This chapter deals with session on forestry databases during which each project country delegation gave a presentation on the use of databases in forestry in their respective countries. The presentations gave an insight in the national practices relating to collection, compilation and retrieval of forestry related information in databases at various administrative levels level (national, state, region, district, village etc.). Following provides a brief synthesized overview of these presentations. The Appendices present complete country presentations on this subject.
The existing national level forest database structures in most of the South Asian countries are not compatible with each other. This is also true for sub-national data structures. They have to be adapted with some minimum changes to meet the demands of data and information for multi-level national planning. The collection of data and information for new orientations in forest planning is being arranged on an ad hoc basis. The cost is, however, exorbitant and the results are likely to have varying degrees of accuracy.
Identification of weaknesses and strengths of the present practices, as well as identification of current constraints and suggestions for future improvement was the focus of the presentations. Country presentations are available in the Annexes with this proceeding. The following sections present commonalities, variations and practices related to forest database management in the project countries.
All the project-countries have the rich tradition for gathering data related to the "traditional aspects of forest resources". The data on traditional parameters of forest resources is in abundance but is scattered at various administrative levels and some times in different institutions. The data on forest area, growing stock, and production is typically kept at District or Divisional level. Most of such information is documented by hand in the registers and is not available in digital format. The access and retrieval of this data is a lengthy process.
Internal security situations in many project countries have currently rendered some areas inaccessible and provide a hindrance to the development of a regularly updated information system based on field work and observations.
Most of the project countries, do not give enough importance to the databases on “non-traditional aspects of forestry” e.g. Non Wood Forest Products, Trees Outside Forests, fuelwood collection, and various socio-economic factors etc. However, with the increasing recognition of integration of the forestry sub-sector and its co-ordination with other sectors of society, there is general agreement to improve the content and quality of forestry databases on these "non-traditional" aspects of forest resources.
All the participants agreed that a reliable, accessible and regularly updated database on traditional as well as non-traditional aspects of forest resources containing spatial and non-spatial geo-referenced information is essential and that it will improve efficiency of sustainable planning, evaluation and monitoring of forest resources.
Project countries appreciated that building coherent and useful forest databases under a common framework of concepts to serve all levels of planning which is integrated with all sub sectors of forestry and coordinated with all sectors of economy is a very major and complex task. There are no ready-made solutions. It has to evolve over time and has to be envisaged in each country as a continued action over a period of years, so that the various gaps are removed step by step, beginning with those considered most urgent and remediable.
All participants held the common view that the task of coordinating, processing, harmonizing and managing forest related data bases is absolutely necessary to avoid duplication of efforts with in forest department and between different development partners. There is little comparability between surveys performed in different years even by the same agencies and ensuring compatibility of data across varying formats, map projections, boundaries, and scales even within a country is becoming a Herculean task. The participants were of the view that proper co-ordination and management of forestry data will facilitate the identification of knowledge gaps across databases and optimization of scarce resources available to collect the information.
Workshop discussions led to a consensus among the participants on need to network the forestry information at sub-national, national and regional level. Apart from collection, retrieval, sharing and dissemination of information, such networks will also facilitate coordination and management of data. The participants considered Local and Wide Area Networks at sub-national, national and regional levels as an essential tools for forest planning and management. Further, there was a general agreement among the project-countries on the a need for an apex body both at national as well as at regional level to coordinate the tasks of harmonizing, distribution and sharing of forestry related information.
All project countries identified lack of skilled manpower and hardware as a major constraint in forest related data management. Participants were of the view that continual development of the human resource is necessary both at national and lower levels like province, district and village level.
Finally, all the project countries desired a better well functioning forest information and database systems that takes advantage of modern Information Technologies to meet fast growing need of integrated and coordinated sustainable forest planning system that is responsive to social, ecological and technical needs.
4.3 Variations
The project countries differ in how far the development of integrated forest database management systems has progressed. There are historical differences in the development of forest planning, forest management, forest inventories, the institutional development and context among project countries. This has led to large differences in the mandate of data collection and the kind, extent, and quality of data that is available with different institutions in the project countries.
The data needs and methods (collection, retrieval and analysis) vary between countries due to variation in national priorities, institutional setups, mandate and responsibilities also among countries. For example responsibility to conserve wildlife and resources lies with forest department in India and to an institution other than forests in Nepal and Sri Lanka. Similarly the mode of managing such areas varies from departmental control in India to participative management in Nepal. Similarly, forest department in Bhutan controls forest harvesting while it is done by other commercial organizations in India, Sri Lanka and Nepal.
Field |
Data Mangers (Agencies) in the Countries | ||||||
Bangladesh |
Bhutan |
India |
Myanmar |
Nepal |
Pakistan |
SriLanka | |
Forest Inventory |
|||||||
National level |
FD |
FD |
NRSA, FSI, WII, ICFRE |
FD |
DFS |
FD |
FD |
State level |
FD |
FD |
SFD |
FD |
DFS |
FD |
FD |
District level |
FD |
FD |
SFD |
FD |
DFS |
FD |
FD |
Plantation |
FD /NGO |
FD |
SFD |
FD |
FD |
FD |
FD |
Harvest / Market |
FD |
FD |
FDC |
FD |
FDC |
FD |
FD |
Biodiversity |
FD |
FD |
FD |
FD |
DWL |
FD |
DWL |
TOF |
NGO |
-- |
FD |
FD |
FD /DFS |
FD |
FD |
NWFP |
FD / NGO |
FD |
FD / NGO |
FD |
FD / NGO |
FD |
FD/DWL |
(Note. FD= Forest Department, NGO = Non Governmental Organization)
The variation in priority settings among alternatives in forest planning over time and among countries has lead to different indicators for planning, management and control. For example, various variables related to biodiversity have been included in forest inventories due to current rise in conservation function and many variables have been excluded from traditional forest databases due to decline in their importance and use. Similarly, many new inventories and databases like assessment of forest plantations, TOF and homesteads have been developed to understand their potential for production and carbon storage.
Main strength flows from past history and rich experience of forest departments in collecting, compiling, retrieving, and analyzing data. The forest department have pyramid or tree type organizational structure with nodes having hierarchical levels of authority that control the current data systems and comparable with that in other sectors. The decentralized structure for data collection provides easy updating and compilation at respective levels. Lastly, the staff has very clear concepts about each item on which traditional forest information is to be collected.
Main weakness of current database systems is that being decentralized at local levels they lack compatibility for aggregation at higher levels. Current databases have large knowledge gaps, especially in the "non traditional" forestry fields like biodiversity, trees out side forests, NWFP, and fires etc. Being decentralized, the existing data sets are many times not readily accessible at higher levels limiting its utility and credibility. Further, such decentralization requires updating skills of large number of professional to manage the datasets.
Many countries have problems of outdated or incomparable landuse and forest maps.
Several forestry related database management systems exist with other development partners both bilateral (community forestry) and with other government agencies (Wildlife Conservation, Soil Conservation and Watershed Management).
Current data system do not have capacity to deal with increasing demand for more diverse and transparent information due to better integration and coordination of forestry sector with other sectors of society. Lastly current data systems are poor in statistical (Temporal, spatial, and cross sectional) compatibility between "information structures", "planning structures", "user structures", and "authority structures" that is essential for the multilevel forest planning system
As the Forestry Sector becomes more integrated within itself and coordinated with other sectors of society, the need to look beyond the traditional parameters of forest resources increases. An abundance of forest related "traditional data" exists at various levels and in various institutions. There are however still knowledge gaps, especially in the "non traditional" forestry fields like Biodiversity, Trees Outside Forests (TOF), Non Wood Forest Products (NWFP), and fires etc. A major challenge for the project countries is the co-ordination, homogenization, formatting, quality, storage, sharing and distribution, processing, and analysis of compatible data to avoid duplication of work among the development partners and to focus efforts on identified gaps in forest-related information.
This session called for enlarging the scope of current forest database at all levels to meet the present and future needs including standardization of definitions, data formats and laying down of the procedures for their collection, retrieval and use. Similarly, the organizational design, particularly in the context of decentralized planning and joint or community forest management needs strengthening and streamlining. The session identified two main issues that need to be resolved in all the project countries (a) design of a multipurpose and multilevel "information systems" that includes collection, storage, retrieval and analysis of information, and (b) statistical compatibility (temporal, spatial, and cross sectional) between "information structures", "planning structures", "user structures", and "authority structures" that is essential for the multilevel forest planning system. The session supported computerization of forest databases to resolve many problems and improve their access and utility.
