This project was funded by the United Nations Fundation and supported by FAO with the aim of encouraging the sustainable utilization and conservation of forest biodiversity at the Mount Emei World Heritage Site (WHS), in Sichuan.

The project began in February 2001. The Sichuan Province Forestry Department (SPFD) implemented the Project in partnership with the Forest Bureau of the Leshan Prefecture, Mt Emei County Forest Bureau and Mt Emei City Municipal Management Committee. The Market Analysis and Development (MA&D) approach developed by the FAO, was used as training methodology.

The carrying out of the three phases of MA&D, starting in January 2001 through December 2005, encountered several interruptions due to funding problems; however, it conducted to positive results.

The preliminary phase of MA&D helped to identify the socio-economic situation of communities living within and around Mt Emei WHS. Using participatory processes, four villages were selected for the project implementation: Longdong village, Heishui village, Yangliu village, and Liangfeng village.

In the first phase villagers were trained, market investigations were carried out and exercises were conducted in order to prioritize products. From a large initial list of products such as timber processing, medicinal plants, fish ponds, bottled mineral water, tourism and others, the villagers short-listed a few products such as processed (organic) tea, huanglian, medicinal plant, and tourism services.

During the second phase, products, markets and means of marketing were identified, opportunities were analysed in the four areas of enterprise development, foreseen by the MA&D process (social/institutional, economy/market, environment/natural resources and technology). The most promising products selected were fruit trees, organic tea, bitter bamboo shoots and eco-tourism.

The third phase, supporting the writing up of the enterprise development plans (EDP), included a survey of the business environment, village workshops for each product for which mission statements and strategies were developed, and the formulation of action plans and financial plans.

Liangfeng village started up enterprises of fruit trees and tourism.

Longdong and Heishui villages, interested in organic tea and bamboo shoots, faced some problems linked to the scarcity of fund for the investments needed to a processing plant. In fact, bamboo shots and tea required large investments to compete with established industries, and finally, their potential products had to be eliminated because of policy restrictions.

Yangliu village developed a business plan for Huanglian, a medicinal plant. The business depended on farmers supplying products on credit in order to reduce the capital needs, but profit margins were not high. Therefore farmers finally didn’t pursue it since it would not be a realistic enterprise.

The implementation of the project demonstrated that projects expecting to create enterprises in very poor communities dependent on forest resources must have funds for seed capital investments. Furthermore, if a project hopes to identify economic incentives for villagers living around protected areas, it needs from the very beginning to address policy issues with local authorities, ensure that there are realistic expectations and recognize that the list of potential products will be limited by restrictions on harvesting and agricultural production. Under park rules many of the resources that villagers are familiar with will not be accessible for establishing enterprises.

At the end, the results achieved by the project had a significant impact on tourism and community based enterprise development in Sichuan. This is why documenting and disseminating the experiences and tools used in Mt. Emei Project is very important, i.e. the Chinese version of the MA&D-field manual which includes all the examples and tools used up to end of 2004. These were also distributed to Winrock International (WI) staff, an international organization that is implementing the Sustainable Tibetan Communities project in Ganzi County.

The Central Government has favoured conservation practices through its local-level authorities. Given the scarce presence of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the province, the partnership strategy was effective in creating synergies among different government divisions with project experience.

Village-level forestry staff demonstrated to be very capable of obtaining the basic skills for planning sustainable enterprises, including tools for participatory village assessment and financial analysis. The MA&D process was successful in using a step-by-step approach at the community level to build the understanding of field staff and farmers about elements in the planning of small-scale enterprises.

The experience in Liangfeng demonstrated that villagers are willing to invest a lot of effort in maintaining a pristine environment, are proud when they see its usefulness as a tourist attraction, and are able to capture a new market for local products such as fruits.

A case study on the Chinese experience in community-based commercial enterprise has been developed. It can be utilised as an instrument to share knowledge and stimulate discussion about projects implemented in World Heritage Sites and protected areas. To read the case study, please click here.

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