2.10.1. Community involvement in the management of natural forests and industrial plantations. \ *, In most African countries, participatory forestry interventions are largely characterized by a focus on the management of natural or indigenous forest resources.
Such interventions often embrace the principles of Community Based Natural Resource Management CBNRM, particularly the integration of the prospect of local livelihoods within the conservation objectives. In recent years, however, community involvement has been witnessed also in the management of commercially important forests such as industrial plantations (Ojwang, 2000). This growing trend has been witnessed especially in South Africa with the development of the small out-grower timber schemes (Mayers et al, 2001; Lewis et al, 2005) and SMMEs (Ndabeni, 2001) which highlight the involvement of local communities in the privatization matters 60
within the forest sector. According to Alden-Wily (2002), countries such as Malawi, Uganda and Tanzania have also proposed various forms of local participation in commercial plantation management.
Given the expansion of opportunities for community involvement in forestry, participatory forestry initiatives in Africa appear as either product- or protection- centred. Alden-Wily (2002) argues that while some projects are conservation-based, participatory forestry initiatives have been influenced by fuelwood extraction in countries such as the Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso and Senegal. In Cameroon, timber harvesting has been the main focus while in the dry lands of the Sahelian regions, grazing management is often the focus of participatory forestry.
2.10.2. The conditions of forests handed over to communities
One of the factors that determine the success or failure of any participatory forestry intervention is the quality of the forests that are passed over to local communities. The concern for the quality of forests passed over to communities is expressed by Potters et al (2002: 72) who postulate that:
The quality of the forest resources managed under participatory forestry is an indication of the government's commitment to the sharing of responsibilities and benefits of forest management. If forests that are in good condition are available, but a country designates only degraded forest resources for management by local stakeholders, the government's commitment should be questioned critically. The government might simply be aiming to reduce the costs of management of these non-productive resources, and for local stakeholders the benefits from the forest resources might not show a notable increase.
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In the African continent, the experience of participatory forestry does not reflect a uniform trend in this regard. According to Alden-Wily (2002), while in countries such as Zambia, Cameroon and Burkina Faso local roles are restricted to unreserved or other "poorer" forest areas in Uganda, Guinea and Ethiopia participatory forestry started in national forest reserves and in most other countries, developments have began in both the reserved and unreserved sectors.
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2.10.3. The rights of access and management of forest resources
The issue of rights of the community or user groups with regard to the use and management of forest resources is one of the significant issues in the analysis of the progress of participatory forestry. It is important to note that local people can commit themselves to maintaining the forest resource and can play an active role in forest management decisions only if their rights of access are clearly defined. Alden-Wily (2001: 5) concurs by saying that "the greater the authority devolved to forest-local communities, the greater their incentive to manage the forest sustainably and effectively". According to Potters et al (2002), in participatory forestry the rights under which communities are often likely to operate can either be formal or informal.
According to Bell (1999), formal rights can be defined as those rights that are imposed to the communities and are often modified through formal institutions such as parliament. The informal rights on the other hand, are often unwritten, communal rights and are modified by the communal institutions. " .!
Under participatory forestry, most African countries provide formal management rights to the local stakeholders while in other countries, both formal and informal rights exist. Potters et al (2002) assert that for the purpose of understanding the state of the advancement of participatory forestry in any country, in as far as community rights are concerned a number of issues need to be taken into consideration. These include an understanding of how formal and informal rights are combined in practice, under which circumstances forest resources are managed under formal or informal rights, and what kind of the de facto security is provided to the holder by both types of rights. Potters et al (2002) further assert that formal rights do not necessarily imply secure rights. Their argument is that some informal indigenous de facto arrangements may provide a more secure right base than other formally documented and recognized rights. On the other hand, informal status makes rights fragile when they are challenged by changing resource use situations or new national policies. In most African countries, given the early adoption of participatory forestry principles, governments are often likely to base rights on a temporal agreement or contract.
Alden-Wily (2001) asserts that in most African countries policies on participatory forestry often recognize local-forest communities as forest users rather than forest managers. According to Potters et al (2002), this situation, however, does not indicate a lack of commitment to participatory forestry, but it is mainly because governments 62
need to examine the potential of the new approach to see how it functions and what impacts it has, particularly on the forest resources.