India
Nepal
Bangladesh, Sri Lanka
Indonesia, Malaysia
Philippines
Papua New Guinea
1. Provide legal basis of the administrative orders by different states to promote Joint Forest Management.
2. Amend government orders on JFM to provide for:
a) Transfer all forests for joint management and not degraded forests only as at present.b) Gradually transfer the entire forest management activity to the Forest Protection committees (FPC) i.e. eliminate the concept of Joint Management to management by the local people alone. The role of the Forest Department will be that of an extension agency. This would mean that the representative of the forest department will no more be the convenor of the committee meetings.
c) Provide tenure rights to the committee for at least 25 years. Presently except for a few states (West Bengal 10 years), all states have specified very short periods or kept the period unspecified. Further it should be clearly mentioned that the agreement is renewable.
3. Eliminate the practice of a separate executive committee of the forest protection committed ie. discontinue two tier system in the participatory groups in favour of only one namely the protection committee. All the households in the village should be members of the Forest Protection committee and all members should be encouraged to participate in discussion and decision making processes. Each family should be asked to have one man and one woman from each family to be member of the committee (as in Haryana state now) to take care of gender discrimination. In order that the group does not become unwieldy, the groups s hold be small (not more than 50 households).
4. Till the entire forest management is transferred as proposed in (2b) above, timber revenue shared with the forest protection committees should be calculated on the gross revenue basis and not on the net revenue (gross minus the expenses for harvesting and supervision by the government parastatal which turned out to be 55% of the gross revenue in some cases) as done in West Bengal. Further, the benefits should be reasonable to attract the participants. In other words, the incentive structure should be improved. For example, in areas where the gross income is little as in arid areas or in mountains, the percentage promised to the participants should be appropriately increased. On the other hand, the gross income of the productive forests being high, a smaller percentage of the gross revenue may be negotiated with the community.
5. Forest Department should be reformed and its activity limited to publicity, extension and monitoring, providing assistance, evaluation and research.
The Nepal Forest Bill is vary progressive in which the users (i) will be given the legal sanction of the forests to be managed by them, (ii) 100% of the benefits will accrue to the users (iii) one third of the members of the users committee will comprise of women members and other such provisions. Yet the handing over process is very slow which needs to be expedited by some measures. The causes leading to the slowness is bureaucratic reluctance, transfer only of degraded fragile forests to the exclusion of productive high forests and hence the lack of zeal amongst the users to take over, highly bureaucratic procedures and too many advisers including the international ones interfering with contradictory advices.
The following changes are proposed to improve the system as also expedite the process of transfer.
1. All forests irrespective of its standing value should be transferred. This would mean that the terai high forests should also be included for user forestry.2. Financial incentives should be given to the foresters to carry out the transfer process.
3. Reduce the bureaucratic processes of transfer.
4. Restructure the FD so that they become simply extension agency as envisaged in the Nepal forestry Master Plan.
Although basically these two countries have, to a varying degree, accepted the concept of decentralisation and devolution of forestry management, no significant legislative or administrative steps have been taken. In order to facilitate the process, these countries should legislate for decentralization and devolution before further steps are taken. We suggest that a high level ministry supported group of technical and administrative personnel should visit India, Nepal and China to study the users group forestry management of Nepal, JFM of India and Reformation Forestry of China, Vietnam etc. and decide which system can be suitably modified to form their National Forestry Management System.
We propose that the countries concerned make the following changes:
1. Take a decision at the highest government level that peoples' management is the best possible known paradigm for forest sustenance.2. Dismantle the concessionaire system of harvesting and management within a cut off date.
3. Carry out all the steps mentioned in the proposal section in the main paper. This includes enactment of legislation to provide the legal backing to the decision. The two most important issues that should be given importance in the rules to be made under the legislation would be that (i) contiguity to the forest and use level should be the criteria for transfer of management and not the claim of actual or hypothetical rights and (ii) that equity amongst the members of the local group to manage the forest is established so that at the local level the more powerful do not undo the decentralization, a common problem discussed in the paper.
The changes proposed are listed below:
1. Amalgamate the programmes of decentralization and reduce the bureaucratic levels and procedures to facilitate the expeditious progress of the programme discussed under the new initiatives in section.2. Enact a legislation (one is being drafted now in Thailand) and rules thereunder providing a legal basis to community forestry not only for the degraded areas but the productive forests as well.
3. Further reduce the concessionaire agreements through negotiation or by legal measures within a cut off date.
4. Follow the steps mentioned of our decentralization proposal.
5. Restructure the DENR so that it has more bias towards implementing the community forestry. Involve the NGOs
We propose the following changes:
1. The provision in the Forestry Act, 1992 of only using the customary rights need to be amended to provide for the right holders to operate directly with other agencies and not only through the parastatals. What will however be required is some form of arrangement by which the right holder and the buyer will be bound by some rules of sustainable management.2. A programme of information management and delivery should be carried out. This proposal is somewhat akin to the Autonomous Natural Resource Options Network that has been suggested in a recent meeting (in Manila) composed of biologists, planners and others. This would make the landowners aware of different forest management options and their impact on the environment. This system should also include delivery of the rights, privilege and responsibilities of the land holders in respect of the forest resources owned by them.
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List of Working Papers already released |
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APFSOS/WP/01 |
Regional Study - The South Pacific |
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APFSOS/WP/02 |
Pacific Rim Demand and Supply Situation, Trends and Prospects: Implications for Forest Products Trade in the Asia-Pacific Region |
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APFSOS/WP/03 |
The Implications of the GATT Uruguay Round and other Trade Arrangements for the Asia-Pacific Forest Products Trade |
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APFSOS/WP/04 |
Status, Trends and Future Scenarios for Forest Conservation including Protected Areas in the Asia-Pacific Region |
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APFSOS/WP/05 |
In-Depth Country Study - New Zealand |
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APFSOS/WP/06 |
In-Depth Country Study - Republic of Korea |
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APFSOS/WP/07 |
Country Report - Malaysia |
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APFSOS/WP/08 |
Country Report - Union of Myanmar |
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APFSOS/WP/09 |
Challenges and Opportunities: Policy options for the forestry sector in the Asia-Pacific Region |
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APFSOS/WP/10 |
Sources of Non-wood Fibre for Paper, Board and Panels Production: Status, Trends and Prospects for India |
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APFSOS/WP/11 |
Country Report - Pakistan |
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APFSOS/WP/12 |
Trends and Outlook for Forest Products Consumption, Production and Trade in the Asia-Pacific Region |
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APFSOS/WP/13 |
Country Report - Australia |
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APFSOS/WP/14 |
Country Report - China |
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APFSOS/WP/15 |
Country Report - Japan: Basic Plan on Forest Resources and Long-Term Perspective on Demand and Supply of Important Forestry Products |
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APFSOS/WP/16 |
Country Report - Sri Lanka |
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APFSOS/WP/17 |
Forest Resources and Roundwood Supply in the Asia Pacific Countries: Situation and Outlook to Year 2010 |
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APFSOS/WP/18 |
Country Report - Cambodia |
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APFSOS/WP/19 |
Wood Materials from Non-Forest Areas |
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APFSOS/WP/20 |
Forest Industry Structure and the Evolution of Trade Flows in the Asia-Pacific Region - Scenarios to 2010 |
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APFSOS/WP/21 |
Decentralization and Devolution of Forest Management in Asia and the Pacific |
D/W7712
