In some places forests and trees are disappearing; in others, tree cover is increasing. What creates the incentives to foster and manage, or to cut and run? What creates disincentives to invest time and other resources in tree and forest management? Many governments, projects, communities, and organizations are struggling with questions about how to create the enabling conditions for improved short- and long-term local livelihoods and public services through effective management of forest areas.
In a global environment of great economic and political change, there is also growing interest within many national governments to change property rights radically. This raises a number of concerns for forests that need to be managed in larger units, than say agricultural land, if they are to produce the variety of products and environmental outputs desired by the various interested persons and groups. When is it most effective to vest the management of forests in local community members as individuals or as groups, and under what conditions will industries or government agencies manage the resource more effectively to reach production, social, and environmental goals? Throughout the 1990s, member governments sent requests to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) for organizational and technical support for forest management, as well as for advice about appropriate forestry resource policies, legal frameworks, and market orientation.
In the early 1990s, FAO brought together an advisory group of specialists focused on issues of managing forests as common property. They urged FAO to strengthen the data available and its analysis. The group pointed out that there were many types of forest products and that frequently several community groups with different perceptions and rules for managing selected products were in any one forest at a given time. To understand the dynamics of forest use and management with this many variables, new tools were needed. This sentiment was echoed by FAO member countries who urged the development of a multidisciplinary and multilevel integrated database allowing comparison over time and between sites, as well as more nuance in interpretation.
The Community Forestry Unit's (CFU) Forests, Trees and People Programme (FTPP) was indeed fortunate to be able to work with Dr. Elinor Ostrom and her highly dedicated professional team at Indiana University to initiate the International Forestry Resources and Institutions (IFRI) research program. IFRI is not a questionnaire but rather a methodology and research protocol to organize information in a relational database that captures variation and interrelationships in the complex of factors that influence forest management. IFRI methods start with a forest and move out to all people who have an interest in its use and health. In Chapter 1, the methodology has been described as "multilevel, multi-country over-time study of forests and institutions that govern, manage, and use them."
FAO has found the IFRI approach to be especially cost effective. It takes less time than many research methodologies and can form a basis for addressing a number of immediate as well as long-term questions. Case studies without common protocol have been carried out in great number. Unfortunately, since they use different questions and methods, there was great waste and need for new studies as new issues arose. These scattered studies offered no way to compare contrasting situations even in the same region. When studies had full information about a small community, they often lacked data on the market or the policy context in which the community lived. Some studies were rich in data about the health of the forest but gave no information about existing forest institutions, use, and management. A study that shows that forest areas are degraded without incorporating the other relevant factors is impossible to use in making wise policy changes. IFRI has information to address all these research weaknesses.
IFRI information is also useful when new questions arise. For example, in Uganda when researchers were asked how to incorporate demographic and population issues into training materials on forest management planning, they were able to quickly provide especially rich information by overlaying demographic data on previously collected IFRI data. IFRI works with the philosophy that IFRI centers are based in the countries themselves and reports of findings are made to the communities, to field personnel, and to host country policymakers and the data is left in the country. IFRI does not extract research and run.
In this Working Paper the authors have drawn from their data to look at specific research hypotheses. The purposes of the original studies vary. Chapter 7 is built on researchers working as partners with Yuracare people to document their historical territory and its current usage. This issue is of great concern to the Yuracare, as the Bolivian government is demarcating land areas and wishes to be able to demonstrate their claims as well as have a basis for developing management plans.... Some studies have benefitted project planners and management by offering a better understanding of local use and rules as well as technical knowledge for the planning phase and over time monitoring the effects of project activity on the people as well as on the trees. Other studies have been made in order to inform government policy. The fact that this is also an international network of researchers with centers in Uganda, Bolivia, Nepal, Senegal, and other countries means that there is a support group with which researchers may discuss questions and a bigger database from which to establish hypotheses and develop queries.
The FAO wishes to thank the advisory committee for stimulating this process and all those community members, field staff, and donors who have invested in the development of this new and exciting approach.... A very special thanks goes to the researchers and the training and backstopping team at Indiana and at the other centers who have dedicated so much time and effort in assuring a very high quality research to better understanding the relation between people and the forests on which they depend.
The Community Forestry Unit (CFU) and the-Forests, Trees and People Programme (FTPP) have developed a series of documents supporting the understanding of local forest and tree management and focusing on three aspects: tenure, institutional and legal analysis, and communal management. It is intended that these documents will be relevant to policymakers as well as practitioners in forestry programmes. The entire set of documents will be useful to universities and training centres. They are available at the Community Forestry Unit, FAO, Viale delle Terme di Caracalla, Rome 00100, Italy.
A concept paper examines and clarifies the issues of tenure related to community forestry (Community Forestry Note 5, Community forestry: rapid appraisal of tree and land tenure, 1989). A field manual presents rapid appraisal tools for field use (Community Forestry Field Manual 4, Tree and land tenure: rapid appraisal tools, 1994). A case study from Nepal adapts and illustrates the use of the methodology to obtain tenure information for project management (Community Forestry Case Study 9, Tree and land tenure in the Eastern Terai, Nepal. A case study from the Siraha and Saptari Districts, Nepal, 1993). A case study from Madagascar illustrates the use of the field manual in policy analysis (Community Forestry Case Study 10, Tree and land tenure: using rapid appraisal to study natural resource management. A case study from Anivorano, Madagascar, 1995).
A concept paper analyzes elements for understanding rules followed by stakeholding groups related to attributes of the tree resource and to incentives or disincentives for community members to expand or to manage existing tree and woodland resources (Community Forestry Note 10, A framework for analyzing institutional incentives in community forestry). A field manual applies these concepts to field conditions for increasing successful planning, implementation, and evaluation of forestry activities (Community Forestry Field Manual 7, Crafting institutional arrangements for community forestry, 1997). A working paper is being developed that analyzes the legal environments in which local forest management takes place and in what ways these often vulnerable systems can be supported through laws and regulations (to be published in 1998).
This group of publications starts with an analysis of relevant literature from Latin America, Asia, and Sahelian African (Community Forestry Note 11, Common forest resource management: annotated bibliography of Asia, Africa and Latin America, 1993). This publication raised issues confirming that literature from the various sites in different or even the same regions was not comparable as consistent data had not been collected from site to site. The various articles and research protocol for the International Forestry Resources and Institutions (IFRI) was partially in response to this issue. This working paper, Forest Resources and Institutions, ilustrates the crucial research questions IFRI can address, while seeking to stimulate greater interest in the IFRI approach and the work of its researchers.
