- Cambodia: The farce of World Bank and government consultation on forests

In late July NGOs wrote to the Ministry of Agriculture to request that Forest Concession Management Plans and Environmental and Social Impact Assessments (ESIAs), submitted by concessionaires to the Department of Forestry and Wildlife, be released for public comment. Three and half months later, an edited version of these documents is to be released, to allow for just over two weeks of public comment. This, the World Bank has decided, is sufficient a period of time to justify the release of the final tranche of their Structural Adjustment Credit (SAC).

NGOs condemn the Department of Forestry for acting in bad faith by allowing an unreasonably short period for consultation on Forest Concession Management Plans. NGOs also condemn the World Bank for releasing the SAC when it had previously called a two week consultation period "grossly inadequate". As Mr William Magrath of the World Bank wrote in June 2002: "My view is that two month period for disclosure and comment would be desirable, one month would be tolerable. Two weeks is grossly inadequate."

In addition, in early September 2002 the Cambodian Department of Forestry and Wildlife's own foreign advisors (from FAO, GTZ, Danida and JICA) called for a minimum of six months for community consultation and public disclosure. They wrote: "Considering the vast expanse of the concessions and the numerous communities involved, it is necessary to give a longer time horizon, for community consultation and public disclosure. We recommend that in the long term it should be a minimum of 6 months...".

"Releasing 'edited' Management Plans and ESIAs for just over two weeks of public comment indicates that the Department of Forestry and Wildlife views Cambodians living in forest areas with contempt. That the World Bank believes this time period is sufficient to justify the release of the final tranche of their Structural Adjustment Credit indicates that they view both local communities and other members of the donor community with as little respect as does the Department of Forestry" said Eva Galabru of Global Witness.

"A short period of disclosure, with the few opportunities it provides for public comment on Management Plans indicates that the Department of Forestry wants to allow logging companies to cut as soon as possible" said Andrew Cock of the NGO Forum.

"Experience all around the world shows that a logging company that operates without regard for local communities is a logging company that is not interested in sustainability. The Department of Forestry at the national level has proved itself incapable of managing Cambodia's forests for public benefit, but when will the World Bank accept that their support for the logging of forests where people live is making communities poorer? Is this the mandate of the World Bank?" stated Mike Bird of Oxfam GB.

Logging companies are now closer than ever to resuming logging in areas of great importance to the livelihoods of many rural Cambodians. However, many of the more remote villages located in or near concessions are unlikely to even see management plans within the allotted period for consultations.

Article based on information from: "Grossly inadequate consultation period shows contempt for Cambodia's poor", press release from The NGO Forum on Cambodia, Andrew Cock, e-mail: andrewcock@bigpond.com , sent by Global Witness Phnom Penh, http://www.globalwitness.org

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- India: The need for community control over natural resources

"Nature can never be managed well unless the people closest to it are involved in its management and a healthy relationship is established between nature, society and culture. Common natural resources were earlier regulated through diverse, decentralized, community control systems. But the state's policy of converting common property resources into government property resources has put them under the control of centralized bureaucracies, who in turn have put them at the service of the more powerful."

"The process of state control over natural resources that started with the period of colonialism must be rolled back. Given the changed socio-economic circumstances and greater pressure on natural resources, new community control systems have to be established that are more highly integrated, scientifically sophisticated, equitable and sustainable. This is the biggest challenge."

When over 50 of us from across the country --scientists, activists associated with people's movements for environment protection-- signed the above statement of shared concern in the Second Citizen's Report (1984-85), we were both describing the genesis of the problem of environmental degradation and alienation of local people from natural resources and the challenge of establishing community control over natural resources. The process of alienation began around 1860, during colonial days, when the British began to 'reserve' the forests as source of revenue for the state and for their commercial and industrial needs back home, and established the Forest Department in 1894.

This policy adversely affected the close and living relationship between natural resources, the tribals and rural poor who are critically dependent on them for their survival. While the so-called 'scientific management' may have served the strategic needs of the colonizer, it led to the destruction of the forest wealth of the people, adversely affected a wholesome lifestyle and culture on one hand and hit at their very survival base and a great civilization that had established a healthy relationship between nature, culture and society, on the other.

This paper (available in full at the web address below) deals with the above broad issues of common lands (all lands except private lands) from our grassroot experience of over two decades to the difficult fight against the forest mafia and changes in the policy and legal arena for meaningful people-centred management of natural resources.

It also addresses the greater challenge of re-establishing, in the present context, community control and management of natural resources like water, forest, land and minerals on one hand and self-rule on the other. This can be achieved by adopting a holistic and multidisciplinary approach to the issues of forestry and common lands that takes us to the core of our notions of 'progress' and 'civilization'. What we need is a second freedom movement to place the issues of people's control over livelihood resources and 'self rule' on the national agenda, a task unfinished by our freedom movement.

Article based on information from: Introduction to "Community control", by S.R. Hiremath, published in magazine "Seminar", Issue No. 499, March 2001 ; http://www.india-seminar.com/2001/499/499%20s.r.%20hiremath.htm

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- Nepal: An experience of Community Based Forest Management

Until the late 1970s, the approach to community based forest management in Nepal implied community resource relations along the lines of the indigenous system of forest management prevailing in Nepal's hills.

During the 80s and early 90s, community based forest management became a government priority programme and the new policy framework set up implied an interface between communities, natural resources and government bureaucracy.

Further on, community forestry has been understood and conceptualised in terms of stakeholders relationship. There has been an increasing emergence and growth of mutually influencing community forest user groups, service providing agencies and organisations with diverse interests.

The present legal framework has legitimised the concept of Community Forest User Group (CFUG) as an independent, autonomous and self-governing institution responsible to protect, manage and use any patch of national forest with a defined forest boundary and user group members.

CFUGs are to be formed democratically and registered at the District Forest Office, with a CFUG Constitution, which defines the rights of the users to a particular forest. The forest is handed over to the community once the respective members, through a number of consultative meetings and processes prepare the Operational Plan, a forest working plan, and submits it to the District Forest Officer for approval.

There are now around 12,000 Forest User Groups (FUGs) formed in Nepal during a period of 14 years, with nearly 1.2 million household members, which account approximately 20% of the country's population who have taken over responsibility to manage about 850,000 hectares of forest areas, nearly 16% of the total forest land of the country.

The process of community based forest management has contributed to the improvement of forest conditions as well as to a reduction in the time spent for collecting forest products, thus improving community livelihoods. It has also increased social cohesion, integrating those who have been excluded from mainstream social and political processes, and has increased knowledge and skills related to forest and organisation management, as well as community and leadership development through several training, workshops and exposure visits at community, government and non-government level. FUGs have been able to generate financial capital from the sale of forest products, levies and outside grants. In turn, many of these FUGs have established low interest credit schemes as well as grants to poorer household members.

However, there are still gaps to fill in the implementation of community forests which reflect weak FUG level governance in many cases. Examples of that are measures which have reduced access to forest products and forced allocation of household resources for communal forest management with insecurity over the benefits, or marginalisation of groups in multi-stakeholder settings which have often been excluded and under-valued, with the perception that they have less ability to make and act on decisions. Further innovation, reflection and modification in community forestry is needed according to local contexts to address social issues such as gender and equity.

In spite of those shortcomings, the Nepalese experience is a source of inspiration to all of us working for sustainable forest management and users' rights, since it has proved that communities are able to protect, manage and utilise forest resources sustainably.

Article based on information from: "Contribution of Community Forestry to People's Livelihoods and Forest Sustainability: Experience from Nepal", Dr Bharat K. Pokharel, e-mail: bkp@mail.com.np , sent by the author. The full paper can be consulted at: http://www.wrm.org.uy/countries/Asia/Nepal.html

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- Thailand: FSC should revoke Forest Industry Organisation certificate

In June 2001, two teak plantations managed by Thailand's Forest Industry Organisation (FIO) were awarded a certificate as "well managed" under the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) system. The plantations, at Thong Pha Phum and Khao Krayang, were assessed by SmartWood, a non-profit organisation run by Rainforest Alliance, a US-based NGO.

Despite the fact that the certified area covers less than 3.5 per cent of FIO's total plantation area, the certificate enables FIO to claim that it is practising "sustainable forest management". Before the assessment was carried out, FIO's Chittiwat Silapat told the Bangkok Post, "It's a major step towards the end of deforestation and the beginning of sustainable development."

FIO is a state-owned forestry enterprise formed in 1947 with the mandate to manage logging concessions in Thailand. FIO effectively organised the destruction of Thailand's forests until the logging ban of 1989. FIO has also established plantations on 140,000 hectares in Thailand, often without the consent of the local communities who were using the land. Certification under FSC enables FIO to cover up its history and its financial problems, which have become severe since the logging ban deprived the organisation of its main source of income.

SmartWood did not include FIO's history in its assessment. Jeffrey Hayward, SmartWood's team leader in Thailand, explained, "Certification is a way for any forestry operation to demonstrate that it has changed and is changing for the better. We are solution oriented. The past is a vital part of history and development, but how does it impact the present and future?".

This ignores the fact that SmartWood is partly determining FIO's "right to be around" by ignoring the reality of social opposition to its very existence. In describing SmartWood as "solution oriented" in this context, Hayward is looking for solutions for FIO. SmartWood seems to be prepared to go to great lengths to find these solutions.

There are no FSC national standards and no national initiative to develop such standards in Thailand. In such cases, FSC certifying bodies should develop an interim standard which should be circulated to "stakeholders" one month before the certification decision. SmartWood failed to do so and simply used the SmartWood "Generic Guidelines for Assessing Forest Management".

When faced with criticism that national level consultation with NGOs and civil society in Thailand was inadequate, Richard Donovan of Rainforest Alliance and SmartWood's Jeffrey Hayward responded, "We felt that we needed to aggressively consult with local stakeholders and we did so, not just during the assessment but in subsequent pre-certification visits to Thailand by SmartWood staff."

Yet, villagers living near the two plantations have never heard of either FSC or SmartWood. Somsak Ratanawaraha, the village head man of Ban Nam Tok Poi near Khao Krayang plantation, is listed as consulted in SmartWood's Public Summary of the assessment. When asked about the consultation process in August 2002, he said, "We didn't talk about anything, they only asked me questions. They didn't talk about FSC. They didn't talk about certification at all. They were talking about the plantation and what benefits are coming."

Virawat Dheeraprasert, chairperson of Foundation for Ecological Recovery (FER) a Thai NGO, commented, "Local people have so far been totally unaware of the SmartWood process and the certification. There has been absolutely no local participation. Which means in effect that FSC is supporting a process that violates the very basic principles of Thailand's constitution."

In accordance with FSC rules, SmartWood has produced a public summary of its assessment of FIO's plantations. According to a motion passed at the FSC General Assembly in 1999, public summaries must provide sufficient information "to make clear the correlation between the specific results of the certification assessment and the FSC Principles and Criteria."

SmartWood's public summary does not do this. For example, SmartWood set out 26 conditions which FIO must meet if the certificate is to remain in place, but the public summary does not explain to which of FSC's principles and criteria the conditions relate.

Fifteen of these conditions had to be met either immediately or within one year of the certificate being issued. In August 2001, Donovan and Hayward wrote, "They have to meet our conditions or the certificates will be revoked."

To check whether FIO had in fact met the conditions, SmartWood returned to Thailand in May 2002 and carried out a first year audit. They found that FIO had failed to meet five of the conditions and had only "partially met" seven more conditions. However, instead of revoking the certificate as promised, SmartWood issued a series of "corrective action requests" with new deadlines.

FIO hoped that SmartWood's first year audit would also include an assessment of five more plantations for potential inclusion in the FSC certificate. However, SmartWood recommended that one of the plantations, Ta Pla, should "not be considered as a potential entrant to the certified pool" on the grounds that "there were land tenure issues" which "would pose a high risk for non-compliance with [FSC's] Principle 2". FIO duly withdrew this plantation from the assessment and SmartWood assessed the remaining four. After a whirlwind six day tour of Thailand, including visits to five plantations, SmartWood concluded that "Regretably, during the on-site audit visits, there were substantive areas that need to be improved to be in compliance with FSC Principles 2, 3, and 5". Further explanation, however, is only available in the "confidential section" of SmartWood's audit report.

Two of FIO's plantations remain certified. Virawat Dheeraprasert said, "The failure to implement the conditions of the first year leads to our demand that FSC must revoke the certification." He added, "It's not necessary to talk of expanding certified areas, right now it is enough that FSC revokes the existing two areas that have been certified."

By: Chris Lang; email: http://chrislang.org

WRM has produced a report on the certification of FIO, which will soon be available at http://www.wrm.org.uy . The report includes a critique of SmartWood's public summary report and a comparison of the reality of FIO's plantations with FSC's principles and criteria.