Inception Workshop for Community Forestry Project
Dili,16/06/2020. The Directorate General of Forestry, Coffee and Industrial Crops of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (DGFCPI), in collaboration with Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), announced the official inauguration of the Community Forestry Development Project in Timor Leste. The announcement was made by the Director General of DGFCPI, Mr Raimundo during the opening session of the project inception workshop that was held on 16 June 2020 at his office in Caicoli, Dili.
The workshop was organized to inform the key stakeholders about the project objectives, expected results and implementation modality, and to provide a platform for sharing experiences on potential challenges and possible synergy with the existing projects implemented by other partners. The Community Forestry project under FAO’s Technical Cooperation Programme (TCP) is intended to play a catalytic role in establishing the initial process towards sustainable management of forests through active participation of local communities. The project will be implemented during 2020-2021 in four pilot sites to be selected using certain criteria.
Mr. Raimundo in his intervention expressed his appreciation to the longstanding development partners particularly EU, FAO, JICA and UNDP for their continuous support and commitment to collaborate with the government in advancing the forestry sector development in Timor-Leste. He provided a brief summary on the status of forestry sector in Timor-Leste and described the strategic value of the project in building capacity to mainstream and institutionalize community-based forest management.
The workshop lasted for one day in which detailed information on the project was shared. The project aims to finalize the existing draft National Community Forestry Strategy, and build pools of capacity at the national and sub-national level to facilitate establishment of community forestry processes. During the project period, a framework and set of tools for an assessment of forest land tenure will be developed and used. Similarly, forest user groups will be formed and start operations based on agreed constitutions and forest management plans. The community forestry development approaches will be tested in four pilot sites representing different agro-ecological zones of the country. At the end of the workshop, a collective commitment was made by all the participants to extend support to this initiative on the development of community forestry.