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.
Bulletin articles
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."
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
April will mark the 60th anniversary of the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and activists throughout the world are already organizing activities to expose those institutions' role in the socially and environmentally destructive economic model being imposed on the world to favour Northern-based corporate interests (see http://www.50years.org for more information).
"No Dirty Gold" is the consumer campaign launched on February 11, 2004, by Earthworks/Mineral Policy Center and Oxfam, intended to shake up the gold industry and change the way gold is mined, bought and sold. Right before and a few days after Valentine's Day --a major occasion for gold jewelry sales in the U.S.-- activists distributed Valentine's cards with the message, "Don't tarnish your love with dirty gold" in front of major jewelry and watch stores, including Cartier's and Piaget's on 5th Avenue in midtown New York City.
On February 12, more than 100 environment, development and human rights groups in the war-ravaged Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have formed a unique alliance to oppose the “development” of the country’s rainforests, which could include a vast increase in industrial logging.
Decades of deforestation and forest degradation have left less than two percent of Ghana's native forest intact. These forests have been the source of livelihood for forest dependent people, providing them with fuel wood, charcoal, building materials, fodder, fruits, nuts, honey, medicines, dyes. They also play an environmental role regarding prevention of soil erosion, watershed protection, soil fertility/shade, shelter from wind, prevention of floods and landslides, water retention and maintenance of water purity.
Swaziland, a landlocked country with a population of 1,161,219 inhabitants in 17,363 sq km almost completely surrounded by South Africa, has timber as its second industrial activity after sugar.
During the Conference “Timber Plantations: Impacts, Future Visions and Global Trends” held in Nelspruit, South Africa, in November 2003, hosted by GeaSphere in association with the TimberWatch Coalition, Nhlanhla Msweli, from SCAPEI, gave a vivid testimony of Swaziland’s situation and grief linked to monoculture tree plantations.
Mining has devastating impacts on the environment and on people, but it has also specific serious effects on women (see WRM Bulletins Nº 71 and 79). Besides causing deforestation and contaminating the earth, rivers and air with toxic waste, mining destroys the private and cultural spaces of women, robbing them of their socialization infrastructure and social role, and all that for the sake of profit of just a handful of huge corporations.
Komodo National Park (KNP) was established by the Government of Indonesia in 1980 to protect the habitat of the unique giant lizard Varanus komodoensis, called Komodo dragon. In 1995, the central government invited the US-based organisation, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) to co-manage the park.
For hundreds of years, Heuny and Jrou indigenous people living in Nong Phanouane and Houay Chote villages have practised rotational swidden farming in their forests on the Boloven Plateau in the south of Laos.
Now, government officials have told them that they have to stop swidden farming and will soon be forced to move. The reason? They have the misfortune to live in a watershed which the government declares must be protected because of a proposed hydropower dam.