per hectare each year.
Transforming Forest Management: The West Bangal CaseDue to its impressive scale, the eastern India region presents a compelling case for natural forest regeneration. Over the past 10-15 years, an estimated 1-2 million hectares of sal forest (Shorea robusta) have been regenerating under the protection and management of community groups in Orissa, South Bihar, and Southwest Bangal. As Ajit Banerjee recounted, the forest management history of West Bengal highlights difficulties with conventional rehabilitation practices faced by many forest departments across Asia, as well as alternative community-based strategies offering more promise in regenerating degraded forest lands. In the early twentieth century, the forests of West Bengal were privately owned and managed on a coppice rotation of 30 years. Clear tenure, effective private access controls, minimal outside interference, and a long rotation period allowed the forest ecosystem to successfully recover through natural regeneration. As population pressures and commercial timber needs mounted during World War II and the early Independence era from 1940 to 1955, felling rotation periods were drastically reduced to 3-4 years, compromising the regeneration process. Forest stocking levels plummeted during this period, and use became unsustainable. The forests were transferred to the public domain in 1956 when they were acquired by the West Bengal government. The Forest Department adopted the silvicultural management system of coppice with standards (mother trees), fixing the coppice rotation at 15 years. Facing strong pressures to generate annual state revenues and supply growing industrial needs, the agency's primary mandate was to manage the forests for commercial ends. For all practice purpose, this strong commercial orientation excluded consideration of local needs. As a result, very poor, highly forest-dependent communities came into direct conflict with the Forest Department. Despite intensive efforts by the divisional forest officer and staff to protect the forests, the standards suffered illegal felling, and the coppice crop was steadily degraded. Protection guards were greatly outnumbered by surrounding local population who felt excluded. Forest communities, alienated from their own forms of sustainable management, began overcutting fuelwood, grazing their cattle, burning, and hunting without regard to the ecological problems caused by their use practices. Natural regeneration failed miserably in most sites, while the forests became so unproductive that villagers even resorted to uprooting coppice stumps for fuelwood. Ajit Banerjee, the local forest officer who witnessed the crisis firsthand, recalls that at the time, "Forest use was out of control." The natural regeneration strategies that had been introduced by the Forest Department to sustain "scientific" forest management, primarily for commercial operations, were rapidly resulting in the production of wastelands. The basic needs and psyche of local populations were ignored, and the vital requirements for natural regeneration to succeed were impossible to ensure. By the early 1970s, it was clear to Banerjee and a few other Forest Department officers that the regular system of forest exploitation and attempted protection by government was no longer viable. An experiment using alternative methods was initiated in a badly degraded forest tract of Arabari range in Midnapore District. In consultation with the eleven surrounding villages, the divisional forest officer entered into an informal partnership with the communities. In exchange for their voluntary protection of the forest, the community would be entitled to a guaranteed share of forest benefits, including all non-timber products and 25 percent of the revenue from sal timber. Although the arrangement was unofficial, it succeeded in adequately clarifying in the minds of the villagers a new system of shared responsibilities and rights to the forest. Under community protection, natural regeneration of the sal scrub proceeded well. In many areas, forests rapidly recovered while simultaneously satisfying the daily, legitimate needs of resident communities. Ushering in a new era of "joint forest management" in West Bengal -- and more recently in fourteen other Indian states -- the Arabari case underscored dual capacities: local communities' ability to cooperate with each other and with the Forest Department in forest management, and the natural capability of degraded forests to regenerate if given respite from disturbances. |
In order to achieve premium-quality wood (which generates US$2,000 per cubic meter), the management strategy deliberately slows early growth, allowing rapid mean annual increments to accrue only after crowns emerge in 40-50 years.
Indigenous people and their traditional forestry practices have much to teach us about the processes of natural forest regeneration, local forms of social organization, and intensive, sustainable management systems, contended Dugan. As new appreciation for indigenous wisdom emerges and the limitations of conventional forestry models are acknowledged, many examples of traditional forest management systems are being documented in Asia.
Dugan noted that in the late 1970s in the Philippines, the Kalahan Foundation, an organization of indigenous tribal communities, acquired 14,000 hectares of mixed forest. Local councils of elders revived traditional rules involving age-old practices to control fire use when clearing forests for food crops. Employing indigenous strategies to accelerate natural regeneration, the tribal communities' management system has resulted in successful forest recovery and growth (Institute of Philippine Culture 1989). Similar experiences have inspired the Philippine's Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) to establish the Community Forestry Program, enlisting 49 communities to protect 50,000 hectares. In a matter of only two years, the community-controlled areas are showing dramatic declines in slash-and-burn farming and illegal logging. Communities have developed what is known today as "accelerated natural regeneration" by simple practices of lodging grasses, preventing fires, and ringweeding pioneer trees. In the course of four years, for the minimum cost of US$100/hectare, a 55-hectare tract of Saccharum grasslands was transformed into a 4-meter forest with herb, shrub, and canopy layers (Nasol 1994).
The past three years of diagnostic field research by members of the Asia Sustainable Forest Management Network further corroborates the value and sophistication of local knowledge, and the community's ability to lead the way in reestablishing sustainable forestry. In remote Diak Lay village in East Kalimantan, Indonesia, native Dayak tribals practice their own intricate systems of land use suitability and natural regeneration monitoring (Poffenberger and McGean 1993a). Based on their traditional classification system, the Benuaq Dayak identify five phases of forest regeneration (see Figure 3). Before opening a patch of forest for swidden (ladang) farming, the Dayak assess soil fertility, using key indicator species to reflect soil and moisture conditions. Their biological assessments are presented before a council of village leaders and elders, who meet to discuss the site's land use history and judge each farmer's request to open a ladang. The forest-fallow management system of the Dayaks has worked for centuries, effectively twinning sustainable farming and forestry practices. Even as their rural subsistence economies move increasingly toward commercial market opportunities, the Dayaks have adapted their ecological knowledge to develop more lucrative, complementary systems of cash crops. Over the past three to four decades, they have cultivated highly productive and valuable mixed fruit and banana gardens. For an even longer period, they have been engaged in planting rattan gardens in the understory of the natural forest, understanding the long gestation period required before such gardens mature fully and reach their peak values.
Figure 3
Benuaq Dayak Phases of Forest Regeneration
Given the huge scale and temporal urgency of the forestry problem across Asia today, the panelists concluded that timely and vast coverage can only be provided through the cost-effective, efficient, and equitable processes of natural regeneration under community protection. Increasingly, community forest management strategies and natural forest regeneration are returning to the forefront of the policy dialogue. The forestry sector has begun to redefine what constitutes "good management." Field evidence suggests that quality management of highly pressured forest resources demands a "human-intensive" system. As Dugan contends, this system must be based on practical, hands-on decision making by small social groups that communicate daily and cooperate with each other. By adopting new roles, the forest department can serve as the 'enabler" and technical guide to sound, local decision making by resident community forest managers.
Panelists included Anil Shah, past director of the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme in Ahmedabad, India; Uraivan Tan-Kim-Yong, professor of Rural Sociology at Chiang Mai University, Thailand; and Marvic Leonen, attorney to the Legal Rights and Natural Resources Center of the Philippines. The speakers presented experiences with emerging community forest management in Asia.
The panelists noted that throughout much of South and Southeast Asia, communities have historically relied on rules and regulations to control forest use and ensure equitable distribution of forest lands and products for agriculture, hunting, and gathering. Where forest resources were abundant and populations small, more extensive land management systems often prevailed. However, as populations have grown throughout the region, both in areas with strong indigenous traditions and in migrant villages with no prior management experience, many communities have begun to either reassert or develop their own systems of resource control. Anil Shah noted that in both western and eastern India, rural people are organizing to protect forests in small clusters of 10-50 households. Often comprising a single socioeconomic or ethno-linguistic group, community-based resource management is possible because members are able to carry out basic functions themselves, including establishment of use rules and regulations, resolution of disputes, and equitable distribution of benefits.
In contrast to formal, multi-village governance bodies (i.e., panchayats, tambon, barios, etc.), which have been the institutional basis for most past social forestry projects, residential hamlets are informal in nature. Shah noted that these small, informal community groups appear to function effectively as resource managers, in part because leaders are accountable to members, rather than to superiors in government. In these small groups, all members are known to one another, so peer pressure can work effectively in encouraging members to conform to consensual forest use norms and rules. Unfortunately, in many parts of Asia the role of indigenous community institutions and leaders has been displaced by formal, often-politicized governance institutions. Lessons now emerging indicate that these local community institutions need to be acknowledged and given the authority to take on responsibilities for forest protection. In some areas, small in- formal community groups -- often tribals -- are taking action unilaterally by protecting forests against all outside users. Other groups are receiving support and encouragement from government forest agencies.
According to Shah, in eastern India, encompassing West Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa, a grassroots environmental movement is growing. Over 10,000 communities now protect over 2 million hectares of regenerating forest. Arvind Khare reported that an estimated 18-30 million hectares of degraded forests on the subcontinent could regenerate rapidly through coppice growth if local communities begin to protect them. The task involves creating opportunities and momentum for village groups to organize and take action, and developing supportive forest departments and NGO extension programs. Over the past five years, India's forestry sector has begun shifting its strategies to emphasize the empowerment of communities as protectors of natural forests, to facilitate their regeneration and recapture their productivity. The national government and fifteen state governments have passed resolutions to recognize forest villagers as joint managers of degraded public lands with clear rights and responsibilities. Khare stated that joint forest management in India should be perceived as a fundamentally new philosophy of resource management. He feels that while progress is being made, community -- Forest Department partnerships should not be confined to degraded forests, but should also include well-stocked forests, parks, and other resources of high value.
Lert Chuntanaparb reported that in Dong Yai, Thailand, eleven rural communities have worked together with regional foresters and researchers to protect and regenerate former kenaf fields. This 25-year transformation has been remarkable, producing the largest tract of remnant lowland dipterocarp forest in Northeast Thailand. Each community has organized a protection group that patrols a section of the 4,000-hectare forest, monitoring for fires and outside timber exploitation. Elaborate rules derived by the communities limit wood extraction to domestic needs only, while the collection of non-timber forest products such as mushrooms and gum remains open even to outsiders who travel far distances (up to 60 kilometers) to gather forest products. Strong community leadership and sympathetic foresters have played a pivotal role in encouraging the villagers to assume responsibility and take pride in the ecological health of their forest.
In the Nam Sa and other neighboring mountainous regions in North Thailand, Uraivan Tan-Kim-Yong and Samer Limchoowong reported that other successful community forest management stories are unfolding. Karen, Hmong, Lisu, and Lahu tribal villages are resolving resource conflicts and organizing forest protection and management activities around the micro-watersheds they inhabit. In some villages, community members have constructed three-dimensional watershed maps that serve as a tool for micro-management planning. Land use management plans, negotiated during monthly community meetings, have led to detailed regulations for forest access and use. These include rules that forbid the clearing of ridgetops and upper catchment forests, ban chainsaws, provide incentives for conservation farming, and impose fines on unauthorized hunting and uncontrolled swidden fires that damage other farms and forests. The organizational process and ecological stabilization and recovery of Nam Sa is now spreading to villages in neighboring watersheds. At the present rate of expansion, it appears that many of the watersheds to the west and north of Chiang Mai will be assumed under local protection within the next six years (Poffenberger and McGean 1993b). A recent Thai national inventory of community forest management initiatives conducted by the Royal Forest Department found nearly 12,000 community groups operating. These comprised both traditional community institutions created to manage forests for cultural, hydrological, or production purposes, and recently established organizations promoted by schools, temples, and other local institutions.
Marvic Leonen reported that most of the Philippines' 190-220 ethno-linguistic groups are found in indigenous upland communities. These tribal cultures are at varying stages in attempts to integrate lowland migrants and development initiatives on their homelands. In many cases, tribal interactions with lowland people have undermined indigenous leadership and institutions, threatening their survival as distinctive cultural communities. The Lumad people of the northern Pulangi watershed in Bukidnon, Mindanao, have been retreating from the progressive intrusion and domination of Visayan migrants and logging operations for several generations (Poffenberger and McGean 1993c). They now find themselves with no further place to run. To survive as a culture, they will need to unite and establish agreements with the government and more powerful migrants to protect their rights to upland forest resources. Like many upland groups, however, they are politically, socially, and economically marginal. They are also fragmented, in part through the actions of different religious groups who compete for their loyalty. Nonetheless, the Lumad maintain their traditional clan leaders (datu) and could organize in the upper watersheds if given the proper support. In other contexts, such as the tribal communities of the Northern Cordillera mountains of Luzon, resistance to mega-infrastructure projects, including dams funded by the World Bank, has provided a focal point and common ground around which tribal communities can mobilize and assert their identities. There is a need to inventory upland community groups and leadership patterns and capacity, identifying those that are in a position to organize on their own and assume forest management responsibilities, as well as those that will need longer periods of institution-building.
Many Filipino NGOs, researchers, and staff are hopeful regarding the range of enlightened community forestry policies and programs that have emerged in the past decade. These new strategies could help to stabilize upland forest use through stewardship agreements and ancestral domain recognition. Even in areas where Imperata cylindrica grasses (cogon) have invaded, studies indicate the control of fire and modest manipulation can facilitate healthy forest succession. However, support of community forest management policies alone has not yet driven rapid reforms on the ground, and the transfer of management authority nationwide has moved slowly. Complex, prescriptive measures for certifying community groups, while a positive indication of government support, have been less effective in facilitating the expansion of ancestral domain designations or community forest certification. Leonen commented that in some cases, the procedures have confused local DENR staff in a myriad of complex, unrelated, or overlapping projects.
A number of challenges face forest departments, NGOs, and researchers working to facilitate the establishment of community forest systems. Developing an efficient and equitable process through which public forest land can be allocated to local communities for protection is essential. Where forest departments have succeeded in this effort, they have created a supportive environment in which communities can take the lead in reaching a consensus on the assignment of responsibilities. Often, decisions over territorial forest boundaries are based on historic use practices, traditional rights, and current needs. Communities usually have a better understanding of these criteria and the actors than forest departments, and any binding agreement must be acceptable to all affected communities. By encouraging villages to take the first initiative in forest designation and mapping, forest departments not only ensure that decisions are more likely to be acceptable to local groups, but also reduce their own workloads. In such cases, the primary role of the forest department is to provide encouragement in the process, including some technical support for mapping, such as appropriately scaled topographic maps if available (generally 1:25,000-50,000), and legitimacy for the outcome. Where communities are unable to reach agreements on their own regarding territorial divisions, forest departments or NGO support groups may need to assist in negotiating a compromise.
Forest departments are confronted with a major transition as they move from traditional custodial and timber management roles to support roles in joint forest management activities. Protection duties are transferred to the community. Production activities shift from timber to multiple products, managed by villagers. Field staff need to develop a different mix of skills and technical expertise to serve as community organizers, forestry extension agents, and market analysts. Experiences from the Philippines, India, and Thailand indicate that working groups comprising foresters, social scientists, and NGO development specialists can assist forestry agencies in transition. It is important that community-forest department management partnerships evolve to fit local conditions. Working groups can help foresters monitor and assess how to adapt their role to better respond to local needs and opportunities.
Uraivan reported that in North Thailand social scientists collaborated with the Royal Forest Department to recruit and train community organizers. These young individuals work with hill tribe communities to develop cooperative resource management strategies. The systems, involving both traditional and emerging leaders and institutions, are functioning well and expanding to neighboring watersheds. The working group monitors the expansion of local management systems, while feeding information into the formulation of supportive local policies and programs. Due to the working group's documentation, government officials better understand the constructive steps being taken by minority hill tribes in North Thailand. This helps support the spread of these grassroots resource management initiatives rather than blocking them, validating the usufruct tenure security of hill tribes, who are not yet legal Thai citizens.
The panel concluded that the Asia experience reveals that elaborate policies and heavily funded projects are not necessarily sufficient to accelerate the empowerment of community groups as managers of public forests. Significantly, more critical is the emergence of a supportive political environment facilitating the establishment and replication of decentralized management systems. Ultimately, simple transparent policies need to be developed as broad guidelines that provide both flexibility and encouragement to local administrators and communities to fine-tune their own resource management agreements.