Expert in Rural Development and Coastal Area Management
Forestry is a natural agent of rural development. Practically all forests are located in rural areas thus providing ample opportunities to rural poor to enhance their livelyhood. Leading several major forestry sector development efforts has allowed me to apply various strategies to promote rural development and alleviate poverty.
Mozambique
In the Mozambican Forestry Entrepreneurship and Joint Forest Management Project it was assumed, that activating the forest-based, small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) would work as the principal means to better the life of communities living within the concession areas. Therefore the Project activities focussed on facilitating credits to SMEs and on supporting forest-based livelihood of the resident communities. My team assisted the partners in their efforts and helped the Direcção Nacional de Terras e Florestas, DNTF, to further develop the mechanisms in order to enable the industry and the communities to manage and use the forest resources in a sustained manner.
Decision of the Government to allocate 20% of the forest and wildlife revenue to local forest communities enabled my team to accelerate the implementation of this revolutionary policy by drafting detailed implementation rules and regulations and by helping forest communities to open small scale businesses using their new funds.
Bangladesh
In the latest project in Bangladesh, my team helped the villagers and other stakeholders to select female household heads from among the poorest and landless families to settle on the newly rehabilitated coastal embankments, and establish and maintain the vegatation on them for protection of the entire community. While maintaining the vegetation on the embankment the poor families are gradually turning to become selfsufficient getting their livelihood from the plants, which belog to them. In the process the embankment maintenance budget of the government will be reduced to the level, which the government can sustain. About 1000 villagers were mobilized for embankment vegetation and 4000 for foreshore afforestation. Conflicting interests of rich and poor, fishermen, rice farmers, shrimp producers and many other occupations, combined with religious and cultural differencies, presented a challenging social network. In this puzzle, introduction of a small fund for community development opened new opportunities to rural poor. Liberalization of women in the most conservative muslim communities has, however, still remained an unresolved issue.
Laos
In Laos we helped the villagers to re-establish their indigenous rights to the forest wherein they lived. In two provinces about 90 villages with 25 000 people were selected to pilot the Village Forestry in the Forest Management and Conservation Programme. Their leaders were trained for sustained management of their natural forests covering about 200 000 ha. The work required a careful balancing of power between the national and local interests. IDA allocated almost 9 million USD for various village development activities. Extension of the programme is being considered as a component to the “Sustainable Forestry” project, which is in pipeline and to be funded by IDA with a budget of 12 million USD.
Thailand
In the Thai Master Plan we introduced community forestry as one of the key strategies to enhance the sustained rural development. About 9 % of the land was suggested for that purpose. Farm forestry and industrial forestry were other contributors to rural development, which we suggested to be included into the Forest-based Rural Development Programme. We pointed out, that the forest land reform is a prerequisite for implementation of the programme because it would enable the villagers to obtain legal access to and control over the resource. Sharp polarization of the opinions in Thai society has slowed down the progress in the required legal and institutional reform and the Community Forestry Act got stacked in the Senate, but it is expected, that it would pass the final steps soon.
Nepal
In Nepal my team established close cooperation with various on-going community forestry projects in the country and realized, that it is the most applicable forest management strategy in those circumstances. The donors community allocated half of their support for the Community Forestry Programme and it has now become the most important form of forest management in Nepal.