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When the farmer supplies labor and/or land (Nominal)

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When the opinion of the beneficiaries is asked (Consultative)

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When the beneficiaries are involved in the activities (Active)

•

When the beneficiaries participate also in decision making.

Offer opportunity to exchange and analyze experiences with methodologies for social forest development in rural Latin-American communities, and create space for the determination of factors of success and failure of the application of these methodologies.

Discuss conceptual elements and build on the basis of the participant's experiences, general guidelines that allow an improved application of participatory methodologies for sustainable forestry development.

Formulate working documents that allow the clarification of concepts and the proposal of participatory methodologies which can be used by governments, institutions, grassroots organizations and persons involved in the promotion and implementation of sustainable forestry development.

Experiences with participatory methodologies and ways to put them into practice, identifying and analyzing factors resulting in the success or failure of the identified methodologies.

Formulation of general guidelines to improve the application of participatory methodologies for the promotion of sustainable and equitable forestry development.

A final statement including orientations on the practice and the use of participatory methodologies, which can be used as a guide by Governments, NGOs, International Agencies, Farmer Organizations and Fieldworkers.

The document states the argument that community forestry, as a field, is more a developer's and forester's invention than a community invention. It also shows the contradiction, showing that in cases where co-administration actually works, foresters do not want to let go; they cannot stop to participate. The paper states that we have to learn and foster the joy of letting go.

Community forestry, as a field, started over 20 years ago. 1977-8 to be exact, when governments began to look a reorienting forestry to contribute more to rural development. To understand the need for this movement, it is important to step further back and look at the development of the field of forestry. In Europe it was mainly an elite profession; during the colonial period, foresters all over the world trained in the European tradition to manage the forest trees and animals for the benefit of the colonial powers. Even for a number of years after independence, national governments largely followed the traditional forest policies.

The paper states that in this period communities had different attitudes towards forests, dependent on the resources: in places where there were no moist tropical forest identified as economically important or of national interest, rural people were mostly living without much contact with foresters. In areas where forests and trees were plentiful and population or economic pressure were not great, many groups had a symbiotic relationship with the nature around them.

When trees and forest products become scarce, many groups developed rules or institutions that helped protect the resource. Forest dependent communities made rules about who could cut which tree or pick its fruit and sometimes when and how. Rules made by the communities often reflected the local system of governing: a more democratic type organization shared the resources more equally; highly organized types created more effective management systems.

What were the governments doing during all of this? When and where forests were identified as important to the national interest, they were classified irrespective of who lived there. It is obvious that when forests were of interest to the government for the national economy (conservation, tourism or income), the government had total power to make management decisions, without local communities participating in the benefits and even less in the management. Foresters were charged with management.

So, what was it that made governments and foresters interested in "inventing" community forest services in the late 1970s? In many of the semi-arid countries there was recognition that forest services were unable to manage the trees and forests with budgetary and personnel limitations. They felt impotent, especially where they concluded that local people "did not understand that they must not destroy the trees."  There were many common perceptions at that time which sidetracked better understanding. One belief was that "the environment is destroyed by the poor." Maybe communities could be taught to appreciate nature if they had more environmental education. Others said that "local people may know better, but they have no other option than to deplete the environment."

In the 1970s global fuel shortages became a major issue and this translated to a feeling that those who used wood and charcoal were destroying the forests. What was the solution? Maybe communities could make fewer demands on the resource by using improved stoves or they could hire more people in forest industries. Perhaps the forest service could plant more trees or supervise the community to plant woodlots on their own land and thereby develop an alternate wood source from outside the forests and improve the lives of the rural poor. But the communities had other needs, such as land for growing food. Fallow land was used for hunting small animas or collecting fruit or sticks for fuel. Although fuelwood was a problem, this did not justify planting trees without resolving other more pressing problems. Here the projects to "help the poor" turned into limitations to the improvement of their lives.

By 1978 NGOs and international institutions were beginning to reorient their focus. The World Bank admitted that their forestry projects were not working. The problem was that tree-planting projects had been placed on land of farmers and herders. Angry rural people, the very same people that the projects were supposedly designed to help, had ripped many of the seedlings out. 1978 was also the year the World Forestry Congress, held in Jakarta, Indonesia. That congress was the first of its kind to hold sessions on social aspects, such as women and forestry. One forester concluded that forestry was not about trees but about people; it was about trees only as they served the needs of people.

In the early 80s the FAO's Forestry for Local Community Development Program comprised the following elements:

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Community forestry should relate to equity, trying to narrow the gap between the richer and the poorer and facilitating inclusion of the excluded, including women.

 

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Making people visible to technical scientists and even to their governments. This may sound strange, but many foresters and officials had very little understanding of what rural people were doing with trees. Foresters were not valuing the role of trees in agriculture, only trees as forests and giving timber. It worked on learning about the diverse, but often complementary, uses women and men had for forest and tree products.

 

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Participation and mutual learning were given more importance. Participation was seen as a partnership between technical specialists, that had control over many of the forest resources, and the local community, with a wealth of local knowledge. Many different groups have been and are using the word, participation, but with different meanings.

 

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It worked with forestry training and educational institutions to change the curriculum and to include more information on community/forestry interactions; and with extension services to broaden the mutual learning approach. With research institutes, especially those in agroforestry, it encouraged the researchers to observe what creative farmers were trying to change, as a first step in identifying the real needs for research.

One of the things learned deals with complexity. Unless carefully designed and monitored, forest projects have a tendency to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. In order for people to get benefits from becoming involved in community forestry activities, certain basic requirements are essential. For tree planting activities to actually help the poor, the poor have to have access to a sufficient quantity of suitable land on which they are not only able to grow food but to plant trees and have the rights to their products. This means that success not only depends on participation, but also on marketing and tenure laws.

Where are the communities now? There are a lot of people really interested in community forestry. There are documented cases where things are working. But there are also examples of projects arrogantly ignoring what others, including local people, have developed.

There are participatory methodologies, tools and approaches which would give the foresters help in the tremendous change of role they were going to have to accomplish if they were to advance community forestry.

But one thing we have seen and experienced that it is hard to let go. It is so rewarding to be needed. It is so powerful to feel that we speak for a community or even for a resource. It is sometimes difficult to recognize how much more important it is to absolutely turn over the power to the communities.

The following things are considered important for the future of community forestry:

Be more realistic in establishing goals keeping in mind that community forestry is multidimensional, multisectoral, with multi-stakeholders.

 

Be more systematic. Take time to work with communities to set local goals but also use robust and replicable tools for baselines to measure change.

 

Be more open to learning from other's experiences.

 

Be more regular in reporting both successful and unsuccessful stages of our activities to share with others.

 

Foster the joy of letting go and practice it ourselves.

 
Index

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Natural Resources: land, forests, water, flora, fauna. The property of and the right to use the natural resources not only should be taken on the communities, and also legally established in a way that there is security about their use.

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Transformation capacity strengthens the aptitude of farmers and indigenous groups to transform natural resources into products and services for themselves or for trade.

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Appropriation of the markets and margins of commercialization. Find new alternatives, improve the quality of products, look beyond the traditional areas of commercialization, change products or all of the above.

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Local financial systems: creation of seed funds, revolving funds, communal banks and other systems appropriate for the rural reality.

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Social and institutional environment: a change in the productive agricultural or indigenous system requires an effort of the existing community organizations, an adaptation of the social structure to respond to the numerous conflicts that arise during a process of change and development. These processes imply transfer of power, new leaders, changes in the internal balance and for this reason a strong social structure is necessary to resolve conflicts.

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Abandon the obsession for the tools of participation in favor of creating space for genuine participation

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Transparency of our discourse and our relation with the communities

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Focus our efforts on the technical proposal

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Contribution to the formulation of policies

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Revision of land tenure aspects and management of natural resources

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Strengthening of Indigenous and Farmers Organizations

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Minimizing the presence of the project through the coordination and transference of responsibilities to the communities;

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Strengthening the existing organizational structures of farming communities;

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Incorporating women in equal conditions in the project activities and fomenting their direct participation in communal decision-making;

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Establishing an efficient institutional and administrative framework, which allows efficient management and transference of the resources by the Project and;

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Facilitating the participation of public and private institutions in the implemention of complementary efforts.

This paper presents an experience in Colombia with a participatory design of a planning, follow-up and evaluation system. The system uses as technical instruments an adaptation and simplification of the Logical Frame, applied within different levels: country (for policy), NGOs and Community Groups (for projects). They have also been using instruments for strategic planning, such as SWOL analysis applied to the context and the institution as a guide for the definition of implementation strategies.

The main technical and methodological characteristic of the Planning, Follow-up and Evaluation System - SPSE - is its prospective approach, because planning is not based on a appraisal of the situation but on the construction of a desired final situation. The initial situation is defined as a baseline more than an appraisal.

During the collection and analysis of the information, depending on the phase of the process and the type of information, different tools and techniques are used with focus on participation, such as Evaluative Workshops, Focus Groups, semi-structured Surveys with key informants and the community, sketch maps, transects, designs of individual landholdings and other tools of PRA.

The main problems that arose during the design and application of the SPSE:

 

	•	The usual formulation of projects is weak in relation to the definition of Final Situations, Annual Results and Initial Situations, as well as impact and result indicators.

 

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The reticence in NGOs with respect to the management of quantitative indicators and the weakness of Community Groups to formulate qualitative indicators. The methodology requires complementarity of both types of indicators.

 

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The weaknesses of male and female technicians of NGOs and members of Community Groups with respect to collecting and analysis of the information, required SPSE to convert the design phase into a training process. Local capacities were gained, but the process was slower. The methodologies, however, allowed sufficient flexibility and respected the rhythms and timing of the communities and NGOs.

 

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The fear of NGOs to formulate their proposals based on projects of Community Groups and to sign with them Cooperation Agreements. In the course of the application of the System, the importance of the Agreement became clear in order to make the relation between NGO and Community Groups more transparent and horizontal.

The main contributions of the SPSE are:

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Strengthens organizational capacities and skills for the administration of the project cycle; more clarity, unification of concepts, creation of common language, more discipline and rigor in the work and an integral system of PSE for the whole organization.

 

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Demonstrates the relation of all projects and actions of an organization to their goal.

 

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Contributes with conceptual elements and methodologies to the internal discussion and analysis of intervention strategies from the cross-cutting dimensions, such as gender, environment and democracy.

 

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Creates a follow-up and evaluation culture; foments working with processes instead of activities.

 

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Facilitates better informed decision-making and more integration between the administrative and technical, and the technical and the social issues.

 

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Reinforces the administration and negotiation capacity with other organizations and public and private entities, national and international, because it facilitates a more technical presentation of the obtained results. Improves skills to argue and negotiate proposals and/or projects with other social actors.

 

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Facilitates the formulation and implementation of actions that are better adapted to regional/local contexts and linked with local and/or regional Plans and Programs. Permits more integral views of the intervention and major coherence in and between proposals of different organizations.

 

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Facilitates the systematization of experiences on an institutional basis rather than a personal basis and allows access to more reliable information about the reality.

 

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Better identification and verification of intangible effects achieved through the intervention, by the formulation of mixed indicators with explicit verification scales.

 

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Contributes to the generation of more clarity in the relation between NGOs and community groups as to the timing, resources and results to be obtained, allowing the stipulation of agreements.

 

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Contributes to the creation of a positive attitude toward accountability and co-responsibility, for the generation of a "self-evaluation" culture.

Index

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The experiences in Totonicapán also show that forest planning can only be started if its concepts have been clarified and a consensus about other determining factors related to responsibilities of local management, validity of control rules, land security, etc. are determined.

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ProBosques tries to promote community members to take control of planning. With the "Central Committee for the conservation of the forests and protection of communal resources" Uleu Che `Ja' (land, tree, water), they try to democratize the structures and the communication between the Administrative Council and the local committees.

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As an important methodological lesson to support the transition of traditional management into a more modern and technical management, the fundamental idea was confirmed: the process of deforestation and destruction cannot be reversed without an adequate and effective community participation.

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In both cases, the idea of Master Plans may, in the future, help to respond to the articulated interests of different community groups. But in the case of Totonicapán the concept of the Master Plan as a tool for modern forest management has, as yet, not had much chance to show its utility. There is a lot of distrust and even hostility. The experience in Totonicapán showed that the actual Management Plans do not represent the interests of community members.

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The joint decisions between community organizations and outside development organizations represented in the annual plans are positive, but they are not functional in the present institutional reality if they are used as intervention tools. CONAP, for example, requires the exact application of the formats established by them, this way questioning the validity of the agreements and interests expressed by the community.

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To contribute, for example, to improving forest management, it is important to be able to influence management and administration forms. In this case it won't be sufficient to have a Master Plan or Management Plan or to train authorities in organizational or administrative matters. It is important to know the mechanisms of communication. For instance in Totonicapán, local authorities or delegations are not independent, but work on the basis of orders, which are part of the oral tradition. During the annual transfer of authority, they encode the orders and this way they transmit the positive and negative aspects of the guidelines for local administration.

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The transformation of communal forests to protected forests in Totonicapán responds not just to the present trend of conservationism, but rather to the strengthened balanced and traditional forms of management by communal authorities, based on ancient rights and community participation.

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Collectivity in the management of their affairs, decision making, land tenure and employment;

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Assistance, mutual help and spirituality.

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Internal supervision and control by people of the communities;

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Existence of a set of rules (indigenous or community);

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No interference of outsiders, in particular government organizations;

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Well defined indigenous structures;

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Indigenous authorities with responsibility for administrating natural resources;

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Rational use of the resources.

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Conversion of collective land into private;

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The possibilities of quick remuneration by external companies to mining the natural resources;

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Discrepancies between traditional religious beliefs and external religions;

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Laws not in accordance with the social, political, economic and cultural reality of indigenous communities;

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Conflicts between communities about the management of community land;

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Debilitation of community structures;

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Lack of legal acknowledgement of indigenous rights and authorities;

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Lack of control of offences against forest resources by national authorities.

Approach to the community

Definition of interesting themes

Orientation on organization and community participation

Identification of gender relations

Forest community self-diagnostic

Alternatives for sustainable development

Formulation of agroforest community projects

Community forest management plan

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Permanent coordination and working relation between the grassroots, institutions and municipal Administration;

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Educational processes about aspects requested by the community;

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Planning on the basis of watersheds, emphasizing the participation of and the collaboration between bordering communities that present similar characteristics with respect to the productive system;

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Formation of rural promoters, men and women, trained as professional technicians in the management of natural resources;

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Adoption of different projects and demonstration parcels on an individual as well as a community bases;

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Increased value of farms after the establishment of different management systems;

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Promotion of women's participation in project activities;

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Community nursery, which besides providing seed for community use, or their commercialization, opened a space for (1) the organization and community participation, (2) technical transfer and (3) environmental education;

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Participatory strategies that have promoted the recuperation of traditional techniques, such as the "minga" mostly used in indigenous communities and the "convite" developed by farmer communities.

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Formation of the team. It is important to form a core group of participants who are prepared to follow the entire process and take ownership of the proyect.

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Incorporation of transects within the community territory.  Field visits with a clear purpose help to initiate discussions about the access to communal resources and current problems.

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Emphasis on leaving something written in the communities. This is distinct from simply giving-back information; it refers to  designing the collection of information from the beginning  to take into account its utility for the decision-makers within the community.

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Flexibility. Regarding the selection of themes for the workshops.

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Mechanisms to keep the authorities and the General Assembly informed about the progress of the work.

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It is indispensable to use tools such as maps to emphasize the consequences of certain decisions and the possible conflicts between activities.

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A system of reiterative internal monitoring. It was shown to be useful to have a system of internal feedback in the shape of form that were filled out after each workshop, journey or meeting.

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A final evaluation system of the work was not designed.

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There were not enough links created with Civil Societies or other organizations with continuos presence in the communities. For this reason, the incorporation of forest technicians into the process was not achieved.

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In the case of one ejido, where no planning team was formed not as many people took part in the workshops as had been hoped, thus emphasizing the need to form a group of committed participants to ensure continuity.

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A greater emphasis on the production of baseline data, generated jointly with the community, is required.

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Creating awareness as to the reality, in which they live; especially thinking of poverty and isolation as a result of specific social forces instead of seeing them as an inherent deficiency to their condition, or as "destiny".

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Based on this judgment, appropriating their collective skills to realize positive changes in the daily situation and around these proposals organize themselves.

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Meeting community-institutions

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The community identifies its problems

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Formulation of productive proposals

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Implementation of productive proposals

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Systemization and evaluation of the process

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The community conforms to the sustainability of the process

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Multiplication of the experience

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It is dynamic with respect to the interaction between different stakeholders (communities, municipal authorities, local organizations, institutions).

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Facilitation of the process is done by professionals and technicians of different disciplines who are aware of changes in the community and who are experienced in social aspects, can maintain dynamism and are creative in their work.

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The planning of activities is realized with participation of all stakeholders involved, assuring the adoption of agreements; the follow-up and responsibilities are shared and is opportunistic and inclusive in its decision making.

•

Training of the local cadre to fulfil the role of facilitators, promoters, and to develop permanent connections between communities, municipalities and institutions.

•

Men and women in communities have equal opportunities. Gender approach and its concrete application is a constant that will be progressively clarified.

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Grassroots organizations participate actively in the processes and in decision making, from the design of the programs and projects until the formulation of social policies at governmental level.

•

Investigations, socioeconomic studies, participatory diagnostics take place during the process.

•

The municipalities are involved as key actors in the process, as a factor for sustainability of undertaken activities and guaranty of the fulfillment of agreements, pacts and decisions.

•

Slow down of the advance of the agricultural frontier. This result is partly thanks to the implementation of the established management plans, but mainly to the strengthening of the traditional productive systems, principally agricultural, with timber and non-timber forest activities.

•

Control of immigration. Concessionairy communities, based on their internal rules and regulations and the contractual clauses with CONAP, use methods to limit the arrival of new families.

•

More employment. The activities linked to forest management have provided a major source of work available in the communities, allowing diversification of family income.

•

Major income. Community concessions have fostered an increase of income of the community members through the generation of remunerated jobs.

•

Development of community infrastructure. The utilities of the communities have allowed the funding of social infrastructure such as roads, clinics, schools, communal halls, drinking-water.

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Development of technical and administrative capacities. There is more knowledge about the application of forest harvesting techniques with low impact, management of non-timber products, administrative-accounting aspects and a strengthened organizational structure.

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Change of individual to collective mentality. The granting of forest concessions of the functioning of the Management Units has motivated collective interests and fomented a change of mentality towards major identification with community interests.

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Change of attitude and perception. The tangible benefits received by the communities are stimulating a change of attitude and perception of seeing the forest not as an obstacle, but rather as a supplier of goods and services.

•

International recognition of good management "Sello Verde". The management realized in the concessions has been internationally recognized as a source of "good management of timber products whose forest management activities correspond with the strict forest, environmental and socioeconomic standards and are in harmony with the principles and criteria of the World Council for Forest Management.

•

Lack of information. Adequate knowledge is lacking about the ecology and management of non-timber forest products, dynamics of the forest, marketing and commercialization aspects in order to diversify production.

•

Few timber species with high commercial value. The market demand has been focusing almost exclusively on Cedar (Cedrela odorata) and Mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla). Valuable unknown species (called secondary), which are the most abundant in the forest, maintain a very low price and a restricted market.

•

Lack of effective consortium organization. It is necessary to extend the organizational level of the management unit towards a consortium level, especially for more efficiency in technical assistance, access to markets, investment in productive infrastructure.

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Conflict of interest. Extreme conservationists are one group that wish to stop all use in protected areas and therefore try to block the granting of community concessions.