Bulletin Issue 81 - April 2004

The Fourth Session of the United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF 4) will be held from 3-14 May 2004 in Geneva. The session will consider implementation of the proposals for action of the Intergovernmental Panel on Forests (IPF) and Intergovernmental Forum on Forests (IFF) in five areas: social and cultural aspects of forests; traditional forest-related knowledge; scientific forest-related knowledge; monitoring, assessment and reporting, concepts, terminology and definitions; and criteria and indicators of sustainable forest management.

A long way from the tropical rainforests of Amazonia, British Columbia (BC), the western most province in Canada, has been characterized as "Brazil of the North" for its rate of forest liquidation. The British Columbian forests are dominated by large corporate tenures and large scale extraction. But there is a glimmer of change as community forests emerge, and with them, a new way of doing forestry and forest management. One of these community forests belongs to Kaslo, a small town on the shores of Kootenay Lake, in south-east British Columbia.

What are we talking about when we speak of “community-based forest management”? First, there is the term “management”. According to the VOX dictionary, it refers to the “art or practice of training horses” and also “to conduct, control, take charge of.” The “forest management” which arose in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was a corollary of the process of fencing in communal forests and, later, the application of state control over forests. Finally, the term became closely associated with the production of timber for commercial purposes.

Why was it that millenary practices for forest use, now known as “Community Forest Management” arose in traditional communities? Why have these practices been so natural for them? Perhaps we should start by talking about the ecosystem. Fritjof Capra, in “Ecology, Community and Agriculture,” http://www.ecoliteracy.org/pdf/ecology.pdf , defines it very clearly: “An ecosystem . . . is not just a collection of species but a community, which means that its members all depend on one another. They are all interconnected in a vast network of relationships, the web of life." The following concepts -summarized from Capra's work- allow for a better understanding of the issue.

In 2002, a number of organizations and individuals working together to influence the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), created the Global Caucus on Community-Based Forest Management, which was successful in influencing government delegates to “recognize and support indigenous and community based forest management systems to ensure their full and effective participation in sustainable forest management.” (article 45h of the WSSD Report)

For years governments have been discussing about forests and making "legally-binding" and "non legally-binding" agreements with the stated aim of protecting the world's forests. It is therefore a useful exercise to look into those agreements in relation with community-based forest management, to see what role –if any– governments have assigned to the communities actually living in or depending on the forests. The 1992 Earth Summit

Among practices that are emerging in the conservation of Kenya’s forests is the participation of communities in forest management. Although the communities are at the moment being involved at a minimal level, many communities living next to forests now want to make decisions and benefit from sustainable use and management of forests. This desire for participation has been fueled by provisions of the soon to be enacted Forest Bill that will replace the current Forest Act, as well as the work of non-governmental organizations such as the Kenya Forests Working Group (KFWG).

Forests and woodlands cover about 24% (or 5 million hectares) of the total land area of Uganda, of which 80% is woodland, 19% moist high forest and 1% commercial plantations. Approximately 30% of such forests and woodlands are gazetted mainly as protection forests directly under various forms of government jurisdiction. The 70% outside the gazetted forest domain exist under various forms of private and customary control.

At the end of a National Conference on Community Ownership of Forests (April 2-4, 2004), organised by Jharkhand Save the Forest Movement, National Forum of Forest People and Forest Workers, and Delhi Forum, held in Chalkhad, a forest village in the Indigenous Peoples majority State of Jharkhand in eastern India, around two hundred indigenous Munda (a central Indian indigenous ethnic group) representatives resolved in unison to “Oppose World Bank: And Save Forests”. Chalkhad is the ancestral village of the legendary Munda rebel leader Birsa Munda who led a struggle against the British colonial government in 1899-1900 popularly known as the Ulugan (great tumult) of Birsa Munda against erosion of khuntkatti (community ownership rights to forests) in Jharkhand.

Indigenous communities have been practicing sustainable community-based ecosystem management for centuries. These systems incorporate local knowledge and beliefs that are based on the wisdom and experience of past generations. They also contribute to the economic well being of local communities, as well as to the well being of the Indonesian nation.

Over the past few years, private conservation has covered close to a million hectares in the South of Chile, surpassing the forest areas under regulated community land tenure, and making it comparable to the previous expansion of pine and eucalyptus plantation companies, today exceeding 2 million hectares. Unexpectedly, as an explosive phenomenon led by corporate executives and organizations mainly originating from the United States, Chilean society has witnessed the appearance of a private land conservation movement that has spread to large national companies and other groups of Chilean society.

The Uitoto peoples in the Araracuara region, in the mid course of the Caqueta River show some common socio-cultural characteristics, among which a production system based on the sustainable use of three spaces: the forest, the river and the “chagra” (a clearing in the forest used for poli-culture plantation). This system is established on the basis of an organization of knowledge handed down from generation to generation, over thousands of years, on the structure of the forest, alternating with the use of different landscape units, the sowing of a large diversity of species and the indigenous people’s own land-use techniques.