6. PRIORITIES FOR FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF SECONDARY FORESTS IN AFRICA
After a long period of forests being managed according to protection and exclusionary principles, which denied communities the right and mean to benefit from forest resources, recent years have seen a move towards community-based approaches to forest management in eastern and southern Africa. Most national forest policies now contain the stated aims of managing and using forest resources in pursuit of sustainable development goals, and to the economic benefit of local communities. These policy goals have been translated into a series of actions that attempt to provide economic incentives for community involvement in sustainable forest management (Mogaka et al., 2001).
- Benefit and responsibility sharing: Most Anglophone countries have
developed policies that permit benefit sharing so that a proportion of
government revenues are used to finance community development activities in
forest-adjacent areas. There is a clear economic rationale to these
benefit-sharing arrangements i.e. improvements in local welfare, and the
provision of visible local benefits from forest, which engender community
support for protected areas and reduce unsustainable or illegal forest
activities
- Forest enterprise development: There are many countries implementing
community-based forest management projects and developing forest-based rural
enterprises. For example, attempts have been made in Malawi to allow for use
and marketing of minor forest products by adjacent communities. Other forms of
forest-based enterprise include the development of local forest ecotourism
ventures (e.g. Budongo and Mabira forest ecotourism in Uganda), small-scale
handicrafts, and processing and cottage industries (e.g. in Central,
Copperbelt and Luapula Provinces of Zambia). These measures are based on the
economic rationale that adding value to sustainable forest enterprises and
markets is a way of reducing or replacing unsustainable utilization
activities, ensuring that communities have an economic stake in forest
conservation, improving economic welfare in forest-adjacent communities.
- Development of alternative forest products: Another widespread use of
enterprise and market development activities as a strategy in community-based
approaches to forest management is the promotion of alternatives to forest
damaging activities. This can be illustrated by the Kenya Indigenous Forest
Conservation Project that involved the promotion of alternative enterprises
and livelihood activities such as zero grazing, energy-efficient stoves,
alternative sources of income, creation of employment and provision of credit
facilities to allow their development. The economic rationale in this case is
that if local pressure is to be taken off forests and if communities are to
forego unsustainable forest-based livelihood activities, then they must be
provided with alternative sources of income and subsistence products that can
replace them.
- Development of tools and indicators for secondary forest management: Based
on data generated from research, there is a need to develop goals, objectives
and methodologies for management of secondary forests.
- Integration of secondary forest management in national forest plans (NFP):
Many Anglophone countries have developed national forest plans that set out
the future of the resource in terms of management, research, capacity building
and economic returns. Secondary forest should be developed in the context of
NTFPs.
- Investment plan for secondary forests: Country forest investment plans
should consider the development of secondary forests alongside plantations as
sources of forest products and for environmental values.