Master Planner to draft national forestry action plans
In the 1980’s donors active in the forestry sector started to get increasingly worried about unabated deforestation especially in tropical countries. FAO launched the National Forestry Action Plan strategy to enhance collection of funds and compile portfolios of projects to tackle the unwanted trend. Finnish experience justified more holistic approach, which advocated long-term development programmes in place of individual, short-term projects. This master planning approch gained support also from ADB and in 1986 I was selected to lead the Master Plan team in Nepal where we applied the programme approach. The next 9 years I was running and contributing to master plans in Asia. Debates between the FAO concept and “our” concept finally resulted in an improved “hybrid” called National Forestry Programmes, which is now being promoted globally by FAO and other donors.
Thailand
In Thailand I worked as Team Leader for a sectoral planning process covering the entire forestry sector development nationwide for a 25-year time period. When completed, the Master Plan was organized into three major components.
- People and Forestry Environment which included protection of forest resources, forest-based rural development, watershed management, conservation of ecosystems and biodiversity and urban forestry.
- Forest Production and Utilization which included allocation of forest resources, management of multipurpose forests, agro-forestry and forest plantation, fuel wood and rural energy development, development of the wood-based industry and non-wood forest products, and
- Institutional Development which included policy and legal reforms, organizations and HRD, mass communication and extension, research and development, environmental impact assessment, and monitoring and evaluation.
The focus of the Plan was in identifying a long-term policy direction, which would enable a gradual re-establishing of sustained forestry in Thailand based on national forest-related values. My team highlighted forest-based rural development whereby the programmes for agroforestry and community forestry development formed the core implementation strategies of the Master Plan. The key components within these programmes were a forest land reform and forest management capability development. Extension foresters and extension agents from grassroots NGOs were seen as the core agents in assisting and organizing the community forestry associations. In order to prepare these programmes the Master Plan process went through a unique exercise as it was taken to the field with a number of workshops around the country with NGOs and all other stakeholders involved whereby the top-down and bottom-up approaches were efficiently linked together.
A national level Steering Committee nominated by the Cabinet guided the work and finally endorsed the Master Plan for implementation, which has started under overall co-ordination of the National Economic and Social Development Board.
After my short-term assignments to Kenya and Bangladesh I continued leading the Implementation Preparatory Phase of the TFSMP which covered the facilitation of the acceptance process of the Plan, drafting of the legislation for the systematic implementation of the new Forest Policy and testing it on the village level. The bottom-up planning approach was tested and developed in selected districts in close collaboration with villagers and local officials of the Royal Forest Department. The aim was to complete the planning circle, which had originated from the national level agencies. The gained experience justified a simultaneous approach where both bottom-up and top-down planning approaches are started at the same time. The assignment also included the development of a forestry sector database linked to the monitoring and evaluation system.
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Nepal
In Nepal I was Team Leader for a similar, national level sectoral planning process, which resulted in two categories of nationwide long-term development programmes.
- Primary Development Programmes included community and private forestry, national and leasehold forestry, wood based industries, medicinal and aromatic plants and minor forest products, soil conservation and watershed management, and conservation of ecosystems and genetic resources.
- Supportive Development Programmes included policy and legal reform, institutional reforms, human resources development, research and extension, forest resources information system, and monitoring and evaluation.
When the government presented the Master Plan to donors their funding commitments exceeded the requirements of certain programmes (like Community Forestry and Forest Conservation) while others (like Development of Forest-based Industries) remained short of funds. In that situation the Plan proved to be a proper co-ordination tool to the Ministry of Forest and soil Conservation, Ministry of Finance and donor agencies.
Kenya
At the end of 1993 I had a short term (one month) assignment as Forest Policy Expert in Kenya for the formulation of a draft forest policy, It was funded by FINNIDA. The Master Plan team in the country had collected background information and extensively studied the performance of the forestry sector but needed assistance in establishing the policy direction for programme formulation and actual planning. The forestry sector policy, which I drafted, enabled the Master Plan team to continue with systematic programming according the policy guidelines and complete the master plan for the subsequent endorsement by the government.
Bangladesh
In Bangladesh the Asian Development Bank contracted me as Staff Consultant and Forestry Sector Planning Expert to help the Bank’s Review Mission on the Forestry Sector Programme / Forestry Master Plan Project for two months in late 1993-early 1994. The task was to analyze the material produced by a consulting firm, and based on the analysis, to draft in close collaboration with the Forest Department a new Forest Policy for the country, including outlining strategies and development programmes, and estimating the funding requirements for policy implementation. The draft policy, which I delivered, was adopted by the Ministry of Environment and Forestry. The Ministry also published another document drafted by me and named it: “Development perspectives of the Forestry Sector Master Plan, Bangladesh”.