Community-based forest enterprises

Activities

Besides promoting and implementing projects to create community-based tree and forest enterprises, the Forest Policy Services (FOEP) is engaged in partnership and collaboration activities with different institutions and organizations, in several countries.

Bolivia: Participation in the Dialogue on Pro-Poor Commercial Forestry organized by The Forests Dialogue (TFD)

In September 2007, the Forests Dialogue organized a meeting in Bolivia to discuss approaches to maximize commercial forestry's potential to reduce poverty. See the Web sites: http://www.theforestsdialogue.org and http://research.yale.edu/gisf/tfd/Bolivia_Poverty_Dialogue.html and Pdf document 

Uganda: National experience sharing workshop on small-scale/ community-based forest enterprise development

This meeting targetted about 50 participants from key stakeholders in the forestry sector, including: representatives from Forestry Inspection Division, Local governments, District Forestry Services, National Forestry Authority, National Environment Management Authority, National Agriculture Advisory Services, Parliamentary Sessional Committee in charge of natural resources, Wetlands Inspection Division, Uganda Forestry Working Group and the private sector.

The main objectives of the meeting were to share with forestry stakeholders experiences and lessons learnt in implementing the MA&D process in Uganda and the Gambia and its implication for forest conservation, and identify new partnerships to continue the work in Uganda on Community-based enterprise development.

Representative of Mgahinga and Bwindi Impenetrable Forest Conservation Trust (MBIFCT), and two Interest Group representatives (Mushroom and Village work) presented the experiences and lessons learnt on Community-based Commercial Enterprise Development for the Conservation of Biodiversity at World Heritage Site.

Experiences from elsewhere The Gambia and Mozambique were also presented.

Finally, the participants identified a series of factors that have to be taken into consideration while facilitating business groups oriented towards tree and forest products. For more details on this activity, please click on:

After the workshop an introductory course was conducted with the aim of introducing the methodology to a wide range of projects and institutions working in the area of participatory natural resource management. The seminar was conducted for fifteen institutions and twenty-three participants attended the course.

Learning Alliance with the Tropical Agriculture Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE)

This project is funded by the FAO and seeks to generate and disseminate new expertise on key factors concerning the organization and development of small-scale community-based forest enterprises.

The organizations taking part in the Learning Alliance are: the FAO, the Tropical Agriculture Research and Higher Education Center, CATIE, through the FOMIN project, CeCoEco, COSUDE, and the representatives of local communities, governmental agencies, private enterprises and projects and non governmental organizations.

A Learning Alliance is a platform aimed to promote a mutual learning process on a prioritary theme, it includes a number of actors and is based on the systematization of their experiences, the analysis and reflection aimed to reddress actions and thus reach a higher level of knowledge, development and agreement.

The Learning Alliance project has the following 4 specific objetives:

• Identify and validate innovative concepts in order to strengthen the Community-based forest products enterprise development and the Market Analysis and Development (MA&D) methodology promoted by FAO;
• to strengthen MA&D facilitators capacity in order for them to organize and develop community-based forest products enterprises;
• Facilitate entreprise organization processes of small producers of Non Wood Forest Products in Guatemala and Nicaragua;
• to reach higher levels of comprehension, development and agreement of small-scale community-based enterprise development through the Learning Alliance. This project has been programmed to finish at the end of 2006.

Overview study to assess the status of microfinance for forest-based small-scale enterprises