| European
Tropical Forest Research Network |
Table
of contents
News 43/44 homepage
MAINSTREAMING FOREST AND
CONFLICT DYNAMICS IN
DEVELOPMENT COOPERATION: A
FOREST AND CONFLICT TOOLKIT
By Moira Feil and Olivia Voils
USAID emphasizes the need to closely link development cooperation to conflict management. In an effort to strengthen conflict management as a crosscutting theme, the Office of Conflict Management and Mitigation (CMM) was established in 2002. Recognising the complexities of violent conflicts and their multifaceted drivers, CMM commissioned a series of briefing papers on how conflict relates to various themes, including youth, health and natural resources. In the framework of this effort, the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR; Bogor, Indonesia), the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (Washington DC), and Adelphi Research (Berlin, Germany) were asked to submit three papers on the linkages between conflict and water, minerals and forest.
The aim of these briefing papers is to raise awareness among mission employees on the links between different natural resources and conflict, and to assist USAID in their program development by integrating conflict prevention and natural resource management. Throughout the project it was clear that USAID required accessible and practical toolkits that would give employees on the ground a quick understanding of the major issues related to these natural resources and conflict as well as practical guidance on how to recognize and address such conflicts in their own work.
USAID specified that the briefing papers should inform development advisers in a concise and practical way about forest and conflict issues. The result was a toolkit comprising four sections: key issues and lessons learned summarizes the main linkages between forests and violent conflicts; program options give examples of innovative projects that address the key issues and illustrate how they can be tackled; the survey instrument lists one page of questions that should help practitioners identify forest-related conflict sensitivities in their working environment and related to their activities; and contacts lists prominent organisations and experts in the field of forests and conflicts. These sections are closely linked, with contacts relating to program options, the examples deriving from the lessons learned which in turn mirror the key issues.
One challenge in building the toolkit was the definition of conflicts. It was finally decided to include violence as a decisive factor, ranging from sporadic violent actions to large-scale civil violence and war. An immediate important concern is timber as a means to finance violent conflict, as in Burma, Cambodia, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ivory Coast and Liberia. The issue of logging and related lower-scale conflicts has direct relevance for the work of development agents operating in diverse countries all over the world. This includes the questions of logging concessions, land and resource ownership, distribution of logging income and the social, cultural and environmental impacts of logging that can lead to distress and frustration. These lower-scale issues are in return embedded in larger structures and developments. A key crosscutting issue is governance, ranging from problems of corruption to decisions on economic policy. Another key issue pointed out in the toolkit is the impact of violent conflicts on forests, which in return has effects on livelihoods and sustainable development.
Lessons learned relating to these key issues were gathered from reports, conferences and interviews with development agency representatives. These lessons turned out to be general and structural in nature and closely related to development work. They include the need for participation and partnerships to avoid conflicts over land and forest ownership and logging concessions and the related need to strengthen forest governance, which in return relates to crosscutting themes such as transparency and strong governance institutions. Some more specific forestrelated lessons are the need to strengthen indigenous land rights and on the other hand, public procurement and corporate social responsibility.
For the section on program options, different sources were screened and European and North American development agents across the globe were interviewed by telephone. The resulting shortlist of examples reflects the diverging scale of the key issues raised, from broader governance initiatives (e.g. the FLEG process) to small-scale, local projects where for example stakeholder dialogues helped overcome conflicts within forest communities. The listed options illustrate the forest and conflict links raised in the first section and describe a selection of appropriate responses to (potential) conflict situations.
The survey instrument should help readers develop sensitivity to forest and conflict links and review their own projects and context in that light. The questions relate to the underlying themes and should help the reader identify issues at different levels (local, structural etc.) from various perspectives.
The toolkit proved a challenging exercise due to the very tight space constraints. While the briefing paper cannot reflect the full complexity of forest and conflict links, it specifically informs a non-specialized but very active audience on this relationship. In view of this tool’s structure as a vehicle for spreading important issues, insights and ideas, it would be interesting to expand and frequently update the program options section. Later, indicators relating to each of the program option approaches could be defined to enable development practitioners to identify progress in this area, and in a second feedback loop the toolkit could be enhanced and fine-tuned.
Moira Feil
E-mail: feil@adelphi-research.de
Olivia Voils
E-mail: ovoils@web.de
Adelphi Research gGmbH
Caspar-Theyss-Strasse 14a
D - 14193 Berlin
Germany
Phone: +49 30 8900068-30
Fax: +49 30 8900068-10
Website: http://www.adelphi-research.de