Bulletin Issue 63 – October 2002

Community-Based Forest Management

THE FOCUS OF THIS ISSUE: COMMUNITY-BASED FOREST MANAGEMENT

  For centuries, local communities benefited from sustainable forest use. However, centralized control over natural resources has for many years now been eroding local rights and resulting in extensive deforestation processes. The current disaster --generated by state and corporate driven activities in forests-- shows the need to change course and to put forest management back again in the hands of local communities. The industrial model has clearly failed to ensure forest conservation, while community-based approaches show that the improvement of peoples' livelihoods is compatible with the sustainable use of forests. In order to collaborate with making this message heard, we decided to facilitate a collaborative effort to share experiences in community-based forest management, by focusing this WRM bulletin entirely on this issue and inviting all those concerned to participate in its preparation. As a result, we received a large number of articles from all over the world, which reflect different --though complementary-- viewpoints regarding the implementation of this approach in diverse social and environmental realities. This diversity will certainly help us all to increase our understanding about the problems which need to be solved to make this approach viable. To all of those who either wrote articles or sent us suggestions --or both!-- our most sincere thanks for sharing your knowledge and experience with us and all our readers.
WRM Bulletin
63
October 2002

OUR VIEWPOINT

THE COMMUNITY APPROACH: SOME RELEVANT ISSUES

SHARING LOCAL EXPERIENCES