Forest Management Considering Poverty Alleviation in West Africa, Particularly Liberia

Forest Management Considering Poverty Alleviation in West Africa, Particularly Liberia

0610-A1

Moses A. Eben
[1]

Abstract

The paper opens by introducing one of the World’s
Twenty-five Hotspots for Biodiversity, The Upper Guinea Forest, situated in West
Africa.

It goes on to explain that the concept of Collaborative Forest
Management (CFM) can help poverty alleviation and/or reduction in West Africa.
The concept of CFM is defined.

The paper then reviews CFM as a means of reducing poverty and
attaining sector objectives of sustainable resource management. It will also
look at CFM’s impact on rural livelihoods and forest resources.

The challenges of CFM will be reviewed, including, how
non-governmental organizations’ and other stakeholders can facilitate CFM.
Important observations and recommendations will be mentioned.

In conclusion, we will show that Sustainable Forest Management
through CFM contributes to poverty alleviation and/or reduction/eradication
because forest can contribute greatly to economic growth, development and
livelihood opportunities for the poor, particularly in the rural areas where
there are few other prospects.

Introduction of forest area

The Upper Guinea Forest extends from Eastern Sierra Leone and
South Eastern Guinea through Liberia, Cote D’Ivoire, Ghana, and into
Eastern Togo is a biologically unique ecosystem that is considered one of the
World’s priority conservation areas because of its high endemism of flora
and fauna. It is one of the 25 (twenty-five) global hotspots for biodiversity,
and this West Africa’s Guinea Forest ecosystem has the world’s highest
diversity of mammals. The overall forest ecosystem is approximately 420,000
square kilometers.

The Upper Guinea Forest along with the adjacent coastal and
marine ecosystems harbors the greatest concentration of biodiversity in the six
countries namely Liberia, Cote D’Ivoire, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Guinea and
Togo.

Forests are severely fragmented; species are disappearing, and
freshwater and coastal marine ecosystems are degraded. This undermines the
natural resource base – the capital for economic growth and development, and the
livelihood source of millions of people.

Impact of civil conflict on biodiversity is significant in
West Africa. Forced migrations caused by war leads to refugees clearing
forestlands, resource use intensifying when population increase to five, ten or
more of their normal size. In these conflict zones, forests continue to be used
for shelter, security, and sustenance in the absence of economic alternatives;
exploitation of timber and minerals also generates income to fuel these
conflicts. Environmental damage also occurs when forests are burned to flush out
enemy soldiers, hunting is undertaken to feed soldiers, and agricultural lands
are destroyed to displace villagers.

We see that in territories abandoned during wars, the absence
of local government and weak national government permit mining and logging at
unsustainable levels, as diamond, gold, rubber and timber are extracted by
unregistered or unregulated companies. Environmental standards become irrelevant
to the holders of the resource, with disastrous effects on wildlife, water
quality, natural vegetation, and soils.

Population growth and influx of migrant populations lead to
competition for land for settlement or agricultural production, and are often
aggravated when competition is between ethnic groups. Ethnic tensions become
flash points for increased conflicts as competition for resources
increases.

There is intense pressure in the region and this threatens the
biological integrity, if not the physical existence, of many West Africa’s
remaining forest fragments. Mining, agriculture, and hunting occur at
wide-ranging scales, from subsistence and household levels to commercial
operations. Throughout the region, bush meat, medicines, building materials, and
other non-timber forest products continue to be harvested wherever forest
patches exist.

These forest fragments, forest habitats become targets for
settlement, encroachment and illicit clearing, planting, and hunting. Also, the
coastline, aquatic and marine environments are being degraded as urbanization
expands and pollution increases.

Institutional barriers to successful Forest Management include
inadequate funding, lack of trained personnel, and poor infrastructure. There
are also weak legislative and judicial structures that provide little framework
for effective Forest Management, and limit enforcement efforts including the
political will of the respective government. Language and other barriers
challenge Forest Management of the areas that straddle national boundaries.
Universities are equally ill equipped to mobilize field teams and generate funds
to carry out baseline surveys and monitoring of forest.

Concept of collaborative
management

Participatory Forest Management (PFM) is an umbrella term to
include shared forest management, joint forest management, collaborative forest
management and community forestry. It tries to secure and improve livelihood of
local people dependent on forest resources by involving all key stakeholders in
the process of forest management, understanding their needs and situation,
allowing them to influence decisions and receive benefits, and increasing
transparency.

The concept of Collaborative Forest Management (CFM) is
defined as the ” working partnership between different stakeholders which
enhances the management and development of the forest and wildlife resources and
leads to equitable distribution of benefits.”

Collaborative Forest Management is a process of consensus. It
requires consultation and involvement of the community in the management of the
resources. Collaboration will have to be exercised between actors and within
institutions for Collaborative Forest Management to succeed. It requires the
proper mechanism to facilitate the process of consensus building, sharing
rights, roles responsibilities and returns.

Collaborative Forest Management includes incorporation of
community-based natural resource initiatives in national programmes to promote
rural development, wealth redistribution, employment, income and productive
opportunities and infrastructure development. It also provides legislation to
support community and other stakeholders’ roles in forest and wildlife
management. Improvement of community access to resources and definition of roles
of various actors in improved resource management is inclusive. Collaborative
Forest Management creates and support viable forest for a with strong civil
society presence and communication channels/networks. (There is up, down and
lateral). It thus places heavy responsibilities on farmers and forest fringe
communities.

As a result of implementation of Collaborative Forest
Management government as one of the stakeholder will clarify the roles and
responsibilities of the different stakeholders in forest resource management and
pass legislation in this regard. Government’s land and tree tenure schemes
will be clarified and document the ownership of trees which offer better
incentive to tree planters. Government will now channel benefits accrued from
off-reserve forest management to communities. There will be benefit-sharing
arrangements to ensure that communities and farmers get equitable shares. Hence,
communities will be made more responsible and accountable, since, timbers
loggers will be made accountable to communities.

Collaborative forest management
vis-à-vis poverty alleviation

In most of the rural areas or the forest areas, there are
little or no economic activities to provide income for the people. The daily
subsistence of the people is depended on the forest. Hence, resources obtained
from the forest include water, firewood, building poles, timber, medicinal
herbs, vegetables, honey, fruits, and animals etc. There are also agricultural
practices as well as extractive activities.

Collaborative Forest Management that allows in collaboration,
government and communities to consider government mandates, standards, and
guidelines, National interest Groups, (Environmental, Timber, Property, Rights
etc), Scientific Forest Management principles, Resources available for forest
management to develop alternative, prioritize and also implement in
collaboration with the community. People learn by being involved, thus have
effective community participation and commitment, including information. The
more accurate information people have, the harder they work, and the more
effective they will be.

Collaborative Forest Management allows people to harvest
forest resources for their home use in a sustainable manner, hence, providing a
means of income and their needs thus a means of reducing or alleviating poverty.
Also, use of forestland for agricultural purposes where food crops as well as
perennial cash crops plantations of cocoa, coffee, rubber, oil palm etc provide
income and needs of the people. It is easy to build on indigenous management
practices, as they allow local community to collect resources in “reasonable”
quantities for their development.

Collaborative Forest Management gives the peoples’
expectation, which includes promotion of rural development, sharing of revenue,
obtaining access to credit facilities and loans and assistance in marketing
goods such as handicrafts and other products.

Collaborative Forest Management recognizes that local people
depend heavily on these resources and have the interest and potential capacity
within their institution to contribute to conservation as long as their rights,
responsibilities and benefits are defined and consensus is built between the
various parties. Hence revenue and benefits sharing from forest products are a
good incentive for collaboration.

Impact on rural
livelihood

Collaborative Forest Management will uplift socio-economic
status of the communities. There will be employment as a result of jobs created
be it logging, extractive industry or self -employment (informal sector). There
will be infrastructure development also. There will be personal intellectual
development, as information will be shared through networking to facilitate
effective participation of the communities. There will be slight infrastructure
as telecommunication facilities at least during operation of extractive
activities.

Challenges, observations and
recommendations

There will be some challenges to the implementation of
collaborative Forest Management. These will include the difficulty in generation
of direct benefit flows to communities; uncertainty of rights, responsibilities
and roles in the collaborative Forest Management decision-making process-
success will only be achieved if the process involves trust, transparency and
commitment (all six countries have this problem); unclear tree and land tenure –
legislation should provide for transparency in tenure, collaboration agreements,
benefit sharing and private investment to facilitate the process of dialogues
(Liberia has this problem); and ensuring institutional and policy support –
There are policies for sustainable forest and wildlife management which are
sound, however, putting them into practice is difficult due to limited financial
resources. (Ghana, Cote D’Ivoire and Togo have this problem and or
challenge). The institutional arrangement in the forest sector have different
department operating independently in the management of forest and wildlife
resources and the regulation without any coordination, leading to overlaps and
inefficiencies. (All six countries have this problem or challenge). Most of the
departments are part of the government, and do not receive the required budget
or personnel resources to cope with the increasing pressures of forest and
wildlife management. (all the six countries have this problem or
challenge)

It is observed that Collaborative Forest Management in Africa
will be new and should be donor-driven; can sustain forest resources, increase
income through improved flow of benefits and reduce poverty; decentralize forest
administration to the grassroots; and finally, requires transparency and
accountability amongst stakeholders.

Recommendation will be, build capacity of communities to
conserve forest resources and indigenous knowledge; negotiation is crucial, as
well as reform of land tenure and tree ownership; foresters must shift from
policing to promoting Collaborative Forest Management; and governments must
accept bottom-up approaches to Collaborative Forest Management.

Bring the main public bodies and agencies that are responsible
for forest management under one body, and modernize and restructure along
business lines, that will deliver a forest and wildlife management and
utilization service that is environmentally sound, commercially minded and
customer focused. It should be runned like a business, which is vital in order
to meet the needs of customers and support the growth and development of
forests. Finally, its mission should be ” provide service that guarantee the
conservation, sustainable management and development of forest and wildlife
resources for the maintenance of environmental quality and optimize their
contribution to socio-economic development for the benefit of all segments of
society.

References

FAO 1994. Introductory Guidelines for Country Report
Proceedings of the International Conference on Programme for Plant Genetic
Resources (ICPPGR), FAO, Rome.

Fisher, R.J. 1995. Issues in Forest Conservation:
Collaborative Management of Forests for Conservation and Development.
International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources and
World Wide Fund for Nature, Gland, Switzerland.

Hoefsloot, H. 1996 Collaborative Management on Mount Elgon; an
account of forest experiences (for publication). The IUCN Tropical Forest
Conservation Programme.

Lawrence, A. and Warren, K. with Mason, T (1999) Researchable
Constraints in Participatory Forest Management: A Survey of Issues and Opinions.
Final Report to Forestry Research Programme. Reading. AERDD. The University of
Reading.

Poffenberger, M. 1996. Communities and Forest Management. A
Report of the IUCN Working Group on Community Involvement, IUCN, Washington.
D.C.

Scherl, L.M., Casells, D.S. and Gilmour, D.A. 1994.
Pluralistic Planning: Creating Room for Community Action in the Management of
the Global Environment: Paper prepared for the Fifth International Symposium on
Society and Resource Management, Colorado, June 7 – 10, 1994

Willy, E. 1994. Looking Again at Community-based Natural
Forest Management. Is Participation Enough?

[1] Executive Director, Center
for Environmental Education and Protection of Liberia, CEEP (Liberia), P.O.
Box 20-4364, Monrovia, Liberia. Cell: (231) 226888-331538; Email: [email protected];
[email protected]

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