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Tropical Forest Research Network |
SOCIAL ASPECTS
SOCIAL
ASPECTS OF TROPICAL FOREST MANAGEMENT
By Carol J.
Pierce Colfer and CIFOR's ACM Team
Between 1994 and 1997, the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) was involved in a project to test criteria and indicators for sustainable forest management. A part of that work focused on social criteria and indicators, and the appropriate methods needed to assess such social conditions. The social criteria and indicators, like CIFOR's Generic Template of C&I (see the 9 tools in the CIFOR C&I Toolbox 1999), emerged from analysis of a number of interdisciplinary field tests in a number of countries. The three broad topics that proved the most important for human well being, within the context of sustainable forest management were:
At the same time, a series of activities had been underway, looking at devolution processes and how formal regulations played out on the ground. Part of that work documented the complexity and utility of indigenous systems, focusing on adaptation in naturally occurring systems of people-forest interactions. We found growing evidence of the diversity, complexity, and unpredictability of how human and ecological systems affected forests (examples reported in Colfer and Byron 2001). Local human systems, we also noted, had important components of use to forestry more generally.
Although the identification and improved definition of what we meant by these issues proved useful in alerting forestry professionals and others to important social issues, our conclusion at CIFOR was that this was simply not enough. Real progress would not occur until a) we could see the conditions specified in the criteria and indicators evident in the real world, and b) the potential contribution of local communities in forest management was acknowledged and widely used as a valuable human resource. As we discussed our findings in our respective fields of research, we could not avoid the conclusion that particularly tropical forests were in a state of crisis. Non timber forest products were, if anything, even more adversely affected than were timber resources - with correspondingly negative impacts on the local people who depended on those products. We concluded that a more action-oriented approach was needed.
Bringing together scientists from two of CIFOR's previous programmes and identifying suitable partners in other countries, we planned a programme - "Local People, Devolution, and Adaptive Collaborative Management of Forests" - to address forest management problems in tropical forest areas. We have entered into partnerships with universities, NGOs, governments, and projects, trying always to build on ongoing fieldwork in our countries of choice. We have developed a two-pronged approach, involving both collaborative experimentation with management of those forest resources deemed important locally, using participatory action research, and a systematic effort to document and evaluate how well this approach works.
In this research we seek to identify mechanisms that build on existing local forest management systems, starting with local communities residing in and around forests, and involving other stakeholders, such as timber, plantation, or mining companies, resettlement schemes, and conservation area managers, as appropriate. In our participatory action research, we will examine strategies to institutionalize collaborative learning, seeking an iterative or adaptive approach to management in particular forests.
The strengths of this effort include:
Some of these dimensions include the following:
Our comparative participatory action research work is already underway in Asia (Philippines, Nepal and Indonesia), in Africa (Zimbabwe, Malawi, Cameroon, and Ghana), and in South America (Brazil and Bolivia). These action-oriented components are complemented by focused research looking at devolution and decentralization, institutions, and conflict management. We are also experimenting with various modeling frameworks, to reflect the interactions we identify in the field, and to help us in communicating our findings in a manner that is more widely understandable or accessible than conventional case studies.
For further information
please contact:
Carol J. Pierce Colfer
CIFOR
PO Box 6596 JKPWB
Jakarta 10065, Indonesia
Tel: +62-251-622622, Fax: +62-251-622100
E-mail: c.colfer@cgiar.org
Website: http://www.cgiar.org/cifor
NTFPS
AND FOREST FRUITS IN SOUTH-EAST MÉXICO
Remi Gauthier
and Nigel Poole - TH Huxley School, Imperial College at Wye
Aliza Mizrahi
and Verónica Gómez - Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán,
México
Introduction
Recent enthusiasm
concerning NTFPs as an important food and income source for forest margin households
has been tempered by constraints to the development of forest economies. The
extraction of forest products is not an inherently sustainable process in either
socioeconomic or ecological terms, and the benefits from commercialisation have
not always increased the incomes of the rural poor.
This article reports work undertaken to investigate the opportunities for enhancing forest fruit use. The focus of the research is forest margin groups in south-west India and south-east México. Some tentative but interesting results are emerging from the analysis of the first data set from a Mayan community who live in the village of Majas, in the State of Yucatán, México.
The Mayan context
It is believed
that the ancient Mayas actively managed their forest ecosystems. Evidently,
much of the traditional knowledge has been conserved: the peninsular flora is
still used by the inhabitants of the Yucatán today for multiple purposes.
There continues to be a well-informed Mayan silviculture, comprising protection
of trees, cultivation, selection and domestication, transplantation, and introduction
of new species.
Findings from Majas
Our initial research
results are consistent with many of the common assumptions about forest margin
communities. Even under 'modern' patterns of land tenure, such as the Mexican
ejido system, there is a system of controlled community forest management.
The forest is important to all households in Majas as a source of both timber
and non-timber products, which account for 18 % of all income sources (agriculture:
27 %, paid labour: 25 %, government support: 20 %).
Forest products for
home consumption
Apart from honey,
NTFPs are not widely marketed by the people of Majas. Forest fruits such as
sakpaj (Byrsonima bucidaefolia) and zapote (Manilkara
sapota) are collected every year by many households (>70%), but mostly
for home consumption. All households use the forest every day for sourcing firewood
and to collect fruit and plants for medicinal and other purposes. Other forest
resources are exploited mainly by men, sometimes accompanied by their sons,
on an occasional basis (monthly or less) or more frequently. This is true also
for thatching and timber for construction and other purposes, and for hunting
and trapping of wild animals for home consumption.
Commercial use of forest
products
While all households collect and consume forest fruits, it is the better-off
families who use them for commercial purposes. On average, forest fruits account
for a only a small proportion of the income from forest products and an even
smaller proportion of total household income. However, in the community of Majas
there is one family who stand out as significant traders, not just of forest
fruits, but of NTFPs in general, as table 4 shows.
Enhanced commercialisation?
This intriguing
inverse relationship between poverty and commercial use of forest products raises
issues about the exploitation of forest resources in general and forest fruits
in particular. There is no doubt that there are opportunities for enhanced commercialisation.
For example, sakpaj is sold in the holiday resort of Cancún, where
it is used as a bar snack. However, only six households in Majas sold sakpaj
and one trader family were the major beneficiary. This suggests that there may
be marketing barriers that prevent commercial use of NTFPs by the Mayan communities.
Depending on the nature of these barriers, improved marketing may improve incomes
for the poorest - or help only the better-off families.
The trader family in Majas are another intriguing case. They buy forest fruits from other households in the community and sell to traders mainly from nearby towns. They have a shop and a vehicle, both of which are income sources to the household that are not available to most other households. A greater understanding of this family will help refine our understanding of the opportunities and threats to developing the NTFP economy.
Conclusion
The preliminary
analysis presented in this article tends to support the premise that commercialisation
may benefit the better-off members of the community, while making explicit the
need to examine the links between marketing barriers and income status. NTFPs
in general, and forest fruits in particular, play an important role in the subsistence
of the household, despite their relatively modest contribution to household
income. The above points highlight the need to test the often assumed link between
commercialisation of NTFPs and poverty alleviation.
This publication is an output from a research project funded by the United Kingdom Department for International Development (DFID) for the benefit of developing countries. The views expressed are not necessarily those of DFID. [Project R7349, Forestry Research Programme]
For further information
please contact:
Dr. Remi Gauthier
Lecturer in Environment
and Development
T H Huxley School
of Environment, Earth Sciences and Engineering
Imperial College
at Wye
Wye, Ashford
Kent, TN25
5AH, United Kingdom
Tel: +44 20 759 42682
(Note New Telephone Number)
Fax: +44 1233 812855
Email: r.gauthier@ic.ac.uk
Website: http://www.ic.ac.uk
WOMEN
AND FORESTS: DOES THEIR INVOLVEMENT MATTER?
by Carol J.
Pierce Colfer
I would answer the question with an unequivocal "yes". I will focus on three sources of evidence on which I base this conviction, each in turn: ethnographic, comparative, and analytical.
The first source of such conviction derives from ethnographic observation over roughly ten years of residence among people in forested areas. I have conducted ethnographic research in an American logging community on the Olympic Peninsula, among swidden cultivators in East Kalimantan and West Kalimantan and in West Sumatra; as well as among peri-urban truck farmers in Riau, Sumatra. During the course of such research, women's active involvement in forest-related activities became clear. The women with whom I lived tend to have different roles from men in forest management; they tend to have different bodies of knowledge about forest and their products than men; and they tend to participate in different institutional arrangements relating to forests than men.
Uma' Jalan Dayak women, from East Kalimantan, for instance, are
These women also participate in collecting parties, in search of forest fruits, bamboos, wrapping or other useful forest leaves, rattan, along with men; and, like men, they engage in low-intensity silvicultural management of selected trees and other forest plants. Comparable patterns - of differences in forest use by men and women - can be found in all the areas where I have worked on a long term basis. Nor is my own experience by any means unique.
The second source of my conviction that women are important for sustainable forest management derives primarily from my involvement in a CIFOR project, called Assessing Sustainable Forest Management: Testing Criteria and Indicators (Cf. Prabhu et al. 1996,1998). This project involved interdisciplinary and international tests of various sets of criteria and indicators for sustainable forest management, in Cameroon, Brazil, Indonesia, Côte d'Ivoire, Gabon, the United States and Austria, paying special attention to women's roles in forest management.
In these studies we learned about the complexity of measuring activities and quickly assessing the nature of women's involvement in forest management, although their involvement was obvious - e.g. through the collection and marketing of non timber forest products. Women tended to be busier than men, surrounded by children in many cases, less likely to speak the national language, and unused to interacting with strangers. Although their involvement was obvious, there was a whole host of behaviours, customs and beliefs that interfered with our access to forest women.
The third source of my conviction that women are important in sustainable forest management comes from a more theoretical analysis of a series of connections between women and forests based on a conceptual model which considers human well being and ecological integrity to be intrinsic parts of sustainable forest management and focusing on principles, criteria, indicators and verifiers (C&I testing process, see above). I place particular emphasis on the fact that any attempt to model any part of reality is a simplification.
I will focus on the effects of women on forests; in fact forest conditions also affect women's well being.
Effects of women on
forests:
Health and
Natural Increase
Women's Income/Production and Natural Increase
Education and Natural Increase
Status and Natural Increase
Impacts on women's well
being:
In-migration
can badly affect women in forest communities - in logging areas, local women
may be exposed to unwanted advances by strange men (suffering themselves from
a grossly unbalanced sex ratio), or to AIDS and other diseases that may follow
the roads that bring in the forest workers and bring out the forest products.
Typical is women's lesser access to forest resources, vis-à-vis local men, and even more so vis-à-vis external stakeholders like logging company personnel and government officials. We could point out their lesser voice in formal forest management and often in local management as well.
Carol J. Pierce Colfer
CIFOR
PO Box 6596 JKPWB
Jakarta 10065, Indonesia
Tel: +62-251-622622, Fax: +62-251-622100,
E-mail: c.colfer@cgiar.org
Website http://www.cgiar.org/cifor
GENDER
KNOWLEDGE ABOUT NTFPs
By Salma N.
Talhouk, Ingrid Lorbach and Marion Karmann
Forests play a vital role in global food security, providing food, fodder, fuel and medicine, and women have historically been the ones using these resources for subsistence. Extensive knowledge of forests, developed through generations, has helped women select specific forest foods that are an important source of income and nutrition for the family. As food supplements, forest foods may even prevent hunger and famine when conventional agricultural crops fail. According to an FAO study, communities living in the wooded areas of Thailand derive 60 percent of their foods directly from forests, with tree leaves being the most widely consumed forest foods. Case studies from Usambara, Tanzania, indicated that 80% of all vegetables consumed and 50% of all meals included leaves from trees (FAO/SIDA; Fleuret). In dry lands, where resources are especially limited, women collect wild foods from trees (example from Eastern and Southern Africa: Karmann & Lorbach).
Forests are also a major source of paid employment for rural communities. Women depend more than men on NTFPs and small-scale forest industries for income. More often than men, they work as collectors and marketers of NTFPs. In contrast, men work in commercial forestry, construction, and forest-based industries, and less in subsistence activities, except for hunting. Men are also generally responsible for cutting large trees, clearing land for agriculture, and extracting commercial timber. In the few cases where women are involved in forest enterprises, they tend to work as wage labourers, and often face serious discrimination (Jill Bowling, Isabelle Faugere, IFBWW; ILO).
This noted gender-based division of work is based on both cultural traditions and socio-economic differences. Gender roles can change over time and in response to changing circumstances (George Martine & Marcela Villarreal, FAO / UNFPA Chile). Gender roles in harvesting of NTFPs are not always strongly pronounced. Unlike East Africa and Asia where hunting is restricted to men, in Latin America women often help men hunt and trap forest animals for meat. In fact, in some parts of Latin America, men and women collect wild fruits and hunt together (Frank Bliss). Carol Grossmann describes Indonesian Dayak societies where only men gather NTFPs in primary forests because women do not venture through the forests on their own. However, when the men locate areas with high NTFP resources they seek their wives' help. Pitamber Sharma summarises gender issues in the Himalayas: although women are involved in the collection and basic processing of most NTFPs, their involvement is restricted to low-return, labour-intensive activities.
The sustainable harvesting of NTFPs by women for subsistence use is shifting to an overuse of the resources by men for income generation. In some cases only men profit from the cash flow. For example, new international markets for medicinal plants like sandalwood roots are decreasing the local stocks that have been historically used in local trade. In addition, men spend the generated money on alcohol consumption, while women have to resort to other sources to secure their family's medical care.
Case studies from Brazil and East-Africa clearly show that migration and mobile traders can exploit NTFPs for new markets in short periods. Examples from West Africa show that women prefer to collect dry wood, from dead trees and shrubs, as it is easier to collect, carry and ignite. With dwindling resources in the vicinity of their villages, however, they start to cut down trees, even those providing important NTFPs, such as the shea butter tree. Because of their partial dependence on forests and tree products women seem to suffer more from forest depletion than do men.
The sustainable use of forests requires the participation of all rural populations, including women. Although women's uses of forest resources often differ from those of men, many development programmes tend to overlook women's specific needs regarding forestry and NTFPs. This is mainly due to the lack of adequate data, information and methodologies to address this issue. This lack of gender awareness is a constraint to the development of sustainable use and management strategies of forest ecosystems and NTFPs throughout the world. In Kenya, trials initiated by women groups on farm alley cropping with Leucaena and Cassia failed to generate the desired mulch and fuelwood because men trimmed the trees for poles or allowed browsing by goats. In contrast, when left to their own devices, men and women separately planted their chosen species at chosen sites for their chosen products. Once the specific gender division of land use and product demand is understood, then fieldworkers and policymakers may build upon this to reinforce complementarity, resolve conflicts and restore the balance between men and women in traditional or experimental land use systems.
In this context recent efforts concerning certification programmes for NTFPs need further refinement to meet local realities and should take into account gender issues to ensure that the full benefits of NTFP certification are felt.
Salma Thalouk, Associate
Professor
Faculty of Agricultural
and Food Sciences
The American University
of Beirut
P.O.Box: 11-0236
Riad el Solh, Beirut
1107 2020, Lebanon
Email: ntsalma@aub.edu.lb
Marion Karmann
Herdstr.4
58332 Schwelm, Germany
Tel: + 49 2332 913892
Email: Karmann@uni-freiburg.de
Ingrid Lorbach
Hellbrook 95
22305 Hamburg, Germany
Tel: +49 40 6970
4979
Email: lorbach@firemail.de
For the list of references please contact the authors
WOMEN
AND THE BABAÇU PALM FORESTS
By Noemi Porro
In the current state of environmental affairs in Brazil, there are no long-term, effectively established public policies for sustainable management of non-timber forest resources. Using the case of the 'Quebradeiras de Côco Babaçu' (women who break open the fruits of babaçu palms and extract kernels), I argue that such initiatives must necessarily combine economic, environmental, and technical concerns with political emancipation. Without citizen ownership, they are fated to collapse into the uncertainties of official programmes.
The babaçu palm forests, which cover twenty million hectares in Northern and Northeastern Brazil, have been home to peasants involved in agricultural and extractive activities since the 17th century. Women direct and work along with children on the extraction of babaçu kernels, which are domestically processed and consumed, but mostly sold to oil industries. Men direct agricultural activities, in which men, women, and children cultivate rice, beans, cassava, and maize. This agro-extractive system of production based on a specific gender division of labour establishes their cultural identity and social relations, both within the household and the village and between them and other sectors of society. As descendants of enslaved Africans, detribalized indigenous people, and immigrants expelled by the Northeastern latifundia, their access to and use of land and babaçu forest resources have long sustained them as a social group. There are, however, sectors of society that seek to dominate them through market relations established by antagonistic public policies.
In the 1970s, development policies favouring cattle ranching and land speculation resulted in agrarian conflicts and the elimination of hundreds of villages and thousands of babaçu palms. Throughout the 1980s, agrarian policies intensified land concentration. In the 1990s, due to neo-liberal policies, national and transnational consumer industries of babaçu oil began to import increasing amounts of palm oil from Malaysia. The 1997 Asian crisis slowed these imports down, but patterns of market trends for babaçu oil have not yet stabilized. From 1980 to 1995, prices were affected by irregularities in demand and babaçu production declined. Price and production instability further threatened babaçu forest conservation, since environmental laws and occasional supporting programmes were and are not sufficient to protect them. In the current political climate, conservation measures in the Brazilian Forest Code itself are in danger of being weakened.
Throughout history and despite the lack of public support for their agro-extractive economy, sectors of the peasantry living in babaçu forests have developed grassroots organizations to assure relative control over their social and natural environments. While land concentration expelled many people, it also forced public recognition of those villages that managed to survive and overcome the conflicts through political mobilization. By the 1980s and 1990s, some of these villages achieved legal rights through an Agrarian Reform programme. Throughout the babaçu region, unions, cooperatives, associations, women's groups, etc., have joined in projects involving forest management proposed by governmental and non-governmental agencies. However, while a few of these projects reinforced political emancipation, most facilitated processes of demobilization.
Based on a combination of economic and ecological concerns and political emancipation, a movement was organized by a pool of grassroots organizations in the Mearim Valley, in the state of Maranhão including close to 3,000 families in four municipalities. It began with discussions of land tenure, credit and environmental conservation issues. Developing and strengthening local cooperatives and processing plants through administrative training has taken years. Nevertheless, since the mid 1990s, the cooperative has exported babaçu oil to Europe and run trade posts in several villages. Women's groups are handcrafting babaçu soaps wrapped in babaçu paper, processing babaçu starch and fruits.
These economic actions were closely related to investment in political emancipation, especially of women. Along with the development of cooperatives, they founded a countryside middle boarding school, held adult literacy classes and carried out workshops on human and reproductive rights. These initiatives helped to launch a movement for conservation and free access to babaçu palms. In 1997, in spite of strong opposition by the mayor and powerful landlords, a municipal law was passed protecting the babaçu and establishing free access to palms for community members. In 1999, two other municipalities approved the same law, and in 2000, some of their leaders were elected as city counselors.
Based on systematic, long-term, ethnographic accounting, examining several experiences throughout the babaçu region, I argue that in the current Brazilian state of environmental affairs, only experiences that integrate political emancipation and forest management will provide for the conservation of non-timber forest resources.
For further information
please contact:
Noemi Miyasaka Porro
331 University Village
South #6
Gainesville - FL,
32603 USA
Tel: +1 352 8465327,
Fax: +1 352 392 7682
Email: noemi@grove.ufl.edu