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CAPACITY BUILDING IN FOREST CERTIFICATION: LINKING AN INTERNATIONAL MARKET MECHANISM TO NATIONAL INITIATIVES

By Anne C. de Fraiture and Wouter Leen Hijweege

Forest certification is gaining recognition as a useful market instrument for linking international customer concern with sustainable forest management. The adoption and application of forest certification in tropical countries remains limited, however while temperate forests are forging ahead. Based on the EU's assumption that a lack of information and knowledge about sustainable forest management and forest certification is one of the main obstacles to the adoption of certification in tropical forestry, GTZ and IAC jointly implemented the 'Inter-institutional Development of Training Capacity in Forest Certification' project in 77 ACP countries between January 2000 and March 2003. In the participating countries, the project supported stakeholders in forest management, encouraging their participation in national and regional forest certification initiatives.

Strategy
Given their number and diversity, the ACP countries were grouped into ten regions with one core country each. For each region, a capacity building strategy was developed and regional focal point organisations (RFPs) were identified to coordinate the implementation of this strategy and to maintain a network for the exchange of experiences. Given the project's restricted financial and human resources, capacity building activities concentrated largely on the core countries, with a focus on national activities. To support the capacity building processes in the regions, a project website was created containing a toolbox and learning platform on forest certification. This material was later adapted to specific regional and/or national circumstances during regional training-of-trainer courses.

Lessons learnt

1. Project impact and sustainability differed markedly and was determined mainly by the country's starting position and progress in establishing forest certification. The project approach to focussing on support for new or ongoing certification processes allowed sufficient flexibility to handle these differences, but increased the project management requirements e.g. in providing adequate back stopping.
2. The aforementioned national and regional intervention in forest certification was not successful in all countries. Obviously, the project's basic assumption of a lack of information among stakeholders involved in forest certification was only partially valid. In most countries, a multitude of factors affected the certification process, such as:
   • Disturbed working relations between different stakeholder groups, for example private companies and governmental organisations. Yet elsewhere, the development of national standards and procedures through stakeholder consultations and national working groups brought various stakeholder groups together successfully for the first time.
   • The role and mandate of the players in the national processes needed due attention. For example, the dominant role of the government in forest management and its supervision tasks complicated discussions. Some governments still see certification as a controlling and steering mechanism within their role and mandate rather than an independent market mechanism. Similarly, private sector representatives proved to be hesitant to share views on certification and forest management issues with colleagues, government and NGOs, because they regard it as their own responsibility.
   • Limited market signals in the absence of a timber export market. Certification for sustainable forest management has been developed for the (international) timber trade and experiences with certification of non-timber products and other forest functions and services (e.g. tourism, watershed management) being limited. This needs to be developed, since marketing these products can contribute to the sustainable management of forest resources.
3. Adopting a process approach to capacity building and placing it in a perspective of longer-term change with multiple stakeholder involvement will contribute to a sense of ownership among the parties involved. However, the initiation of such a social learning process requires time, money and long-term support from donors. Thus, capacity building evolves from providing training to individuals to providing various forms of support, training and coaching both for individuals and organisations in order to develop new roles and working methods. Apart from technical information about forest certification and training-of-trainers, attention shifts to such issues as communication, governance and conflict management.
4. The project offered national stakeholder groups (governmental, non-governmental and private sector) a neutral platform on which to start a dialogue and to exchange views. In most countries this aspect of neutralism was essential in order to get the major stakeholders around the table and to get the process started. This resulted in some countries in the (re-)establishment of national working groups.
5. After all, up-to-date information and especially communication play an important role in building support, trust and mutual understanding among stakeholder groups in the transformation to sustainable forest management. Information management is one of the mechanisms for maintaining momentum in an ongoing learning process among the various stakeholders and may take many different forms. However, the active involvement of stakeholders is one common denominator. The project's digital toolbox and learning platform on forest certification has been developed as a networking tool that is to continue playing a facilitating role in building an information base and platform for sharing experiences (see http://www.gtz.de/capacity_building or http://www.iac.wur.nl/forestcertification).

Conclusion
Linking an international market mechanism such as forest certification to several national initiatives for sustainable forest management is a complicated activity with far-reaching institutional implications. Instead of a straight-forward training approach for the transfer of technical expertise, a process-oriented capacity building effort to support learning among a network of involved parties is required. It is essential that the national context and institutional setting is taken as a starting point for the implementation of project activities. Furthermore, flexibility in strategies and approaches to adapting project activities to the actual situation of the stakeholders and to responding to the evolving capacity building requirements requires high-level commitment from the project management.

Further information:
Anne C. de Fraiture and Wouter Leen Hijweege
International Agricultural Centre
P.O. Box 88
6700 AB Wageningen
The Netherlands
E-mail: fraiture@wxs.nl or wouter.hijweege@wur.nl

Website: http://www.iac.wur.nl/forestcertification

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