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International Forestry Review Vol. 11 (2), 2009

The

Contents GUEST EDITORIAL J.Y. CAMPBELL

155

PAPERS 157

171 Benefits of community-based forestry in the US: lessons from a demonstration programme c.m. Danks A community-based forestry approach to poverty alleviation in Alabama’s Black Belt Region A. Diop and R. Fraser

186

Incorporating social equity in conservation programmes in the northeastern US D. Brighton

197

Equity first or later? How US community-based 207 forestry distributes benefits M.H. McDermott

221

Participatory forest management in the Eastern Arc Mountains of Tanzania: who benefits? V.G. Vyamana

239

Improving the benefits to the poor from community forestry in the Churia region of Nepal M.R. MAHARJAN, T. RAM DAKAL, SURESh K. THAPA, K. SCHRECKENBERG and C. LUTTRELL

254

A fair share? Sharing the benefits and costs of collaborative forest management S. MAHANTY, J. GUERNIER and Y. YASMI

268

What does community forestry mean in a devolved Great Britain? A. LAWRENCE, B. ANGLEZARKE, B. FROST, P. NOLAN and R. OWEN

281

International Forestry Review

THE INTERNATIONAL FORESTRY REVIEW

Equity in community forestry: insights from North and South M.H. MCDERMOTT and K. SCHRECKENBERG

Participatory forest management: a route to poverty reduction? K. Schreckenberg and C. Luttrell

Special Issue: Equity in Community Forestry Insights from the North and South

Vol. 11 (2), 2009 ISSN 1465 5489 PUBLISHED BY THE COMMONWEALTH FORESTRY ASSOCIATION www.cfa-international.org SPECIAL ISSUE EDITORS: K. SCHRECKENBERG, M.H. MCDERMOTT and A.J. POTTINGER

The International Forestry Review Editor

Alan Pottinger The Crib, Dinchope, Craven Arms, Shropshire SY7 9JJ, England Email: [email protected]

Chairman of the Editorial Advisory Board

Jim Ball 11 Mansion House Mews, Corsham, Wilts SN13 9BB, England Email: [email protected]

Editorial Advisory Board

Jim Ball Independent, Italy/UK

Peter Kanowski Australian National University, Canberra, Australia

Timothy Boyle Independent, Canada

Jean-Paul Lanly Conseil Général du Génie Rural, des Eaux et des Forêts, Paris, France

Susan Braatz FAO, Rome, Italy Eberhard Bruenig University of Hamburg, Germany Neil Byron Australian Productivity Commission, Melbourne, Australia Jim Carle FAO, Rome, Italy Ebby Chagala Kenya Forestry Research Institute (KEFRI), Nairobi, Kenya Mafa Chipeta FAO, Rome, Italy Jonathan Cornelius James Cook University, Australia John Innes University of British Columbia, Canada

Bill Mason Forest Research, Edinburgh, UK Cesar Sabogal Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), Brazil Naresh Saxena Independent, New Delhi, India Jeff Sayer Senior Associate, WWF, Gland, Switzerland Lee Su See Forest Research Institute Malaysia, Malaysia Josef Turok International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI), Rome, Italy

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Contact Editor, International Forestry Review, The Crib, Dinchope, Craven Arms, Shropshire SY7 9JJ, UK Telephone: +44 (0)1588 672868, Fax; +44 (0)870 01 16645 Email: [email protected], Web: www.cfa-international.org

Cover photos: Top left - Field tour, Federation of Southern Cooperatives, Alabama, USA (Melanie McDermott). Top right - Public hearing and audit session, Tharu Community Forest User Group, Bardia District, Nepal (Maksha Maharjan). Lower left - Field tour, Jobs and Biodiversity Coalition, New Mexico, USA (Tony Cheng). Lower right - Equitable forest product distribution, Banke District, Nepal (Maksha Maharjan).




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International Forestry Review Vol.11(2), 2009

i

Contents GUEST EDITORIAL

221

155

Participatory forest management: a route to poverty reduction? K. Schreckenberg and C. Luttrell

239

Equity in community forestry: insights from North and South M.H. MCDERMOTT and K. SCHRECKENBERG

157

Participatory forest management in the Eastern Arc Mountains of Tanzania: who benefits? V.G. Vyamana

254

Benefits of community-based forestry in the US: lessons from a demonstration programme c.m. Danks

171

Improving the benefits to the poor from community forestry in the Churia region of Nepal M.R. MAHARJAN, T. RAM DAKAL, SURESh K. THAPA, K. SCHRECKENBERG and C. LUTTRELL

A community-based forestry approach to poverty alleviation in Alabama’s Black Belt Region A. Diop and R. Fraser

186

A fair share? Sharing the benefits and costs of collaborative forest management S. MAHANTY, J. GUERNIER and Y. YASMI

268

Incorporating social equity in conservation programmes in the northeastern US D. Brighton

197

281

Equity first or later? How US community-based forestry distributes benefits M.H. McDermott

207

What does community forestry mean in a devolved Great Britain? A. LAWRENCE, B. ANGLEZARKE, B. FROST, P. NOLAN and R. OWEN

J.Y. CAMPBELL PAPERS

SPECIAL ISSUE EDITORS: K. SCHRECKENBERG, M.H. MCDERMOTT and A.J. POTTINGER

ii

International Forestry Review Vol.11(2), 2009

International Forestry Review Vol.11(2), 2009

155

GUEST EDITORIAL J. Y. CAMPBELL1 The Christensen Fund, 394 University Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94301, USA

Email: [email protected]

Is community forestry really benefiting those who are most in need and those who continue to struggle with marginalisation and exclusion? This is the question that has haunted me more than any other over the last twenty years. In one way or another I’ve been involved in supporting and facilitating community forestry approaches with the explicit intention and fervent hope that the answer is at least a partial ‘yes’. This special issue, drawing from the panel and papers presented at the International Association for the Study of the Commons in Cheltenham in June of 2008 and drawing from experiences in both the global South and North, suggests that the answer is at best a partial ‘yes’. It should therefore be required reading for anyone genuinely interested and honestly concerned about the contribution that community forestry can make to what I like to call deep equity, that is, a just and fair distribution of opportunity and benefits, happiness and health, among all the complex layers and divisions in human society, between the present and the future generations and between us humans and our non-human neighbours in this global earth community. The conclusions from the authors in this special issue drive home the painful truth that we must continuously question our answers and constantly re-examine our assumptions about who benefits, and how, from the activities we all engage in. They also remind us that changing power equations takes time and intense engagement, whether it is between forest dependent communities as a whole and the state or the large commercial and global interests that have historically usurped control over forests, or whether it is between women, lower castes, different racial and ethnic groups, Indigenous Peoples, recent migrants, forest workers and nomadic and seasonal users, poor families and other weaker members and their wealthier, more powerful neighbours within forest communities. I’ve always held that it is vital to insert the foot into the door, no matter how small the crack and then continue to press hard against the forces that would keep people apart from forests and the many wonders and benefits that are part of a functioning bio-cultural landscape. Going with this strategy, one can always make the excuse that ‘the door hasn’t been open wide enough yet’. And indeed it is the case that by and large community forestry programmes have been half-hearted and reticent to really risk transferring power.

1

Relatively few official community programmes have actually vested inalienable rights and full control over access and management to local communities. Most community forestry ‘projects’ have managed to create complex regulatory systems that ensure government or external intervention through management and operational plans. Market systems have continued to effectively exclude small forest producers and businesses. Appreciation for the complexity of ecological systems is too often limited by exclusion of its human members and feeds the arrogant culture of ‘the expert’ and ‘scientific knowledge’, ignoring the knowledge of Indigenous Peoples and local forest communities. Almost every other lobby group, whether they are conservationists, extractive industries or ‘development professionals’ is better funded and more organised to influence policy than local communities are. The few remarkable champions within government are too often transferred or have their authority undermined by those resistant to change. And sadly, too few community organisations taking up the governance of forests under their control undertake a real commitment to ensure that community level benefits are explicitly extended to those who have been dominated and denied them in the past. Of course this only means that we need to put a stronger shoulder to the door and continue to let in more light, create more space and be even more explicit about equity. The authors of these papers and the excellent summary paper by McDermott and Schreckenberg show both the incredible difficulties of ensuring equitable benefit distribution and the remarkable possibilities that accompany all the other important gains that community forestry has made at the level of communities in aggregate. It is no surprise that some of the most important innovations are continuing to be made in Nepal – which has one of the longest histories of community forestry, the most remarkable national Federation of Community Forestry Users, and a continued attention at the policy and implementation level to the issue of equity. What may be more of a surprise to some are the similarities and learning between experiences in the US, Great Britain and a number of countries in the global South. In her presentation of the paper she co-authored with Lynn Jungwirth at the IASC meeting, Cecilia Danks said that “Community forestry in the US is like an omelette.” In my response, I agreed and talked about the need to peel all

Jeffrey Campbell is currently Director of Grantmaking at The Christensen Fund. Previously he was Senior Program Officer with the Ford Foundation serving in the US, Indonesia and India offices and working on community forestry.

156

J. Y. Campbell

the layers of the onion in the preparation of that omelette – no matter how many tears resulted. Because each layer adds to the flavour of the final dish and conceals the complexity of the next layer, it also makes us appreciate the sacrifice of the onion. What is vitally important is: who is preparing the community forestry omelette, who will cook it, serve it and most importantly who will dig their teeth into it? Enjoyment of community forestry’s spiciest interior should be fair and equitable and should be particularly appreciated

by those with the greatest hunger and longing, not just the greatest appetite! Ultimately we pin very high expectations on particular projects and constituent parts of bio-cultural settings, knowing that the larger underlying systems which drive inequity need themselves to be flipped over a very strong fire of change. It is to be hoped this special edition will help fan the flames of that fire, at least within the sometimes smug world of community forestry protagonists, of which I now find myself a considerably humbled member.

The Editors and the Commonwealth Forestry Association wish to thank the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the Regional Community Forestry Training Centre for Asia and the Pacific (RECOFTC) for their generous financial support for this Special Issue of the International Forestry Review. 'This publication has been partially funded by the Department for International Development (DFID), however, the views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of official UK government policy.'

International Forestry Review Vol.11(2), 2009

157

PAPERS Equity in community forestry: insights from North and South M.H. MCDERMOTT and K. SCHRECKENBERG Rutgers University, Department of Human Ecology, Cook Office Building, 55 Dudley Rd, New Brunswick, NJ 08901 USA; School of Civil Engineering and the Environment, Southampton University, Highfield, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK.

Email: [email protected], [email protected]

SUMMARY Who benefits from community forestry – and who gets left out? Soon after it emerged as a significant trend in the global South in the 1980s, practitioners, advocates and scholars began to ask such questions of community forestry. The distributional impacts of its more recent development in industrialised countries have been less examined. More unusual still has been the explicit attempt to exchange experience between North and South. In response, a symposium was organised to bring together participants of two Ford Foundation-funded projects on community forestry in the US, Nepal, Kenya, and Tanzania. Enriched by additional cases from the United Kingdom and Asia, this introductory article and issue report on the symposium’s results. These include the finding that, while community forestry can reduce social inequity, it generally does so by generating positive change at community and higher levels, rather than by delivering benefits directly to poor and marginalised households.

Keywords: participatory forest management, livelihoods, poverty, community-based resource management, benefits

Equité dans la foresterie communautaire: aperçus du nord et du sud M. H. McDermott et K. Schreckenberg Qui bénéficie de la foresterie communautaire; et qui est laissé sur le bord du chemin? Les spécialistes, ceux qui la pratiquent et ceux qui la soutiennent, commencèrent à poser de telles questions à la foresterie communautaire peu après son émergence en tant que courant notable dans le Sud global dans les années 80. La distribution de ses impacts dans ses développements plus récents dans les pays industrialisés ont été moins examinés. L’essai explicite d’échange d’expérience entre le Nord et le Sud est vraiment peu habituel et a entraîné l’organisation d’un symposium pour permettre la rencontre des participants de deux projets de foresterie communautaire fondés par la Fondation Ford aux USA, au Népal, au Kenya et en Tanzanie. Cet article introductif qui comprend un rapport sur les résultats du symposium est enrichi par des cas additionnels du Royaume-Uni et d’Asie. Ils incluent la découverte que, alors que la foresterie communautaire peut réduire l’inégalité sociale, elle l’obtient souvent en créant des changements aux niveaux communautaires, et aussi plus larges, plutôt qu’en livrant les bénéfices directement aux foyers démunis et marginalisés.

Justicia social en la silvicultura comunitaria: experiencias del Norte y del Sur M.H. MCDERMOTT y K. SCHRECKENBERG ¿Quién se beneficia de la silvicultura comunitaria, y quién está excluido? Poco después del surgimiento de la gestión forestal comunitaria en los países del Sur en los años 1980, los especialistas, defensores del modelo y profesionales del ramo empezaron a plantearse estas preguntas. Sin embargo, los impactos de la distribución de su crecimiento más reciente en países industrializados no han sido sujetos a un examen tan riguroso, y ha habido muy pocos intentos explícitos de intercambiar las experiencias entre Norte y Sur. En respuesta a esta situación, se organizó un simposio con el objeto de reunir a los participantes de dos proyectos de gestión forestal comunitaria financiados por la Fundación Ford en Estados Unidos, Nepal, Kenia, y Tanzania. Con la incorporación posterior de estudios adicionales del Reino Unido y de Asia, este artículo introductorio informa sobre las secuelas de este simposio. Entre otros resultados, se concluye que si la gestión forestal comunitaria es capaz de reducir la injusticia social, suele ser a través de la generación de cambios que benefician a escala comunitaria o a mayor escala aún, y no mediante la creación de beneficios directos para hogares pobres y marginalizados.

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INTRODUCTION From remote hamlets perched in the Himalayas to derelict urban lots in Scotland, poverty tends to characterise the varied settings of community forestry around the world. The characteristics that are associated with high forest cover, principally remoteness from population centres and markets, are similarly linked to poverty (Chomitz 2006). “Because the poor and forests occupy the same space” (Sunderlin et al. 2008: 24, see also Hobley 2006) and because forestlands are often the most valuable local asset, they appear to provide an obvious foundation for rural community development strategies. Urban forestry often addresses deprivation reflected in the lack of trees, yet it similarly involves community members cooperating to shape a beneficial local environment (McPherson et al. 2005). This article, and the special issue it introduces, looks across a diverse array of community forestry initiatives1 around the globe to ask: how does community forestry benefit poor and marginalised people? What factors in its design and practice promote the (re-distributive) flow of benefits to these vulnerable populations? Drawn from both the global South and the global North, the unique collection of cases presented here provides rich analytical grounds for comparison. To take advantage of this opportunity, the question can be re-framed more broadly as: ‘What can we learn by comparing experience in the South and North about the equity outcomes of community forestry?’ Inevitably, the findings of this collection of papers do not definitively resolve all these questions. However, they do appear to provide support for some striking conclusions. First, in spite of significant and manifold contrasts in context, community forestry can be effective in both South and North as a rural development strategy to improve the welfare of poor communities while conserving or restoring forests (Carter and Gronow 2005, Sunderlin et al. 2005). Second, although the poorest and the most marginalised share in community and higher level benefits, forestry does not necessarily bring about a relative improvement in their individual welfare. In other words, • Community forestry is often better at improving conditions for poor communities as a whole than for the poorest within communities; and • Community forestry is often better at delivering benefits to the poor and marginalised at the community and higher levels rather than directly at the household level. This special issue illustrates a tremendous diversity of cases, all with some claim to the label community forestry. An indirect finding of this comparative effort is that there is 1

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sufficient commonality in what has been called community forestry (or some related term2) in the global South and industrialised North to gain important insights from the comparison. While it is not our project to evaluate or select among the multiple definitions found in the literature (see Glasmeier and Farrigan 2005, Lawrence 2007), it may be useful to set out a working definition of community forestry from the beginning. For our purposes, community forestry refers to the exercise by local people of power or influence over decisions regarding management of forests, including the rules of access and the disposition of products. Scholars and proponents may layer on additional features that they take to be necessary qualifications for community forestry, such as commitments to equitable participation, environmental improvement or social wellbeing (cf. Danks this issue). Our use of the term ‘local people’ recognises the complexity and contingency inherent in defining and bounding the ‘community’ as a unit of participation (Cohen 1985), placing the focus instead on forest users. Similarly, we use the term ‘forest’ in its broadest sense, embracing forest scrub, farm trees, urban greenspaces and high forest alike. While all of these definitional issues are worthy of discussion and debate, these broad, minimalist definitions will serve the purposes of these paper. At its core, then, community forestry entails a power shift from government to the local level. As such it is a matter of degree. It is open to discussion how much power has to be reallocated and to whom for a given instance to qualify as community forestry. It is open to empirical observation what social and environmental impacts ensue. Our focus here is on a subset of these outcomes, that is, on the benefits (and costs) to poor and marginalised people that occur as a result of implementing community forestry. Benefits are closely linked to the issue of equity, which is a growing preoccupation of the community forestry literature (Lawrence 2007, Pagdee et al. 2006). Equity itself is rarely defined by authors but incorporates concepts of fairness and social justice (Lawrence 2007, Mahanty et al. 2006), where what is considered ‘fair’ in any particular context of necessity requires a value judgment (Schreckenberg and Luttrell, this issue). McDermott (this issue) broadens the conception of equity to include not only the equal or fair distribution of benefits, but also individual and community capacity and empowerment. This approach acknowledges that non-material benefits may be highly valued, just as levels of wellbeing may be high in low-wealth households and forest-dwelling communities. In common with the other contributions to this issue, this paper recognises the multiple dimensions and contextual nature of poverty (World Bank 2001) and the utility of the livelihoods approach in exploring

For the purposes of this analysis, we focus on ‘contemporary’ community forestry initiatives by governments, donors and civil society designed to be relevant to current circumstances (Arnold 2001), excluding traditional or indigenous forest management, in particular longstanding municipally owned community forests (as in New England) and tribal forests in the US. These include participatory forest management, community-based forest management, community-based forestry, adaptive collaborative management, joint forest management and other variants. In this paper we generally use the term community forestry unless referring to a country-specific form known by a particular name.

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the multi-faceted impacts of community forestry (Carney 1998). We are concerned with both absolute and relative changes to poor people’s livelihoods and how community forestry enables people themselves to determine which needs will be met and how. Our focus on equity therefore requires an analysis of power relations rather than an exhaustive catalogue of the impacts of community forestry on poverty. The necessarily broad strokes employed in making comparisons across the wide range of contexts represented by the papers in this issue may at times obscure some crucial considerations. In particular, in referring to the ‘poor and marginalised’, this article does not delve into the ways in which different causes, consequences and remedies are connected to different forms of marginalisation, such as gender, caste, class, race, ethnicity and place of origin. Just as these characteristics differentiate what we refer to as ‘the community,’ so too our shorthand use of ‘household’ conceals intra-household differentiation in relation to how costs and benefits, risk and opportunity, are distributed between family members of different genders and ages (Agarwal 1997). In spite of the existence of several good reviews of community forestry in recent years (Carter and Gronow 2005, Glasmeier and Farrigan 2005, Lawrence 2007, Pagdee et al. 2006), the questions posed by this collection of papers remain largely unanswered. Glasmeier and Farrigan (2005: 65) point out, community forestry “as both a process and an outcome, is an understudied and underevaluated field of development”. Assessments of how effectively community forestry provides community benefits are particularly limited (Charnley and Poe 2007). These reviews have taken a global approach while more in-depth, case-study based reviews have focused on the US (Baker and Kusel 2003), the Americas (Charnley and Poe 2007) and diverse southern examples (Menzies 2007) respectively. The present collection of papers attempts to fill a gap by taking an explicitly North-South comparative approach to examine the equity outcomes of community forestry. BACKGROUND TO THIS ISSUE Since the emergence in the global South of programmatic forms of community forestry in the 1980s and 90s, the Ford Foundation has been a chief supporter and proponent. When similar initiatives began as local experiments in the United States in the early 1990s, Ford was involved in fostering their growth. Within Ford’s programme for Asset-Building and Community Development, the Community Forestry field funded two major, multi-sited projects, one in the United States and one with sites in Africa and Asia. In the US, Ford committed US$12.5 million to establish the Community-Based Forestry Demonstration Program (CBFDP) with the intent to “harvest the lessons that emerged as catalysts for a broader movement” (Wyckoff-Baird 2005: 17). From 2000 to 2005, following a one-year planning phase, this investment supported thirteen competitively selected pilot programmes, a non-profit ‘managing partner’,

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and two university-based research teams (see Cheng et al. 2006). In the next article in this issue, one of the members of the latter (Danks) gives an overview of the benefits achieved by participants in the Ford programme, paying particular attention to the factors affecting the nature and distribution of benefits to the poor from community forestry. Analyses by key players in two of the demonstration projects follow. Diop and Fraser discuss the approach used and challenges faced by a community forestry initiative addressing poverty and land-loss among African American farmers in the Black Belt region of Alabama. Brighton details a case in which social equity was integrated with conservation goals through the formation of a community-owned forest in Vermont. McDermott, another member of the research team, then provides a conceptual framework for understanding how community forestry distributes benefits and applies it to several CBFDP pilots. Between 2005 and 2008, Ford also funded the Action Research into Poverty Impacts of Participatory Forest Management (ARPIP) project, in collaboration with CARE International and national partners. Schreckenberg and Luttrell provide a synthesis of the results of this comparative study, which included fieldwork in Kenya, Tanzania and Nepal designed to look particularly at the intra-community distribution of the costs and benefits of participatory forest management (PFM). A paper by Vyamana assesses the different livelihood impacts of the two forms of participatory forest management found in Tanzania: joint forest management in government forest reserves (typically of high biodiversity value) and community-based forest management on village forest land. A third paper from the ARPIP project presents results from the Churia hills region (bordering the lowland Terai) of Nepal, where two CARE projects have been working to improve the benefits to the poor from community forestry (Maharjan et al.). The parallels between the two projects, ARPIP and CBFDP – the shared focus on social equity, emphasis on research, and funding source – provided a compelling opportunity for comparison that the authors sought to explore in a symposium held at the 12th Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of the Commons in Cheltenham, England in 2008. The panel was enriched with an additional paper on benefit-sharing in community forestry in Asia that grew out of a series of case studies and facilitated workshops involving practitioners and policy makers in a regional ‘Learning Initiative’ (Mahanty et al.). The resonances among the papers and in the experience of other practitioners and researchers were brought out during a lively and engaged discussion at the event, which also informs the contents of this issue. Finally, the characterisation of community forestry in the developed North is broadened by a first-of-its kind comparative analysis of emergent trends in community forestry in England, Scotland and Wales (Lawrence et al.). In addition to contrasting the separate development of community forestry in the three nations that emerged from post-devolution Great Britain, the authors examine its fit with wider policy goals, including community revitalisation and ‘alleviating social deprivation’.

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MAIN FINDINGS Although varied in their methods and specific foci, all of the papers in the special issue investigate the nature and distribution of benefits from community forestry. The focus in this introductory paper is on the net benefit-flows to poor and marginalised people, the distribution of benefits (and costs) among them and others, and between individual households and the community as a whole. In seeking to uncover the factors that underlie this distribution, we largely bypass those that are inherent features of the communities or their contexts (e.g., community heterogeneity and forest size). Rather, we concentrate our investigation on the more malleable design features of the community forestry initiatives themselves, while recognising the interdependence of context and design (Schreckenberg et al. 2007). It can be argued that any patterns and relationships that apply across such a diverse array of cases are relatively robust findings likely to apply to community forestry more generally. By attending in particular to North-South, ‘rich’'poor' and community-household distinctions, this analysis arrives at eleven findings that appear to apply across most of the cases presented in this issue3. These findings are illustrated below with material drawn from the papers included more by way of example than with the intent to present all the evidence4. 1) By expanding decision-making space, community forestry enables the community to gain desired benefits; however, it does not guarantee benefits to the poor. Put another way: by increasing decision-making scope and power, community forestry can enlarge the benefit ‘pie’ for the community as a whole, but does not necessarily guarantee a bigger slice for the poor. The working definition of community forestry proposed above identifies increased decision-making power or influence at the local level as its essential element. McDermott (this issue, 2009) develops the idea of a decision-space, expanding the notion of decision-making to embrace process (the venues, scope and means for finding a common voice) and power (the capacity to express that voice and effect desired results). New and expanded decision-spaces are both a factor enabling community forestry to make change, and an outcome, or benefit, of the change it makes. This is very clear in Nepal, where community forest user groups (CFUGs) are a new decision-making space created by the community forestry process, which enables communities to plan and implement the management of forests handed over to them for an indefinite period. Formed at a level below that of the smallest unit of village government (the village development committee), these groups have become

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a platform for social dialogue on a range of issues beyond community forestry (Maharjan et al.). In the US, intra-community benefits often flow from conflict resolution, brought about, for example, by the new decision-space opened by focusing on practical problemsolving on the ground. In the western United States, the work of community forestry groups has been central in transforming situations of intense environmental conflict through establishing practical collaborative working relationships among diverse local interests, federal agencies and sometimes representatives of other national and regional parties (e.g., environmental or industry groups) (Conley and Moote 2003, Danks, McDermott). These collaborative partnerships are characterised by trust among members and, frequently, the exchange and application of local and scientific forms of knowledge. Many collaborative initiatives in the US are pursuing environmental restoration, which provides corollary benefits, notably access to jobs and raw materials. In the South, community forestry is often associated with a process of decentralisation, which empowers local government and local agency representatives. In Tanzania, for example, previously dormant Village Natural Resource Committees have been reinvigorated by community-based forest management and joint forest management initiatives, engaging in negotiations with the Forest and Beekeeping Division and – where forests are used by several communities – with other committees (Vyamana). In Nepal, the decisionspace opened up by the organisation of a national user-group federation (FECOFUN, see Maharjan et al.) has greatly increased the bargaining power of community forestry groups and led to significant policy changes. Danks, Diop and Fraser, McDermott, and Lawrence et al. also speak to the effectiveness and value of formal networks and coalitions that community forestry groups have formed in the US and UK. Organised user groups are in a strengthened position to negotiate with or even substitute for services from the local government. For example, some of the user groups in Nepal are now providing basic services, from improving roads and school buildings to providing credit and social security (funeral costs, food aid), that would normally be provided by government (Maharjan et al.). They also negotiate with local government to obtain services such as electrification (jointly funded by several user groups and the local Village Development Committee). In the same way, some Community Forest Associations in Kenya are a focus for negotiations with external agencies, including for the provision of ecotourism facilities or an electric fence to protect villagers against elephants (Schreckenberg and Luttrell). Similarly, community forestry initiatives in the US have parlayed improved relations and negotiating power vis à vis government into better access to government services

Note that these papers do not cover some key examples of contemporary community forestry programmes such as Canada (Beckley 1998, McCarthy 2006, Reed and McIlveen 2006), Mexico (Klooster 2000, Bray et al. 2005) and Cameroon (Fometé and Vermaat 2001, Oyono et al. 2006). To reduce repetition all papers in this issue are referred to only by the authors’ names.

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and assistance. For example, the Federation of Southern Cooperatives in Alabama has succeeded in gaining more (and more appropriate) extension services and training for traditionally ‘underserved’ African American farmers (Diop and Fraser). In Scotland, the community woodland sector is providing new linkages between local groups and social service delivery agencies not typically involved in forestry, such as council youth and social services, development trusts, housing associations and health care and education providers, which benefit the wider community (Lawrence et al.). Whole communities, rather than individual households, are the beneficiaries of many, if not most, of the outcomes of community forestry illustrated above, namely: inclusive new social fora and dialogue, representation of marginalised groups, reduction of conflict, collaboration with external groups and government agencies, and infrastructure and government services. Poor and marginalised community members will share in these community-level benefits. However, the degree to which they do so largely depends upon the degree to which they themselves participate in the new decision-spaces created by community forestry (see finding #4 below). As the following papers and the general literature (e.g., Edmunds and Wollenberg 2003, Lawrence 2007) document, local elites or particular interest groups may dominate these arenas, potentially enriching themselves and excluding, or even actively prejudicing, the poor. In Kenya and Tanzania, for example, it was predominantly better-off members of the community or committee members who engaged in community forestry-related income-generating activities (Schreckenberg and Luttrell). Even without elite capture, community forestry is often not able to provide direct benefits to the poorest of the poor, due not only to the opportunity costs and vulnerability to risk limiting their participation (#4, #6), but to lack of access to other key resources (#5), among multiple factors. In Nepal, for example, inability to pay school fees and uniforms meant that the very poor were sometimes unable to make use of new community-level benefits such as schools (Maharjan et al.). The US cases, as documented in this issue, generally fit the pattern of low-income communities engaging in community forestry while their most marginalised members remain largely unengaged. For example, none of the very poor were among the farmers who took up goat-raising in Alabama (Diop and Fraser) or the residents of Vermont who bought a share of a communally owned forest (Brighton). In none of the cases presented were non-participants actively disadvantaged. However, lack of representation, for example, of Hispanics on the Jobs and Biodiversity Coalition in New Mexico, can lead to outcomes that, although not damaging, are substantially irrelevant to their concerns and values (McDermott). 2) The poor may be made worse off by community forestry; safeguards and/or compensation mechanisms are required to forestall this. This set of papers confirms findings by Pagdee et al. (2006) that there is greater reliance on forests for livelihood support

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in the South than in the North. Such reliance inevitably means that any change to forest management regimes risks disadvantaging some people. In all the ARPIP case studies, for example, the introduction of community forestry involved putting in place new harvesting restrictions or enforcing existing ones more effectively in order to promote regeneration (and greater future benefits) or better protection of the resource. This was particularly problematic in previously open access forests, leading people in several communities to resort to collection from non-community forest sources (Schreckenberg and Luttrell). Declines in forest-based incomes after the introduction of community forestry in most of the ARPIP case study communities in Nepal were felt particularly by the poorest, who have few or no private forest resources to fall back on (Maharjan et al.). A frequent by-product of the improved forest condition achieved by community forestry in the South is increased wildlife damage, leading some user groups in Nepal to offer compensation for any livestock killed (Maharjan et al.). Depending on how the community is defined, poor people (including migrants or more distant users) may be excluded from community forestry processes altogether. While the Tanzanian system automatically involves all village residents, both the Kenyan and Nepali systems are based on user groups. Community forest associations in Kenya are membership-based organisations open to anybody living within 5km of the forest and able to pay the membership fees. In the Nepal case, while all community members should be included during the establishment of new community forest user groups, groups may refuse entry to new migrants (or charge high joining fees) particularly if their forests are too small to supply products for existing members on a sustainable basis (Maharjan et al.). Although none of the papers on community forestry in the global North finds any evidence of detrimental effects of community forestry on livelihoods, Danks warns that “should community-based forestry practices become institutionalised more broadly in the US without attention to the needs of the poor and marginalised, negative impacts could easily occur” such as lost job opportunities on federal forests for migrant forestworkers. 3) Community forestry must target the poor and marginalised in order to benefit them. To go beyond safeguarding the poor against harm and to advance equity, as the papers in this special issue all concur, community forestry must take proactive steps. In the global South this means establishing poverty alleviation as an important goal that goes beyond mere rhetoric. Too often the stated goal of contributing to livelihoods is neglected in favour of a focus on improving forest management (Schreckenberg and Luttrell). As Glasmeier and Farrigan (2005: 56) argue, where the objective is to achieve “profitable opportunity or ecosystem protection rather than livelihood generation, the outcome may further constrain the local distribution of wealth and economic opportunity”. To advance equity in the US, community forestry must target

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disadvantaged groups as beneficiaries of its activities and for inclusion in its decision-spaces. Poor and marginalised community members must first be identified so that community forestry groups and initiatives can avoid harming their interests, target them for benefits, or engage with them in transforming inequitable social relations. In Nepal this is achieved through participatory wellbeing ranking, a mandatory step in the community forestry process (Schreckenberg and Luttrell). In particular, it is important to understand the nature of poor people’s use of the forest (e.g., through stakeholder workshops as in the case of Tanzania), the degree of their reliance on it, and the likely impact of the introduction of community forestry activities. In the UK, “target[ing] resources”, “alleviating social deprivation”, “social inclusion and environmental justice”, using “woodlands as a social and cultural asset for disadvantaged communities”, are all described as key aims of community forestry, although access to greenspace and capacity-building are prioritised over the generally modest direct economic benefits (Lawrence et al.). In the US, discourse on community forestry is less likely to acknowledge poverty alleviation as a goal than to speak in terms of economic development as the positive antidote. Nonetheless, as Danks relates, many community forestry groups form explicitly to advance the interests of socially and economically marginalised groups, e.g., forest workers and harvesters, inner city neighbourhoods, Native American nations and African American farmers. Similar to the situation depicted in the South, each of the American papers in this issue makes the point that a focused strategy is required to benefit marginalised groups or to attract their participation, due to cultural barriers, opportunity costs and limited capacity to absorb risk. Mahanty et al. in their synthesis of experience across Southeast Asia, argue that explicit targeting of marginalised groups to support their engagement in collaborative forest management bodies and activities is a precondition for community forestry to make a difference to the poor. This is now happening through policy support in Nepal where the 2009 draft guidelines for community forestry require 35% of forestry user group funds to be spent on pro-poor activities (Maharjan et al.). Mahanty et al. further note that such processes will enable community forestry to play a wider development role, outside the forest-related sector. These points are echoed in all the southern papers, as well as by Danks and McDermott for the US. There is similar agreement regarding the finding that to move people out of poverty, community forestry must do more than provide a safety net; it must help them build assets (see #5 and #6 below). This is a central plank of the Ford Foundation programme for Asset-building and Community Development that funded much of the work profiled in this issue. One clear example is provided by the CBFDP pilot in Vermont, in which creative financing allows low-income community members to accumulate capital by purchasing low-cost shares in a collectively owned piece of working forest (Brighton).

4) Access by the poor and marginalised to new or expanded decision-spaces enables them to gain a bigger share of the benefits of community forestry. The papers in this issue suggest that equity will be advanced most directly when the poor and marginalised themselves acquire decision-making power. To belabour a metaphor – if the poor bake and serve the community forestry benefit pie, they can ensure a bigger slice for themselves. At the same time, they can safeguard against any potential negative consequences of consumption by others (see #2). Schreckenberg and Luttrell found that equity in decision-making is strongly linked with equity in benefits. McDermott theorises that this is because, irrespective of the wider reach of indirect benefits, "those who attain relative power, grounded in their enhanced control over resources, are likely to use that power to benefit their interests more narrowly." Nepal was the only one of the three ARPIP case study countries in which there was proportional representation of poor and marginalised people (including women and ‘untouchable’ dalits) on community forest committees, including in key decision-making positions; in addition, this was the only set of communities in which there were activities specifically targeted at supporting the poor (Maharjan et al., Schreckenberg and Luttrell). In contrast, poor and very poor people were often severely under-represented on Tanzanian village natural resource committees and consequently had almost no involvement in the new forest-related income-generating activities introduced (Vyamana). Disadvantaged people are not only the experts on their own aspirations and values, they can aid forest management based on knowledge of the local environment and past management practices (Danks, Diop and Fraser). However, giving poor people a voice requires more than simple participation in decision-making fora (Hobley 2006). Experience in Nepal has found that only a strong focus on good governance (achieved, for example, through properly implemented participatory wellbeing ranking, governance literacy classes or ‘public hearing public audit’ sessions) leads to a majority perception that decisions are taken to the benefit of all (Maharjan et al.). In the UK, Lawrence et al. argue, community forestry is moving towards “empowerment”, through land reform, lobbying, funding and/or decision-sharing. In the US, Danks acknowledges, “engaging the poor and marginalised people in leadership and decision-making remains a challenge for many [community-based forestry] initiatives… enhanced outreach efforts were often successful in getting participation in specific projects, but only occasionally did they result in new representation and leadership of the poor and marginalised in broader decision-making and over the long term.” One exception she notes is the achievements of the Alliance of Forest Workers and Harvesters “in getting low income and minority forest workers themselves, as well as their concerns, included in national level panels and policy discussions.”

Equity in community forestry: insights from North and South

5) Access to land and forest products is a key benefit and factor in the ability of community forestry to bring benefits to the poor and advance equity. McDermott argues that people need access not only to decision-making spaces, but also to the resources needed to implement their decisions, including the forest itself. Gaining new access to forestland and the products that can be extracted from it is one of the chief motivations for and benefits of community forestry. While outright ownership (as in the case of Tanzanian village forests or Mexican ejidos) is rare, stable access is indispensable for communities to invest in and benefit from ‘their’ forests. Where users' tenure is insecure, community forest management is more likely to fail (Ostrom 1990, Pagdee et al. 2006). In recognition of the importance of access to land as a determinant of wellbeing, some communities in Nepal are allocating plots within their community forests to poor community members for intercropping or cultivating non-timber forest products.This has enabled these groups to obtain a higher proportion of their overall income from community forestry and to earn a higher cash income from community forestry than better-off groups in the community (Maharjan et al.). Community forestry has been part of a multi-pronged effort by community-based organisations in the American Southeast, such as the Federation for Southern Cooperatives, to prevent black smallholders from losing access to their own land (Diop and Fraser). Brighton details how a community forestry initiative makes it possible for low-income (though not the poorest) community members in Vermont to purchase a parcel in a collectively managed working forest. Implementation of the 2003 Land Reform Act in Scotland, which gives community groups the rights of first refusal on purchases of the public forest estate has brought land directly under community management. In urban areas of the UK, community forestry initiatives are aimed at renewing degraded landscapes and promoting public access to greenspace in deprived areas (Lawrence et al.). As is well documented for the South, forest products for subsistence uses also play a role in the North. For example, access to a steady, low-cost supply of fuelwood is a significant benefit from private (Vermont) and public (New Mexico) forest land managed by community-based groups (Brighton, McDermott). Non-timber forest products are valued for ceremonial and medicinal purposes by Native American and Appalachian land managers (Danks). The southern cases illustrate how important the rights to commercial use are in order to increase the size of the community forestry benefit pie sufficiently to provide benefits for all. Formal access to forest land and its products is providing a new source of income to communities, particularly in areas with valuable timber resources or a high potential for attracting ecotourism and researcher fees (Schreckenberg and Luttrell). In Nepal’s Churia region, the combination of membership fees and revenue from forest product sales (particularly timber) has provided some user groups with funds of over US$20,000, much of which is spent on community infrastructure and capital for poor

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members’ income-generating activities (Maharjan et al.). Mahanty et al. argue that, in many other places, the state continues to control and capture revenue from high-value resources resources under community forestry, thereby severely constraining its local benefits. On public land in the US, where communities cannot lay claim to the land itself, community forestry initiatives have succeeded in overcoming bureaucratic and legal constraints to gain access to raw materials, and related extraction and processing jobs, that provide crucial feedstock for rural economic development while reducing the threat of catastrophic wildfire (Danks, McDermott). 6) Economic development is an important benefit of community forestry; however, under some conditions it may increase inequity. Community forestry can generate the raw materials for economic development through commercial timber harvests, innovations and entrepreneurial ventures in the growing, processing and marketing of varied other forest products. From small American logging towns to African villages, the locales for community forestry often have few other resources or development alternatives. However, the capital, knowledge, skills, time investment and risk tolerance required for taking up these alternatives, including for meeting the bureaucratic requirements to do so (e.g., permits), constitute significant barriers to entry for the poor, as noted for both northern and southern cases. The net effect of community economic development thus may be further economic differentiation within communities. Yet, under some conditions, the rising tide of community development may significantly reduce the hardships faced by the poorest, even though they benefit less in total than others. As Mahanty et al. assert for Asia, and McDermott shows for New Mexico, local entrepreneurs have a crucial role to play in stimulating local economic activity and benefiting workers, customers and suppliers even as they make the greater gain. In the South, community forestry often includes the introduction of income-generating activities that aim to add value to the forest (e.g., ecotourism), substitute for its products (e.g., woodlots) or compensate for reduced access to forest products (Schreckenberg and Luttrell). Evidence from Tanzania and Kenya suggests that these are rarely taken up by the poorest as they require upfront investment of capital (e.g., for butterfly cages or beehives) or land (for woodlots). Communities in Nepal have, however, begun to use their community funds to provide soft loans (and even grants in some cases) to poor community members to engage in income-generating activities of their own choice (such as rickshaw-pulling, petty trade, goat-keeping) (Maharjan et al.). In the rural US, particularly in regions where the declining timber industry has left an economic vacuum, community forestry initiatives seek to foster sustainable rural economic development and community resilience by promoting and incubating locally-owned businesses engaged in value-added processing of forest resources or biomass energy production (Danks, McDermott). Income-generating

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alternatives on private land include goat-rearing combined with timber management (Diop and Fraser). One of the aims of community forestry in Wales is to use woodlands “to encourage economic regeneration through enterprise development” (Lawrence et al.). More than profits, jobs are an accessible, sought after, and potentially equity-enhancing component that community forestry can bring to community economic development. In Nepal, where the importance of wage labour has increased for all wellbeing groups, forest guard jobs are often targeted at the poorest (Maharjan et al.). Jobs were a particular concern for participants in Scottish community forestry, who wanted local assets to generate local benefits (Lawrence et al.). Similarly, maintaining and generating jobs was a major thrust of many of the initiatives in the Ford CBFDP. For example, two of the demonstration projects, the Watershed Research and Training Center and Wallowa Resources, recovered many of the jobs lost to the closure of local sawmills by establishing respectively a business incubator and a for-profit subsidiary (Danks). While the total number of jobs directly generated by the CBFDP is not large (and, as in the UK, has not been consistently monitored), they may have significant multiplier effects in economically depressed rural communities (Danks, McDermott, Lawrence et al.). In addition to jobs processing and marketing forest products, community forestry may be associated with the introduction of new forest management jobs. In the South, lack of resources may previously have prevented forest departments from implementing tasks such as guarding, cutting firebreaks and enrichment planting that can now be carried out by community members. On public lands in the US, grants won by non-profit organisations have funded mandatory environmental studies, thereby creating contracting work that had been stalled due to federal budgetary shortfalls (McDermott). While volunteers in the North are more likely to be inspired by environmentalism, in the South some jobs are carried out unpaid by community members in anticipation of future benefits. In Kenya, for example, young men who patrol the forest may share in the fines imposed on offenders, but their long-term hope is to gain paid employment as ecotourism guides (Schreckenberg and Luttrell). In Tanzania, the work is often undertaken by committee members who benefit by having priority access to new income-generating activities introduced to the community as part of the community forestry process (Vyamana). In Nepal, where earlier studies in the Middle Hills highlighted the difficulties of poor families in meeting rotational guarding duties, most forest guards are now paid and some user groups specifically target these employment opportunities at the poorest (Maharjan et al.). The poor may also be made relatively worse off where the introduction of new opportunities by community forestry initiatives leads to increased disparities within communities. Thus, the requirements for up-front payments of harvesting permits mean that in some Tanzanian communities only the well-off can afford to avail themselves of the new opportunity to sell timber from the village community forest (Vyamana). In these communities the inclusion of forest-based incomes

has much less impact on lowering the Gini coefficient than in communities where forest products are accessed equally by all (Schreckenberg and Luttrell). While differential barriers to entry also exist for start-up businesses in the North, their scale has remained sufficiently modest such that net impacts on internal economic disparities have not been noted. 7) Community capacity is both a benefit of community forestry and an important factor facilitating its success. The non-economic social benefits of community have been accorded various labels, which can be grouped in two sets: those that accrue primarily to individuals and those that reside in social groups. Individual benefits, such as skills, knowledge and health, can be termed human capital. Social capital refers to the strength and density of relationships or networks, both institutional and informal. Grouped here as community capacity, all these forms of social enrichment are both facilitating factors and, in turn, can be beneficial results of community forestry in self-reinforcing fashion. Furthermore, these factors underpin the political capital of households and communities, i.e., the capacity to negotiate with external actors. Social and political capital are reflected in the effectiveness of the decision-spaces provided by community forestry (#1). In many cases, community forestry initiatives involve the creation of local institutions that constitute new decision-spaces and enhance community capacity in arenas beyond forest management, such as the community forest user groups in Nepal. In other cases, community forestry involves the expansion of decision-spaces by existing institutions, as in Tanzania. Both types are exemplified among the community-based non-profits supported by the CBFDP in the US. This capacity of these institutions can be harnessed to address inequity and poverty to the extent that they are (a) dedicated to this purpose, and/or (b) inclusive of poor and marginalised community members (#3 and #4). The findings from ARPIP and the CBFDP studies echo those of Mahanty et al., who conclude that non-financial social benefits, such as strengthened capacity, are valued by local actors and can play a crucial role in developing the assets needed to move out of poverty. In the UK, Lawrence et al. find community forestry is bringing about “social inclusion”, as well as “improved social cohesion and building social capital” enhancing the potential of communities in “deprived areas… to work together to deliver benefits to their locality”. Community forestry is a knowledge-intensive process (Brown et al. 2002) and the provision of training is often a component in community forestry projects and programmes. While this may primarily benefit individual trainees and households, as in Tanzania (Vyamana), selection systems can ensure fair representation of all community groups, as is happening in the ARPIP case study communities in Nepal (Maharjan et al.). Training focused on forest management can be of wider community benefit by improving the income-generating potential of the forest, while training on good governance can ensure that benefits are managed in a more effective and equitable manner (Schreckenberg and

Equity in community forestry: insights from North and South

Luttrell). Similarly, in the North, participants in community forestry acquire human capital and social networking connections through training, workshops and hands-on experience, which many go on to apply in multiple spheres of community service. Several of the CBFDP projects have targeted low-income and unemployed workers for training opportunities (Danks). 8) Community forestry often pursues ecological, economic and equity goals in sequence, rather than simultaneously. The Ford Foundation’s US-based programme is not alone in promoting a definition of community-based forestry that advances equity simultaneously with economic development and environmental conservation. However, McDermott argues that community forestry initiatives commonly practice strategies that tackle these objectives sequentially. In cases located in both North and South it was found that progress on the other objectives of community forestry may be necessary to advance social equity, for example, forest regeneration to yield products of greater value, jobs and enterprises to enhance income. Nonetheless, as one of the participants in the US-based Ford Foundation project averred, however long-range the goal of social equity might be, “if it’s not in the blueprint, not part of the vision, you’ll never get there” (quoted in McDermott). The western US community forestry projects in the CBFDP, formed in response to environmental conflict and/or economic need, began in most cases with a focus on finding common ground and building local capacity. At the same time or soon after, they set about providing jobs and forest-based economic opportunities in often relatively homogeneous rural settings. Beyond efforts to promote inclusive participation on the part of some projects, addressing internal inequities was not an initial emphasis. Rather, it could be said that the ‘community’, which in each case occupies a marginalised position vis à vis the national economy, is the target, rather than the marginalised groups within them. (As the exception, the Alliance of Forest Workers and Harvesters fights inequity on a regional scale, but not within any one community of place). An initial focus on better forest management is common across all the southern cases. Looking at the three ARPIP case study countries suggests that maturity (in terms of duration, diversity and scale of experience) is an important factor in determining how much livelihood benefits are prioritised both at the level of individual community forestry initiatives and for national programmes as a whole (Schreckenberg and Luttrell). It is perhaps not surprising that Nepal, with over 30 years of experience in community forestry involving over a third of its population, has made the greatest progress in prioritising contribution to livelihoods as a major aim of its community forestry programme. Clearly, as illustrated by the papers in this issue, community forestry is a dynamic phenomenon (Lawrence 2007), with objectives and practices that evolve in response to the experience of diverse local and regional initiatives.

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9) External support and facilitation are necessary for community forestry to run well, and especially to benefit the poor and marginalised. Working in Asia, McDougall et al. (2007: 220) found that “active outside facilitation was the key to initiating adaptive behaviour and collaboration”. All the papers in this collection confirm the need for a well-resourced facilitator from civil society. The Tanzanian cases, which are characterised by very low benefits from community forestry overall, are alone in displaying a lack of any real development of social or political capital (Vyamana). The fact that the majority also lacked any non-governmental facilitation suggests that building community capacity around community forestry may require a critical mass of activity and external support. External facilitation is crucial, Schreckenberg and Luttrell argue; for example, in Nepal “the success of the … user groups in targeting activities specifically at the poorest … is likely to be in large part due to the governance and empowerment focus of the supporting NGO projects.” In the US, the Ford Foundation dedicated a substantial portion of the total CBFDP budget to fund a nationally based ‘managing partner’ whose role was to provide capacity building among the community-based grantees, through group training, exchanges of experience, networking among project leaders and direct institutional support via site visits (see Wyckoff-Baird 2005). Danks describes how the grantees themselves varied from groups based in a single geographical community (e.g., Makah Tribal Forestry) to regional non-governmental organisations (New England Forest Federation) to multi-scale, public-private collaborative groups (Public Lands Partnership). Moreover, Danks explains, these groups also participate in a number of regional and national networks of community forestry groups that have raised new sources of funds to engage in capacity-building, facilitate research, spread innovation, and advocate for policy reforms, thereby elevating the scale of the impact of community forestry as an emerging social movement. Similarly, Lawrence et al. document for the UK the emergence of partnerships between government agencies, non-government organisations and communities, as well as community forestry networks. One of the most influential voices on community forestry comes from the South, where the Federation of Community Forestry User Groups of Nepal (FECOFUN) has become a political force with an international profile. FECOFUN exemplifies how intermediary institutions can help community members and groups gain access to government services, level the playing field in negotiations between communities and state agencies, and effect national-level policy change (Maharjan et al.). The ARPIP cases in Nepal, as well as the CBFDP sites in the US, also demonstrate the value of external funding and support from aid agencies and donors (CARE and the Ford Foundation respectively), a point echoed by Lawrence et al. and Mahanty et al. Indeed, where such support is present, as it commonly is worldwide, it can be difficult to disentangle the impacts of community forestry and that of such external funding and support.

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10) Supportive culture, training, resources and policies of forest and related agencies are necessary to enable government officers to be effective partners to communities. The emergence and implementation of community forestry generally requires forest departments to cede power and knowledge claims to local communities, a challenge for most government agencies (Ribot 2002). The engagement of different levels of government in the ‘collaboratives’, ‘partnerships’ and ‘multi-level governance’ that authors in this issue delineate indicates that state agents are integral players in the process of community forestry, rather than bystanders, opponents or mere supporters (Danks 2008, Lawrence et al., Mahanty et al.). Hence, capacity-building is required at the field staff and local government levels as well as ‘attitudinal and cultural change’ at all levels (Mahanty et al.). In order to engage not only with local communities, but with the poor and marginalised among them, a yet greater attitudinal shift as well as specialised skills and experience are required. Beyond new training, incentive structures and other institutional reforms to forest agencies and local governments, the policy changes that would strengthen the potential of community forestry to alleviate poverty and promote social equity necessarily vary from North to South, and across national contexts, as the Mahanty et al. paper details for Asia. Some policy reforms are very specific, e.g., subsidised user fees for the poor in Nepal (Maharjan et al.) or special federal contracting provisions that create more opportunities for communities to implement forest management (Danks). For community forestry to make a significant impact on alleviating poverty may require the enactment of more fundamental policy reforms addressing such issues as the nature and duration of community rights to land and resources, including high value, commercial resources (Mahanty et al.). Future promise for newly established community forestry programmes is suggested by the progressive direction of the evolution of community forestry since its inception over thirty years ago in Nepal to be more equitable and beneficial to poor and marginalised groups. Finally, evidence from all the multi-case papers supports one policy conclusion consistently: rather than enabling the retreat of the state, the effective implementation of community forestry requires the commitment of adequate resources to and by the agencies involved (Brown et al. 2002). 11) The benefits that community forestry generates at community and higher levels are generally more significant to poor and marginalised groups collectively than those they receive as individual households. Divisible ‘goods’ that community forestry may deliver to individual households include: forest products for subsistence and sale, access to land, retention of land, jobs, income, training and skills, small business capital or support,

and access to greenspace. To a limited number of poor and marginalised households these direct benefits may exceed in value their share in the collective benefits from community forestry. However, as the papers in this issue generally show, the reverse holds for the majority. While this observation applies to community forestry globally, it must be qualified in different ways in the North and South. Perhaps the most significant distinction is the greater dependence upon forests for livelihood in the South. This has ramifications for one of the important qualifiers in assessing household-level impacts of community forestry: benefits must be weighed in relation to costs, who gains must be compared to who pays. Greater livelihood dependence in the South means the cost of exclusion is higher. Community forestry in the South is more likely to entail initial bans on forest use and during regeneration, followed by continuing restrictions, which hit the poor hardest. Similarly, exclusion from use or benefit is likely to be more painful in the South for non-participants such as distant and transient users or residents who aren’t included in the forest user group. In the US, community forestry groups have directly advocated for migrant forest workers, and more generally seek to open closed forests to use rather than close previously open forests (Danks, McDermott). Benefits and costs may be unevenly distributed within households, particularly along gender lines. In the South, women are still the main collectors of fuelwood and fodder and are therefore hit hardest by restrictions imposed on forest use; at the same time they may be least able to take up any new income-generating activities associated with the introduction of community forestry. In the North, gender and other intra-household power disparities are less pronounced and their effects in relation to community forestry have not been reported. At community level, the new, or newly expanded, decisionspaces associated with community forestry are capable of delivering multiple benefits to communities as a whole (see #1): the inclusive new social fora in and of themselves, the representation of marginalised groups, improved local governance and community capacity, reduction of conflict, collaborative relationships with government agencies and other external groups, and community infrastructure and government services. The restoration of forest health, the ecosystem services it provides, and the potential source of sustainable future value it represents are benefits enjoyed by people residing near the Sal forests in Nepal and the fireprone pine forests of New Mexico alike. These environmental benefits may be particularly important to low-income and marginalised forest workers and harvesters, who depend more than other community members on healthy forest ecosystems for their livelihoods. Just as it is crucial to break open the categories ‘household’ and ‘community’, it is important to keep in mind that these social constructs are themselves interconnected. It is a difficult (and arguably not very useful) exercise to pinpoint the level of social aggregation to which a given benefit accrues. The case of the Watershed Research and Training Center’s business incubator located in an economically

Equity in community forestry: insights from North and South

depressed former logging town in Northern California provides an instructive example. As Danks documents, the incubator assisted 128 clients, of which 30 became active businesses, generating at least 45 jobs, many of which went to low-income and or Hispanic workers. Clearly, the greatest benefits flow to those few households directly involved. The level of benefit to those households that are directly employed (or trained, etc.) by a new forest-related enterprise exceeds their share of the collective gain. However, as in this case, these households often represent a small percentage of the total marginalised population in the vicinity. Thus, in utilitarian terms, the sum of these benefits to this small set is less than the sum of indirect benefits received by the larger group. Yet, these ‘household level’ benefits exert communitylevel effects, with which they are largely incommensurable. It is difficult to quantify the value arising from the addition of any kind of economic activity in a depressed and depopulating rural community or region (or, for that matter, inner city neighbourhood). In Dida, Kenya, for example, although income-generating activities were predominantly taken up by better-off user group members, other community members expressed approval of the resulting stimulation of the local economy (Schreckenberg and Luttrell). Economic measures of the ‘multiplier effect’ resulting from the new spending and investment don’t quite capture the net effects of community re-vitalisation, such as keeping a small town on the map by opening a shop in its nearly-shuttered centre, giving young people a reason to stay or return home, or converting a drug-dealers’ den to a shady, green mini-park. Even more intangible effects, such as a sense of hope, belonging and community pride have reportedly been instilled by community forestry projects in the US and UK (Danks, Lawrence et al., Wyckoff-Baird 2005). However, while some community-level benefits can have significant impacts on non-participants, others may be hard to access for the very poorest. Thus, schools built with forest user group funds may be out of reach for students from poor families unless they are assisted with scholarships or school uniforms. As is documented in Nepal, poor households may have to negotiate their benefits (or their share of communitylevel benefits) in the new community-level decision spaces. But this process of identifying the poorest and engaging with their needs has, in some cases, resulted in collective earnings being redistributed in ways that directly help the poor (e.g., soft loans) (Maharjan et al.). In so doing, it may at the same time help to break down class and caste barriers and lead to greater community solidarity. The impacts of community forestry can extend well beyond the household and community levels. Ecosystem protection and restoration are benefits felt at multiple levels, sometimes with complex redistributive implications. In the sense that forests and greenspaces, the biodiversity they contain, the environmental services they provide, and the recreational opportunities they offer are public goods, these impacts of community forestry are of much wider benefit than simply at the level of the community or households managing the resource. To the extent that these

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communities and households are disadvantaged compared to the population enjoying these goods, the net result might be termed inequitable (unless local benefits are sufficient to compensate for the local burdens of management). Conversely, the net impact might be considered inequitable if community managers degraded forest resources (beyond what was occurring under previous management) or cut off access (beyond what would be necessary to sustain them). The collective impact of community forestry begins to exceed the sum of individual project impacts as practitioners form formal and informal regional and national networks for learning and advocacy. These coalitions and relationships have been instrumental in conflict resolution at supra-community scales, building on local success stories (as McDermott describes in the New Mexican case). Their engagement with government has lead to significant policy and institutional reform in some countries, such as Nepal and the US (see #10, Schreckenberg and Luttrell, Danks, and McDermott). These policy reforms have expanded the opportunities and decision-making power of communities and, in the case of Nepal, have been explicitly pro-poor (Maharjan et al.). Thus, even if community forestry activities do not result in direct benefits to the poor and marginalised, their impacts at higher scales may ultimately work to transform the existing political and economic systems that are reproducing poverty, social conflict and forest degradation. Danks maintains that some community forestry groups in the US are well aware of this: …many participants in [community-based forestry] initiatives realised that building the capacity of community members to engage in existing economic and political systems had limited value… Many CBF practitioners split their time between implementing local projects on the ground …and working at the regional and national levels to develop markets and change policies that affect forest communities. Both ecosystems and economies work at broader scales than the human, placed-based communities involved in these CBF efforts. If, at larger scales, policies and market incentives work against community values and benefits, one is unlikely to see community-level benefits without systematic change at those broader scales. CONCLUSION Globally, community forestry tends to be situated where people are impoverished or without options and, often, forest health is poor. Noteworthy exceptions reported in this issue, where high biodiversity value has prompted heavy restrictions on forest use, include Tanzanian joint forest management and some Kenyan participatory forest management. Consistently across all the cases presented in this issue and beyond, the communities involved are marginal to centres of power, and (urban cases aside) geographically marginal to centres of population and market activity. Limited economic alternatives for residents make

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forest land and products central to local livelihoods, while forest departments lack adequate resources and capacity to protect and manage them. Despite the similarities outlined in this paper, the more obvious differences between the richer, industrialised North and the global South condition the manner and degree to which community forestry can combat poverty and inequity. The emphasis on forest conservation as the primary objective of community forestry is much stronger in the South, where local people are often seen as the chief agents of degradation. There is at the same time a much higher degree of dependence on forests by the poor, making the potential costs of restrictions on forest use, as well as the benefits of harvesting, processing, marketing or employment, much more significant to local livelihoods. Because the cost of exclusion is therefore higher, the stakes involved in setting the boundaries of ‘community’ or the ‘forest user group’ are higher. Conditions of access to the forest, or forms of tenure, vary within the regions as much as between them. Across most of the global South as well as western North America, the forest under community management is owned by the state, but community forestry programmes and initiatives may also involve private smallholdings and communityowned forests, as in Scotland, the eastern US and Tanzania. The range of community/forest-user types falling under the umbrella of ‘community forestry’ in the North is particularly wide, including for example, highly localised urban neighbourhoods and highly dispersed migrant forest workers (Danks). While the livelihoods of the latter are very reliant on forests, economic dependence on urban trees is negligible outside a specialised sector. The scalar, programmatic, and institutional differences in how community forestry is designed and implemented ultimately have important implications for its impacts on equity. Broadly speaking, beginning around the 1990s, community forestry in the South has been rolled out through national policies that specify a blueprint to be replicated across a large scale. There is concern, however, that such off-the-shelf approaches are unlikely to achieve their objectives (Brown et al. 2002) and that a uniform approach may undermine existing traditional community-based forest management systems (Conroy et al. 2002). In theory, decentralisation policies – as in the case of Indonesia – now make the development of more locally specific community forestry programmes possible (Engel and Palmer 2006). In contrast, community forestry in the North has emerged on a smaller scale, in the form of diverse pilot projects and local innovations sprouting from the grassroots. This approach has certain advantages, allowing for more experimentation, more context-appropriate and democratic design and better use of local knowledge. In other words, it generally accords more decision-space to local people. Local commitment is likely to be greater to a project with organic and voluntary derivation than to the imposition of a poorly understood state programme. With local origins comes the flexibility to adapt to changing local circumstances, and hence the capacity for adaptive management that is so crucial for sustainability

under conditions of political, economic and climatic change. However, the northern approach also has disadvantages. It is difficult to scale-up such a decentred, variable collection of experiences in order to constitute a social movement capable of spreading horizontally as well as effecting change vertically (through bureaucratic and policy reform). The UK and US examples demonstrate very complex institutional setups involving diverse actors, different levels and sectors of government, non-governmental organisations of numerous types, and various collaborative arrangements among them. For a community-based group to negotiate through this morass of layered rights, responsibilities, and areas of competence almost necessitates a knowledgeable and politically astute internal champion, external facilitator, and/or collaborative learning group (Cheng et al. 2006, Danks 2008). Moreover, experience in the South has shown that local decision-spaces may reproduce local inequities. Spontaneously arising, unregulated decision-spaces leave open the possibility of incomplete and unbalanced representation by self-interested elites or self-appointed NGOs. As discussed earlier, even when the poor and marginalised are formally included, without an inclusive orientation or adequate facilitation their voices may not be heard. Local populations may even risk being further marginalised “because their expressed needs are just one of many within a broad context of actors who have also found their voice and a forum by way of community forestry’s emphasis on inclusiveness” (Glasmeier and Farrigan 2005: 67). Such important differences aside, the analysis and comparison of findings across the global spectrum of studies presented in this issue has identified a number of significant commonalities, which further research may confirm, refine or dispute. Among the eleven common findings identified, four are fundamental. First, community forestry reduces social inequity only when it explicitly targets the poor and marginalised; similarly, community forestry significantly reduces poverty only when it adopts poverty alleviation as an explicit goal. Second, community forestry expands the decision-making spaces available to community members, thereby enabling them to sow change and reap multiple benefits. Third, the poor and marginalised can enlarge their share of benefits by gaining entry and actively participating in those decision-spaces. Fourth, poor and marginalised households are more likely to share in the benefits that community forestry delivers to the community as a whole than they are to gain from it individually. Among the community-wide benefits may be some that register at the supracommunity level, such as national policy reform and the influence and information gained through participation in national and international networks. Finally, while community forestry cannot itself fix all the structural inequities that perpetuate poverty and marginalisation, it can begin to equip communities with the resources and capacity to come together to challenge them.

Equity in community forestry: insights from North and South

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The authors gratefully acknowledge the collaboration of their CBFDP and ARPIP team members, IFR editor Alan Pottinger, and the other authors in this issue. We thank Jeff Campbell and the Ford Foundation for supporting the original research of both the CBFDP and ARPIP projects as well as the International Association for the Study of the Commons symposium at which these papers were presented. We also thank Phil Franks and CARE International for supporting the ARPIP study. Finally, thanks are due to Cecilia Danks, Sango Mahanty and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on this paper. REFERENCES AGARWAL, B.1997. “Bargaining” and gender relations: within and beyond the household. Feminist Economics 3(1): 1-51. ARNOLD, J.E.M. 2001. Forests and people: 25 years of community forestry. FAO, Rome. 134pp. BAKER, M. and KUSEL, J. 2003. Community forestry in the United States. Island Press, Washington, D.C. 247pp. BECKLEY, T. 1998. Moving toward consensus-based forest management: a comparison of industrial, co-managed, community and small private forests in Canada. Forestry Chronicle 74: 736-744. BRAY, D.B., MERINO-PEREZ, L. and BARRY, D. 2005. The community forests of Mexico. Managing for sustainable landscapes. University of Texas Press, Austin. 372pp. BRIGHTON, D. 2009. Incorporating social equity in conservation programs in the Northeastern US International Forestry Review 11(2): 197-206. BROWN, D., MALLA, Y., SCHRECKENBERG, K. and SPRINGATE-BAGINSKI, O. 2002. From supervising ‘subjects’ to supporting ‘citizens’: recent developments in community forestry in Asia and Africa. Natural Resource Perspectives No. 75, ODI, London. CARNEY, D. (ed.) 1998. Sustainable Rural Livelihoods: What Contribution Can We Make? DFID, London. CARTER, J. with GRONOW, J. 2005. Recent experiences in collaborative forest management. A review paper. Occasional Paper No. 43. CIFOR, Bogor. CHARNLEY, S. and POE, M. 2007. Community forestry in theory and practice: where are we now? Annual Review of Anthropology 36: 301-336. CHENG, A.S., FERNANDEZ-GIMENEZ, M., BALLARD, H., BROUSSARD, S., DANKS, C., DANIELS, S.E., MCDERMOTT, M., SEIDL, A.F. and STURTEVANT, V. 2006. Ford Foundation community-based forestry demonstration program research component final report. Available at: http://welcome.warnercnr.colostate.edu/ frws/cbf/docs/ford_research_report_final_2006.pdf CHOMITZ, K.M. 2006. At loggerheads: Agricultural expansion, poverty reduction, and environment in the tropical forests. The World Bank, Washington D.C. 304pp.

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MAHARJAN, M.R., DAKAL, T.R., THAPA, S.K., SCHRECKENBERG, K. and LUTTRELL, C. 2009. Assessing the benefits of pro-poor community forestry in the Nepal Churia region. International Forestry Review 11(2): 254-267. MCCARTHY, J. 2006. Neoliberalism and the politics of alternatives: Community Forestry in British Columbia and the United States. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 96(1): 84-104. MCDERMOTT, M.H. 2009. Equity first or later? How U.S. community-based forestry distributes benefits. International Forestry Review 11(2): 207-220. MCDERMOTT, M.H. 2009. Locating benefits: expanding decision-spaces, resource access and equity in U.S. community-based forestry. Geoforum 40(2): 249-259. MCDOUGALL, C., PRABHU, R. and FISHER, R. 2007. Discussion and conclusions. In: FISHER, R., PRABHU, R. and MCDOUGALL, C. (eds). Adaptive Collaborative Management of Community Forests in Asia. Experiences from Nepal, Indonesia and the Philippines, pp206-225. CIFOR, Bogor. MCPHERSON, G., SIMPSON, J., PEPER, P., MACO, S. and XIAO, Q. 2005. Municipal forest benefits and costs in five us cities. Journal of Forestry 103(8): 411-416. MENZIES, N.K. 2007. Our forest, your ecosystem, their timber. Communities, conservation, and the state in community-based forest management. Columbia University Press, New York. 264pp. OSTROM, E. 1990. Governing the commons: The evolution of institutions for collective action. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 298pp. OYONO, P.R., RIBOT, J.C. and LARSON, A.M. 2006. Green and black gold in rural Cameroon: Natural resources for local governance, justice and sustainability. Environmental Governance in Africa Working Paper No. 22. World Resources Institute, Washington, DC. PAGDEE, A., KIM, Y. and DAUGHERTY, P.J. 2006. What makes community forest management successful: a meta-study from community forests throughout the world. Society and Natural Resources 19(1): 33–52. REED, M.G. and MCILVEEN, K. 2006. Toward a pluralistic civic science? Assessing community forestry. Society and Natural Resources 19(7): 591-607. RIBOT, J. 2002. Democratic decentralization of natural resources: Institutionalizing popular participation. World Resources Institute, Washington D.C. SCHRECKENBERG, K., LUTTRELL, C., ZORLU, P. and MOSS, C. 2007. A way out of poverty? A review of the impacts of PFM on livelihoods. Keynote paper, 1st National PFM Conference, 6-8 June 2007, Kenya Forestry Research Institute (KEFRI) HQ, Muguga, Kenya. Available at: http://www.odi.org.uk/resources/ download/2984.pdf SCHRECKENBERG, K. and LUTTRELL, C. 2009. Participatory forest management: a route to poverty reduction? International Forestry Review 11(2): 221-238. SUNDERLIN, W.D., ANGELSEN, A., BELCHER, B., BURGERS, P., NASI, R., SANTOSO, L. and WUNDER,

S. 2005. Livelihoods, forests, and conservation in developing countries. World Development 33(9): 1383– 1402. SUNDERLIN, W., DEWI, S., PUNTODEWO, A., MULLER, D., ANGLESEN, A. and EPPRECHT, M. 2008. Why forests are important for global poverty alleviation: A spatial explanation. Ecology and society 13(2): 24 [online] http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/ vol13/iss2/art24/ VYAMANA, V.G. 2009. Participatory forest management in the Eastern Arc Mountain area of Tanzania: who benefits? International Forestry Review 11(2): 239-253. WORLD BANK. 2001. World Development Report 2000/2001: Attacking Poverty. Oxford University Press, New York. WYCKOFF-BAIRD, B. 2005. Growth rings: Communities and trees: lessons from the Ford Foundation communitybased forestry demonstration program, 2000-2005. The Aspen Institute, Washington, D.C. 225pp.

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Benefits of community-based forestry in the US: lessons from a demonstration programme C.M. Danks University of Vermont, 153 S. Prospect St., Burlington, VT 05401, USA

Email: [email protected]

SUMMARY Community-based forestry (CBF) in the US involves a diversity of activities that can occur on public or private lands, and extends beyond land ownership and management into the processing and marketing of forest products and services. Like CBF in many other parts of the world, it shares the interdependent goals of achieving ecological health and social well-being. Actual benefits achieved through CBF are not yet well documented in the literature. This paper illustrates the diversity of CBF activities in the US through the participating projects of the Ford Foundation’s Community-Based Forestry Demonstration Program and examines programme outcomes with attention given to the conditions under which benefits accrue to poor and marginalised people. The discussion reflects on the importance of looking at institutional change as well as project level benefits when assessing environmental and social outcomes.

Keywords: community forestry, participatory forestry, USA, livelihoods, poverty

Bénéfices de la foresterie à base communautaire aux USA: leçons d’un programme de démonstration C.M. Danks La foresterie à base communautaire (CBF) aux USA comporte une diversité d’activités pouvant s’exécuter sur terre publique ou privée. Elle s’étend au delà de la possession et de la gestion de la terre jusqu’au marketing des produits et des services forestiers. Comme la CBF dans de nombreuses autres régions du monde, elle se porte vers les buts interdépendants d’obtenir une écologie saine et un bien-être social. Les bénéfices réels obtenus par la CBF ne sont pas encore bien documentés. Cet article illustre la diversité des activités de la CBF aux USA avec les projets participant du programme de démonstration de la foresterie à base communautaire de la Fondation Ford, et examine les résultats du programme avec une attention particulière portée aux conditions permettant que les bénéfices parviennent aux personnes démunies et marginalisées. L’analyse réfléchit à l’importance de prendre en compte le changement institutionnel ainsi que le niveau projeté des bénéfices au moment de l’évaluation des résultats environnementaux et sociaux.

Beneficios de la gestión forestal comunitaria en Estados Unidos: resultados de un programa de demostración C. M. DANKS La gestión forestal comunitaria (CBF, por sus siglas en inglés) en Estados Unidos incluye una diversidad de actividades que pueden desarrollarse en tierras de propiedad pública o privada, y se extiende más allá de la propiedad y gestión de la tierra para abarcar el procesamiento y marketing de productos y servicios forestales. Igual que en muchas otras partes del mundo, el CBF compagina los objetivos interdependientes de lograr la salud ecológica y el bienestar social. En los estudios por escrito, no se ha documentado todavía los beneficios logrados por el CBF, y este artículo destaca la diversidad de las actividades de CBF en Estados Unidos por medio de los proyectos que participan en el Programa de Demostración de Gestión Forestal Comunitaria de la Fundación Ford, y examina los resultados del programa en lo que se refiere a las condiciones en que las personas pobres y marginadas puedan acceder a los beneficios. El estudio considera la importancia de tener en cuenta el cambio institucional a la hora de evaluar los resultados ambientales y sociales.

INTRODUCTION Community-based forestry (CBF) in the US, like community forestry elsewhere in the world, varies considerably depending on the local institutional, cultural, political and ecological context. As discussed further below, CBF

initiatives may differ in form and activities pursued, but share a common goal of enhancing local involvement in forestry to promote social well-being and ecological health. CBF in the US differs from many forms of participatory forestry found in the global South in that there has been less emphasis on legally devolving forest management rights to community-

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level entities. Without a national legal framework for CBF, diverse forms of CBF have arisen that generally seek to improve ecological stewardship and to support forest-based activities and enterprises that contribute to community goals. CBF activities often promote increased community participation on public lands, capacity-building and collective initiatives among private landowners, and in some cases, community acquisition of forest land (Donoghue and Sturtevant 2008). Identifying and quantifying the full range of benefits from CBF, and understanding to whom they accrue and under what conditions, have been fundamental research questions regarding CBF around the world (e.g. Edmunds and Wollenberg 2003, Larson et al. 2007, SpringateBaginski and Blaikie 2007). Of particular interest to scholars, funders and practitioners are the impacts of CBF on the most vulnerable portions of the population especially poor, marginalised people, who are often disadvantaged ethnic and racial minorities as well as women and children (Fisher et al. 2008). While there has been considerable attention to describing CBF in the US and even discussion of its potential for alleviating poverty, the documentation and analysis of benefits, especially those that might accrue to poor and disadvantaged people, are relatively scarce (Charnley and Poe 2007, Glasmeier and Farrigan 2005, McDermott 2009a). This paper seeks to contribute to understanding the benefits of CBF in the US by reviewing the outcomes of the Ford Foundation’s Community-Based Forestry Demonstration Program. The nationwide CBF Demonstration Program, which ran from 2000 to 2005, sought to represent a diversity of US CBF activities among its 13 community participants, and it placed special emphasis on promoting sustainable livelihoods and understanding the outcomes resulting from these activities. The paper addresses the following questions: What benefits resulted from these projects, who benefited, and under what conditions did benefits accrue to low income and marginalised people? In this paper, the nature of CBF in the US is introduced as a diverse set of activities pursuing similar overarching goals, methods and benefits, despite varying contexts and types of communities. Forest land ownership, which contributes to the diversity of CBF activities observed, is briefly discussed. The paper then describes the Ford CBF Demonstration Program, reports on specific outcomes achieved by the participating organisations, and focuses on the benefits which have accrued to low income and marginalised people. The discussion addresses the conditions under which benefits are most likely to reach the poor and marginalised and the importance of looking at institutional change outcomes in addition to project level benefits. In this paper, the phrases ‘low income and marginalised people’ or ‘the poor and marginalised’ will be used to refer to disadvantaged individuals and groups who live in or near poverty or who are marginalised in the US due to race, class, ethnicity, gender or disability. This wording is chosen to capture the intent of both President Clinton’s Executive Order on environmental justice (Clinton 1994) and the USDA Forest Service’s term ‘underserved’. “Underserved

individuals, groups, populations, or communities” are those “that the Forest Service has not effectively protected, supported, or promoted in the delivery of programs and services on a fair and equitable basis” (USDA Forest Service 2000:33). Similar to the Executive Order, it specifies that “the underserved have been minority groups (including American Indians or Alaska Natives), persons below the poverty level, and persons with disabilities”, and in some cases women (USDA Forest Service 2000:33-34). Data and analysis contributing to this paper came from a diversity of sources. The summary of the general nature of CBF in the US was drawn largely from a comprehensive analysis of CBF research in the US carried out by the author in which a database of approximately 200 reports, papers and books from 1990-2007 was compiled, coded and updated in 2008. The analysis of the Ford CBF Program outcomes draws on the author’s multiple roles with the programme and uses data collected by both herself and colleagues. The author was a member of the Colorado State University-based research team that conducted research and analyses of Ford CBF Demonstration Program from 2004 to 2006 involving field work in multiple sites. In addition, she conducted an evaluation of the Pennsylvania State University-based research component for the Ford Foundation, and, at the beginning of the five year programme, participated as a community partner in her capacity as research programme director for one of the community groups in the Demonstration Program. Data from multiple sources were generally concordant and therefore were combined in the tables; the reports documenting outcomes are cited together at the end of each table. This paper is not intended to be a definitive report on the results of the Ford CBF Demonstration Program. Space does not allow for a comprehensive and nuanced discussion of the many programme outcomes and implications (see Ballard et al. 2008, Cheng et al. 2006, Fernandez-Gimenez et al. 2008, Korten and Wyckoff-Baird 2005, and Wyckoff-Baird 2005). Several specific cases are analysed in much greater detail in this issue (see Brighton, Diop and Fraser, McDermott). Moreover, many participants with varying and valid perspectives may interpret or emphasise the data differently. This research was guided by the principles of communitybased participatory research in which researchers work with community groups as partners (Stoecker 2005, Stringer 2007), however the interpretation and all errors are the responsibility of the author. COMMUNITY-BASED FORESTRY IN THE US: GOALS, ACTIVITIES AND BENEFITS Common goals, diverse activities In recent years, several articles and books have described community-forestry relationships (e.g. Donoghue and Sturtevant 2008, Lee and Field 2005) as well as the emergence and prospects of community-based forestry in the US (e.g. Baker and Kusel 2003, Brendler and Carey

Benefits of community-based forestry in the US

1998, Charnley and Poe 2007, Glasmeier and Farrigan 2005, Gray et al. 2001a). While all of these authors take a national view of what constitutes CBF, and several of them look abroad to understand the US models in an international context, they vary somewhat in the breadth of activities they include as CBF and therefore the approximate dates when CBF emerged in the US. For those authors that place more emphasis on CBF as collaboration between communities and government agencies with regard to public forest lands, CBF is considered a part of collaborative resource management as it has emerged in the western US in the early 1990s (e.g. Charnley and Poe 2007, Glasmeier and Farrigan 2005, Weber 2000). Baker and Kusel (2003) look further back and note the “historical antecedents” to current forms of CBF, such as community-owned forests, which can date back centuries in the US (e.g. Gonzales 2003, McCullough 1995). When one considers indigenous land management, CBF can date back millennia (Abrams and Nowacki 2008, Blackburn and Anderson 1993). This paper takes an inclusive view of CBF in the US that encompasses public and private lands, eastern and western landscapes, urban and rural communities, as well as forest management and forest products. This inclusive view is drawn not only from the diversity of representations of CBF in the literature (e.g. Baker and Kusel 2003, Gray et al. 2001b, Kusel and Adler 2001), but also from observation of the emerging community of practitioners who recognise their common attributes and goals and are increasingly working together (e.g. American Forests n.d., Communities Committee of the Seventh American Forest Congress n.d.;

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Rural Voices for Conservation Coalition n.d.; Yellow Wood Associates 2000). In this paper, the term ‘community-based forestry,’ or CBF, includes a variety of activities that share certain goals and methods, which are summarised in Table 1. Central to CBF is the role of the community as participant in and beneficiary of forestry activities. In CBF, communities generally share in decision-making and benefits; they contribute resources, labour and knowledge to managing forests and utilizing forest products; and they do this with the joint goals of achieving social well-being and ecological health (Danks and Fortmann 2004). The nature and degree to which each of these components is present in a given CBF initiative can vary considerably. For example, regarding decision-making, communities can completely own the forest and control all management decisions, or they may contribute meaningful input to a government or private sector forest manager. Some CBF efforts emphasise participation in forest management, while others focus more on the utilisation of forest products through value-added processing and marketing. While such an inclusive description of CBF risks rendering the term meaningless, CBF can still be identified by the combination of interrelated goals and methods used to achieve them. In fact, the methods employed – such as promoting inclusive participation, fostering forest-based business opportunities, and restoring forest ecosystems – are often viewed as valueladen objectives themselves, not just means to achieve their overall social and economic goals. This integration of goals and methods is evident in how CBF practitioners

TABLE 1 Goals and methods of community-based forestry in the US

Overarching goals

Methods

• Ecological health and sustainability • Community well-being and resilience • Meaningful role for local communities and forest workers in forest management planning and decisionmaking Work collaboratively • Promote participatory, inclusive, transparent and fair processes • Establish forums for information-sharing and shared decision-making between community and relevant federal or state agencies • Work through partnerships that span public and private lands and institutions Emphasise equity • Invite and seek consensus among diverse stakeholders • Encourage the participation of and address the needs of marginalised community members including low income, ethnically diverse and/or racial minorities • Accept local knowledge as contributing to scientific management Build capacity • Build capacity of both community and agencies for collaborative management • Help small-scale, private forest landowners to retain and sustainably manage their forests • Develop networks locally, regionally and nationally to address issues of scale that affect economic viability and political action Create livelihoods and sustain ecosystems through for-profit enterprises • Enhance opportunities for community members to implement restoration and sustainable management of forest ecosystems and urban landscapes • Support local, small-scale, forest-based enterprises that contribute to community well-being • Utilise sustainably produced timber and non-timber forest products to generate revenue and jobs that help achieve both ecological and social goals

Sources: Synthesised from diverse sources that are based on the input (interviews, co-authorships and programme documents) of CBF groups nationwide, including Baker and Kusel 2003, Gray et al. 2001a, Wyckoff-Baird 2005 and field research.

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describe their own work. For example, when a group of CBF practitioners and action researchers assembled for a week in Bend, Oregon in 1998 to begin to document their efforts, they defined CBF in terms of both “critical dimensions” and “pathways” (Gray et al. 2001a:21). Community in CBF in the US The ‘community’ in CBF can vary considerably. In the United States, forest communities that participate in CBF can be commuter exurbs or remote, rural towns surrounded by national and industrial forests. They also include communities of forest workers who may not reside immediately adjacent to the forest in which they work. Urban neighbourhoods and cities can also participate in community-based forestry. In fact, in the US, the phrase ‘community forestry’ most often refers to urban forestry. Due in part to the urban connotations of the term community forestry in the US, the term community-based forestry was chosen for this paper to include both the urban and rural contexts and to emphasise the role of community as both actor and beneficiary. What these communities often share are economic and cultural ties to the trees and forests that surround them (Danks 2008). ‘Community’ is a loaded word with many common, sociological and political meanings which have been explored in greater depth by other authors with regards to community-based resource management (e.g. Agrawal and Gibson 1999, Flint et al. 2008, Li 1996). The term ‘community’ can conjure up positive, politically useful images of caring, neighbourly, democratic collaborations among equals. However, both participants in and scholars of CBF are well aware of the internal inequities, conflicts and enduring divisions related to class, ideology, race, ethnicity, age, gender, family history and old-timer vs. newcomer status that can impede collaboration in any community. In many cases, CBF efforts seek to directly address and overcome such internal differences by seeking broad consensus and collaborative action on common ground issues (e.g. Sturtevant and Lange 2003). Conversely, CBF initiatives do not always include the full diversity of the community they seek to aid or represent (McDermott, this issue). Ownership and governance of forests in CBF in the US Fifty-six percent of forestland in the US is privately owned, 42 percent is owned by federal and state agencies, and 2 percent by local government (calculated from USDA Forest Service 2007). CBF activities can occur on all of these types of ownership. In many parts of the world, CBF seeks to devolve many of the rights and responsibilities for management, if not outright ownership, to local communities (Fisher 1999). In the US, while increased community participation in decision-making, implementation and benefits of forest management on public lands are clearly objectives of CBF, assuming full ownership of federal and state forests has not been a consensus goal. Most advocates of CBF emphasise that “public lands should remain public”

(Lead Partnership Group n.d.). The main innovations regarding governance of public forests in the US employed in CBF are informal collaborative groups, formal advisory committees and enhanced public participation processes that bring together community members of diverse perspectives with agency experts and decision-makers in a deliberative process that guides forest management decisions (Koontz et al. 2004, Weber 2000, Wondolleck and Yaffee 2000.) Private property rights are held dear in the US, and CBF initiatives that deal with private land are careful to respect the rights of landowners. That said, there have been some innovative projects to allow stewardship of federal forests by local communities as well as many community-based efforts to purchase private forest land as community forests (Belsky 2008, Davies et al. 2008). Benefits sought through CBF in the US Just as it is not easy to separate goals from methods because they are both value-driven among CBF practitioners, it is not easy to neatly separate social, ecological and economic goals and benefits sought through CBF. While forest land preservation may be a part or even the main purpose of some CBF efforts, some form of subsistence or commercial use of the forest is often part of what distinguishes CBF from other local land conservation efforts. Economic activity is developed both to achieve the goal of community wellbeing and to help fund ecological goals. For example, many CBF proponents view the profitable and efficient use of underutilised species, sizes and grades of woody material as a way to achieve ecological goals by making restoration economically viable (e.g. RVCC 2005, Vermont Family Forests 2003). CBF efforts often promote social entrepreneurship and small, community-scaled businesses to enhance social benefits from forests (Broussard et al. 2008, Danks et al. 2003). They often seek to sustain local forest-based livelihoods by creating new job opportunities in areas such as fuels management, forest inventory and assessment, landscape restoration and processing of forest products. These economic activities are chosen in large part to enhance the ecological conditions and functions of the forest. The Vision and Values statement of one CBF group phrased this integration of economy, society and ecology as follows: “We value and support those who refuse to sacrifice the long-term good of the land for the good of the people, or the good of the people for the good of the land, who seek to find a new path which honors and sustains both.” (Healthy Forests, Healthy Communities n.d.) Therefore, the benefits listed in Table 2 are artificially divided into social, economic and ecological categories to show the breadth of benefits sought. The term ‘largely’ in the category heading is intended to acknowledge that the benefits are not restricted to the categories in which they are listed. A healthy ecosystem, for example, provides many valuable social and economic benefits. Note that Table 2 represents benefits sought, not

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TABLE 2 Benefits sought through CBF in the US Largely environmental Largely economic

Largely social

• • • • • • • • • •

Restoration and maintenance of ecosystem functions and biological diversity Protection of ecologically important places and species Ecological sustainability in forest management Economic viability of restoration activities, sustainable management and forest-based businesses Sustainable livelihoods including high quality, forest-based employment Provision of private goods (e.g. timber, firewood, mushrooms) and/or ecosystem services (e.g. clean air and water, carbon sequestration, visual and spiritual amenities) Reductions in conflict and increase in social harmony Cultural survival, identity and vitality Landownership retention and traditional access rights to forests Healthy families and options for youth

Sources: Synthesised from diverse sources that are based on the input (interviews, co-authorships and programme documents) of CBF groups nationwide, including Baker and Kusel 2003, Gray et al. 2001a, Wyckoff-Baird 2005 and field research.

necessarily achieved. Documenting the types of benefits actually achieved and to whom they accrue is important to understanding the effectiveness of CBF in addressing its many goals. While there is some documentation of the many benefits of urban forests (e.g. McPherson et al. 2005, Nowak and Dwyer 2007), and of the impacts of public forest management on local communities and workers (e.g. Charnley et al. 2008, Moseley and Reyes 2007), there is relatively little literature reporting on benefits resulting from community-based forestry activities in the US, particularly in rural areas. The CBF literature has often emphasised description and process features of these new collaborative efforts rather than outcomes, in part because many CBF efforts emerged in the 1990s and their long term goals of ecological health and community well-being could not be realised in the short term (Conley and Moote 2003, Fernandez-Gimenez et al. 2008, Koontz and Thomas 2006, McDermott et al., in press). While low income and marginalised families are often the intended beneficiaries of CBF projects, reports on the outcomes they actually realise through CBF are extremely limited. The Ford Foundation has been concerned with understanding how CBF can be a strategy to address poverty and inequity by promoting sustainable rural livelihoods and governance structures that provide fair access to forest resources (Ford Foundation 1998). The experience of the Ford Foundation’s CBF Demonstration Program, described below, can provide insights into the nature of benefits from CBF in the US and the conditions under which those benefits reach poor and marginalised people. FORD FOUNDATION COMMUNITY-BASED FORESTRY DEMONSTRATION PROGRAM Since the mid-1970s, the Ford Foundation has supported community-based forestry in over 20 countries as one strategy to address the environmental degradation and inequity which contribute to poverty (Ford Foundation 1998). In the mid-1990s, Ford Foundation program officers drew on their international experience as they explored, guided and supported new community-based forestry efforts

emerging in the US (Danks 1997). They developed the CBF Demonstration Program as a multi-faceted effort to fund practices on the ground, to foster capacity-building and peer-learning, and ultimately to derive lessons that could be shared nationwide. Among the issues that this programme was intended to explore were the abilities of CBF to “improve rural livelihoods and revive rural communities,… restore and maintain ecosystem health, … reduce the polarization …[and] establish a ‘radical middle’ that could recast the debate altogether” (Campbell 2005:ix). Thirteen community partners were selected from over 100 applicants to represent much of the geographic, cultural and institutional diversity of community-based efforts nationwide (Table 3). These groups were funded from 2000 to 2005 to work on the ground in their communities and to share their learning with each other. In addition, a collaboration of individuals from national non-profits served as ‘managing partners’ to facilitate peer learning and provide organisational support. The organizational support and networking opportunities provided by the managing partners were major components of the programme (Korten and Wyckoff-Baird 2005). In a third component of the programme, two university-based teams of researchers were engaged to study these CBF efforts and their implications. Collectively, the 13 community groups chosen to participate in the programme reflect much of the diversity of CBF activities in the US. They include projects on federal, municipal, tribal and private forest lands. While most are based in the rural communities they serve, they include one urban forestry group, one urban-based partnership of rural forest businesses and a multistate alliance of forest workers. Some participating groups are fairly new and work almost exclusively on CBF, while others are longstanding community-development or forestry organisations that have recently added CBF to their programmes. While contexts may differ between sites, they often shared similar approaches. For such varied groups as the Watershed Research and Training Center, which works in a remote, former timber town in the west, and D.C. Greenworks, which works in the urban centre of the nation’s capital, a major focus has been building a ‘green collar’ (Durning 1999) workforce through training, contracting and business

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TABLE 3 Community participants in the Ford Foundation CBF Demonstration Program Community partner

Land ownership

Alliance of Forest Workers and Harvesters (AFWH), California & Oregon

Largely public, also private and tribal

D. C. Greenworks, Washington, D.C.

Urban private and public

Federation of Southern Cooperatives/ Land Assistance Fund, (FSC), Alabama

Private

Healthy Forests, Healthy Communities (HFHC), Oregon

Public and private

Jobs and Biodiversity Coalition, (JBC), New Mexico

Public and private

Makah Tribal Forestry, Washington

Tribal

North Quabbin Woods (NQW), New England Forestry Foundation, Massachusetts

Private

Penn Center, South Carolina

Private

Public Lands Partnership (PLP), Colorado

Public

Rural Action (RA), Ohio

Private

Vermont Family Forests Partnership (VFFP), Vermont

Private

Wallowa Resources (WR), Oregon

Largely public, also private

Watershed Research and Training Center (WRTC), California

Largely public, also private

incubation. Others such as the Alliance of Forest Workers and Harvesters and the Vermont Family Forest Partnership strive to enhance the pay and conditions for forest workers.

Project focus and activities Promotes environmental justice, multicultural understanding, improved work opportunities, worker-friendly policies and participation in decision-making for culturally diverse and often mobile forest workers. Seeks to empower low income urban communities to improve their environments and provide economic opportunities through programmes such as 'green collar' job training, tree-keepers, and environmental design and installation. Conducts outreach and training and develops cooperative initiatives that help African-American landowners access the resources needed to retain land ownership and develop sustainable forest-based businesses. Supports a network of small producers of sustainable forest products; seeks to grow markets, enhance capacity of local entrepreneurs and inform federal policies that affect development of community-based forest products companies. Seeks to develop consensus on and secure resources for forest restoration and sustainable forest-based businesses that rely on products of restoration. Promotes awareness, education and inventory of non-timber forest products to support ecological and culturally sensitive forest management. Seeks to revitalise the local economy based on sustainable use of forest resources, including recreation, tourism, woodworking and other value-added manufacturing. Preserves local culture, empowers African-American communities and contributes to land retention and sustainable livelihoods by supporting community conservation and development of forest-based products and enterprises. Engages a diversity of stakeholders in discussion and projects to manage conflict, promote collaboration, and influence public forest management to improve forest health and local economies suffering from the decline of the timber industry. Conducts outreach, capacity-building and research activities to support the cultivation and marketing of medicinal plants and other forest products to contribute to sustainable livelihoods among the rural poor. A partnership among 3 non-profits (local, state-wide, and national) to produce replicable models of forest ownership, management and marketing that are ecologically sustainable and economically inclusive. Facilitates community planning processes, designs and implements forest and watershed restoration projects, and developed a for-profit sawmill to manufacture and market the products of forest restoration. Conducts job retraining, market development, land management planning and youth activities; developed a forest business incubator to create sustainable jobs in an area experiencing economic distress due to the decline of the timber industry.

At least 10 of the 13 community partners have focused on the development and nurturing of independent, small businesses, be they community-owned sawmills, furniture makers, goat

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producers or non-timber forest products harvesters. Eight groups have been engaged in the development of networks and other collective efforts among landowners, workers and or small forest-based businesses. These associations, cooperatives and networks worked collectively to overcome economic and political limitations of their work due to issues of scale, remoteness, and a history of marginalisation. Examples of such collective efforts include the Healthy Forest, Healthy Communities wood products partnership and the Roots of Appalachia Growers Association of ginseng producers fostered by Rural Action. BENEFITS OF CBF: INSIGHTS FROM THE FORD DEMONSTRATION PROGRAM All participants in the Ford Foundation CBF Demonstration Program were involved in documenting and assessing the outcomes and implications of this programme. The community partners conducted self-assessments with the help of the managing partners; the managing partners captured lessons learned and best practices across multiple sites; and the research teams collected additional primary and secondary data to address some of the broader issues about the conditions under which CBF can achieve its multiple goals. Input from clients, community members, staff and board members were solicited through site visits, interviews, and focus groups. Among the many questions examined by all three sets of programme participants – community groups, managing partners and researchers – were: what benefits resulted from CBF, and to whom did they accrue? The outcomes reported below are derived from all three sets of inquiry. It was not feasible to collect uniform or even comparable outcomes data from all 13 project sites, despite considerable efforts to do so. The community groups were chosen to represent diversity and were too different – in socioeconomic and political contexts, in length of engagement in the community, in chosen interventions, in geographic scope, in nature of partnerships, in organisational capacity, in supplemental funding, in forest ownership and governance structures, and many other respects – to provide meaningful comparisons or generalisations across the 13 sites. For this reason, the outcomes and benefits data are reported below in broad categories (Tables 4 and 5), but are not condensed and summarised across the entire programme. The detail provided in these tables is intended to give a flavour for the kinds of CBF activities pursued in the US. Many accomplishments The groups participating in the CBF Demonstration Program can claim many accomplishments over the five years. Community partners had significant local impacts in retraining workers, reinventing forest-based livelihoods, and building local capacity to cope with changing economies. Table 4 lists just a sampling of their diverse achievements and also provides some description of the specific kinds of

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CBF activities undertaken by the community partners. Environmental outcomes included both direct project implementation, such as forest restoration, fuel reduction and tree planting, and the promotion of sustainable practices among community members and the wider public. As noted in Table 1, the fostering of diverse for-profit enterprises is a strategy employed by many CBF groups in the US to replace declining extractive industries, address livelihood issues, and restore damaged ecosystems without depending on government subsidies. Several CBF groups trained community members in new job skills and many helped to launch and support new and existing forest-based businesses. The efforts of these CBF groups to address environmental and economic needs by building consensus and mutual understanding led to reported increases in community cohesion and hope for the future among community members. Sustainable livelihoods are among the benefits sought through CBF (Table 2), and the outcomes in Tables 4 can be viewed in terms of how they contribute to that objective. Frameworks for understanding rural livelihoods emphasise that sustainable livelihoods depend not simply on income, but rather on combination of: 1) assets and capabilities of both individuals and their communities, 2) activities which generate income and provide subsistence, and 3) access to those assets and activities as mediated by institutions, social relations and organisations (Ellis 2000, Sunderlin et al. 2005). Many of the outcomes cited in all three categories of Table 4 – environmental, economic and social – contribute to sustainable livelihoods by building the assets and capabilities of community members through training (human capital), community cohesion (social capital), grants (financial capital), and ecosystem health (natural capital) and by developing the businesses and other income generating activities in which they could employ those assets. Who benefited? Many of the CBF efforts helped their communities by making it possible for people to earn a living, retain ownership of land and restore damaged forest ecosystems. Local residents and forest workers involved in these projects contributed to the vitality of their communities both through the economic multipliers of their spending and the talents shared through community service. These increases in local economic activity and community capacity resulting from the CBF projects facilitated by the community partners were cited as benefits by community members, but were often hard to quantify. The clearest and easiest to document benefits are those that went directly to project participants and those that occurred on lands managed or treated through CBF efforts. For example, 80% of HFHC businesses reported increased business after joining HFHC (Wyckoff-Baird 2005). It is not clear, however, if these efforts helped to develop and sustain the small, forest-based business sector more broadly in their region or who among the beneficiaries might be poor families or minority-owned businesses. A number of benefits accrued directly to low income

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TABLE 4 Examples (not exhaustive) of the outcomes in the Ford Foundation Community-based Forestry Demonstration Program

Largely environmental

Largely economic

Largely social

Implemented restoration and treeplanting • WRTC, WR and PLP made possible the implementation of field projects to restore ecosystem health by providing matching funds, project planning and/or consensus needed to get work done on public lands; together they made possible restoration treatments on over 57,000 acres by 2004. • D.C. Greenworks planted 160 street trees, 98% of which were still living and being cared for in 2005; participants in their Treekeepers programme adopted another 100 trees. Promoted sustainability through guidelines, monitoring and outreach • VFFP developed, promoted and followed rigorous sustainable forestry standards for forest management in their region; over 8000 acres were managed under those standards in 2004. • RA worked with Ohio state officials to address ginseng poaching more effectively. • AFWH developed and implemented a mushroom monitoring programme to ensure sustainable harvest and inform policy. • VFFP, NQW, FSC and Penn Center helped private landowners to understand and access technical assistance for sustainable forestry practices on their land through direct outreach. Trained workers to engage in sustainable forest-based occupations • D.C. Greenworks trained 80 horticultural workers. • NQW trained 17 people in ecotourism. • WRTC trained 48 forest workers and contractors. • JBC supported the training of 92 people in the Forest Service's southwest firefighters' programme. Supported development of new and existing local forest-based businesses • VFF, HCHP and NQW developed brand identity that has helped to secure orders and, in some cases price premiums. • JBC fostered the growth of 10 new businesses which use the products of restoration thinnings, creating over 20 jobs with pay above local alternatives. • HFHC’s small grants programme provided 23 mini-grants for peer-learning visits, prototype development and market research. • D.C. Greenworks developed an in-house business to hire its training programme graduates to install green roofs and rain gardens. • VFF, HFHC and RA supported local entrepreneurs by developing connections between producers and purchasers of forest products, attending trade shows, and developing market awareness. • Penn Center, Makah Tribal Forestry, RA, and WRTC worked with non-timber forest product harvesters to develop collective approaches to share information and decrease business risks related to inventorying, harvesting, processing and/or marketing non-timber forest products. Reduced conflict and fostered sense of community • JBC and PLP have helped define common ground and overcome longstanding divisions among those who support forest utilisation versus forest protection. • Through individual contact, group workshops and other events, AFWH reduced conflict and fostered greater understanding among forest workers and agency personnel separated by race, culture, language, location, and potentially conflicting uses of the forest. • NQW helped new and estranged community members get to know each other through engagement in project activities. • WR guided a countywide planning process that emphasised inclusion and transparency and is credited with strengthening the community. • AFWH, JBC, PLP, WR and WRTC led monitoring efforts which reportedly contributed to increased trust, respect and mutual understanding Provided youth opportunities to develop skills, knowledge and options • FSC, WR and WRTC started summer youth camps and outdoor school activities emphasising sustainable resource management. The WRTC camp serves 90 children per year. • WRTC organised and trained field crews of young adults in forest restoration and trails maintenance. • JBC involved local youth in forest monitoring. • D.C. Greenworks trained urban youth in landscape and gardening skills and helped young entrepreneurs set up a rain barrel business. • The Makah CBF initiative held five ‘wildcrafting’ sessions for 68 middle school students on the cultural value, economic uses and sustainable harvesting of local non-timber forest products.

Sources: Drawn largely from Wyckoff-Baird (2005) supplemented by Cheng et al. 2006, Fernandez-Gimenez et al. 2008, McDermott 2009a, programme documents and field research.

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families, ethnic minorities and other marginalised groups as a result of these CBF activities. Table 5 gives some examples of these benefits, organised according to the livelihoods framework of individual and collective assets, income-generating activities and institutionally mediated access (Ellis 2000, Sunderlin et al. 2005). Because direct participants in CBF projects tended to receive the greatest benefits, poor and marginalised people were most likely to benefit when they were identified, invited and otherwise specifically targeted by CBF efforts for inclusion in decision-making, capacity-building and income-generating activities. In many cases, CBF groups did not keep records of participants by race, ethnicity or income level so many of the outcomes mentioned in Table 4 also benefited the poor and marginalised in their communities. The list in Table 5 was drawn from efforts to quantify impacts at the project level and may not reflect the importance of CBF activities for individuals and households. A qualitative study of two project sites by Sturtevant (2006) yielded additional household level benefits. For example, from the jobs created through the WRTC’s forest business incubator that assisted 128 clients of which 30 became active businesses, benefits described in interviews included: “one said he was eating better, many reported they are getting better health and dental care, and others said they had savings accounts for the first time in their lives… Many mentioned they could get loans or mortgages for the first time; one single mom of four said her job kept her from losing their house…” (Sturtevant 2006:133) Direct livelihood benefits were not the only ones important to the poor and marginalised CBF participants interviewed. Because the Alliance of Forest Workers and Harvesters seeks to improve livelihoods of and mutual understanding among mobile, multicultural forest workers throughout the Pacific Northwest, their work directly focuses on low income and marginalised families who might not live near the forests in which they work. One member commented that the Alliance’s work in “creating community, without community of place, promotes cultural pride,” and another noted that “[the Alliance] helps its membership by empowering us, giving us hope” (Sturtevant 2006:119-120). Empowerment and pride may be considered aspects of social capital and therefore ‘assets’ that can contribute to sustainable livelihoods. Such benefits, however, are valued in themselves by many CBF participants, and not just as instrumental contributions to achieving livelihood goals. Because Table 5 emphasises documented benefits that accrue directly to the poor and marginalised and not to the general population, it does not fully represent the valuable ecological outcomes from which the poor, as well as other community members, may benefit. Low income and marginalised forest workers and harvesters may depend more than other community members on healthy forest ecosystems for their livelihoods, and at the same time, enjoy the full range of amenities and ecosystem services derived from a healthy ecosystem. Some forest restoration efforts did

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specifically target low income families. For example, a fuels reduction programme coordinated by the WRTC in a remote, low income forest settlement improved forest health and reduced the risk to residents of losing their homes to wildfire. Under what conditions are benefits of CBF most likely to reach the poor and marginalised? While many valuable outcomes were documented, it was difficult to develop cross-cutting conclusions about the conditions under which benefits were more likely to accrue to low income and marginalised people. The diversity represented by the 13 community partners made it difficult to draw robust conclusions about how impacts were achieved across multiple sites. Moreover, five years is long enough to make some significant advances and contribute to the livelihoods of project participants, but may not be long enough to achieve some important goals such as reductions in poverty rates or changes in land ownership patterns. Even when quantifiable outcomes such as number of jobs created or number of forest acres restored were recorded, it was not always clear which factors contributed to the success of these efforts. Much of the work of the community partners did not focus on the direct delivery of services to the neediest in the community. Had it been, quantifiable benefits might have been more clearly evident at the project level. Rather, the community partners tended to focus on putting the pieces in place for a new, more just system of forest ownership, management and production that could lead to revitalised communities and healthy ecosystems. Whether they were building consensus on public land management, starting a forest cooperative or supporting small forest enterprises, community partners spent much of their time reaching out to individuals, seeking agreement, connecting people with each other, collecting data, sharing information, engaging agency personnel and even drafting proposed legislation. When their efforts did focus on providing direct services to the poor and marginalised, they emphasised training, selfhelp, community-building and empowerment – efforts that build assets and promote resilience, but may take longer to generate concrete benefits. Despite these constraints, some observations can be made regarding the conditions under which poor and marginalised people are likely to benefit from CBF. Whether it was helping to access existing resources or encouraging participation in innovative projects, the community partners found they had to give extra attention to incorporating the poor and marginalised. Language barriers, direct costs, lost work time, perceived risk, perceived benefits, and meeting style or cultural preferences related to group interactions could all inhibit participation by low income and marginalised community members. Mini-grants, mileage compensation and scholarships were important for many of the groups to encourage the participation of low income community members in workshops, policy meetings and peer learning opportunities. In addition, when the AFWH

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TABLE 5 Examples (not exhaustive) of livelihood related benefits realised by low income and marginalised people through the Ford Foundation’s CBF Demonstration Program Developed personal and organisational capacity • • • •

FSC helped African-American landowners negotiate for themselves with loggers to obtain fair deals. AFWH helped minority and low income forest workers to develop and express their voices, even when English was not their first language, enabling them to give presentations to USFS officials, legislators, conferences and the press. WRTC provided staff, space and logistical support to incubate community efforts into functioning organizations, including the Nor-El-Muk Tribal Office and a senior citizens' low income housing project. Penn Center lent staff and other support in the establishment of the Lowcountry Landowners Association that provides technical assistance to the largely low income, African-American residents of the island.

Provided forest ownership options for low income and marginalised groups Assets

• •

VFFP piloted a model for collective forest ownership that reduced the barriers (initial cost, risk and management expertise) for low income families to become forest landowners. FSC and Penn Center offered technical assistance and forest-based income strategies to enable low income, African-American landowners to retain ownership of their land.

Sustained and reinforced cultural identities and sense of community The Makah project incorporated inventory and management strategies for traditional non-timber forest products into timber-oriented forest management planning. • By creating alternative income strategies that helped local residents retain land ownership, the Penn Center helped to sustain the distinctive Gullah community of the Sea Islands. • D.C. Greenworks brought together inner city residents, who were largely low income minorities, through tree-planting and shared meals, building relationships which led to additional community development efforts. Created new employment and business opportunities •

JBC nurtured the growth of one Hispanic-owned and one female-owned business, as well as several owned by low income entrepreneurs; about half of the employees of these were Hispanic. • PLP facilitated a 4 million board foot timber sale that was sold to two local mills and a Hispanic-owned firewood business. • WRTC incubated new forest-based businesses which created over 45 jobs in a high poverty area; most of the jobs went to low income workers, many of whom were Hispanic. • WRTC directly employed 20 seasonal fulltime workers on fuels reduction crews, most of whom were from low income families. • RA enabled low income ginseng growers to generate supplemental income by providing rootstock and market connections. Included low income and marginalised groups in decision-making •

Activities

• Access

• • •

AFWH facilitated the participation of low income and marginalised harvesters of non-timber forest products in monitoring, policy discussions and permit setting processes. RA helped local, low income ginseng growers to change laws governing ginseng harvest and theft. WR included the Nez Perce Tribe as a full partner in watershed planning and sought to ensure their input on resource management projects. WRTC coordinated efforts of low income landowners to plan and coordinate fuels reduction treatments with the US Forest Service.

Sources: Drawn largely from Wyckoff-Baird (2005) supplemented by Cheng et al. 2006, Fernandez-Gimenez et al. 2008, McDermott 2009a, programme documents and field research.

held trainings, they needed to employ translators in multiple languages to allow the Cambodian and Spanish speaking workers to participate. They also worked to offer alternative formats and pacing for group gatherings that accommodated diverse cultures. A number of the CBF groups reached out through traditional community channels and events such as soccer games, potlucks and farmers’ markets, which differed significantly from the ‘call a meeting and they will come’ approach which typifies legally-mandated public

participation processes. To engage people living at or near poverty levels, decreasing the risk of new opportunities was at least as important as capacity-building efforts to enhance the individual skills and organisational infrastructure. Capital, especially, low cost, low risk capital, is also a constraining factor. For example, when VFFP developed a collective model that significantly lowered the cost of forest ownership, they found that they needed to reassure interested, low income

Benefits of community-based forestry in the US

families through home visits that this model could work for them. VFFP ultimately developed a no cost loan and buyback policy to lower the risk of ownership (see Brighton, this issue). In another case, a no interest loan from the WRTC enabled a new medicinal plants processor to pay harvesters up front to cover the costs for permits and travel costs before rather than after herbs were delivered. Changing the timing of payments in this way significantly enhanced participation by low income harvesters. While inclusive, participatory processes at all levels are highly valued goals of CBF, engaging the poor and marginalised in leadership and decision-making has been a challenge for many CBF initiatives. While the interests of poor and marginalised people extend beyond income generating activities, economic constraints and family obligations may make it especially difficult for them to dedicate time to collaborative processes and community boards. The enhanced outreach efforts described above were often successful in getting participation in specific projects, but only occasionally did they result in new representation of and leadership by the poor and marginalised in broader decisionmaking over the long term. A notable exception is the work of the AFWH in getting low income and marginalised forest workers themselves, as well as their concerns, included in national level panels and policy discussions. At the same time, many participants in CBF initiatives realised that building the capacity of community members to engage in existing economic and political systems had limited value. Staff, board members and project partners expressed this concern in group interviews. It was, after all, the existing political and economic system that contributed to local poverty, forest degradation and social conflict. Many CBF practitioners split their time between implementing local projects on the ground that piloted new models for community-forest relationships and working at the regional and national levels to develop markets and change policies that affect forest communities. Both ecosystems and economies work at broader scales than the human, placed-based communities involved in these CBF efforts. If at larger scales, policies and market incentives work against community values and benefits, one is unlikely to see community-level benefits without systematic change at those broader scales. Institutional change through CBF? If significant, sustainable benefits accrue not from individual projects but from institutional change, then the question changes. Rather than ‘what benefits did forest communities, especially the poor and marginalised among them, realise from these five-year projects?’, perhaps the important question is ‘what institutional changes did this programme achieve that ultimately benefit poor and marginalised people?’ This question highlights the third element of the livelihoods framework – the institutions that mediate access to the assets and activities vital to sustainable livelihoods. There is some evidence that the groups in the Demonstration Program have made some noteworthy institutional changes,

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even over the short span of five years. Most significantly, CBF groups have changed how many forest management issues have been framed and addressed from ‘jobs versus environment’ and the accompanying tools of litigation and protest, to ‘healthy forests, healthy communities’ which emphasises the interdependence of economy, ecology and community and relies on the tools of collaboration and partnerships. As the concluding chapter of Growth Rings, the comprehensive report by the managing partners on the CBF Demonstration Program, noted, “…the remarkable innovations across the five-year implementation phase of the Demonstration Program represent an emerging paradigm shift away from previously dominant practices of forest management” (Wyckoff-Baird 2005:191). The author continued that although a new CBF paradigm has not yet taken root, “…the nature of the conversation about natural resource management has changed at virtually all levels of the discussion, whether among forest landowners, between rural stakeholders…, or within state and federal agencies.” Even the former Chief of the US Forest Service had come to view community-based stewardship as the future of forestry (Bosworth and Brown 2007). The CBF groups in the Demonstration Program have reframed the discussion and made steps towards institutional reform in at least three ways: 1) by providing on-the-ground examples of forestry activities that enable both local residents and visiting policymakers to envision a new kind of forestry that sustains both human and natural communities, 2) by developing new forums of discussion and policy access, from local collaborative groups to congressional hearings in Washington, D.C., and 3) by bringing new voices, perspectives and data to both new and existing forums and policy discussions. They achieved these innovations not just through individual projects in their local communities, but by identifying and working with other local initiatives and national groups working on similar issues. Urban forestry supporters have been connected to each other and active nationally through groups like the Alliance for Community Trees. More recently, the Rural Voices for Conservation Coalition (RVCC) has grown from the policy work at Sustainable Northwest and several national level organisations. RVCC, which includes many of the CBF Demonstration Program community partners among its active members, has developed briefing papers through consensus and has grown the capacity of community forestry practitioners to work strategically with congressional representatives on issues of importance to forest communities. The clearest national policy outcomes that CBF advocates have achieved in the US have occurred through relatively modest additions or changes in legislative wording, budget appropriations and agency directives which encourage collaboration between agencies and community stakeholders and direct resources to communityoriented forestry activities. Some of the federal policies and legislation that community groups in the CBF Demonstration Program have influenced include the Secure Rural Schools Act which allocates a portion of Forest Service funds to

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projects prioritised by communities through Regional Advisory Committees, the National Fire Plan which requires collaboratively developed community wildfire protection plans, and the 2008 Farm Act which includes new funding for community-owned forests. CBF practitioners and their concerns are now regularly included in top level policy discussions regarding national forest lands. For example, representatives from AFWH were invited to give testimony to congressional committees on immigration rules for forest workers (Smith 2008), and the director of the WRTC was asked to suggest priorities for economic stimulus funding (Jungwirth 2009). In some cases, the work of these grassroots groups to solve local problems has had positive benefits well beyond the participating communities. One example is new federal forest contracting authority that engages and benefits communities and workers. A group of western CBF groups, including several of those in the CBF Demonstration Program, coordinated with a national non-governmental organisation in pushing for stewardship contracting options on federal land that they hoped would benefit local workers, increase local input on projects and provide for multiparty monitoring (Danks 2003, Davies et al. 2008, USDA Forest Service n.d.). Their efforts resulted in national stewardship contracting legislation that has benefited communities as far away as Vermont, where the Green Mountain National Forest has undertaken a major stewardship contracting initiative. While the CBF Demonstration Program contributed to broader institutional change both through the strength of the local programmes developed and the connections among peers that it fostered nationwide, such change was not well captured by the assessments of programme outcomes (and therefore not represented in its own table in this paper). The 13 community partners were competitively chosen based on project proposals that focused on the interventions designed for the communities that they served, be they place-based communities or the participating forest workers, landowners and businesses of a specific region. Most of the assessments by the community, managing and research partners appropriately focused on the project level outcomes for the target communities. Many of the policy reforms, however, were achieved through activities and partnerships that spanned multiple scales and actors, many of which were not part of the Demonstration Program and were supported by separate funds. Moreover, it is difficult to demonstrate that the policy reforms have yielded measurable benefits to low income and marginalised people in the communities of the 13 programme partners. The institutional reform activities that required many of the community partners in the CBF Demonstration Program to travel and work with partners outside of their home communities were driven primarily by the desire to remove barriers and to create the conditions for success for their local initiatives. As revealed in group interviews, they started to work in regional and national venues to address issues that they found they could not resolve at the local level, usually because the resources and decision-making authority resided at higher levels. The director of the WRTC commented, “We

didn’t set out to change the world; we set out to change our communities” (Sturtevant 2006:125). They expected their reform efforts would bear fruit locally. They would likely concur that while institutional change is clearly an important outcome to capture, such change should eventually result in ecological and social benefits at the community level. Conversely, successful local models have been instrumental in promoting institutional change by demonstrating new options and influencing policy reforms at the national level. For example, field tours which brought congressional staff to forest communities and introduced them to CBF activities were instrumental in generating understanding and gaining support for CBF policy recommendations. As the community partners found, and livelihoods frameworks suggest, institutional reform and local interventions are interdependent and both are required to achieve CBF goals. Institutional change that promotes community involvement in forestry does not necessarily benefit the poor and marginalised. Studies of CBF in the global South have shown that decentralisation and devolution of forest management to local communities may in some cases harm the poor and marginalised people who depend most on forests, but lack the resources and political power to influence their management (Edmunds and Wollenberg 2003, Larson et al. 2007, Kumar 2002, Springate-Baginski and Blaikie 2007). These observed impacts were due to a number of reasons including the closure of de facto open access forest resources upon which the poorest residents might depend, community-based governance practices that favoured the local elite, or costs of participation that outweighed the benefits. In the CBF Demonstration Program, negative impacts on the livelihoods of the poor were not documented, in part because CBF tended to open up forest access, albeit modestly, rather than limit it. Moreover, most community partners and the managing partners paid particular attention to addressing the challenges to participation by poor and marginalised people. Should community-based forestry practices become institutionalised more broadly in the US without attention to the needs of the poor and marginalised, negative impacts could easily occur. For example, if federal contracting on public lands were limited exclusively to local communities, then the mobile forest workforce, which is often composed of low income and marginalised workers in the US, could lose some job opportunities. When that issue arose in recent years, CBF groups working collaboratively at the regional and national levels responded by defining and demanding high quality work conditions that provide greater benefits to forest workers nationwide, be they local or mobile (RVCC 2006). Such collaborations were possible because the groundwork had been laid to engage low income and marginalised forest workers in policy discussions, despite the economic and cultural challenges to participation. CONCLUSION The groups and projects included in the Ford Foundation CBF Demonstration Program span the breadth of CBF activities in

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the US. Analysis of these projects provides insights into the kinds of benefits realised by CBF in the US and the conditions under which benefits reach the marginalised and the poor. A number of positive local outcomes were documented during the five year programme, including newly planted trees, forest restoration treatments, retrained workers, forestbased businesses, forest land ownership and retention, social cohesion, options for youth, and increased participation in decision-making. Benefits were more likely to reach the poor and marginalised when CBF groups conducted enhanced outreach activities and developed strategies that reduced the risk of participation. CBF groups were also successful at achieving some institutional reforms. Working collaboratively, CBF groups have raised visibility for the issues affecting forest communities and workers at regional and national levels and have successfully implemented a number of policy reforms. Ultimately, institutional changes should still achieve the overarching goals of CBF, that is, should still result in measurably healthier forest ecosystems and human communities than would occur in their absence. Evidence for such change is present – for example, conflict has been reduced, jobs have been created, and forest restoration projects have been implemented – but on a fairly limited scale relative to the need. It may be, as has been found in studies of community forestry in Asia, that “the space of local forest management is larger, …[but] it is not yet large enough to make a difference to their livelihoods” (Edmunds and Wollenberg 2003:166) The CBF Demonstration Program offered several insights into providing benefits for poor and marginalised people. Both in project outputs and in the broader project of institutional change, the ability of the poor to benefit depends in large part on the extent to which pro-poor objectives are emphasised and traditionally marginalised people are involved. If new collaborative processes only invite prominent leaders among traditionally recognised stakeholders, e.g. the timber industry, influential business owners and national environmental groups, while forest workers and low income landowners are left out, then the overarching goals of CBF cannot be achieved. If training and technical assistance are offered generally to all workers and landowners without outreach specifically targeted to marginalised groups, then poverty and environmental degradation may continue among the people and forests of those communities. These issues of inclusion are important not just for CBF project implementation, but for how citizen organisations, agencies and legislators develop policies and practices that affect the sustainability of forests and forest communities. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author gratefully acknowledges the intellectual insights and hard work of all participants in the Ford Foundation’s Community-Based Forestry Demonstration Program, especially Lynn Jungwirth, Barbara Wyckoff-Baird, Jeffrey Campbell, and the CSU research team and its leaders

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Anthony Cheng and Maria Fernandez-Gimenez. Similarly, the author thanks IASCP panel coordinators Melanie McDermott and Kate Schreckenberg, editor Alan Pottinger, editorial assistant Ken Brown, and the anonymous reviewers for all of their insights and assistance. This research was funded in part by the Ford Foundation. REFERENCES ABRAMS, M.D. and NOWACKI, G.J. 2008. Native Americans as active and passive promoters of mast and fruit trees in the eastern USA. Holocene 18(7): 11231137. AGRAWAL, A. and GIBSON, C. 1999. Enchantment and disenchantment: the role of community in natural resource conservation. World Development 27(4): 629649. AMERICAN FORESTS. n.d. Forest Policy. Accessed at http://www.americanforests.org/resources/fp/ on May 22, 2009. BAKER, M. and KUSEL, J. 2003. Community forestry in the United States: learning from the past, crafting the future. Island Press, Covelo, CA. BALLARD, H.L., FERNANDEZ-GIMENEZ, M.E. and STURTEVANT, V.E. 2008. Integration of local ecological knowledge and conventional science: a study of seven community-based forestry organizations in the USA. Ecology and Society. 13(2). BELSKY, J. 2008. Creating community forests. In DONOGHUE, E. and STURTEVANT, V. (eds) 2008. Forest community connections. Resources for the Future, Washington, D.C. BLACKBURN, T. and ANDERSON, K. (eds). 1993. Before the wilderness: environmental management by native Californians. Ballena Press, Menlo Park, CA. BOSWORTH, D. and BROWN, H. 2007. After the timber wars: community-based stewardship. Journal of Forestry 104(July/August):271-273. BRENDLER, T. and CAREY, H. 1998. Community forestry defined. Journal of Forestry 96: 21-23. BRIGHTON, D. 2009. Incorporating social equity in conservation programs in the Northeastern US International Forestry Review 11(2): 197-206. BROUSSARD, S., CHENG, A., and DANKS, C. 2008. Community-based forestry as social entrepreneurship. Colorado State University Extension Bulletin #5, 2 pp. CAMPBELL, J. 2005. Foreword. In: WYCKOFF-BAIRD, B. 2005. Growth rings: communities and trees: lessons from the Ford Foundation Community-Based Forestry Demonstration Program, 2000-2005. The Aspen Institute, Washington, DC: pp. vii-ix. CHARNLEY, S. and POE, M.R. 2007. Community forestry in theory and practice: where are we now? Annual Review of Anthropology 36: 301-336. CHARNLEY, S., DONOGHUE, E.M. and MOSELEY, C. 2008. Forest management policy and community wellbeing in the Pacific Northwest. Journal of Forestry

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A community-based forestry approach to poverty alleviation in Alabama’s Black Belt Region A. DIOP and R. FRASER National Wildlife Federation, Southeast Natural Resource Center Atlanta, GA 30308 USA; Center for Forestry and Ecology Department of Plant and Soil Sciences Alabama A&M University Normal, AL 35762, USA

Email: [email protected], [email protected]

SUMMARY The Black Belt region of Alabama is endowed with immense forest resources. However, land-loss, high poverty, unemployment, and low education levels have persisted among African Americans, the majority population in the region. This paper discusses the approach, the challenges and the lessons learned by the Federation of Southern Cooperatives in their adaptation of a community-based forestry approach with a focus on social, economic and political benefits for private landowners. Education and technical assistance, coalition-building, networking and cooperative development strategies were used to increase land-retention, improve access to public and private services and implement land-based income-earning opportunities. This approach resulted in the engagement of a marginalised people in land-based poverty reduction strategies. However, many of the poorest have not yet realised the direct benefit of the community-based forestry approach because of its low credibility among private and public land managers and agencies, the time it takes to develop collaborative processes and the Federation’s limited resources.

Keywords: African American, landowners, benefits, community forestry

Une approche forestière basée sur la communauté pour soulager la pauvreté dans la région Black Belt de l’Alabama A. Diop et R. Fraser La région de la Black Belt de l’Alabama est dotée d’immenses ressources forestières. Cependant, la perte des terres, la pauvreté, le chômage et le bas niveau d’éducation persistent chez les afro-américains, qui sont la population majoritaire dans cette région. Cet article offre un débat sur les approches, les défis et les leçons apprises par la Fédération des coopératives du sud dans l’adaptation d’une approche forestière basée sur la communauté se concentrant sur les bénéfices politiques, économiques et sociaux pour les propriétaires terriens privés. Il apparait que l’éducation, l’assistance technique, la formation de coalitions, la communication entre les différents partis et stratégies pour le développement coopératif semblent accroître la rétention des terres, améliorer l’accès aux services publics et privés, et semble aussi faire démarrer des opportunités de création de revenus liés à la terre. Cette approche a résulté dans la participation d’une population marginalisée dans des stratégies de réduction de la pauvreté basées sur la terre. Nombre des plus démunis n’ont toutefois pas encore réalisé le bénéfice direct de l’approche forestière basée sur la communauté, du fait de sa faible crédibilité auprès des agences et des responsables de la gestion de la terre publics et privés, du temps nécessaire pour développer les processus de collaboration, et des ressources limitées de la Fédération.

Un modelo comunitario para reducir la pobreza en la región del "Cinturón Negro" del estado de Alabama A. DIOP y R. FRASER La región de Alabama llamada "el Cinturón Negro" tiene recursos forestales inmensos. Sin embargo, la pérdida de terrenos, un alto índice de pobreza y bajos niveles educativos siguen siendo problemáticos entre la población afroamericana, mayoritaria en la región. Este estudio analiza el modelo de la Federation of Southern Cooperatives (Federación de Cooperativas del Sur), y los desafíos que ha tenido que afrontar y las lecciones que ha tenido que aprender, en su adaptación del modelo de gestión forestal comunitaria en aras de privilegiar los beneficios sociales, económicos y políticos para los terratenientes privados. Se emplearon estrategias de educación, asistencia técnica, creación de coaliciones y de redes de contacto y desarrollo cooperativo para potenciar la retención de tierras, mejorar el acceso a los servicios públicos y privados, e implementar oportunidades para aumentar ingresos derivados de las tierras. Este modelo ha obtenido como resultado el compromiso de una población marginada en cuanto a las estrategias de reducción de pobreza basadas en el uso de la tierra. Sin embargo, una gran parte de los más pobres no se ha dado cuenta todavía de los beneficios directos del modelo de gestión forestal comunitaria, por motivo de su escasa credibilidad entre los administradores de tierras privadas y públicas y las agencias correspondientes, el tiempo necesario para desarrollar procesos de colaboración, y los recursos limitados de la Federación.

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INTRODUCTION

BACKGROUND

Many efforts to help minority and limited resource landowners both in the US and internationally have fallen short because their proponents have had simplistic notions of how to provide assistance. In most cases they simply offered information or funding while ignoring the fact that what is often happening to small farm and land owners reflects historically rooted preferences for institutional (often corporate) strategies of resource exploitation by a process of marginalisation of local populations, expressed in the contemporary context as a neglect of people/communities. Advancing community-based forestry in Alabama’s Black Belt, an impoverished region, where few of the majority African American population own land, therefore offers some interesting challenges. In this region, as in many other places around the world, there is a history of an increasing disconnection between the local population and the local (forest) resources. This disconnect is exacerbated by the lack of collective and community-based approaches, the absence of significant public lands and poor service delivery by public agencies charged with land management. Yet this land provides a valuable resource from which various benefits (social, economic, political and ecological) could be derived by the local population, once structural inequities, in particular limited access to decision-makers, resources and markets, are addressed. The Federation of Southern Cooperatives (FSC), with over 35 years of communitybased activism, recognised an opportunity, circa 2000, provided by Ford Foundation’s Community-Based Forestry Demonstration Program (CBFDP) to use a communitybased forestry approach to leverage resources, deliver technical assistance and education, and foster collective actions (Wykcoff-Baird 2005, Cheng et al. 2006). To do this the Federation adopted the collective approaches that were common in the Civil Rights movement and continue to be important in the Environmental Justice movement (Bullard 1990). This paper provides an insider’s view of the application of a community-based forestry approach to some of the challenges in the region, the impact of these efforts, and some of the lessons learned. From 2002 to 2007, the lead author served as the Project Director of the Federation’s Black Belt Legacy Forestry Program (BBLFP), one of the thirteen Ford Foundation-funded community-based forestry demonstration projects in the US (see Danks, this issue). The paper begins by identifying the deeply rooted historical, social, cultural and political obstacles to the local population benefitting from the forests in their region. An understanding of this complex history provides some explanation for the general approach and multifaceted programmes devised by the Federation to address the suite of critical issues they had identified. The impacts of the Federation’s community-based forestry activities are discussed in the following section with a final discussion focusing on the lessons learned and outstanding challenges.

The Black Belt of Alabama is part of a larger impoverished region distinguished by its population and its soil. This region is called Black Belt because of the predominant African American population and the dark soil. This region is also characterised by a history of slavery and sharecropping, denial of rights, disruption of social, economic and political structures, and the erosion of community and collective action (Myrdal 1944). The Black Belt region is known as a region with rich land and poor people, despite the presence of a significant forest industry (Schulman 1991). Alabama Black Belt’s poverty rate of 34.9% is almost twice the state’s average of 18.8% and is well above the national average of 13.3% (Buckenya and Fraser 2003). The population in the Alabama Black Belt has relatively shorter life-spans, lower educational attainment and lower average per capita income when compared with other Alabama counties (Fraser et al. 2005). This may be due in part to the fact that, as Joshi et al. (2000) suggest, the economic benefits of the forest industry are not overcoming the shortfalls in human capital development that threaten the long-term economic and social well-being of these communities, a finding supported by Bliss et al. (1997,1998a, 1998b, 2005). Gilbert et al. (2001) went even further after reviewing studies of black farmers and rural landowners. They argue that land plays a crucial role in the social, political, and economic complexity of the region, and added that how land is distributed may be a key element in economic underdevelopment of African Americans. Alabama has 23 million acres of forest of which only 6% is publicly owned. This is the state with the second largest area (78%) of privately owned forests (Wear and Greis 2002, Wicker 2002). Some of these non-industrial private forestland owners are minorities, particularly African Americans, and little is known about them (Gan and Kolison 1999). The forestry and forest products industry is also one of the most important, if not the most important, industry in Alabama and, in 1998, timber was ranked second among farm sources of income (Crews 2000). The typical Alabama non-industrial private forestland owner controls a relatively small acreage, and these smaller holdings represent almost 50% of the total forested acreage in the state. African Americans are 26% of Alabama’s population and control a significant portion of the forestland in the Alabama Black Belt region (see Figure 1). In a two-counties study in southeastern Alabama where African Americans represented more than a quarter of the population, Gan and Kolison (1999) reported that a significant portion of the forestland is owned or managed by African Americans. In these two counties, the size of the forestland owned by the minority landowners surveyed ranged from 10 to 698 acres, with a mean of 113 acres and a median of 70 acres. Fraser et al. (2005) reported that, in Perry County, African Americans were 67% of the population and 7% of the landowners. Of the 1 416 African American landowners in Perry County, only 238 have been identified as owning properties listed in the property parcel maps. The average African American

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figure 1 Traditional counties of the Alabama Black Belt

Source: Center for business and economic research, the University of Alabama.

landholding was 40 acres and they owned 4% of the land. AFRICAN AMERICANS AND FORESTLAND OWNERSHIP Evolving disconnect between African Americans and land The connection of African Americans to forestland was evident throughout European exploration, settlement and development of North America. As slaves, they used the forests as a place for worship as well as refuge, were involved in clearing woodlands for agriculture and worked as loggers and producers of naval stores (Leatherberry 2000). After the Civil War they became forestland owners and managers. Yet, over time African American relationships with forests were transformed. According to Mitchell (2001), the major causes for this shift were the inequitable distribution of resources, social structural barriers, inadequate access to technical assistance and the collective memories of Jim Crow,1 together with industrialisation and the mechanisation of agriculture that were features of the rapidly changing economic landscape. Across much of the Southeast, these factors have rendered the potential sale of land the only realistic source of significant revenue. Over the past 150 years, intimacy with the forest turned gradually to fear and dissociation, because organisations opposed to Black

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freedom, such as the Klu Klux Klan (a white supremacist group), used the forest to disguise their activities and as a venue for lynching. The mechanisation of agriculture reduced the need for field labour and many African Americans migrated from the South to manufacturing jobs in thriving Northern and Western industrial cities (Schulman 1991). Educational opportunities, higher paying jobs and the availability of services and security in urban centres kept the South to North flow of young African American migrants going. In the meantime, African Americans became more disconnected from their forests as they relied less and less on the land for their sustenance (Schweninger 1997). Fresh in the minds of many African American landowners is a perception of past discriminatory practices from federal agencies. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the federal agency responsible for supporting and assisting family farmers, contributed to further disengaging African Americans from the land. In 1999 in the ‘Pigford Case’, the USDA admitted to its role in discriminating against Black farmers and causing many of them financial distress and foreclosure of their property and settled a class action suit by compensating claimants for their losses (Cowan and Feder 2009). The USDA and other professionals have recently coined several descriptions of African American landowners (i.e., limited resource, traditionally underserved, socially disadvantaged, and minority landowners) to show that they are in danger of being left behind, and thus careful attention must be paid to their interest in forestry and land management. The challenges that this disconnect presents In parts of the Deep South, limited resource, traditionally underserved landowners still control pockets of private forestland. These are the residuals of African American family and/or community holdings that were accumulated in the post-Civil War/Reconstruction (1867 to 1910) era, when African Americans owned over 15 million acres of land. This ownership and control of land has always strongly affected many aspects of rural life, especially in these poorer regions of the country. Gilbert et al. (2002) found that beyond its cultural significance in minority communities, rural land ownership is particularly important since it is often one of the few and one of the largest forms of wealth. Despite this significance, recent studies indicate that African American landownership has declined at an alarming rate over the course of the second half of the twentieth century (Brown 1973, Zabawa et al. 1990). According to statistics from the USDA, African Americans’ land ownership had declined to less than 2.3 million acres in 1999 (Gilbert et al. 2002). In most cases, African Americans did not just sell the land and move away, they were driven from it by violence and

Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965 that restricted the civil rights and civil liberties of African Americans. They mandated de jure segregation in all public facilities, with a ‘separate but equal’ status for black Americans and members of other non-white racial groups.

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through the exercise of complicated legal systems. Brown (1973) listed seven reasons for the rapid decline of blackowned land: tax and partition sales, mortgage foreclosures, failure to write wills, land ownership limitations on welfare recipients, eminent domain2 and voluntary sales. Beyond this, there is well documented evidence that African Americans were cheated out of, or driven off, their land through intimidation, discrimination, violence and even murder. In a three-part investigative story called “Torn from the Land”, Lewan and Barclay (2001) confirmed 107 land takings without compensation in thirteen southern and border states. Recently, the land loss issue has been exacerbated by development pressure. Several studies have demonstrated that African American forestland owners have diverse ownership objectives and generally manage their land-based resources less intensively than other non-industrial private forestland owners. Many African American forestland owners pay little attention to their forest except when timber is harvested (Gan et al. 2003). Schelhas (2002) argues that the African American history of landownership, hunting, recreation and access to extension services and programmes is dramatically different from that of white landowners, and that these differences impact natural resource management in important ways today. On the ground this is reflected in the fact that relatively few African American landowners have formal forest management plans; they usually manage their land with little professional advice and minimal planning for the future. In reality, their culture of forest ownership is familycentred rather than economically driven, their decisions about their forestland are often made in complex household and family contexts, and their values differ from the values of professional foresters. African American forestland owners generally own smaller acreages and small forested tracts are not well served by contemporary logging operations (Bailey et al. 2004). These capital-intensive logging operations are designed to harvest large tracts, making them inefficient at harvesting tracts under 50 acres (Greene et al. 1997). As a result, most owners of smaller forested lands have few, if any options, for harvesting and marketing their timber (Cubbage 1983, Dubois et al. 2001). Current evidence also indicates low participation in government conservation and forest management practices among farmers in general, and limited resource minority

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landowners in particular. A number of studies (Bell et al. 1994, Molnar et al. 2000) have all reported a chronically low participation in government-sponsored programmes among small and limited resource farmers. The fundamental problem is trust. Given the history of relationships between African Americans and public agencies (for example, the USDA), many are reluctant to participate in agencysponsored events (Mitchell 2001).3 Nevertheless, many of the issues facing forestry in the South – such as control of the Southern Pine Beetle, management of wildlife and biodiversity – require coordinated action over large land areas with diverse private and public ownerships. (Bliss et al. 1997, Wicker 2002, Schelhas et al. 2003). Zabawa et al. (1990) reported that making an economic return from a small forest parcel may be critical to small landowners' ability to retain land while maintaining their economic well-being. Gan et al. (2003) argued that, given the constraints African American forestland owners face, they must engage in active, at times extractive, stewardship of their forests. However, this effort requires trying different approaches. The Federation of Southern Cooperatives’ community-based forestry initiative is one example of such an attempt to use a non-traditional approach to helping African American forestland owners. THE FEDERATION’S COMMUNITY-BASED FORESTRY STRATEGY Mission and history of the Federation Community-based forestry has unique problems in Alabama because of individualism, exclusive rights in property ownership and the anti-communist (effectively anti-community) wave which created barriers to collective action in unincorporated areas.4 The Civil Rights movement was a major force for change in the US, especially in rural, predominantly African American areas such as the Black Belt. The right to vote, to attend desegregated schools and to hold public office was hard fought and came as a result of federal initiatives and local collective action to correct these historic wrongs. Some of the leading opponents to change were the scions of the plantation class who fought the federal government for their own rights, just as they ferociously

Eminent domain in common law legal systems is the inherent power of the state to seize a citizen’s private property, expropriate property, or seize a citizen’s rights in property with due monetary compensation, but without the owner’s consent. The property is taken either for government use or by delegation to third parties who will devote it to public or civic use or, in some cases, economic development (http:// www.answers.com/topic/eminent-domain). Mitchell contends: (1) Broken promises “have become a metaphor for the continued unwillingness of the government to provide African Americans with the same range of economic opportunities that it has afforded white Americans to integrate African Americans into the economic mainstream of society” and (2) “African Americans today not only feel betrayed by the government’s retreat on land reform during the Reconstruction, but also by the perception that the government has played an active role for the past half century in dispossessing land from African American families who overcame great obstacles to acquire land on their own.” In state law, an unincorporated area is a region of land that is not a part of any municipality. Thus, an unincorporated community is usually not subject to or taxed by a city government. Such regions are generally administered by default as a part of larger territorial divisions, often counties (http://en.wikilib.com/wiki/Unincorporated_area)

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fought to suppress African Americans’ right to vote. Local and state policemen, lawyers, judges, politicians and civil servants effectively challenged most attempts to integrate African Americans into the mainstream. These efforts were only overcome by the force and weight of federal laws. The same cast of characters has also stridently opposed societal control of property use. They remain equally ferocious in defense of their right to do whatever they want on their property, believing that everyone should be left alone to manage their property as they see fit. Therefore, Alabama has by far the lowest property taxes in the US, and every attempt to change the tax structure has been strenuously resisted. Similarly, Alabama is one of the few states that do not uphold ‘home rule’, that is, governance by a local elected body. In all unincorporated areas in the state (i.e., all rural areas), laws and regulations are made in the state legislature not at the county level. This means that local officials are often uncertain about their authority to address local problems, because the authority, if it exists, is conferred through a tangle of state statutes. The plight of African Americans was made more acute by the fact that, during and after the Civil Rights era, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and other agencies were used to disrupt African American organisations under the pretext that they were investigating un-American (i.e., communist) activities or tax-evasion. It was in this arena that African American organisations emerged in the 1950s and 1960s. The Federation of Southern Cooperatives is one of the few surviving5 African American organisations with a commitment to collective action and land-based development.6 It was founded in 1967 by leaders that came out of the Civil Rights movement to ensure that African American and other historically underserved communities of the Black Belt had the support and resources to own and make full use of their land, natural resources and other business opportunities. The Federation was established to work with African American family farmers and landowners to enhance the quality of their lives and improve their communities. The Federation’s mission is to:  (1) develop cooperatives and credit unions as a means for people to enhance the quality of their lives and improve their communities; (2) save, protect and expand the landholdings of Black family farmers in the South; and (3) develop, advocate and support public policies to benefit the Federation’s membership of Black family farmers and low income rural communities. The Federation currently has field offices in Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina as well as a Rural Training and Research

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Center (RTRC) in Epes, Alabama. The Federation’s main strength is its ability to work directly with people from the local communities to achieve their goals. Its participatory approach is based on the trust it has built with communities throughout the south during its 40 plus years of existence. The Federation currently serves 75 active cooperatives and credit unions from the Carolinas to Texas, involving more than 20,000 families. The Federation has always viewed forestland as a very important asset for African American communities. However, the benefits of forestland ownership have not, and are not, being fully realised by minority and limitedresource landowners (Wood and Gilbert 2000). According to Schelhas (2002), underserved landowners are in danger of being left behind by the changing economics of forest management and ownership in the Southeast. They lack knowledge of, and easy access to, available information and technical assistance to manage their forests and to market the products and services that derive from it. Moreover, inappropriate forest management practices in their communities such as high-grading7 have degraded the natural resource base resulting in loss of timber income and reduced recreational and environmental benefits. These conditions have exacerbated unemployment, poverty and problems of environmental degradation in many areas in the Southeast. The Federation’s Black Belt Legacy Forestry Program (BBLFP) has focused on addressing these issues by exploring forestry-related opportunities that exist within the African American community and other underserved communities in the Alabama Black Belt. The Federation’s community-based forestry approach The BBLFP has developed and uses a mix of outreach, training, demonstrations, information dissemination and one-on-one technical assistance to assist limited-resource and African American landowners in the management and utilisation of their forestland to generate income options that both draw upon and preserve forest resources. The BBLFP implemented the following five key activities: Education and technical assistance Forestry education and training activities which focus on forest best management practices, the importance of a forest management plan, and estate planning and heir property issues. Technical assistance comes in the form of workshops, seminars and demonstrations at the Federation’s Rural Training and Research Center or in locations within

From the beginning the Federation experienced some very tough times, fighting to overcome entrenched opposition and fighting to stand up for the rights of those who have been underserved for so long. During most of its existence the Federation has also faced active opposition by white political leaders who saw that the Federation represented a challenge to the status quo. A federal grand jury investigation was allowed to drag on for years during the 1970s, causing some funders to withdraw support, and thereby slowing the growth of the organisation. After a long and challenging battle, the Federation was eventually able to clear its name and regain the support of private foundations as well as working relationships with federal and state agencies (Bethell 1982). http://www.federationsoutherncoop.com/history.htm High-grading is the harvesting of high quality trees while leaving dead, damaged or low value/quality trees to naturally regenerate the forest.

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the community. These educational events are also important venues for sharing information and building networks. Demonstration Agroforestry and goat silvopasture demonstrations at both the Rural Training and Research Center and on private land to augment training activities with a functional ‘show and tell’ dimension. The diverse demonstration sites serve as training grounds to expose distressed landowners to a range of opportunities which can yield or enhance their economic benefits. These demonstration projects, which are maintained by local landowners with strong support from BBLFP staff, provide hands-on training and education to a broad base of landowners about agroforestry and forest management practices with potential for income generation at minimal financial risk. Cooperative development Cooperative development and marketing activities are centred on agroforestry opportunities, which can yield shorterterm benefits for economically distressed landowners. For example, the BBLFP has assisted landowners that are raising goats in their forest to increase their bargaining power by facilitating the creation of a regional meat goat cooperative and to decrease their production cost through bulk purchases. Outreach Direct outreach and technical assistance to landowners and farmers to understand and develop forest management plans and to identify and access government programmes and funding. The Federation’s outreach work is centred on providing information and technical assistance on sustainable forestland management and land utilisation alternatives. Youth development Traditionally, youth from underserved communities have left their communities to attend college or to get better paying jobs in urban communities, only returning when they retire. The main objective of the youth development programme is to connect youth to the land, as well as to expose them to landowners who are successfully utilising their land and have become committed to preserving it. IMPACTS OF THE FEDERATION’S COMMUNITYBASED FORESTRY APPROACH The Federation has centred its community-based forestry efforts on achieving a combination of short and long-term benefits. This section focuses on the impacts of the Federation’s community-based forestry approach to developing activities with human, economic, political, social and ecological benefits for small and minority landowners in Alabama. Human and economic benefits The best way to maximise economic opportunities for low-income African Americans in the region is to make

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sure that they are able to hang on to the most important asset that many (though increasingly fewer) still have, namely land (Bailey et al. 2004). A critical aspect of landownership addressed by the Federation’s education and technical assistance programme is heir property, one of the most common causes of African American land loss. Heir property is generally a piece of land inherited by all the descendants when the original owner dies intestate, i.e. without a will or other types of estate plans. In this situation, every descendant owns a fractional, partial and undivided interest in the land and does not have a separate deed to his or her ownership interest. As a result, the given parcel of land has many owners (a number of whom may reside in other states), and in most cases they have no real connection to the land. Management of heir property poses difficulties, because of confusion about who owns what and how much, and who is responsible for paying the taxes. Moreover, participation in public programmes is usually impossible without a clear or consolidated title to the land. According to Thomas et al. (2004), over 80% of African American rural landowners do not have an estate plan. Zabawa (1991) identified distrust of the legal system, superstition, lack of education and reluctance to do something that might cause friction between family members as some of the possible reasons for the lack of estate plans. In the last 40 years, the Federation has helped over 5 000 families address their heirproperty problems by providing information, legal services and advice on estate planning and management, drafting of wills and title consolidations. Between 2002 and 2007, the BBLFP hosted or participated in over 23 events throughout the state where heir property issues were addressed and used targeted outreach to assist over 350 forestland owners to deal with heir property issues. Heir property issues also make long term decision-making and investment in the land extremely difficult and have hindered any attempts to utilise or develop any land-based assets. The BBLFP has educated landowners on the loss of opportunities that this situation can perpetuate; landowners were empowered and assisted in resolving their issues by working directly with the Federation’s staff attorney. A comment often repeated by landowners is that a consequence of this effort is the open discussion of wills, trusts and property management in family (usually annual) reunions in their communities, something rarely discussed in the past. Timber marketing has always been very challenging for African American forestland owners. Specific challenges have to do with a history of abuse by loggers and timber brokers. Unscrupulous operators have been known to pay African American forestland owners a small fraction of the value of their timber and defraud these owners of their property. These negative experiences have made many African American landowners reluctant to explore the revenue potential of their forestland. In response, the Federation has organised workshops to educate landowners on how to market timber successfully, has provided direct technical assistance in developing timber sale contracts and has referred landowners to reputable timber buyers and loggers in the region. In this process, landowners have

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come together and learned from each other by sharing their positive and negative experiences. A consultant forester8 in Macon County reports that a number of landowners who have participated in the BBLFP activities have subsequently utilised the services of a professional forester and experienced increased revenues from their timber sales. Another important component of the BBLFP’s community-based forestry approach was to assist landowners to identify and implement enterprises that could help them generate some income from their land as a strategy for encouraging land retention. The BBLFP quickly saw the importance of working with African American landowners to create short-term income opportunities from their land, from which they could at least pay property taxes, while they were waiting for their trees to mature. Goat silvopasture was introduced by the BBLFP for that purpose. The idea of rearing goats in forested areas was previously unknown in Alabama but, together with tree-growing, provides a viable land management alternative for landowners and an effective strategy not only for hazardous wildland-fuel mitigation, but also for generating income through sale of the livestock (Fraser 2008). Landowners were able to generate supplementary income without interfering with their other commitments. The BBLFP was very successful in leveraging additional resources in this project. For instance, participation by the Alabama Forestry Commission, together with Tuskegee and Alabama A&M Universities allowed the initiative to expand beyond the initial demonstration sites and project area. In a case study conducted by Alabama A&M University, Fraser (2004) reported that the participants in the goat/tree silvopastoral system reported that goat enterprise provides a quick return in a short period of time, contingent upon the available market price. Several landowners reported income ranging from US$1900 to US$3500 from the sale of their goats over a nine-month period. As a Sumter County landowner, one of the more successful participants in the project, remarked “Little bit of learning for a small farmer with the help of the Federation makes a big difference in the sustainability of the land”. The same landowner often said he enjoyed working and learning together with other landowners with similar interests. Training and other forms of capacity-building are important components of the strategies through which the Federation operates so that its members have the skills and information they need to defend and accumulate assets. The Civil Rights Action Team (1997) reported that minority and limited resource landowners have historically been underserved by extension and assistance programmes in the South. The Federation has consequently brokered education and technical assistance between forestland owners and natural resource professionals because it recognises that the public and private benefits of the forests can be enhanced with assistance from natural resource professionals. Historically, African American landowners who have woodlots as small as 5 to 10 acres have not received meaningful assistance

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in managing and developing their forestland holdings. The Federation has worked to make state and federal agencies aware of the issues with which socially disadvantaged forestland owners have to grapple and has connected forestland owners with state and federal resource providers. In this way, the Federation has been instrumental in the creation of the USDA Minority Farm Register, which is a tool to promote equal access to USDA programmes and services for minority and other individuals with agricultural interest. John Zippert, the director of the Federation’s Rural Training and Research Center, contends that the attendance of a senior representative of the Secretary of the USDA as well as senior United States Natural Resources Conservation Services (NRCS), Farm Services Agency (FSA) and Forest Service (FS) officials at one of the Federation’s annual meetings at the Center is recognition that the number, location and the ability of members to access these agencies and their services is of major importance. Political benefits From the time the Federation started working on communitybased forestry, its leaders saw the need and potential for bringing together a coalition of players to address African American forestland owners’ issues. Such dialogue does not happen naturally in many rural communities, where political and economic differences have historically worked against productive conversations about forest management. The BBLFP therefore encouraged NGOs, state and federal agencies and many university partners to work together to assist African American landowners, introducing new resources and expertise to the communities in the process. For instance, through BBLFP efforts the state forester committed some federal Forest Land Enhancement Program (FLEP) funding ($140,000 in 2006) to work with minority landowners. The BBLFP also provided opportunities at its Rural Training and Research Center for landowners to meet with high-level USDA officials to talk about the Pigford case, as well as opportunities for participation in the Farm Bill listening sessions at the Center and Tuskegee University. BBLFP capacity building efforts have stimulated the engagement of many landowners. The Alabama Forestry Commission Minority Forest Landowner Advisory Council is an example where the BBLFP played an important role in shaping outreach programmes at the state level. The Limited Resources Landowner Education and Assistance Network (LRLEAN) is another example of an organisation that was created by landowners that were involved with the BBLFP with a mission to serve underserved limited resource landowners. Through LRLEAN and members of the Advisory Council, the BBLFP has been instrumental in integrating African American landowners into the activities and programmes of the predominantly white Alabama TREASURE Forest Association.

Names of individual informants have been withheld to protect their privacy.

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Social benefits Social research around the world that has devoted considerable attention to social structures and networks has indicated that they can both enable or inhibit sustainable forest management and equitable forest benefits (Gibson et al. 2000). In an investigation of programme participation behaviour of non-industrial forest landowners in Indiana, Nagubadi et al. (1996) observed that among many factors, membership in forestry organisations significantly influences landowners’ programme participation and actions on their land. Through cooperative and other organisational development, the Federation has encouraged landowners to form or join social networks to address their common needs. The Federation has worked to bring together landowners within the community. For example, among the African American community in Alabama, land loss is frequent and absentee landowners are plentiful. Community members and families are often very worried about what’s happening to their forest and to the community. The Federation’s community forestry initiative has provided a forum to bring forest owners together and facilitate relationship-building to address such concerns. As one Sumter County landowner commented, the BBLFP has helped forestland owners discover new possibilities, see the actual and potential economic, social and environmental benefits of the forest and learn how to work together toward common goals. In addition to promoting informal networking, the BBLFP has facilitated participation in more formal organisations and networks. Participation in the Southeast Regional Forum sponsored by the National Network of Forest Practitioners (NNFP) in 2005 was coordinated by the BBLFP. As a result of this effort, 55 African American landowners joined the NNFP: (Shewmangal, pers. comm. 2005). These networks have provided landowners with an opportunity to interact and learn from their peers as well as to advance their common interests and needs. According to one Crenshaw County landowner, the involvement of African Americans in these networks has advanced forest management by encouraging many of them to write forest management plans and use professional advice in their operations. The BBLFP’s efforts and approaches have gained increasing recognition and buy-in. As a result, a team of university professors (Fraser et al. 2007) were supported by the USDA Forest Service to feature the Federation’s goat agrosilvopasture strategy in 12 training workshops provided to over 300 landowners across six southeastern states (building human, as well as social, capital). These workshops and other networking efforts have also contributed to the formation of a Community-Based Land Development Consortium (CBLD), which has brought together 10 individual organisations in the Black Belt region. The consortium offers a system of support for actors (e.g., state, regional and community-based organisations; community foundations; extension agents; universities and researchers) involved in low-wealth African American communities in the Southeast, and aims to strengthen local capacity by helping to link organisational development and

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other resources in a coordinated, integrated and effective manner. The consortium’s coordinator contends that these efforts have regionalised the BBLFP’s efforts by facilitating interactions and networking on a regional scale. Ecological benefits From the beginning, the BBLFP was committed to maintaining the long-term ecological viability and productivity of the land. It also understood the importance of implementing an approach that speaks the language landowners are most interested in, namely tying stewardship directly to the economic benefits. Many landowners talk about the stewardship ethic as something far in the past that has been lost and with which they aspire to reconnect. They still remember the time when forests were used for their full array of benefits rather than just for immediate gains from maximised timber values. In the opinion of one Dallas County landowner, it took the BBLFP to remind many landowners of their involvement in collecting medicinal herbs, forest florals and valuables other than timber or firewood from the forests. The BBLFP has worked with landowners to promote forestry practices that directly or indirectly enhance and restore forestlands to offer the full range of ecological benefits. In so doing, BBLF staff have leveraged additional resources from other technical service providers as well as building on landowners’ own local knowledge. This functional approach carefully balances the long-term needs of forest ecosystems with landowners’ short-term economic needs. As explained by a landowner from Elmore County, African American landowners commonly need to make a regular income from their land to cover their taxes and sustain their livelihoods. BBLFP efforts have resulted in the implementation of sustainable solutions in many cases. Over 550 landowners have visited demonstration sites or attended educational activities sponsored by the Federation. Sixty percent of the landowners involved in the Federation’s goat programme have implemented new best management practices on their lands, including raising meat goats not only for income but also as an alternative to using herbicides and mechanical means to suppress exotic invasives. Twelve landowners, with BBLFP assistance, have developed forest management plans and many others have implemented improved forest management practices such as establishing fire breaks and food plots for wildlife and carrying out thinning, selective harvesting or prescribed burns. There is no quantitative evidence that ecosystems have been made healthier in the limited time span of the programme. However, given the shift away from focusing solely on resource extraction to including implementation of forest best management practices, it is likely that some ecological benefits were achieved. A member of the Buck Creek hunting club, for example, remarked that many hunters on these properties have noticed better hunting. The BBLFP’s efforts appear to have contributed to the overall well-being of the forest and have engaged landowners in the active management of their land.

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LESSONS LEARNED AND ONGOING CHALLENGES The Federation has actively served and worked with minority and limited-resource landowners in the Alabama Black Belt and in surrounding communities for over forty years. As landowners become aware of the importance of land ownership and the prevalence of land loss, many are requesting assistance that most states and federal agencies are unable to provide because of their limited and diminishing outreach and technical assistance budgets. The Federation has seized this opportunity to implement communitybased forestry approaches to encourage and engage African American forestland owners in the stewardship of their natural resources to improve their livelihood and communities. In this process, the Federation was able to draw out and document many lessons that highlight what worked well and where challenges were met. However, despite all the efforts, the Federation has realised that the credibility of community-based forestry among private and public land managers and agencies remains low in Alabama. Many agencies continue to focus on addressing individual large landowners’ issues instead of focusing on the collective needs of small tract holders. Another challenge is inherent in the process of collaboration. While the benefits of collaborative efforts are in part the result of organisational differences, creating a workable partnership between NGOs, academics, and state and federal agencies is a demanding process. Communitybased groups like the Federation are involved in frontline activities, such as face-to-face problem solving, while academics are in most cases more theoretically oriented. In building these partnerships, the Federation has persistently asked the question 'What is the community getting out of the process?' in order to keep partners focused on community benefits. For many communities, especially those from which industry and agencies have divested, every small change is significant. However, in spite of the Federation’s efforts, a large number of small landowners are still not receiving any sort of assistance in managing their land. A key question is: how do we scale-up community-based forestry efforts to achieve region-wide impacts? The Federation’s limited capacity, due in part to funding unpredictability and small staff numbers, has often limited the impacts of its community-based forestry efforts. This situation has often made it very difficult to attract, recruit and retain skilled and experienced people to work in rural areas. Another constraint to scaling-up community-based forestry efforts is that they remain a secondary activity for most small landowners who have to maintain off-farm jobs to sustain their livelihood. Although, goat-rearing, for example, provided an alternative on-farm income earning opportunity, this was not enough to keep some landowners on the land because there were limited growth opportunities, i.e. there were inadequate marketing and processing facilities to handle the higher production levels needed to generate a sufficient on-farm income. Establishment of a regulatory (USDA) approved facility costs money that is either not available from public

institutions or affordable from private lenders. In order to scale up this effort some credit or finance mechanism would be required. The Federation has also recognised some challenges it needs to address if it is to continue and succeed as an organisation. For example, the Federation has a very stable executive staff that has been involved with the organisation from its early days. It is a very strong, bonded and experienced group of people, who have been together through all the ups and downs over the years and have grown together as an organisation. Although this is of great value to the organisation, as retirement approaches, the need to hire and train a new group of leaders is essential for the future success of the organisation. The continued viability of these ideas is still dependent on funding from external sources together with the ability of the Federation and the Community-based Land Development Consortium to retain and build on the institutional memory of current staff. Grant-writing by the Federation, the Consortium and institutional partners, (e.g., Tuskegee and Alabama A&M universities), the continued support by the agencies (e.g., USDA Forest Service, Alabama Forestry Commission and Natural Resources Conservation Services), and collaboration with other grassroots organisations (e.g., LRLEAN) will be critical in building the social, economic and political capital to move forward. It is still too soon to determine if the results of the community-based forestry initiative are either long-lasting for those directly involved, or if there will be an increased and sustained involvement of others who were encouraged by seeing the benefits to those directly involved. Currently, the BBLFP is a core programme of the Federation, recognised by many landowners and private, state and federal agencies. In many ways the lessons learned by the BBLFP are influencing, and will continue to influence, regional efforts. This is best captured by the values specifically incorporated by the Community-based Land Development Consortium, i.e. reaching out to diverse organisations across sectors, remaining rooted in the land, working with groups and whole communities, engaging youth, actively participating, and by being present, available, and proactive. The BBLFP’s legacy can be sustained if the Consortium is successful in promoting dialogue between sectors; the development of new ideas and collaborative relationships; increased knowledge and skills in land-based development through training and support for emerging organisations and leaders; a growing network of constituents to advocate for policy change affecting landbased community development; and ongoing connections between communities and service providers. Wherever possible, the Consortium must keep national attention on landowner issues. This paper has provided an exploratory look at the challenging conditions affecting minority and limited resource landowners in Alabama’s Black Belt and the efforts of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives to respond to these challenges with a community-based forestry approach. It is hoped that the initial analysis of these conditions and opportunities offers some insight into ways to enhance

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management efficiency, land-use improvement and income in areas such as the Black Belt, so that the local population can survive as effective stewards of the land in relatively self-reliant communities. REFERENCES BAILEY, C., HARTASKA, V., DUBOIS, M.R. and LINDSEY, B. 2004. Forestry and community: creating local markets for local resources. Auburn University NRI proposal. http://www.ag.auburn.edu/~bailelc/nri4.1.htm BELL, C.D., ROBERTS, R.K., ENGLISH, B.C. and PARK, W.M. 1994. A logic analysis of participation in Tennessee’s forest stewardship program. Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics 26(2): 463-472. BETHELL, T. N. 1982. Sumter County Blues: the ordeal of the Federation of SouthernCooperatives. The Committee, RARE. BLISS, J.C., NEPAL, S.K., BROOKS, Jr. R.T. and. Larsen, M.D. 1997. In the mainstream: environmental attitudes of mid-south NIPF owners. Southern Journal of Applied Forestry 21(1): 37-42. BLISS, J.C., SISOCK, M. and BIRCH, T. 1998a. Ownership matters: forestland concentration in rural Alabama. Society and Natural Resources 11(4): 115-137. BLISS, J.C., WALKINGSTICK, T.L. and BAILEY, C. 1998b. Development or dependency? sustaining Alabama’s forest communities. Journal of Forestry 96(3): 24-30. BLISS, J.C. and BAILEY,C. 2005. Pulp, paper, and poverty: forest-based rural development in Alabama, 1950-2000. In: Lee, R.G. and Fields, D.R. (eds). Communities and Forests: Where people meet the land, 138-158. Oregon State University Press, Corvallis, Oregon. BROWN, R.S. 1973. Only Six Million Acres: A decline of black owned land in the rural south. The Black Economic Research Center, New York. BUCKENYA, J. and FRASER, R. 2003. Human development index for Alabama. Southeast Decision Sciences Institute Proceedings. Williamsburg, VA. Feb 26-28, 2003: 45-50. BULLARD, R. 1990. Dumping in Dixie: race, class, and environmental quality. Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado. CHENG, A.S., FERNANDEZ-GIMENEZ, M., BALLARD, H., BROUSSARD, S., DANKS, C., DANIELS, S.E., MCDERMOTT, M., SEIDL, A.F. and STURTEVANT, V. 2006. Ford Foundation community-based forestry demonstration program research component final report. Available at: http://welcome.warnercnr.colostate.edu/ frws/cbf/docs/ford_research_report_final_2006.pdf COWAN, T. and FEDER, J. 2009. The Pigford Case: USDA settlement of a discrimination suit by Blck farmers. CRS Report RS 20430. Congressional Research Service, Washington DC. Available at: http://wikileaks.org/wiki/ CRS-RS20430 CREWS, J.R., 2000. What Agribusiness Means to Alabama’s Economy.  Alabama Cooperative Extension System ANR-1107, Auburn University, Auburn, AL.

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CUBBAGE, F. 1983. Economics of forest tract size: theory and literature. Gen. Tech. Rep. SO-41. US Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Southern Forest Experiment Station, New Orleans, LA. 21 p. DANKS, C. 2009. Community-based forestry in the US: diverse activities and institutions with common goals International Forestry Review 11(2): 171-185. DUBOIS, M.R., ERWIN, C. and STRAKA, T.J. 2001. Costs and cost trends for forestry practices in the South. Forest Landowner 58(2):3-8. FRASER, R. 2008. Opportunities agroforestry offer minority landowners engaged in land stewardship. USDA Forest Service Southern Research Station Bulletin. FRASER, R.F., GYAWALI, B. and SCHELHAS, J. 2005. Blacks in space: Land tenure and well-being in Perry county Alabama. Small-Scale Forest Economics, Management and Policy 4(1): 21-31. FRASER, R. 2004. An innovative research and outreach approach to evaluating goat-tree silvopastoral systems as a method of hazardous wildland-fuel mitigation. A report to the Alabama Forestry Commission. Montgomery, AL. GAN, J., KOLISON, S.H. and TACKIE, N.O. 2003. African American forestland owners in Alabama’s Black Belt. Journal of Forestry 101(3): 38-43. GAN, J. and KOLISON, S.H. 1999. Minority forest landowners in southeastern Alabama Southern Journal of Applied Forestry 23(3): 175-178. GIBSON, C.C., MCKEAN, M.A. and OSTROM, E. 2000. People and forests: Communities, institutions, and governance. MIT Press, Cambridge. GILBERT, J., SHARP, G. and FELIN, M.S. 2001. The decline (and revival?) of black farmers and rural landowners: A review of the research literature. Working paper No. 44, North America Series, Land Tenure Center, and University of Wisconsin-Madison. GILBERT, J., WOOD, S.D. and SHARP, G. 2002. Who owns the land?: Agricultural land ownership by  race/ ethnicity. Rural America 17(4): 56-62. GREENE, W.D., HARRIS, Jr. T.G., DEFOREST, C.E. and WANG, J. 1997. Harvesting cost implications of changes in the size of timber sales in Georgia. Southern Journal of Applied Forestry 21(4): 193-198. JOSHI, M.L., BLISS, J., BAILEY, C., TEETER, L. and WARD, K. 2000. Investing in industry, underinvesting in human capital: Forest-based rural development in Alabama. Society and Natural Resources 13(4): 291-319. LEATHERBERRY, E.C. 2000. An overview of African ties Americans’ historical, religious, and spiritual to forests. Society of American Foresters 1999 national convention. Portland, OR. SAF Publication 00-1. Society of American Foresters: 452-457. LEWAN, T. and BARCLAY, D. 2001. Torn from the Land. Associated Press December 3, 2001. MITCHELL, T.W. 2001. From reconstruction to deconstruction: undermining black landownership, political independence, and community through partition sales of tenancies in common. Northwestern University Law Review. School of Law, Northwestern University.

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MOLNAR, J. J., BITTO, A., BRANT, G. and HOBAN, T. 2000. Core conservation practices: paths and barriers perceived by small and limited resource farmers. Staff paper, Dept. of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology, Auburn University, Auburn, AL. MYRDAL, G. 1944. An American dilemma the Negro problems and modern democracy Vol I. Harper & Brothers, New York. NAGUBADI, V., McNAMARA, K., HOOVER, W. and MILLS, Jr.W. 1996. Program participation behavior of non-industrial forest landowners: A probit analysis. Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics 28(2): 323-336. SCHELHAS, J. 2002. Race, ethnicity, and natural resources in the United States: A review. Natural Resources Journal 42(4):723-763. SCHELHAS, J., ZABAWA, R., MOLNAR, J. 2003. New opportunities for social research on forest landowners in the South. Southern Rural Sociology 19(2): 60-69. SCHULMAN, B.J. 1991. From cotton belt to Sun Belt: Federal policy, economic development, and the transformation of the South, 1938-1980. Oxford University Press. SCHWENINGER, L. 1997. Black property owners in the South 1790-1915. University of Illinois Press, Urbana, IL. SHEWMANGAL, N., 2005. Personal comments. National Network of Forest Practitioners’ outreach coordinator. THOMAS M., PENNICK. J., and GRAY. H. 2004. What is African-American Land Ownership? Federation of Southern Cooperatives Land Assistance Fund. Accessed August 19, 2005 (http://www.federationsoutherncoop. com/ aalandown04.htm). WEAR, D.N. and GREIS, J.G.. 2002. The southern forest assessment summary report. USDA Forest Service, Atlanta, GA. WICKER, G. 2002. Motivation for private forest land owners. Southern Forest Resource Assessment General Technical Report SRS-53, USDA Forest Service Southern Research Station: 225-237. WOOD, S.D. and GILBERT, J. 2000. Returning AfroAmerican farmers to the land: recent trends and a policy rationale. Review of Black Political Economy 27(4): 4364. WYCKOFF-BAIRD, B. 2005. Growth rings: Communities and trees: lessons from the Ford Foundation communitybased forestry demonstration program, 2000-2005. The Aspen Institute, Washington, D.C. ZABAWA, R. 1991. The Black Farmer and Land in SouthCentral Alabama: Strategies to Preserve a Scarce Resource. Human Ecology 19: 61-81. ZABAWA, R., SIAWAY, A. and BAHARANYI, N. 1990. The decline of black farmers and strategies for survival. Southern Rural Sociology 7: 106-121.

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Incorporating social equity in conservation programmes in the northeastern US D. BRIGHTON1 Vermont Family Forests, P.O Box 254, Bristol, VT 05443, USA

Email: [email protected]

SUMMARY Vermont’s programmes for conservation of forest land do not generally address the increasing disparity between the wealth of those who own land and those who do not. A pilot project was conducted under the Ford Foundation’s Community-Based Forestry Demonstration Program to see if a typical conservation project could be modified to allow people to own land who could not otherwise afford to do so. Forest land was acquired by a conservation organization. Some of the rights - the rights to manage and profit from the forest - were sold to a group of community members who own those rights in common. A covenant restricts the sales price so present and future members can expect their stewardship to yield a modest return on their investment. The project’s experience suggests ways in which existing conservation programme can be revamped to incorporate opportunities for people of lower incomes and build community around the forest.

Keywords: forests, community forests, equity, land trusts, conservation easements

Incorporer l’équité sociale dans les programmes de conservation dans le nord-est des EtatsUnis D. Brighton Les programmes de conservation de terres forestières du Vermont ne font en général guère attention à la différence grandissante entre les moyens des propriétaires terriens et ceux des personnes ne l’étant pas. Un projet pilote a été mené sous l’augide du Projet de démonstration de la foresterie à base communautaire de la Fondation Ford, pour voir si un projet typique de conservation pouvait être modifié pour permettre aux personnes qui étaient autrement dans l’impossibilité d’espérer cela, de devenir propriétaires terriens.Des terres forestières furent acquises par une organisation de conservation. Certains des droits, ceux de gérer et de profiter des bénéfices de ces forêts, furent vendus à un groupe de membres de la communauté qui les possédèrent alors en commun. Un contrat restrégnit les prix de vente pour permettre aux membres présents et futurs de s’attendre à ce que leur gestion produise un fruit modeste sur leur investissement. L’expérience du projet suggère des moyens à l’aide desquels les programmes existants de conservation peuvent être remodelés pour offrir des opportunités de groupe aux personnes à faible revenus, et construire une communauté centrée sur la forêt.

Incorporación de la justicia social en los programas de conservación en el noreste de Estados Unidos D. BRIGHTON Los programas para la conservación de tierras forestales del estado de Vermont no suelen tratar la disparidad cada vez mayor entre la riqueza de los terratenientes y los que no poseen tierras. Bajo los auspicios del Programa de Demostración de Gestión Forestal Comunitaria de la Fundación Ford, se llevó a cabo un proyecto piloto para evaluar la posibilidad de modificar un proyecto típico de conservación para facilitar la propiedad de la tierra por parte de los que por otra forma no tendrían los recursos financieros. Se vendió a un grupo de miembros de la comunidad algunos de los derechos relacionados con la gestión de la tierra y el aprovechamiento de los beneficios, y los miembros ejercen en común estos derechos. Existe una cláusula que limite el precio de la venta, para que los miembros actuales y futuros del proyecto puedan esperar un rendimiento modesto de su inversión. La experiencia del proyecto sugiere formas de adaptar programas de conservación existentes en aras de incorporar oportunidades para personas de ingresos menores y utilizar el bosque para reforzar la comunidad.

1

The author was the team member responsible for the establishment of Little Hogback Community Forest—one component of a larger project conducted by Vermont Family Forests through the Ford Community-Based Natural Resource Demonstration Program. The valuable suggestions made by anonymous referees are gratefully acknowledged.

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INTRODUCTION Vermont, a rural state in the northeastern USA, is famous for its working landscape of farm and forest. However, the working landscape no longer works as an economically sensible investment; it has become a luxury item, affordable only to wealthier households and often off-limits to the community members who have traditionally hunted, hiked, and harvested there. Land is now much more valuable as a site for development or as an enormous leafy privacy hedge protecting an estate from the rest of the world. The average market value of working land in parcels larger than 25 acres was $1 743 per acre in 2007.1 A state agency calculated that the value of that forest land, if based on its incomeproducing potential as forest, was only $133 per acre in 2007.2 The high market values make purchase impossible to justify as a profitable investment in sound forestry. This, in turn, effectively limits the ownership of forest land to those with discretionary income and/or those expecting a return based on converting the forest to other uses. Unlike western states where a large proportion of the land is public, over three quarters of the forest land in the state of Vermont is in the hands of private, non-commercial landowners (Frieswyk and Widmann 2000). While Vermont is still considered to be quite rural – there are roughly 10 acres per resident – increasing development is disrupting wildlife habitat, making landscape-scale forest management difficult, and creating parcels that are too small to contribute economically to a forest-based industry. Between 2003 and 2007, nearly 4 000 new parcels smaller than 25 acres were carved out of larger parcels.3 The market for land has created social as well as environmental issues. As land changes hands, the characteristics of the landholders change, too. In a national study, Birch (1996) found that new forest landowners tend to be wealthier and have more formal education. In Vermont, a study conducted by the US Forest Service reported that in 1983, 40% of the forestland owners had at least a bachelor’s degree (Widmann and Birch 1988); a subsequent US Forest Service study found that in 2004, 49% of the Vermont forestland owners had at least a bachelor’s degree (Butler and Weatherberry 2006). And state property tax records indicate that, by 2008, over one quarter of the private noncommercial undeveloped land in Vermont was owned by people who did not live in the state. In response to the threats to the land, non-profit land trusts and various levels of government have formed partnerships, secured funding, and developed accepted practices to conserve land in perpetuity. While these efforts have been quite successful in protecting land from fragmentation and development, they have not endeavored to change the ownership patterns that have arisen. There are few opportunities for lower-income community members to acquire land and to secure rights to use the forest, to cut 1 2 3

firewood, or to receive revenue from forest products. And, because so many of the parcels that are conserved are owned by people who are relatively wealthy, land conservation is often seen as an elitist effort–protecting land from the community rather than protecting land for the community. Vermont Family Forests, a community-based forest conservation organisation, posed the question: how can the established practices of conserving land to meet environmental goals be modified to involve and benefit a broader range of community members? To explore one possible answer, Vermont Family Forests, with support from the Ford Foundation’s Community-Based Natural Resource Demonstration Program, undertook an experimental pilot project. A forest parcel was removed from the market; covenants were placed on it so that it would be perpetually conserved as well as perpetually affordable; and it was re-sold to a group of community members who could not otherwise afford to buy land. The project attempted to advance social equity in a limited way by creating new forest ownership opportunities that are accessible to people who are not wealthy enough to afford to buy a parcel of forest land. It levelled the playing field to the extent that any household that could invest an amount roughly equivalent to one or two months’ rent could buy a share in the land. Although even this level of investment would exclude the poorest households, the project dramatically increased the number of potential landowners. The project was designed to build a wider constituency for conservation by reversing the usual pattern of exclusion to one of inclusion, as coowners of a conserved, working forest. A parallel goal was, through this process, to build community - trusting social relationships across social classes. This paper describes the structure of the pilot project and some of the obstacles, lessons learned, and successes. It also discusses policy and institutional changes that would allow this type of community conservation effort to be replicated efficiently. PERPETUAL LAND CONSERVATION IN RURAL VERMONT Land ownership is described as the possession of a bundle of rights, including the rights to lease or sell the land, and to use the land for various legal purposes. These rights can be unbundled and owned separately; for example, one person may own only the right to hunt on a parcel of land. Because there are situations in which the conservation of the land would further the public interest while another legitimate use of the land–most usually a type of development–would not, public and non-profit organisations have stepped in to protect the land in perpetuity by acquiring some or all of the rights. Perhaps the simplest means of protecting the public

Average fair market value of land enrolled in Vermont’s Use Value Appraisal Program, 2007. 2007 use value for forest land, as calculated by the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation. Author’s calculations based on analysis of tax records for all privately owned parcels in the state in 2003 and 2007.

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benefits of forest land is for the public to purchase the entire bundle of rights outright. In the past, the federal and state governments acquired large tracts of land and established national and state forests. At this point in Vermont there are no major efforts to expand state or national forests. Because land prices are so high, purchase of land for conservation is rarely undertaken unless the only way to secure the public benefits of the land requires holding all of the rights. For example, if the public benefit of a forest were to provide protection for a species or a drinking supply that precluded any other use of the land, or if the public benefit were to provide a public park, acquisition of all the rights in the land would be logical. For a local municipality to do this, a majority of the local voters must vote to increase their taxes to cover two costs: the cost of acquisition of the property, and the cost of the taxes that would no longer be collected on the property. A more common approach is for a conservation organisation or municipality to acquire only those rights in the land that are necessary to secure a conservation benefit. This has often been described as the acquisition of development rights, although the practice generally goes beyond the development rights and imposes certain restrictions and requirements to guarantee the ecological protection of the land by means of a conservation easement. A conservation easement is “a legal agreement between a landowner and a nonprofit land trust or governmental entity that permanently limits the uses of the land in order to protect specified conservation values” (Lind 2001). Once the conservation easement has been granted, the landowner retains some rights to the land–for example the right to manage the land according to accepted silvicultural and ecological practices. Other rights, such as the right to subdivide or develop the land are acquired by the conservation organisation and extinguished. This perpetual separation of the property rights for conservation purposes was clarified and codified in the Vermont Statutes in 1977, and it is now the most frequently used means to conserve farm and forest land. In many cases, the easement is donated by a landowner who can take advantage of state and federal income tax and estate tax savings. In other cases, particularly on working agricultural land, the easement is purchased. In all easement transactions– both donations and purchases - the value of the conservation easement is calculated as the difference between the fair market of the full bundle of rights (known as the before value) and the fair market value of the smaller bundle of rights after the easement (known as the after value). If the easement is donated, this value is used to determine the tax deduction; if the easement is purchased, this value is used to determine the purchase price. Acquisition of an easement has several advantages over outright acquisition of all the rights in a parcel. First, it is less expensive because only some of the rights need to be purchased. Second, landowners are more likely to donate an easement than to donate the land. Third, although there are ongoing obligations to police the easement, these are less onerous than those of owning and managing the land.

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Fourth, the underlying rights to the land remain on the local property tax rolls–making this method more acceptable to other taxpayers. Once the easement has been granted, removing some of the sticks from the bundle of rights, the value of the land should reflect only the remaining rights–usually the rights to manage the land for agriculture or forestry. In some cases, this enables future purchasers of the conserved land to expect the income on agricultural or forestry activities to provide a reasonable return on their investment. However, there are people willing to buy conserved land in Vermont for prices that far exceed its value for agriculture or forestry– even though a conservation easement may preclude building a house on it. They are paying for amenities like privacy, views and a refuge. This raises the price of the conserved land so that it would no longer be a profitable investment in agriculture or forestry. Organisations in the Northeast have begun to address this issue for agricultural land. The Vermont Housing and Conservation Board (VHCB) recognised that even though a farm may be subject to a conservation easement and cannot be developed, it may still pose an attractive site for an estate. The VHCB concluded that “in all likelihood the beginning farmer will lose out to the affluent buyer motivated more by the potential for a trophy property than by its agricultural potential” (Vermont Housing and Conservation Board 2003). In order to keep farmland affordable to farmers, the VHCB and conservation organisations in Vermont have begun to acquire what is known as an Option to Purchase at Agricultural Value (OPAV) in addition to the conservation easement. Owners of conserved farmland are paid today to give the conservation organisation an option to purchase the land at its agricultural value if the owner offers the land for sale at any point in the future. The OPAV ensures that resale values will be consistent with the land’s income-producing potential from agriculture; it also allows the conservation organisation to direct the subsequent sale of the farmland to a farmer. In practice, the conservation organisation has rarely had to exercise its option; the existence of the OPAV has influenced the expectations of the owner and most sales of land subject to the OPAV have been to other farmers. The OPAV runs with the land, so subsequent sales will also be subject to the terms of the option. Although similar affordability issues exist with forestry, no similar option is currently used on forest land. To finance conservation efforts, Vermont’s well-organised land conservation movement taps into donations of land, financial contributions of individuals as well as foundations, funding from federal programmes, and a state fund. This state fund, called the Vermont Housing and Conservation Fund, relies on a portion of a tax levied when property changes hands. The money is distributed to non-profit organisations in order to meet dual goals: affordable housing and land conservation. The fund was created in the 1980s, through what has been called a conspiracy of good will, when people concerned with the lack of decent affordable housing and people concerned with rapid development of land banded together to push for the establishment of the fund. The logic

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of the unusual coalition and of its proposed revenue source was that land speculation was fragmenting the landscape and driving up the price of both working land and housing. A tax on that property market could be directed to respond to these threats to communities. The coalition has held together for more than twenty years, and the fund is hugely important in leveraging other money and making progress toward ecology and equity goals. While many successful conservation projects continue to be accomplished, they rarely increase opportunities for resource-limited community members to acquire meaningful rights to forest land. Outright acquisition and public ownership of land for conservation transfer ownership to all members of the public. Yet many people feel distanced from public land because there are so many owners, frequent passionate disputes over the management and use of the land, and ineffective and time-consuming legal and bureaucratic methods for resolving controversy. Acquiring a conservation easement generally does not change the ownership of forest land–which tends to be in the hands of fairly wealthy families. If the forest land subject to an easement is eventually offered for sale outside of the family, the parcel is generally too expensive–particularly if a house or second home is part of the package–for most lowerincome aspiring community forest owners. And, finally, the conservation goal of keeping land from being fragmented is at odds with creating affordably sized parcels of conserved land.

local economy; connecting more community members to forests and to each other in a meaningful way; and providing assets and forest ownership opportunities to community members who could not otherwise afford to buy them. The approach involved disaggregating property rights so that the rights to use the forest could be purchased at a reasonable price, and aggregating enough community members to be able to acquire a parcel large enough to be ecologically significant and economically managed. The basic methods used were: 1. A conservation organisation acquires a parcel of forest land. 2. The conservation organisation divides the bundle of rights and holds a conservation easement so the land is permanently protected. 3. A conservation organisation holds an affordability covenant to remove the land from the amenity market and ensure that the land will never be sold for more than its value as forest. 4. The remaining rights–the rights to enjoy, manage and profit from sound management of the forest–are sold to a group of community members who own and manage the land in common. 5. The sales price of those remaining rights is consistent with the anticipated income from careful management, such that the community members expect a modest return on their investment. Disaggregating the property rights

THE PILOT PROJECT COMMUNITY FOREST

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LITTLE

HOGBACK

To see how a forest conservation project could be structured to benefit community members who might not otherwise be able to buy land, Vermont Family Forests (VFF) embarked on an experimental project with support from the Ford Foundation’s Community-Based Forestry Demonstration Program. As with other community forestry organisations, VFF strives to protect the health of the forest (ecology) and to improve the financial returns for both the landowners who manage their land accordingly and the local wood-using enterprises (economy). After developing VFF’s capacity to support ecology and local forest-based economy, the pilot project was launched to see if there were a way to use that capacity to strengthen the third leg of the communitybased forestry stool–equity (See Danks and McDermott, this volume). As with most community forestry projects, the main idea was to better integrate forestry into the community. In this case, the specific approach was to provide options for purchase of conserved forest land to a wider range of people–not just the wealthy. The purpose was not only to increase the equity of landownership; it was also to better incorporate forestry and land conservation into the community by providing meaningful opportunities for more people to participate, benefit and care about their forest. The primary goals of the pilot project included: permanently conserving forest land that contributes to the

The first step was to select a parcel of land, and then to remove various rights associated with that parcel so that the remaining rights could be sold to a group of community members at 'forest value.' The appraisal report defines 'forest value' as 'the value in use of the property (which is estimated) by employing a form of the Income Approach that reflects the income-producing characteristics of the land and timber' (Lamprey 2004). According to an appraisal handbook, 'the income approach requires the appraiser to estimate the income from a property and capitalise the income into an estimate of current value' (International Association of Assessing Officials 1990: 83). Accordingly, the appraiser estimated forest value by capitalising the anticipated income from forest products that could be sold assuming the land were sustainably managed in accordance with the terms of the conservation easement. To the extent possible, VFF relied on existing practices and organisations. The Vermont Land Trust (VLT) is Vermont’s largest conservation organisation with tremendous technical capacity to manage transactions and also with a commitment to meeting community needs. VLT agreed to collaborate, and suggested a parcel they had acquired - 115 acres of northern hardwoods with a long view from the summit–that they had been planning to sell subject to an easement. VLT was willing to hold the parcel for the time VFF needed to work out the details and pull together the local group to buy the underlying rights. The parcel was named Little Hogback Community Forest (LHCF), and the process for turning it

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over to community members began. An appraiser estimated the conserved value of the parcel and VLT sold it, subject to a perpetual conservation easement (retained by VLT), at this conserved value to Vermont Family Forests. As is often the case, the appraised value of the land subject to a conservation easement alone exceeded its forest value. The gap between the conserved value and the forest value presented several issues. If the land were offered to community members at a price that was higher than forest value, it would not result in an investment in working land-that is, land that could pay for itself through productive management. Moreover, the price would necessarily be set at a level accessible only to purchasers with disposable income, thereby obviating the project’s equity goal. Yet a non-profit organisation cannot sell property to private individuals at a value below market value–essentially giving away value without endangering its charitable tax status (as well as its credibility and integrity). To remove the amenity value from the land, the pilot project incorporated the concept behind the Option to Purchase at Agricultural Value. Before selling the land to the community members, Vermont Family Forests removed another property right–the right to sell the land at a value that is higher than the forest value. This was done through an affordability covenant giving the holder, VFF, the right to repurchase–at forest value–all or any of the shares that might come up for sale. This covenant reduced the price of the land to its forest value. The covenant is a permanent restriction that runs with the land and is recorded in the land records with the deed. In the future, even if VFF does not exercise its right to purchase, subsequent buyers would not be willing to pay high prices for a share that they might have to sell at a lower price, so the price should remain affordable. The forest value was determined by an inventory of the standing timber, a sustainable harvest schedule, and current values for forest products. The forest value of the parcel is expected to increase, but it should increase because of as its value as a managed forest–not because of the market for FIGURE 1 From market value to forest value: removing rights

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second homes or for privacy–and therefore it will remain a viable investment in sustainable forestry. VFF’s affordability covenant also serves to keep the shares in the hands of local community members of limited means because it allows VFF to repurchase any shares that come up for sale, and to resell them to community members. Members can expect a modest return on their investment from the sale of forest products and the appreciation in the (forest) value of their share. Picnics and potlucks, hunting and hiking, are additional benefits not accounted for in dollar terms. Aggregating community members One of the reasons for aggregating community members to own a parcel in common was to be able to afford a parcel large enough to be viable for both ecological and economic management. Yet another important reason was to extend the benefits of, and appreciation for, the forest to more members of the community, and to build community around the forest. Ordinarily, perpetual conservation of this parcel would have resulted in its ownership and management by one wealthy owner; in contrast, this project enabled sixteen community members to own and manage it together. A focus group and early discussions with potential shareholders helped to refine the concepts and shape the organisational structure of the planned association of community shareholders. Participants were quite concerned about governance issues associated with common ownership. Initially and idealistically, VFF had envisioned giving a group of enthusiastic strangers complete control over their land and their landholding organisation. But the enthusiastic strangers at the focus group responded quite clearly that they did not want another frustrating exercise in democracy in their lives. They said they would like to be presented with a fully defined product–complete with a specifications sheet– explaining what was being offered for sale. They would like to know at the outset, for example, if deer hunting would be allowed before they decided to go to a meeting to find out more information. They were absolutely not interested in fighting with extremist environmentalists about whether or not timber would be cut; they wanted to be sure that each member of the group came with the understanding that this was a community forestry project and that careful tree cutting would be allowed. They also said that they would like Vermont Family Forests to manage both the land and the landholders’ organisation for at least the first two years. They wanted to make sure that the land was carefully managed; they wanted to make sure their rights would be protected; and they didn’t want to feel they had to spend a lot of time haggling about these things. Focus group members also agreed that $3 000 would be a palpable yet feasible amount for people to invest to secure their rights in a parcel of forest land, and that a group larger than 20 would make meaningful participation difficult. Before marketing the project, VFF and VLT agreed on the management plan, the conservation easement, and the various prices associated with the rights in the parcel.

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VFF then determined the number of shares to be offered (sixteen), and the price per share ($2 850) based on the land characteristics, the selling price (forest value), and the wisdom of the focus group. VFF also drew up an operating agreement for the landholder group that was structured as a limited liability corporation (LLC). Because annually billing and collecting each member’s share of the property tax bill would be cumbersome, the share price was set so that it would fully cover two things: the purchase price (forest value) of the land, and a management account. The management account would be set to cover expenses until the next timber harvest. Between harvests, the management fund would be drawn down to cover carrying costs while the trees grow, increasing the forest value. At harvest, some of the forest value would be converted to cash; enough money would be put back into the management account to cover expenses until the following harvest and the remainder would be distributed to members. The project involved explicit provisions to ensure inclusion of community members who could not otherwise afford to purchase land. Half of the shares were restricted to households with incomes less than the county median of $63 100, and deferred loans were offered to these households. An income-eligible household could purchase half of a share for $1 450 (half of the share price) and VFF would loan the other half of the share. The member would have full-share rights for voting, firewood, and revenue distributions and no one would know who had a half-share loan and who did not. No payments would be due on the loan. However, if the member wanted to sell the share in the future the value the member would receive would be one half of the value of a share at the time of sale. Effectively, the loan permits a member to buy half of a share, enjoy the ongoing rights associated with a full share, but gain the appreciated value of only half a share. This allows VFF’s half share to appreciate as well, enabling the half-share loan to be offered in the future. VFF recognised that one of the benefits of an asset for households with limited resources is the ability to use it in an emergency. A certificate of deposit could be cashed in if the household suddenly needed to pay for an urgent medical need, for example. To facilitate a similar use of the asset in land without damaging the resource, VFF set aside a fund to enable it to purchase a share from a member who needed to sell quickly. VFF could then market and resell the share to another community member. Results Although it is too early to evaluate the long-term benefits of the pilot project, a few results may be reported. Instead of being held by a single wealthy owner, Little Hogback Community Forest is now owned by a Limited Liability Corporation with sixteen shares, each held by a different household. Eight of the members applied for and received the loan. These members submitted a copy of their income tax returns to a cooperating local banker who verified that their incomes

were below the county median. With this exception, all other income information remains unknown by project leaders. While the project was designed to offer opportunities for landownership to people whose incomes could not otherwise allow them to buy land, every attempt was made to ensure that the subsequent operation of the project did not involve any income distinctions. The information submitted to the bank was confidential; no participants know who has a subsidised share and who does not; all activities are open to all members; each member receives an equal share of any distributions. As a result, it has not been possible to track how participation and its benefits might vary with income characteristics. A conservation easement guides the management of the land and ensures that it remains in forest in perpetuity. An affordability covenant ensures that future transfers of the land or shares in the land can be at forest value. This removes the land from the market forces that have made investments in forest land unreasonable for people trying to make a return from managing the land. A timber harvest was conducted prior to the sale to the LLC. The harvest was used to improve the road system on the land and to put money into the management fund so that property taxes and management expenses can be covered without billing the members. Members who would like to harvest firewood have paid VFF $10 per cord to cover the cost of a forester marking the trees that can be cut according to the management plan and standards. In two years, members have paid for eighteen cords to be marked. Although there is little value to these trees on the stump, a cord of split, dry firewood is now selling for $300. Clearly, there is a great deal of work involved in cutting and splitting. However, for people who have muscle and time but little money, this is a significant benefit. Although VFF prepared the initial operating agreement, including the list of accepted and prohibited uses, the group has begun to manage itself. Members hold quarterly meetings, usually involving a pot-luck meal; members have decided to strive for consensus and only fall back on a majority vote if absolutely necessary. Currently, they are debating whether or not dogs should be allowed on the land. In addition, they have cleared trails, posted a map and information about the property, and cut firewood to donate to a needy family. There is a core group that is most likely to participate in these activities. There is also frequent e-mail correspondence about the property as well as items that may be of interest to members, such as an announcement of an upcoming workshop on bats, for example. Management is overseen by VFF, although some members have expressed interest in playing more of a role. For example, the firewood committee convinced VFF’s forester to turn a marking session into a training session. With these skills, the members may become more involved in forest management, although it is too soon to know which of them if any will become active in this way. Meanwhile, the responsibility for monitoring and enforcement of the terms of the easement terms remains with the Vermont Land Trust.

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Finally, there is a waiting list of people who would like to buy shares in the project or in a similar one. This is perhaps the strongest indication that the model is functioning well and generating benefits that are locally valued. Vermont Family Forests, the organisation holding the affordability covenant, would be responsible for overseeing any sale of membership shares and exercising its right to purchase, if necessary. However, at this point no members have been interested in selling.

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organisations to work with more community members and with lower-income community members, dissolving some of the elitist divide and gaining community trust and support for the organisation, easements, and land conservation more generally. In other words, while pursuing equity goals may conserve fewer acres per dollar invested, it enhances the conservation value per acre and builds community capacity and support for forest conservation. Who benefits: defining the target population

FROM PILOT TO PROGRAMme: ISSUES TO BE RESOLVED Implications for conservation organisations This approach adds costs to the normal acquisition of a conservation easement for four reasons. The first is that it requires funding to fill the gap between conserved value and forest value in addition to the cost of a normal easement. In some areas, there may be no difference between conserved value and forest value, but in most of the northeastern United States there is. Second, it relies on a revolving fund to offer loans, to buy a share should a member need to liquidate in the event of an emergency, or to exercise the option to purchase a share at forest value. Third, it requires additional staff time spent organising, educating, and supporting the group over time. Fourth, it usually requires the organisation to buy and hold all the rights in the land for enough time to pull the landholders’ group together. There is a cost to holding the land; there is also greater risk in finalising this type of transaction than there is in simply acquiring an easement. Conservation organisations have noted that the model would therefore reduce the amount of land conservation that would be accomplished, as organisations would spend limited conservation dollars to conserve fewer acres. While it is true that the model competes for existing conservation funding for the acquisition of easements, VFF found that it also brought new money to the table. A new donor, who saw Little Hogback as an opportunity to address environmental and community goals simultaneously, came forward and contributed to the community aspects of the project– specifically the revolving loan fund and the affordability covenant. And, in general, the participating community members would not otherwise be contributing their money to a forest conservation project. Although this type of project may not maximise the number of acres conserved, there are other conservation benefits. Ownership of a parcel by an organisation of individual community members is a good way to provide continuity of management. In northeastern US, private forest land changes hands frequently, and with each new owner come new management ideas. While individual owners of the pilot project may sell their shares, the group and its management plan will persist. The incorporation of a new member is unlikely to change the course of management suddenly. In addition, this type of project allows the conservation

Although a more equitable distribution of landholding opportunities was an explicit goal of the project as it was proposed to the Ford Foundation, determining the target population was difficult. It was clear that the project would not work for people who could not first meet their basic needs, as they would be likely to sell their share quickly to buy immediate necessities. There was also a concern that limiting the eligibility of all of the members by income might create a project with the aura of a welfare project, tending to label and segregate lower-income families rather than build community - and building community was an important goal of the project. On the other hand, if there were no control on income there would be no way of guaranteeing that the project was indeed putting the land in the hands of people who could not otherwise afford it. These issues have been grappled with in other fields, such as subsidised housing, for example, where people have tried to strengthen community as well as to offer financial support to those who need it. In the early years of federal low-income housing policy, people felt that the needs of the truly destitute would be met by other programmes, and so formulas evolved to “limit access to public housing to a fairly limited population that was judged neither too well off nor too destitute to benefit from the assistance” (Pelletier 2008). The formulas used for housing were generally tied to a percentage of median area income, in an attempt to reach families who could not afford the housing without a subsidy, but who could manage with such assistance. Because some of the early subsidised housing projects were plagued with stigma and social problems that resulted from involving only low-income households, housing organisations now generally recommend mixed-income housing developments. In this forest experiment, it was hoped that a mixedincome landholder organisation would be strengthened by interactions between members from different economic situations and from different walks of life and thereby build community. In early public meetings at which project organisers suggested restricting all membership slots, people pointed out that even households with incomes of 150 percent of median could not afford to buy a parcel of forest land in the county. After much debate about how the shares should be allocated by income, the formulation finally chosen reflected the belief that this community forestry experiment should strive to extend ownership opportunities deeper into the community so forest ownership better reflected the make-up of the community–but it would not target the lowest income groups in the first project. The project was structured to

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expand ownership opportunities in two ways: 1) rather than one wealthy owner, the parcel would have sixteen owners who could not otherwise afford to own land; and 2) half of the shares were restricted to households with incomes below the county median. Although some of the project planners originally feared that the participation of better-educated or better-known people in the community might be intimidating to others, it seemed that this actually provided reassuring validity to the venture. When celebrated author/activist Bill McKibben broke the trail in his snowshoes and led the group to the summit, people sensed that they were involved in something worthwhile–not just a flaky scheme. In addition, many of the skills most appreciated by the group–especially cutting firewood–are not dependent on college education or income. Marcy West Lyman, in a case study of Little Hogback Community Forest found: “The collective capacity of the shareholders is strongest if there are complementary skills among the members. In this case having individuals that bring capacity in finances, facilitation of meetings, forestry, wildlife and management has proven to be valuable” (Lyman 2008). The lower-income slots were definitely the harder slots to fill. When VFF followed up with some residents to find out why they had not attended any meetings to find out about the project or how the project could be modified to meet their needs, they said had seen a poster or a newspaper article about the venture, but they assumed that they would never be able to own land so they had not responded. It was also clear that it is much harder for people of limited resources to invest in something unproven. VFF learned it would take more time to anticipate and understand invisible barriers and to encourage eligible people to imagine themselves as landholders. The income distribution adopted for this pilot project was set somewhat experimentally, as it was a first attempt at broadening the pool of community members able to buy and hold land. Moreover, it was not clear to what extent there would be interest among households of different incomes. It is likely that this type of project would better serve lowerincome households if: 1) there were similar projects already operating successfully, so that people would feel that they were investing in something that has been proven rather than in an experiment, 2) outreach and information-provision were more diligent and targeted to the needs of lowerincome households, and 3) larger loans, lower share prices, or free shares were available to income-qualified households. However, even with these modifications this type of project would not benefit the very poorest households; people must first be able to meet their basic daily needs before it would make sense to hold a long-term asset such as this. Is this a worthy use of public and philanthropic funds? Although many of the individual components of this pilot project are similar to other public and charitable programmes, there is little recognition of the public benefits of this type of comprehensive project. In the United States

it has rarely been the experience or expectation that land conservation programmes incorporate equity goals, or that social programmes incorporate land conservation. On the environmental side, the public benefits of maintaining forests are well acknowledged. The US has a long history of public support for conservation easements and for various incentive programmes designed to encourage private landholders to manage their land in ways that are consistent with public goals. These programmes with a natural resource focus tend to benefit the wealthier households, mainly because the wealthier households are more likely to own forest land. For example, a survey of private forestland owners who were participating in the Forest Stewardship Program (FSP), a federal incentive programme, found that “while the Census Bureau estimated the median household income nationally for 1997 to be $37 303, the medians for the same year reported by our four samples of FSP participants were all in the range of $50 000 to $75 000” (Esseks and Mouton 2000: 32). Boyd and Hyde also found that the federal incentive programmes favoured large landowners, and they concluded that, for the full range of public interventions in forestry in the U.S: The distributive effects are the opposite of what US society generally prefers… Wealthier landowners, higher-wage employees, and Canadian producers gain from these interventions. Small private producers, lowerwage employees, US consumers, and the public treasury bear the burdens of these interventions (1989: 278). On the social side, there are programmes for fuel assistance, for housing assistance and for asset accumulation, but these programmes generally do not involve land ownership or stewardship. A fundamental question is whether landownership actually provides meaningful benefits to lower-income households, and whether ongoing income supports would be more helpful. Michael Sherraden, who has championed the concept of using assets to alleviate poverty, points out: “With assets, people begin to think long term and pursue long-term goals. In other words, while incomes feed people’s stomachs, assets change their heads” (1991:6). This line of thinking led to the Assets for Independence Act (PL 105-285), that made the following findings: Economic well-being does not come solely from income, spending, and consumption, but also requires saving, investment, and accumulation of assets because assets can improve economic independence and stability, connect individuals with a viable and hopeful future, stimulate development of human and other capital, and enhance the welfare of offspring. The Individual Development Accounts authorised under this act were short-term (usually three to four years) bank accounts designed to help people save to invest in education, housing, or business. Although this act clarifies that helping lower-income people acquire assets is a legitimate public goal, owning forest land is quite different. Sherraden commented that, because of the short-term nature of the

Incorporating social equity in conservation programmes

IDAs as currently structured, it would not make sense to invest in forest land for a few years and then pull the money out. However, he suggested that investing in forest land as a long-term Individual Development Account, for retirement for example, “would make a good deal of sense, and has policy roots back to the Homestead Act.”4 Although conserved forest land is a long-term asset as he suggests, it differs from a retirement savings account in several respects. In addition to providing income when it is liquidated, it can provide firewood and occasional revenue while it is being held, reducing current expenses. And, off the ledger, it can provide unlimited hours of peaceful hiking and birdwatching with friends. Yet ultimately this was a community forestry project, and the reason for attempting to achieve ecological and social goals together in this project was more than a sum of the two. The overarching purpose was to extend the reach of community forestry deeper into the community. In addition to conserving land, it offered the benefits of– and appreciation for–that conservation to more community members. In addition to providing an asset to community members who could not otherwise afford it, the project offered a community-building opportunity and a connection to the natural world. Achieving and maintaining a price consistent with the value of land in forest The pilot project relied on the existing conservation mechanisms as much as possible. However, policy reform could smooth the way to scaling up this model. One piece that was missing in the process and that needs to be developed is the forest equivalent of the Option to Purchase at Agricultural Value. In the US, charitable non-profit designations, and associated tax benefits, are granted to nonprofit organisations by the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Conservation organisations, which operate carefully within the IRS guidelines to maintain their preferred non-profit status, were quite concerned about the IRS interpretation of selling the land at forest value because the practice was new and had not been approved. To test the IRS opinion on this, VFF was advised to form an entirely new organisation and to apply for charitable status rather than jeopardise or confuse the status of already established groups. While it may seem that a provision for agricultural land could easily be applied to forest land, the distinction seems to lie in the landholders who would benefit. Farmers are fairly easy to recognise and target, while forest-land owners are not. Farmers are often defined as people making their living from farming; forest-land owners are not expected to make their entire living from their land so that criterion is not applicable. And, unlike farmland, it isn’t a matter of enabling current rightful owners to stay, but rather of changing the ownership to meet social goals. Although the use of a mechanism similar to the OPAV

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was eventually approved for the pilot project, in order to bring the effort to scale, more work is needed to clarify the guidelines so that non-profit organisations can be confident about the situations in which the mechanism can be applied while maintaining the organisation’s charitable status. A great deal of collaborative thinking and research went into the creation and development of the OPAV before its implementation became routine, and similar efforts to develop a forest equivalent would be justified. Another approach, pioneered by former E.F. Schumacher Society President Robert Swann, relies on leases rather than ownership to maintain opportunities to manage land at a price that is consistent with its income-producing potential as working land. Swann envisions a Community Land Trust buying and holding land, portions of which are leased to community members to be used in accordance with a stewardship plan. While the lessee owns–and may sell - any buildings or improvements on the land, the Community Land Trust continues to own the land itself and thereby controls the affordability of the lease in perpetuity. In Swann’s plan, the Land Trust would need to purchase more rights in the land and secure more funding to do so than it would under the pilot project. Community members, on the other hand, would need less up-front money to secure management opportunities through a lease, although they would not have the same potential to build equity that the Little Hogback Community Forest project provides. CONCLUSIONS Even though it is too early to adequately assess the benefits, the project has demonstrated that the existing conservation mechanisms can be modified to achieve both the ecological goal of perpetual conservation of forest land and the social goals of expanding opportunities for more community members of a wider range of incomes to own the land and to manage it as a community. The experience shows that, in Vermont, community members of varying socioeconomic status are interested in buying shares in commonly owned conserved forest land and working together to manage it. To achieve these goals, the pilot project reconfigured the rights in a parcel of land so that it: would perpetually remain as forest; would not be subdivided; would be managed according to ecologically sound principles; would be held and managed in common by a group of community members; and would perpetually be available to community members with a range of incomes at a price that reflected its income-producing potential for the allowed uses. Perhaps the most significant hindrance to efficient replication of this type of project is the lack of broad recognition of the public benefits of community forestry in general and, more specifically, of financially viable ownership and stewardship of working forest land by community members. Best and Wayburn (2001) conclude

Average fair market value of land enrolled in Vermont’s Use Value Appraisal Program, 2007.

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that the conservation of private forests in the US is thwarted by a cultural sense that forests are something outside of daily lives and basic needs. They argue, “All efforts to expand private forest conservation are hampered by lack of integration of conservation into forestry, and forestry into society” (2001: 201). The additional incorporation of equity into this mix makes the package harder to define and label, more complex to publicise and promote, and farther from the conventional understanding of an important public need. As a result, funding, programmes, and policies are not directed at strengthening the equity aspects of community forestry. Baker and Kusel found “investment strategies that explicitly integrate environmental and community investments are needed” (2003: 166). For community forestry this is the challenge and the goal. Bringing the pilot project to scale depends on–and also promotes–recognition of the value of making ecological management of forests both beneficial and important to a broader range of community members. REFERENCES BAKER, M. and KUSEL, J. 2003. Community forestry in the United States: learning from the past, crafting the future. Island Press, Washington, D.C. 247 pp. BEST, C. and WAYBURN, L. A.. 2001. America’s private forests: status and stewardship. Island Press, Washington, D.C. 268 pp. BIRCH, T.W. 1996. Private forest-land owners of the northern United States, 1994. Resource Bulletin NE136, US Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Northeastern Forest Experiment Station, Radnor, PA. 293 pp. BRIGHTON, D., BRYNN, D., ROGERS, G., SULLIVAN, M., WEINER, B. 2007. Review and analysis of the use value appraisal program. Vermont Legislature, Montpelier, VT. 89 pp. BUTLER, B.J. and LEATHERBERRY, E.C. 2006. 2004 National Woodland Owner Survey – Summary Statistics for Vermont. US Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Northern Research Station, Newtown Square, PA. www.fs.fed.us/woodlandowners. ESSEKS, J.D. and MOUTON, R.J. 2000. Evaluating the Forest Stewardship Program through a national survey of participating forest land owners. The Center for Governmental Studies of Northern Illinois University. DeKalb, IL. 98 pp. FRIESWYK, T. and WIDMANN, R. 2000. Forest statistics for Vermont: 1983 and 1997. Resource Bulletin NE00-145, US Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Northeastern Research Station, Newtown Square, PA. 130 pp. INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF ASSESSING OFFICERS. 1990. Property appraisal and assessment administration. IAA0, Chicago IL. 716 pp. LAMPREY, R. 2004. Appraisal of use value 115 acres. Lamprey Appraisal, Wells River, VT.

LIND, B. 2001. Working forest conservation easements. Land Trust Alliance, Washington, DC. 45 pp. LYMAN, M.W. 2008. Community ownership and equity: a case study of the Little Hogback Community Forest. Draft report. MOSER, M. 2006. Vermont Land Trust Conservation Survey. Center for Rural Studies, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT. 31 pp. PELLETIERE, D. 2008. Getting to the heart of housing’s fundamental question: How much can a family afford? A primer on housing affordability standards in US housing policy. National Low Income Housing Coalition, Washington D.C. 26 pp. SHERRADEN, M. 1991. Assets and the poor: a new American welfare policy. M.E. Sharpe, Inc. Armonk, New York. 324 pp. SWANN, R. and WITT, S. undated. Land: challenge and opportunity. E.F. Schumacher Society, Great Barrington, MA. 9 pp. VERMONT DEPARTMENT OF TAXES. 2008. Annual Report: Division of Property Valuation and Review. Montpelier, VT. 150 pp. VERMONT HOUSING AND CONSERVATION BOARD. 2003. Farm “affordability” in Vermont’s Farmland Protection Program. Internal memorandum. WIDMANN, R.H. and BIRCH T.W. 1988. Forest-land owners of Vermont–1983. Resource Bulletin NE-102, US Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Northeastern Forest Research Station, Broomall, PA. 89 pp.

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Equity first or later? How US community-based forestry distributes benefits M.H. MCDERMOTT Rutgers University, Department of Human Ecology, Cook Office Building, 55 Dudley Rd, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA

Email: [email protected]

SUMMARY An understanding of how community-based forestry (CBF) generates benefits is required in order to explain their distribution. To examine this question, this paper develops a conceptual framework for understanding CBF dynamics that rests upon the fundamental premise that its transformative potential derives from a change in who gains access to resources and decision-making power. Applying the framework to several pilot cases in the Ford Foundation’s US Community-based Forestry Demonstration Program, the study finds that improvements in equity, economy, and ecology may follow in sequence (and with uneven emphasis), rather than simultaneously as premised in the prevalent ideal of CBF promoted by the programme. Who gained access and decision-making power largely predicted who benefited individually, although indirect benefits at higher scales were significant. Moreover, the direct benefits of community forestry generally extended to marginalised groups only when they were specifically targeted.

Keywords: community-based natural resource management, community forestry, equity, US

Equité immédiate ou délayée? La distribution de bénéfices de la foresterie à base communautaire aux Etats-Unis M.H. McDermott Une compréhension de la manière dont la foresterie à base communautaire (CBF) crée des bénéfices est nécessaire pour expliquer sa distribution. Pour examiner cette question, cet article développe un cadre conceptuel pour aider à saisir les dynamiques de la CBF qui reposent sur la prémisse fondamentale que son potentiel de transformation dérive du changement de l’identité de ceux ayant accès aux ressources et au pouvoir de prise de décisions. En appliquant ce cadre conceptuel à plusieurs cas-pilotes dans le Programme de démonstration de la foresterie basée sur la communauté de la Fondation Ford aux Etats-Unis, cette étude trouve que les progrès en équité, économiques et écologiques peuvent apparaître successivement, et avec des intensités inégales, plutôt que simultanément, comme l’idéal principal de la CBF promue par le programme le prévoyait. Bien que les bénéfices indirects à grande échelle étaient importants, l’identité de ceux ayant accès au pouvoir de prise de décisions indiquait fortement celle de ceux qui allaient bénéficier à plus petite échelle. De plus, les bénéfices directs de la foresterie communautaire ne s’étendaient généralement aux groupes marginalisé que lorsque ceux-ci étaient visés spécifiquement.

¿Justicia social primero, o más tarde? La distribución de beneficios en la gestión forestal comunitaria en Estados Unidos M.H. MCDERMOTT Para explicar su distribución, hace falta entender como la gestión forestal comunitaria (CBF, por sus siglas en inglés) genera beneficios. Con el objetivo de examinar este tema, este estudio desarrolló un marco conceptual para comprender la dinámica del CBF, que se basa en el hecho fundamental de que su potencial de transformación se origina en un cambio en cuanto a quien tenga el acceso a los recursos y al poder de toma de decisiones. Después de aplicar este marco a varios estudios piloto del Programa de Demostración de Gestión Forestal Comunitaria de la Fundación Ford, el artículo demuestra que las mejoras económicas, ecológicas y de justicia social sigan consecutivamente y de manera desigual, y no de forma simultánea como en el típico ideal de CBF promovido a través del programa. El acceso a los recursos y el poder de toma de decisiones predecían en gran parte quienes serían los beneficiarios individuales, aunque a una escala más alta los beneficios indirectos fueron significativos. Por otra parte, en general los beneficios directos de la gestión forestal comunitaria se extendían a los grupos marginados sólo en el caso en el que fueron específicamente dirigidos a estos.

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Introduction Context In varied times and places, communities have long been managing forests – that is exploiting, sustaining, and manipulating them for productive purposes, sometimes in a collective manner. However, colonial and post-colonial governments have arrogated control over forestland to themselves, leaving to communities only territories under recognised indigenous management and those areas falling under de facto local control due to inadequate state capacity to manage and police. Community-based forestry as it is known today developed in the global South beginning in the 1970s and ‘80s. It arose where local people regained a degree of control over their forests from the central state, generally under government programmes initiated on a pilot basis (e.g., Joint Forest Management in India, Integrated Social Forestry in the Philippines (Poffenberger and McGean 1996, Gibbs et al. 1990)). The state set the expectation that beneficiaries would protect and even restore the forests under their management, yet it was also intended that the productive use of these resources would benefit the poor. Scholarship on community-based resource management has examined the terms and uneven processes of devolution of resource control from the central state to various local actors. Scholars have found that, among other factors, whether or not communitybased resource management alleviates poverty and advances social equity depends on which powers are devolved to local communities, and to whom within them (Agrawal and Gibson 2001, Charnley and Poe 2007, Edmunds and Wollenberg 2003, Larson and Ribot 2004). By contrast, these near-axioms have neither been adopted in the discourse of practitioners or promoters, nor applied in public policy in community-based forestry as it emerged in the United States roughly a decade later. Particularly in the context of public lands and environmentalism in the West, the devolution of environmental governance can be taken as tantamount to the institution of ‘local control’, a politically unpalatable and legally problematic concept (Hibbard and Madsen 2003, McCarthy 2005). Instead, 'collaboration' between local parties and public agencies is the favoured approach (Conley and Moote 2003, McDermott, Moote and Danks in press, Wilson 2006, Wondolleck and Yaffee 2000). The discourse on community-based forestry focuses on its positive outcomes, or expected benefits, rather than the social change, or reallocation of power, which experience from the South demonstrates is necessary to enable it. The literature investigating those outcomes in terms of their equity effects in the US is limited, particularly beyond the case study level (exceptions include Baker and Kusel 2003, Glasmeier and Farrigan 2005).

1

This investigation was undertaken under the research component of the Ford Foundation’s Community-based Forestry Demonstration Program (CBFDP), a five year, five million dollar effort implemented on thirteen pilot sites across the United States (Danks, this issue). Among the research topics that were generated through a participatory process, the question driving this study calls for an assessment of who had benefited from the demonstration projects, and in what ways. Pursuing this investigation soon revealed that a more fundamental question must first be answered, namely: how does community-based forestry (CBF) bring about social change? 1 An understanding of how community-based forestry generates benefits is required in order to explain their distribution among individuals, families and communities. To examine this question, this paper develops and applies a conceptual framework for understanding the dynamics and impact of community-based forestry. The fundamental premise is that the transformative potential of CBF derives from a change in social relations of resource access and control. This follows from the more general observation that social change is required for (anthropogenic) environmental change. This doesn’t mean that devolution of control over natural resources necessarily produces environmental improvement. Rather, social action is seen as logically prior, since it is people who decide whether to cut trees, pave them over, or protect them. So, if change in forest management and forest condition is to be achieved, social change will first be necessary at some level - local or global, specific or systemic, socio-cultural, political, or economic (McDermott 2009). Causal framework vs. descriptive metaphor The proposed analytical framework contrasts in significant ways with an influential model of community-based forestry that stresses the balance among its social, ecological and economic components. Widely invoked in the community development and business literature, it has been termed the “triple bottom line,” (Elkington 1998) or the “three-legged stool” (Baker and Kusel 2003). In their meta-analysis of the literature, Pagdee et al. (2006:5) determine that the definition of “success” in community forest management “should integrate outcomes of ecological sustainability, social equity, and economic efficiency”. This stance has been persuasively articulated in the Ford-sponsored analysis of lessons learned from the CBFDP (Wyckoff-Baird 2005:3): Community-based forestry derives its fundamental strength and versatility via a three-pronged working framework that honours the mutual interdependence of forest and human communities. Within that framework, each component strategy of community-based forestry – social, ecological and economic – is considered to be equally important.

Clearly, it is not possible to disentangle the impact of the Ford programme from that of the work of the CBF groups supported by it. nor is it necessary to do so. The intervention by Ford can be treated as a constant across the ample variation among the thirteen sites, so that differences among them must be due to other factors. Moreover, external support is a prevalent factor in the current, programmatic forms of CBF (McDermott and Schreckenberg, this issue).

Equity first or later?

With the proviso that the balance among the three legs be construed as dynamic and adaptive, the three-legged stool is the model of the CBF ideal as advanced in the original call for proposals for the CBFDP put out by the Ford Foundation. According to this model, the yardstick against which the thirteen pilot projects should be measured is the degree to which they simultaneously advance these three, integrated goals. In fact, an examination of the record of accomplishments at the CBFDP sites finds that a number of the initiatives do not match up well to the three-legged, or simultaneous, ideal. In that sense, they stretch the boundaries of what is defined by the Ford program as constituting community-based forestry. Yet, a view through the lens provided by the proposed analytical framework brings into focus different strengths in these cases and suggests a more expansive notion of the definition of community-based forestry. Instead of the descriptive approach that results from applying the stool model, and typically from evaluating CBF success, this analytical framework demands a causal analysis. Rather than metaphorically characterising its outcomes (the social, ecological and economic legs), this alternative calls for an investigation of the social drivers of change that generate such outcomes. The foundational proposition of the framework holds that, if CBF changes the balance of power to increase local access to resources and roles in decision-making, it will bring about social transformation. The framework does not by itself predict the balance among outcomes; ecological-socialeconomic, or even beneficial-detrimental. The next section develops the theoretical basis of the proposed analytical framework. This paper argues that whereas the simultaneous model applies in only a minority of cases, this framework accounts for the dynamics of change in CBF generally. It then proposes the 'house' as an alternative metaphorical model, in which the components of the 'stool' are re-arranged into a temporal sequence. The paper then investigates the utility of the analytical framework and the empirical fit of the house (or sequential) model through an ethnographic examination of two cases selected from among the CBFDP sites, followed by a broader survey among the remainder (see also Cheng et al. 2006 and McDermott 2009)2. The paper concludes with a discussion of the significance of this analysis to CBF policy, practice and potential. Analytical Framework Premises Comprised of three premises, the conceptual framework

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developed in this paper offers a structured way of analysing the dynamics and impacts of CBF. Its theoretical basis largely derives from the literature on political ecology, including allied critiques of community-based resource management (Agrawal and Gibson 1999, 2001, Berry 1989, Leach et al. 1999, Li 1996, 2000, McCarthy 2005, 2006, Ribot and Peluso 2003, Schroeder et al. 2006). The first premise concerns power relations: CBF initiatives will bring about social change when they transform: • who gets access to resources • who makes what decisions how (decision-spaces). Ribot and Peluso (2003: 153) define “access” to resources in the broadest terms, as “the ability to benefit from things.” While this comprehensive conception of access subsumes decision-making, for the purposes of this analysis it is useful to distinguish them as twin aspects of control over benefit flows. For people to attain desired benefits, they must gain roles both in decision-making institutions (formal agencies or informal relations) and in institutions guaranteeing or facilitating resource access (formal rights or informally recognised claims). Access to certain material or symbolic resources may be necessary to make decisionmaking feasible and effective, in other words, in order to exercise control. For example, unlike in the global South and American West, where most of the forest is under public ownership, access to the forest itself is not generally at issue in those parts of the United States where most forested land is privately held. However, access to other resources, such as capital, specialised knowledge, or governmental licenses, may be necessary to generate and capture benefit flows from the private forest. As urged by CBFDP participants, the concept of decision-making was expanded and replaced in the framework by the more nuanced notion of decision-space, with dual dimensions of power and process. An important element of the power dimension is the scope of the decisions that individuals and local organisations can make, as well as the range of options from which they opportunity to select. A number of the partners in the CBFDP have found ways to move past deadlock over environmental conflicts and governmental inaction by entering into collaborative processes with federal land management agencies and others. They have first proven the success of this approach at the local level and then successfully advocated for wider adoption and, in some instances, for institutionalisation at the policy level. As a result, the voices of CBF organisations and rural community members (including even those opposed

Participatory research methods informed the development of research questions, the selection of the two case studies, and the analysis of results. The analysis was validated and refined through interactive presentations at the national CBFDP workshops as well as at the two case-study sites. Source material for the investigation of all thirteen CBFDP initiatives was derived from a review of project documents as well as participation in the workshops. For the two case studies, ethnographic methods were employed, principally participant observation and open-ended interviews, conducted over a three-week period at each site between 2004 and 2006. Over twenty-seven interviews were held for each case, based on purposive sampling that began with key informants identified by the two CBFDP partner organisations. Additional informants were located through the snowball method. A deliberate effort was made to include representatives of marginalised groups.

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to CBF) are increasingly shaping resource management decisions on public lands and public policy affecting private lands. Moreover, these voices are not just advocating positions, they are “weaving our own information” - local knowledge about resources, as well as innovative solutions -- into the decision-making process. Where gaining this kind of power locally requires system change, CBF groups have been part of bringing that transformation about. In the words of one CBFDP leader, The people most affected are often the least involved in terms of control and input. Step one is figuring out or being educated as to what affects your life, and step two is how to gain control of this…. In this movement we’ve seen a huge shift in ten years - from no voice, no consideration, to public action and voice. However, particularly where CBF constituents have found themselves to be highly marginalised (e.g., minority landowners and forest workers and harvesters), the emphasis has been not so much on gaining voice and influence in formal arenas, at the proverbial table, but in developing their own institutions or venues to find and express their individual and collective voices. This is the other dimension of decision-space, one that CBFDP partners call the process of “creating space”. The first premise of the analytical framework accounts for the generation of benefits from CBF. The second and third premises are corollaries that address the distribution of benefits that results, differentiating recipients by class, race, ethnicity, gender, age, and other important social markers. The framework directs us to consider the relationship between who among these groups gained access to resources and expanded decision-spaces and who gained those benefits. Are benefits limited to those people with new resource access or decision-making power? Or do indirect benefits, via economic multiplier effects, ecosystem services, land and population retention, conflict reduction and the like, significantly improve the lot of non-participants? The second premise of the analytical framework predicts: Those who exercise a role in making decisions and obtain access to the resources to implement them benefit more than those who do not3. In other words, those who attain relative power, grounded in their enhanced control over resources, are likely to use that power to benefit their interests more narrowly. The extent of overlap or conflict among interests and the significance of indirect benefits to the poor and marginalised will vary under different circumstances. In the United States, traditional powerbrokers seldom, if ever, have initiated community-based forestry efforts. Even without taking into consideration the ethical commitment to equitable participation that most CBF groups espouse, elite capture does not pose the same risk that it does in most contexts in the global South (McDermott and Schreckenberg, this issue). CBF initiatives generally arise to address the lack 3

of alternatives in communities marginalised by their distance (geographic and socio-political) from urban centres of power. These conditions are exacerbated as macro political and economic trends transform rural economies, with the decline of natural resource-based industries, demographic shifts, and the de-funding of government services and functions. Furthermore, although they may have professionals among their members, staff and boards, most CBF organisations are oriented to the concerns of workers, small landowners, and small business people – those in disadvantaged class positions. For these reasons and others, the CBFDP partners uniformly feel themselves and their constituencies to be marginalised. Some express doubt that degrees of marginalisation among the marginalised are pertinent, particularly among the more homogenous (white) communities. This issue may best be left as an empirical question to be examined case-by-case. Even poor rural communities are internally differentiated with respect to power and wealth, and macroeconomic trends have uneven impacts. In addition, cultural values and preferences influence participation in community-based forestry in ways too numerous to recount. They shape what uses and qualities of forests are valued, what types of livelihood are desired, effective modes of leadership, appropriate modes of expression and of forming decisions in groups, inclinations towards entrepreneurship – the list goes on. Hence, even where the intention is to be inclusive, CBF efforts are highly likely to attract participation primarily among members of the same social group(s) that initiated them – unless very self-conscious outreach efforts are made, efforts which inevitably involve taking risks and learning from failures. In many respects the deepest and most salient cultural divides in the US are racial (often also associated with ethnicity, language and/or national origin). The issues of race and ethnicity are explosive for many CBF organisations and communities (as for American society in general). Furthermore, CBF organisations, whose legitimacy rests on being seen to represent communities, are very vulnerable to accusations of exclusivity. Even though the structure of most natural resourcedependent rural communities in the US may make elite capture unlikely, initiatives that simply devolve resource access and control from central government to local levels are also unlikely automatically to benefit the most marginalised local groups (such as non-resident, immigrant workers). Thus, the analytical framework calls for validation of the final premise (#3): In order to reduce inequity, community-based organisations must make equity an explicit target to which they hold themselves accountable. An alternative model – Building the CBF House According to this framework for understanding community-

Note that, according to Ribot and Peluso (2003), those with access are by definition those who benefit.

Equity first or later?

based forestry, its essential foundation lies in the elements of social transformation – expanded access to resources and decision-spaces for communities. This contrasts with the simultaneous and balanced integration of social, economic, and ecological aims symbolised in the stool model. Some CBF partners feel strongly that the integration of these three objectives as an ideal is an essential part of a genuine CBF vision. The alternative framework provides for the possibility that, as a matter of strategy, rather than building all three legs of the stool simultaneously, a CBF initiative may choose to tackle social, economic, and ecological objectives in sequence over time. The latter approach can be figured as a house, in which expanded resource access and decision-space constitutes the foundation. The most valued or feasible of the three objectives then becomes the ground floor, before a second objective can be erected, with the third objective added last as the top floor. The rate of progress from one ‘floor’ to the next is not predictable. Moreover, reaching the top floor may take longer than, for example, a five year project cycle. Although the simplicity of a heuristic device highlights key features, it inevitably obscures others. While co-equal and simultaneous emphasis on all three objectives might be uncommon among CBF efforts, an absolutely linear, discrete temporal sequence of objectives in all probability occurs even less frequently. Moreover, the house, or sequential, model downplays the dynamic interaction and synergistic effects among the three elements (a.k.a. floors, legs, or objectives). As with all metaphors, the utility of the house model, however, lies in the degree to which it reflects and elucidates real experience: as described below, for some of the CBFDP partners the match is a good one. Equity: distribution, capacity, empowerment Whether seen as a floor or as a leg, the social component of community forestry is the most difficult to define. As one constituent of the triple bottom line, it is generally referred to as the equity element (e.g., Baker and Kusel 2003, Elkington 1998). This multivalent concept has at least three aspects: distribution, capacity, and empowerment. First, equity as a standard demands that we ask of CBF not has it distributed benefits equally, but instead, several things: 'Has it made the worst-off in the community better-off? If not, has their participation laid the groundwork for future gains? Has the level of social inequity decreased in terms of voice, power, respect, material or other benefit?' This would be quite a challenge for any social programme. Perhaps unsurprisingly, one of the CBFDP participants found that, “the equity leg was the shortest.” In fact, this observation has been made more generally about the US community forestry movement as a whole (Baker and Kusel 2003). When the notion of social equity is broadened to incorporate the second aspect, community capacity, it begins to seem more feasible as an objective, and community forestry may be found better suited to the task. A community’s capacity (comprised of its physical resources, individual skills, and collective ability to work

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together) is an indispensable building block of communitybased forestry (FEMAT 1993). It inevitably must be built up in order to implement a CBF project successfully and to sustain new practices and institutions past the project’s end. Applying enhanced community capacity to CBF activities and objectives generates social and economic benefits that have the potential to reduce inequity. Enhanced community capacity helps build more resilient and sustainable communities, i.e., communities that are better equipped to adapt to shocks and respond to opportunities. As one workshop participant put it, "sustainability … requires sharing resources… peace requires social equity”. On the other hand, the concept of community capacity is not subsumable under equity. The skills and resources that enhance a community’s capacity to act may not be equally distributed among members. Nor will all residents and their interests be represented in the institutions that build up a community’s organisational capacity. This analysis focuses on equity aspects of the social component of the community forestry triad. Clearly it is part and parcel of addressing the question ‘who benefits?’ Moreover, as the third premise in the analytical framework predicts, the gains in equity that can transform social benefit to social justice are unlikely to occur without focused attention. If programs seek to maximise community capacity, they may spend scarce resources on the most informed and ready individuals and organisations, so that marginalised groups can be left out. If, for example, entrepreneurial opportunity or training is offered to whomever is best qualified, or even whomever comes forward, participation by the disadvantaged will be minimal. Targeted outreach, extra support, and/ or culturally appropriate adaptation may be required for programmes to be inclusive. A workshop participant made the point forcefully, Once you get the ecology and economy floors built, you don’t naturally progress to the third floor [equity]… yeah, it may take longer than the project, but if it’s not in the blueprint, not part of the vision, you’ll never get there. Can equity be achieved by the targeted redistribution of benefits to passive recipients? Or, does it necessitate empowerment, such that the beneficiaries determine which needs will be met and how (cf. Leach et al. 1999)? Addressing this third aspect of equity brings us back full circle to the foundational premise of the analytical framework: for CBF to make a social difference it must bring about the reallocation of power, expanding decision-spaces and access to resources at the local level to those formerly excluded. APPLYING THE FRAMEWORK: FederAtion of Southern Cooperatives Context The Black Belt Legacy Forestry Program, funded through the Ford CBFDP from 2000-2005, operates out of the Rural

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Training Center of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/ Land Assistance Fund, located in Sumter County in western Alabama (see Diop and Fraser, this issue for an in-depth account). Sparsely populated and heavily timbered, Sumter County lies in the heart of the Black Belt, so called because of its fertile soils and predominantly African American population (73% in Sumter)4,5. Prior to the Civil War, nearly half of the county’s residents were slaves, many of whom later stayed on as sharecroppers and eventually landowners (Thornton 1978). While cotton has been replaced by loblolly pine and cattle pasture, making the area again rich in resources, its legacy of stark poverty remains. Today the forestry sector is the county’s most valuable6. Yet this increasingly mechanised industry yields little local benefit (Bliss et al. 1998). With unemployment figures consistently twice the state average and almost half its children living in poverty (US Dept. of Labor n.d., US Census 2000), Sumter County is a case in point. Despite limited financial resources, many African Americans in Sumter County have access to forest resources on their own lands. However, black farmers are losing their land even faster than other family farmers7. Moreover, the woodlands on the remaining black-owned farms are so small and fragmented that management has become problematic and rarely remunerative (Gan et al. 2003, Schelhas 2002). In many cases the land is held communally by a group of heirs, and the consequent legal and financial complications increase the likelihood of land partition and tax sales (Dyer 2007, Thomas et al. 2005). The long, dark history of discrimination facing black landholders continues to drive land loss and underproduction. Lack of access to government extension and credit services, compounded by low levels of income and education, limit capacities to pursue existing options to manage land beneficially (Gan et al. 2005, Gilbert et al. 2002, Schelhas 2002). Out-migration from rural areas has left mostly the elderly on the land (Dyer 2007, Gan et al. 2003). The Federation of Southern Cooperatives, founded in 1967 by leaders in the Civil Rights movement, has been battling ever since to gain fair access to resources for its members. Upon this foundation they strive to build social equity, the pre-eminent objective. When this first floor is largely complete, they work towards the second-tier objective of economic benefit. While discussions with member farmers revealed a strong bond with the land and a desire to steward it for succeeding generations, ecological considerations clearly rank a distant third. The CBF Demonstration Project In launching its CBF Demonstration Program, the 4 5

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Federation confronted a similar challenge facing community forestry in the global South, that is, promoting a longterm investment (sustainable timber management) to a population with pressing short-term needs and expectations. After a somewhat slow start, it hit upon a solution that has also proved popular in the semi-arid tropics: agroforestry, specifically a silvopastoral system in which goats are used to clear land for planting, excluded until the trees are well established, and then returned to keep down competing vegetation. By producing a regular income that helps pay the taxes, goat-raising can help keep the land in farming, and in the family. At the same time, by keeping out development and preserving a diverse landscape of farms and forest, community-based agroforestry generates indirect, but important, ecological benefits. Decision-spaces While African American smallholders are nominally the decision-makers on their own land, the barriers outlined above impede their ability to formulate and implement effective decisions as individual households. So, as the project leader explained, before the project could make any attempt to tackle forest management decisions per se, they had to create a collective decision-space: Basically the first thing we did … we organised. While we were organising, we kept in mind that we wanted to create a space where people have a voice. What comes first is organising – it’s giving everyone a voice and then you bring them together... You establish the process where everyone can speak up and share ideas. Access to resources In the context of private lands, community-based forestry is not so much about changing who makes decisions about forest management, as it is about providing the equitable access to resources that enables forest landowners to make informed decisions about how their land is managed – and that moves desired options within reach. Thus, one of the primary ways the Federation supports community forestry is by maintaining its pre-requisite: secure land tenure. During the project period, the Federation provided direct access to resources to over twenty demonstration farmers, who, in return for a three-year commitment to maintain the goats, host visitors and share experience with other farmers, received either breeding goats or assistance in erecting fencing and sheds. Some of the offspring of Federation-bred goats (a form of self-reproducing capital) are distributed to other farmers. The Federation also helped develop local resources in the

16.4 per sq. mi., US Census (2000) 69.2% forest land in 1999 (USDA Forest Service, Forest Inventory and Analysis. Data Base Retrieval System. http://www.srsfia.usfs. msstate.edu/scripts/ew.htm) Alabama State Data Center, Center for Business and Economic Research, http://cber.cba.ua.edu/asdc.html. Dyer (2007), citing the US Departments of Agriculture and US Commerce. shows a 94.9% decline in farms operated by African Americans in Alabama over a roughly 50 year period (1954-2002). The comparable rate for whites was 68%.

Equity first or later?

form of human capital: knowledge, information, skills and the awareness of opportunities for supplementing income and deriving other benefits from managing trees and goats. Helping initiate and support relationships among landowners catalysed the formation of informal social networks, another form of capital. By bridging gaps in delivery to underserved ‘minority and limited-resource’ farmers, the Federation provides access to governmental resources. Prior to the Ford grant, the Federation had advocated successfully to the Alabama Forestry Commission for creation of ‘outreach forester’ extension positions dedicated to this population. It was able to broker Forestry Commission assistance in developing forestry management plans to a few of these farmers. The Federation also facilitates the exchange of resources between farmers and research and extension institutions. Because the latter gain access to farmers by virtue of their trust in the Federation, the research, services and policies produced are more likely to be accurate and useful to small, low-income and black landowners. These farmers seek greater access to markets and credit as well. The Federation has been helping catalyse the formation of a regional goat meat producers’ cooperative that would address this gap and increase farmers’ power to negotiate for better prices and conditions. While the coop was still in a prolonged outreach and organising phase by the project’s end, participants and staff feel that the multiple meetings have catalysed the creation of another ‘space where people have a voice’, where they can make collective decisions, i.e., a decision-space. By providing a consistent source of funds through a lean period in the Federation’s history, the Ford grant also contributed access to resources for the organisation as a whole. It thus indirectly supported black landowners’ political presence and the advocacy, legal advice, agricultural services, social capital and other forms of assistance without which community-based forestry would not be a realistic option. In this sense, the project contributed to overall gains in resource access and effective decision-making power (premise #1) that outstrip the social-change making potential of CBF alone. Outcomes – distribution of benefits The demonstration farmers are relatively more prosperous, educated and progressive in their farming practices than are other smallholders. Given the high prevalence of poverty and unemployment in the county, their relative prosperity is clearly evident from the appearance of their properties, as well as the fact that each household receives at least one regular salary or pension. The demo farmers include a number of women and one white couple. Data are lacking to assess the indirect benefits received by the many farmers who have learned from what the demo farmers are doing, or who have attended any of the Federation’s meetings, workshops and field visits. However, since lack of access to capital, a high discount rate and aversion to risk often characterise ‘limited resource’ farmers,

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it is a fair assumption that those that then gamble on goats or who undertake active forest management begin from a similarly better-off position. This is a commonly observed phenomenon associated with technology adoption by farmers around the world (Franzel 1999) and more generally in the diffusion of innovations (Rogers 2003). In contrast, the landless poor, migrant workers and urban dwellers are not able to avail themselves of the resources provided through the CBF project. However, the CBF staff and on-site demonstrations support the Federation’s youth garden and forestry camps, which are open to non-landowners. At present, the project has provided direct benefits in assets and human capital to a small number of disadvantaged farming households (although not the most marginalised among them). Unless the producers’ cooperative succeeds in raising the price farmers receive for goat meat, the wider direct economic benefits of the CBFDP agroforestry project will be limited and difficult to assess. As of yet, the impact of the project is best evaluated as an integral and supportive part of the Federation’s wider work. Because the Federation explicitly attacks inequity by targeting a disadvantaged social group, black smallholders, it has reduced inequity (premise #3). In so doing it bypasses the local white elite, and thereby challenges a common critique of CBF: that the most powerful in the community will necessarily grab the benefits. By tackling racial dynamics and power imbalances directly, and by offering services and opportunities consistent with black landowners’ values and constraints, the Federation is able to gain their trust and involvement. The fact that participation and direct benefits are largely limited to the relatively better-off principally reflects their lower constraints and greater receptivity and capacities. However, the implication of premise #2 that the benefits of CBF will be restricted exclusively to those who personally gain resource access and decision-space was not borne out. The Ford CBFDP strengthened the Federation, while the Federation’s trusted reputation and organising, land retention and advocacy work provide essential support for communitybased forestry. Thus, the benefits generated by the project and the institution itself in many respects cannot be distinguished. The CBF initiative modelled income-generating, sustainable management of small, black-owned wooded farms and demonstrated what kind of support is required. As a consequence, CBF benefited the wider community by helping to transform attitudes about what it is possible for minority and resource-limited farmers to achieve, the resources they deserve, and their right to play a significant role in making decisions that shape their environment. APPLYING THE FRAMEWORK: The Jobs and Biodiversity Coalition Context The Jobs and Biodiversity Coalition (JBC) came together in Grant County, New Mexico, under highly polarised conditions. It is based in the village of Santa Clara, bordering on the vast, arid and remote Gila National Forest, which

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comprises over half the county. During the preceding years of conflict, environmental organisations faced off against extractive industry and the US Forest Service. Beginning in the 1980s they began to deploy appeals and litigation against timber sales. The success of their efforts, compounded by shifts in the timber industry in response to globalisation and mechanisation, eventually brought active forest management to a standstill. Further hampered by neoliberal budget cuts, by the mid-90s the Forest Service was effectively forced to cut off contractors’ access to the forest, choking off the local supply of wood. At the same time, it was becoming increasingly evident that over a century of heavy livestock grazing, widespread logging, and fire suppression had resulted in a threat of catastrophic wildfire that required preventive intervention. Despite its sparse population8, rural nature and geographic isolation, the county has been tightly linked to the global political economy by its historic and on-going dependence on the mining industry, with its associated cycles of high unemployment (e.g., 12% in 2003 (US Dept. of Labor n.d.)). The traditional land and natural resource-based sectors of agriculture and forestry employ less than 5% of the county workforce (US Census 2000). At the start of the project, per capita income was 62% of the national average and 15% of Grant County families were living in poverty (US Census 2000). Within a few years, 75% of public school students in the mining district around Santa Clara received free or reduced-price lunches. Almost half the residents of Grant County are of Hispanic/Latino origin, with a large cluster in the mining district (GCCHC 2004). The CBF Demonstration Project In 1999, a local community development organisation invited the Center for Biological Diversity, a locally based, regionally influential environmental organisation, to join in applying for the planning phase of the CBFDP. The centre had been engaged in efforts to initiate forest restoration work with the U.S Forest Service (despite being one of its litigants), along with Gila WoodNet, a neutral nonprofit. Along with several others, members of these three core groups formed the Jobs and Biodiversity Coalition, an informal association that aims to promote “low-impact forest restoration that yields wood that is used to optimise job creation and economic development”. Decision-spaces At the inception of the CBF project, there was essentially no access to the Gila National Forest for the purpose of cutting trees (other than a few cords of firewood). Those gates had been slammed shut. Finding common ground in 'restoring the forest' by thinning its fuel-load emerged as the solution, leading the nascent JBC to premise its project on obtaining

8

7.8 persons/square mile (US Census 2000).

access to the National Forest to remove small-diameter timber. It took over two years of concerted effort before the JBC was able to pry open the rusty gates of the forest and to re-start the flow of wood in Grant County. In order to achieve this breakthrough it was first necessary for the JBC to insert itself into the stalemated decision-making process of the Forest Service. In essence, it had to create a new decision space. The opportunity to gain in power and exercise influence over an expanded range of issues followed from the creation of a new process, or way of making decisions, with a new role for (elements of) the community. This process was pioneered when three JBC members, an environmentalist, a business owner, and a District Ranger were able carve what they term the "zone of agreement". As they explain, that zone is located by focusing first on an on-the-ground, in-the-forest, small-scale project. As one put it, “Start with a project, not a grand plan, and leave aside other issues, about which you can agree to disagree”. This way, even mutually antagonistic groups can find common ground. He further explained, “Once we got into the forest, it was astounding how much we agreed on which trees should be cut. Immediately, our zone of agreement, and trust level, went up ten times!” Having agreed on a restoration-based prescription for a small timber sale was the first step. The next step was to neutralise the external opposition. Here it took the willingness of the environmentalist, in the words of another member of the trio, to "lay his reputation on the line". His credibility with local and national environmentalists was such that they agreed not to lodge any appeals if he endorsed the forest practices proposed by JBC. Next, the sale had to be shepherded through the process mandated by NEPA (the National Environmental Policy Act). To do this not only required bureaucratic skill, it required capital, since the Forest Service was broke. The JBC, which had acquired access to capital through the Ford project, was able to step in. This pattern has persisted past the end of the Ford project: the JBC gains a seat at the decision-making table at least in part because it has funds to contribute (as well as the capacity to do the work); the JBC subsequently pays for the actual forest restoration work and/or NEPA process out of its own grant monies. In their own words, "bringing money to the table" has enabled the JBC not only to gain access to the forest, but also to influence the type of forest management that occurs. Moving from a bureaucratic decision-making process to a collaborative one, in which local parties regularly participate with the Forest Service in making management decisions, constitutes a tremendous achievement. The Forest Supervisor credited the JBC with making a national impact: The JBC changed a lot of attitudes, changed a lot of minds... This has had repercussions across the Forest Service, not just in other districts, but across the region

Equity first or later?

and the country… because people inside and outside the Forest Service could see what’s happened – that work is going forward without appeals... thinning is happening, wood is coming off… I’ve given talks around the country on our experiences with collaboration… Members of the JBC, and the example provided by their experience, have been influential in a number of policy arenas, e.g., the Western Governor’s Association and the federally legislated, state-run Community Forestry Restoration Program. Through alliances facilitated by participation in the CBFDP, JBC has been instrumental in instituting collaborative processes in several federal policies9. While the beneficial impact of this new way of making decisions on forest management has been widespread, the participation in the decision-space created was much more narrow. The JBC contends that they could not have succeeded under the prevailing bureaucratic and conflictridden conditions if they had diluted their focus even slightly. The coalition has stayed unstructured and ad hoc and has resisted incorporating in any way or developing bylaws. While meetings are open, they are not advertised. Although a local sportsman and several members of the Hispanic community have attended a number of JBC meetings, only one persisted in his involvement. As a result, they have stuck with the same core group of people – a group that can draw on years of personal experience to take a “sophisticated approach” to working with the Forest Service. Thus, without necessarily intending to be exclusive, the JBC have effectively limited access to the decision-space they have opened up to those with narrowly focused interests and access to specialised knowledge, a group that is largely comprised of well-educated Anglo males. Access to resources The dedicated and persistent efforts of the JBC unlocked the forest gate, providing access to contract work and the woody biomass removed in the course of forest restoration. In addition to JBC member Gila WoodNet, at any given time there are usually two to four small thinning outfits operating on the national forest and, periodically, on private lands. Many of the contractors produce firewood, a locally valued commodity that lower-income people often find difficult to obtain or afford. In addition to affordable firewood, the integrated processing line that GWN assembled by stretching grant dollars and re-tooling used parts, produces a variety of other wood-based products that provide the inputs for nine other small businesses, all located in Santa Clara. Together these businesses provide the community with access to much-needed employment. The Ford grant provided the JBC with the capacity and

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matching funds to leverage over two million dollars in eleven different grants within a little over five years. A significant portion of this funding has been invested in infrastructure, which has been made accessible to small start-up enterprises. Another resource JBC has brought to the community is knowledge and information, for example, on forest ecology and restoration, grant-writing, equipment design, product development and markets. The JBC has provided various forms of training, including supporting 92 youth through three years of the Forest Service's Southwest Firefighters programme. Access to markets remains an on-going challenge, particularly due to the limited size of local markets and high transportation costs to larger, urban markets. In addition, small business spin-offs from the community forestry project have been constrained by the lack of access to financial capital. Outcomes – Distribution of Benefits The Jobs and Biodiversity Coalition succeeded in putting into place the two crucial mechanisms for social change: expanded access to resources and participation in decisionmaking (premise #1). Beyond these impacts, significant benefits in themselves, what positive social outcomes, if any, have resulted? The local economy has been supplied with resources crucial to its development – raw material, capital, training, research and development. Ten small, entrepreneurial businesses or partnerships have been fostered by the JBC. In addition to the employment indirectly stimulated by re-opening work in the woods, the coalition’s efforts are directly responsible for over twenty jobs10, with pay considerably above local alternatives. Economic multiplier effects amplify the net impact of these businesses on the local economy, as wages, sales, value-added products, and local taxes are generated and circulated. In terms of the distribution of direct individual benefits of CBF: one out of the nine new business owners was Hispanic, one was female, and most were low-income. Seven out of twelve workers in the new businesses were Hispanic, and two were female. While half the fire-fighting trainees were Hispanic, only 14% were women. Other benefits register at levels of social organisation above the individual. Perhaps chief among these are the impacts of forest restoration itself – enhanced accessibility for recreation, intrinsic biodiversity and landscape values, and re-established ecosystem services, in particular lowering the threat of catastrophic wildfire. Over the long haul, the coalition hopes to foster a shift in attitude and values that they believe will contribute to community resilience: We really are creating a new culture of community forestry. It’s going to take a couple of generations…I

See below on the Rural Voices for Conservation Coalition. Business and employment created indirectly through opportunities opened up to other contractors and NGOs are not included. The employment figures include only those working for GWN and the nine new businesses around July 2006.

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hope our legacy is one of stewardship… of forest restoration instead of commodity production. These and other benefits manifest at the community (e.g., multiplier effects), regional (e.g., conflict resolution), and higher (e.g., policy reform) levels run counter to the implication of premise #2 that the benefits of CBF will be restricted exclusively to those who personally gain resource access and decision-space. Notwithstanding these benefits, the JBC cannot be said to have advanced social equity substantially thus far. Minimally, as one associate of the project asserted, “All groups have to have buy-in… and ownership of the project. If you don’t get buy-in, then they won’t know if they’ve been benefited.” By and large, most Hispanic and low-income residents of the county do not know that they have been benefited by the CBF project. This finding would tend to confirm the final premise (#3): in order to reduce inequity, community-based organisations must make equity an explicit target and hold themselves accountable to it. Thus, the equity leg of the community-based forestry stool is again shorter than the others. However, does this render the JBC’s endeavours but a wobbly exemplar of community-based forestry, if indeed they qualify? Or, do we find that the coalition is engaged in progressively constructing a CBF house? The JBC laid a solid foundation by expanding resource access and decision-spaces (premise #1), and has made substantial progress in erecting the ecological and economic floors. It may be that the very qualities that made it successful in these efforts, its singleminded focus on forest restoration and utilisation of the by-products, make it ill-suited for tackling social inequity. Nonetheless, the third floor may yet be built in time – perhaps not by the JBC alone, but by a wider, collaborative construction effort involving organisations specialising in community development. Although the JBC has been criticised for a lack of community engagement, its success has levered open a door to hitherto closed Forest Services processes and thereby eased the way for other community-based groups to gain entry. While the JBC base is exclusive, it remains exclusively local. It is only because the leaders are rooted in the locality that they were able to contribute essential local (and regional) knowledge – knowledge of the forest, the Forest Service, environmentalist groups, local businesses and more. Crucially, they also display the commitment to the long haul. As one of the principals averred, It’s a slow process, with a lot of false starts. You have to start small and stay the course. That’s why this community control stuff is so critical, because of that need for long-term commitment.

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APPLYING THE FRAMEWORK ACROSS THE CBFDP How typical of the thirteen Ford Foundation-funded CBFDP projects were the Federation and JBC initiatives? Which models of CBF do the others resemble? Do they fit the CBF framework in terms of making foundational shifts in access to resources and decision-making power? How do they distribute benefits? The remainder of this paper addresses these questions using examples from the other eleven CBFDP initiatives. Given that the Ford Foundation’s selection criteria for the program favoured plans for the simultaneous, integrated pursuit of ecological-economic-social goals (Danks, this issue, Wyckoff-Baird 2005), we might expect a preponderance of projects aiming for the simultaneous model (the stool). Whereas all of the projects espoused the intent to strive for the simultaneous ideal in their original design, the emphasis among the goals varied. In practice, five projects came close to achieving a fairly even balance as of the end of the CBFDP program. Including the JBC and Federation, six or seven projects (the exact number is open to interpretation) took a sequential, or house-building approach11. The five cases attaining, or nearly attaining, the classic, Ford-preferred, simultaneous ideal of integrating social, economic and ecological goals are situated in multiple contexts: from urban (D.C. Greenworks) to rural, and eastern, largely private lands-based (D.C. Greenworks, Rural Action) to western, largely public lands-based (Watershed Research and Training Center, Wallowa Resources, and the Public Lands Partnership). However, the degree of simultaneity is differentiated once the ‘social’ piece is further analysed and the components of ‘equity’ are broken out - distribution, capacity, and empowerment. D.C. Greenworks and Rural Action tackled equity from the inception by targeting disadvantaged groups for benefits, capacity-building, and empowerment. This is perhaps not surprising given that the two non-profit organisations running the projects were founded explicitly to serve the underserved: low-income, predominantly African American, inner-city neighbourhoods, and low-income, white, rural Appalachian communities, respectively. The western projects, all formed in response to conflict, began with a focus on finding common ground and building local capacity. At the same time (or soon after), they set about to provide jobs and forest-based economic opportunity in relatively homogeneous rural communities in decline. Addressing internal inequities was not an initial focus. Rather, it could be said that the ‘community’, which in each case occupies a marginalised position vis à vis the national economy, is the target, rather than the marginalised groups within them. The case of the Public Lands Partnership (PLP), a group of

It is inevitably a subjective process to match the CBFDP projects to either the simultaneous/stool or sequential/house model, and for the latter, to name the particular sequence of objectives pursued (ecological-economic-social). However, it is not essential to this discussion to get the numbers ‘right’. Those projects for which the sequence of objectives was more complex (or debatable) have not been included in the tally.

Equity first or later?

individuals and organisations in western Colorado, provides an example of a CBF initiative for which advancing social equity was not an original explicit goal, but which adapted its programme to embrace it several years into the project. The four original objectives of this partnership (collaboration, economic opportunity, sustainable forest management and natural resource stewardship values) included social aims, however they emphasised diversity and culture rather than addressing poverty or other forms of marginalisation. During the course of project implementation, the funder and the program manager began increasingly to stress the importance of equity as a valued objective. In addition, a project report noted, As we were exposed to other community based forestry initiatives and ideas through the national CBF Demonstration Program, we began to realise that interest group diversity and civil dialogue do not lead to ethnic diversity or social equity. PLP set about on a process of discussion and experimentation, with uneven results. Efforts to involve the local Hispanic population have not had much impact, due, project leaders have explained, to both cultural barriers in communication, and to a lack of incentives resulting from difficulties in jumpstarting work in the woods and thus creating jobs. (Note: targeting is necessary (premise #3), but not sufficient, to deliver benefits). In contrast, the PLP has had some positive experiences in its attempts to reach out to the Northern Utes, an isolated tribe that had been displaced to Utah from ancestral lands in Colorado. A Forest Service archaeologist (and PLP member) helped them engage with the tribe, build trust, and discover ways in which they could provide support. The partnership was able to help with grant applications and provide access to other resources. Most significantly, the PLP sponsored field visits from the reservation to the Ute’s ancestral land. This allowed elders to recall names of sacred sites, sources of medicinal plants, and other forms of traditional knowledge, permitted aspects of which are recorded in PLP’s Living History project. Through books, videos and a working group, the Living History project has built capacity among those who live on the land to make their voices heard. This group includes not only ancestral inhabitants, but also others, such as ranchers’ wives, who also may not be inclined to speak up at public meetings, nor to frame their knowledge in terms typically validated in public policy processes. Unlike the PLP, which launched its CBFDP project with a social component focused on capacity-building and only later targeted equity (empowerment), Vermont Family Forests, had equity (distribution) in its original blueprint. Yet, VFF also took several years to advance from forest ecology-focused work, then to add on forest-based economic activities, before it reached the stage where it was ready to tackle equity. Brighton (this issue) details the creative mechanisms this non-profit used to pioneer a community equity-ownership prototype that would allow low-income Vermonters to hold a piece of woodland as an asset and opportunity to exercise stewardship.

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Starting in the reverse order of objectives, six of the CBFDP organisations built equity (capacity, distribution and empowerment) into the ground floor. All of these organisations do not exist primarily to promote communitybased forestry, but rather to serve a mission to advance the condition of marginalised social groups. They include, in addition to the Federation, D.C. Greenworks, Rural Action, the Makah Tribal Council, the Alliance of Forest Workers and Harvesters, and the Penn Center. There was no strong association with one CBF model or the other: two organisations (DCG, Rural Action) pursued the triad of CBF goals simultaneously, while the other four took a sequential approach. Although there are too many variables to infer a causal connection, it is notable that the two cases that simultaneously embarked on their economic ventures together with social capacity-building steps clearly achieved stronger economic results than did those that followed the sequential path. This brief survey indicates that the Ford CBF demonstration projects illustrate almost every combination and sequence of strategies for social, economic and ecological outcomes. Indeed, the variation is so great, and the contexts so divergent, that it is not possible to assess which strategies deliver more benefits more equitably under which circumstances. What then, if anything, do these experiments have in common? The analytical framework in this paper calls for a causal analysis: did these organisations make common, more fundamental changes that underlie these varied outcomes? The framework developed in this paper directs us to look past these five-year outcomes and their sequences, under the floorboards if you will, to examine their foundations. Specifically, did the CBFDP experiments shift the balance of power to expand the decision-making spaces and resources accessible to local communities (premise #1)? A thorough consideration of this question would demand a more extended discussion of each of the CBFDP cases than space allows. In brief, it is evident that each of the thirteen sites succeeded in expanding access to resources through such strategies as skills training, business incubation, social networking, advocacy, sourcing matching funds, and retaining or expanding land holdings. It could be argued that this is not an unlikely result given that the Ford Foundation injected such substantial resources: millions of dollars, the capacity-building support of the managing partner, and the status and leverage associated with being a grantee. However, this should not overshadow, and could not replace, the value added and shared that came from the grassroots: ideas, passion, plans, volunteer time, local knowledge, peerto-peer training, networking and the like. Did these community-based forestry initiatives enlarge decision-spaces? In terms of decision-making processes, the venues and modalities, it would be fair to say that every demonstration project made a difference. The Living History Project of the PLP described above is one case in point. Others are the collaborative arenas for discussion and long-term partnerships through which western public lands groups, JBC among them, have been able to defuse entrenched conflicts, identify common ground and act to

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benefit communities and forests. To what extent have these CBF initiatives enlarged the scope of decisions and range of options open to individuals and local organisations? In other words, have they shifted more power to the local level? The tactics and degree of success have varied with the nature and magnitude of the challenges targeted. A number of the groups have principally aimed at markets and found some success in expanding the range of options for local producers. The Makah Tribal Council did not take on structural obstacles, made fairly unsuccessful forays into market development, and ultimately chose instead to turn inwards and focus on education. The group that faces the steepest power gradient has struggled, almost closing its doors at the end of the Ford CBFDP. This group, the Alliance for Forest Workers and Harvesters, exists to take on structural obstacles; it represents perhaps the most disempowered constituency: forest contract labour, substantially comprised of mobile, immigrant and undocumented workers. However, the Alliance continues to make an impact. For example, in September 2008 their executive director gave testimony before Congress on employers' violations of federal law and responsibilities for protecting the health and welfare of workers carrying out service contracts on national forests. The Alliance gained a Congressional audience due to its association with the Rural Voices for Conservation Coalition, which builds on several preceding and continuing efforts to tackle obstacles to community-based forestry at the national scale. Joining all six of the western CBFDP grantees and dozens of other organisations, the coalition provides a forum for developing common platforms, writes position papers, issues press releases, lobbies politicians, and works with federal land agencies to address “policy issues that affect rural communities, public lands management, and the continuation of a natural resource-based economy in the West” (Sustainable Northwest n.d.). They have helped craft national policy, such as establishing stewardship contracting and modifying provisions of the Healthy Forests Restoration Act to allow for bottom-up, collaborative planning of wildfire projects (see Danks, this issue). Conclusion In order to accomplish social change (and thereby also reach ecological goals), community-based forestry shifts the balance of power by altering the distribution of access to resources and of decision-making power and scope. Whether or not the outcomes balance evenly on three legs, when local communities are empowered to act through expanded resource access and decision-spaces, the essential and operative elements of community-based forestry are in place. The corollary premises were largely borne out by evidence from the cases: benefits primarily, but not exclusively, flow to those who gained access and influence; and reducing equity must be an explicit target if it is to be achieved at all. The Federation of Southern Cooperatives and the Jobs and Biodiversity Coalition better approximate houses under

construction than balanced stools. The eleven other CBFDP projects illustrate the gamut of strategies, variously tackling social, economic and ecological objectives simultaneously or in sequence. However, all are established on a foundation providing enhanced access to resources and creating expanded decision spaces for local communities. In the shorter term, who benefits? While these CBF initiatives have delivered a wide range of benefits at community, landscape and regional scales, in most cases, they have not yet benefited marginalised groups sufficiently to make a significant reduction in social inequity. It could be argued that striving for inclusive participation, if not equity as an explicit goal, is an essential, defining element of community-based forestry. Yet, from another perspective, one might ask how much heavy lifting should be expected of CBF. Must each organisation tackle social reform (often against major odds), as well as economic development and ecological restoration? Or, is it enough to take a pragmatic approach, to build on community strengths, and seize upon opportunities as they emerge? Is the CBF movement a big tent, encompassing a diversity of groups? Or, does the concurrent integration of social, economic and ecological aims constitute a threshold across which groups must pass to enter? While it constitutes a worthy ultimate goal, the focus of the simultaneous model on ideal outcomes makes it less useful for analysis than a framework that identifies the foundation and dynamics of change. Furthermore, valorising only this archetype of community-based forestry undermines its potential by discrediting those initiatives that fail to improve ecology-economy-equity equally or simultaneously, but nonetheless generate significant benefits for communities and forests. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author gratefully acknowledges the practical support and intellectual content provided by the many parties who contributed to what is fundamentally a collective research effort: participants in the Ford Foundation’s CommunityBased Forestry Demonstration Program, especially members and staff of the Jobs and Biodiversity Coalition and the Federation of Southern Cooperatives; colleagues on the research team, lead by Tony Cheng and Maria FernandezGimenez; the inspirational programme officer then at the Ford Foundation, Jeff Campbell; the IFR issue co-editors, Alan Pottinger and Kate Schreckenberg (also IASCP panel originator); David Hughes and Ken Brown for editorial assistance; and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. This research was funded in part by the Ford Foundation. REFERENCES AGRAWAL, A. and GIBSON, C. 1999. Enchantment and disenchantment: the role of community in natural resource conservation. World Development 20(10): 629-649.

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AGRAWAL, A. and GIBSON, C. (eds.) 2001. Communities and the environment: ethnicity, gender, and the state in community-based conservation. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ. BAKER, M. and KUSEL, J. 2003. Community forestry in the United States. Island Press, Washington, D.C. BERRY, S. 1989. Social institutions and access to resources. Africa 59:41-55. BLISS, J., SISOCK, M. and BIRCH, T.W. 1998. Ownership matters: forest land concentration in rural Alabama. Society and Natural Resources 11(4): 401-410. CHARNLEY, S. and POE, M. 2007. Community forestry in theory and practice: where are we now? Annual Review of Anthropology 36: 301-336. CHENG, A.S., FERNANDEZ-GIMENEZ, M., BALLARD, H., BROUSSARD, S., DANKS, C., DANIELS, S.E., MCDERMOTT, M., SEIDL, A.F. and STURTEVANT, V. 2006. Ford Foundation community-based forestry demonstration program research component: final report. Available at: http://warnercnr.colostate.edu/frws/cbf/ docs/ford_research_report_final_2006.pdf CONLEY, A. and MOOTE, A. 2003. Evaluating collaborative natural resource management. Society and Natural Resources 16(5): 371-86. DANKS, C. 2009. Community-based forestry in the US: diverse activities and institutions with common goals International Forestry Review 11(2): 171-185. DIOP, A. and FRASER, R. 2009. Social, economic, and political capital in Alabama’s Black- Belt region: A community-based forestry approach to poverty alleviation. International Forestry Review 11(2): 186-196. DYER, J. 2007. Heir property, legal and cultural dimensions of collective landownership in Alabama’s Black Belt. Agricultural economics and rural sociology. M.S. thesis, Auburn University. EDMUNDS, D. and WOLLENBERG, E. (eds.) 2003. Local forest management: the impacts of devolution policies. Earthscan, London. ELKINGTON, J. 1998. Cannibals with forks: the triple bottom line of 21st century business. New Society Publishers, Stony Creek, CT. FEMAT (Forest Ecosystem Management Assessment Team). 1993. Forest ecosystem management: an ecological, economic, and social assessment. US Department of Agriculture, US Department of Interior, Portland, OR. FRANZEL, S. 1999. Socioeconomic factors affecting the adoption potential of improved tree fallows in Africa. Agroforestry Systems 47: 305-321. GAN, J., KOLISON Jr., S.H. and TACKIE, N.O. 2003. African-American forestland owners in Alabama’s Black Belt. Journal of Forestry 101(3): 38-43. GAN, J., ONIANWA, O., SCHELHAS, J., WHEELOCK, G. and DUBOIS, M. 2005. Does race matter in landowners’ participation in conservation incentive programs? Society and Natural Resources 18(5): 431–445. GCCHC (Grant County Community Health Council), 2004. Grant County community health council profile. Silver City, NM.

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GIBBS, C., PAYUAN, E. and DEL CASTILLO, R. 1990. The growth of the Philippine Social Forestry Program. In: Poffenberger. M. (ed). Keepers of the Forest: Land Management Alternatives in Southeast Asia. Ateneo de Manila University Press, Manila, pp. 253-265. GILBERT, J., SHARP, G. and FELIN, M.S. 2002. The loss and persistence of Black-owned farms and farmland: a review of the research literature and its implications. Southern Rural Sociology 18(2): 1-30. GLASMEIER, A. and FARRIGAN, T. 2005. Understanding community forestry: a qualitative metastudy of the concept, the process, and its potential for poverty alleviation in the United States case. The Geographical Journal 171(1): 56-69. HIBBARD, B. and MADSEN, M. 2003. Environmental resistance to place-based collaboration in the US West. Society and Natural Resources 16(8): 703-718. LARSON, A. and RIBOT, J. 2004. Democratic decentralisation through a natural resource lens. European Journal of Development Research 16(1):25. LEACH, M., MEARNS, R. and SCOONES, I. 1999. Environmental entitlements, dynamics and institutions in community-based natural resource management. World Development 27(2): 225-247. LI, T.M. 1996. Images of community: discourse and strategy in property relations. Development and Change 27: 501-527. LI, T.M. 2000. Articulating indigenous identity in Indonesia, resource politics and the tribal slot. Comparative Studies in Society and History 42(1): 149-179. MCCARTHY, J. 2005. Devolution in the woods: community forestry as hybrid neoliberalism. Environment and Planning A 37: 995-1014. MCCARTHY, J. 2006. Neoliberalism and the politics of alternatives: community forestry in British Columbia and the United States. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 96(1): 84-104. MCDERMOTT, M.H. 2009. Locating benefits: expanding decision-spaces, resource access and equity in U.S. community-based forestry. Geoforum 40(2): 249-259. MCDERMOTT, M., MOOTE, A. and DANKS, C. In press. Institutional Barriers to Collaboration and Strategies for Success. In: DUKES, F., FIREHOCK, K. and BIRKHOFF, J. (eds) Community-based collaboration: making sense of a socio-ecological movement. University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville, VA. MCDERMOTT, M.H. and SCHRECKENBERG, K. 2009. Equity in community forestry: Insights from North and South. International Forestry Review 11(2): 157-170. PAGDEE, A., KIM, Y.S. and DAUGHERTY, P.J. 2006. What makes community forest management successful? A meta-study from community forests throughout the world. Society and Natural Resources 19(1): 33-52. POFFENBERGER, M. and MCGEAN, B. (eds.) 1996. Village voices, forest choices: joint forest management in India. Oxford University Press, Oxford. RIBOT, J. and PELUSO, N. 2003. A theory of access. Rural Sociology 68: 153-81. ROGERS, E. 2003. Diffusion of innovations. Free Press,

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New York. SCHELHAS, J. 2002. Race, ethnicity, and natural resources in the United States: a review. Natural Resources Journal 42(4): 723-63. SCHROEDER, R., ST. MARTIN, K. and ALBERT, K.E. 2006. Political ecology in North America: discovering the Third World within? Geoforum 37(2): 163-168. SUSTAINABLE NORTHWEST. n.d. Rural Voices for Conservation Coalition. Accessed at http://www. sustainablenorthwest.org/rvcc June 8, 2009. THOMAS, M.N. 2000. From reconstruction to deconstruction: undermining Black landownership, political independence, and community through partition sales of tenancies in common. Research Papers. University of Wisconsin-Madison, Land Tenure Center, Madison. THORNTON, J. 1978. Politics and power in a slave society, Alabama 1800-1860. Louisiana State University Press. US DEPARTMENT OF LABOR. n.d. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Local Area Unemployment Statistics. Accessed at: http://stats.bls.gov/lau/ on June 12, 2009. US CENSUS. 2000. United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census Accessed at: http://factfinder. census.gov on June 12, 2009. WILSON, R. 2006. Collaboration in context: rural change and community forestry in the Four Corners. Society and Natural Resources 19(1): 53-70. WONDOLLECK, J.M. and YAFFEE, S.L. 2000. Making collaboration work: lessons from innovation in natural resource management. Island Press, Washington, D.C.; Covelo, CA. WYCKOFF-BAIRD, B. 2005. Growth rings: communities and trees: lessons from the Ford Foundation CommunityBased Forestry Demonstration Program, 2000-2005. The Aspen Institute, Washington, D.C.

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Participatory forest management: a route to poverty reduction? K. SCHRECKENBERG and C. LUTTRELL School of Civil Engineering and the Environment, Southampton University, Highfield, Southampton SO171BJ, UK; Research Associate, Overseas Development Institute, 111 Westminster Bridge Road, London SE1 7JD, UK

Email: [email protected], [email protected]

SUMMARY This paper presents the results of a three-year action research project, which investigated the impacts of participatory forest management (PFM) on poverty. Beginning with an analysis of over 30 cases reported in the literature, the project went on to undertake field research in Kenya, Tanzania and Nepal, three countries representing very different stages in and approaches to the implementation of PFM. PFM typically provides a new decision-making forum and may reroute previously direct household benefits to the user group or community level. Regardless of PFM model, the research shows that the key to providing rural people with a sustainable and equitably distributed stream of net benefits is to adopt poverty reduction as a stated objective, allow for both subsistence and commercial use of forest products, design appropriate PFM institutions, introduce transparent and equitable means of benefit-sharing, and provide sufficient support during establishment of PFM initiatives.

Keywords: community forestry, livelihoods, equity, governance

La gestion forestière participative: un chemin vers la réduction de la pauvreté? K. Schreckenberg et C. Luttrell Cet article présente les résultats d’un projet de recherche active de trois ans qui a étudié les impacts de la gestion forestière participative (PFM) sur la pauvreté. En commençant avec une analyse de plus de 30 cas reportés dans la littérature, le projet entreprit ensuite des recherches sur le terrain au Kenya, en Tanzanie et au Népal, trois pays représentant des étapes très différentes dans les approches de mise en pratique de la PFM. Un des aspects paticuliers de la PFM est qu’elle offre un nouveau forum de prise de décisions. Elle peut peut-être également faire passer des bénéfices autrefois directement octroyés aux foyers, au niveau des groupes des utilisateurs et communautaire. Quel que soit le modèle de PFM, la recherche démontre que les clés pour parvenir à fournir un courant durable de bénéfices nets distribués équitablement aux communautés rurales sont: une réduction de la pauvreté soulignée dans les objectifs, permettre une utilisation commerciale et de subsistance des produits forestiers, la conception d’institutions de PFM appropriées, l’introduction de moyens de partage des bénéfices équitables et transparents, et, fournir un soutien suffisant durant l’établissement des initiatives de PFM.

La gestión forestal participativa: ¿un modelo para la reducción de la pobreza? K. SCHRECKENBERG y C. LUTTRELL Este estudio presenta los resultados de un proyecto de investigación de una acción de tres años que examinó los impactos de la gestión forestal participativa (PFM, por sus siglas en inglés) sobre la pobreza. El proyecto empezó con un análisis de más de 30 casos divulgados en material publicado y después prosiguió con un proceso de investigación sobre el terreno en Kenia, Tanzania y Nepal, tres países que representan modelos de PFM y etapas de desarrollo muy diferentes. El PFM proporciona normalmente un nuevo foro de toma de decisiones y resulta posible que desvíe beneficios que los hogares solían recibir de forma directa hacia el nivel del grupo de usuarios o de la comunidad en general. Sea lo que sea el modelo de PFM, las investigaciones demuestran que, para proporcionar a la población rural un flujo de beneficios netos sostenible y distribuido de forma equitativa, resulta fundamental que la reducción de la pobreza sea un objetivo establecido. También hay que tener en cuenta la subsistencia y el uso comercial de productos forestales, diseñar marcos apropiados para el PFM, crear formas transparentes y equitativas de compartir los beneficios, y proporcionar apoyo suficiente durante el establecimiento de iniciativas de PFM.

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INTRODUCTION Over the past few decades most countries in Africa (FAO 2000) and many in Asia (Mahanty et al., this issue) have promoted the participation of rural communities in the management and utilisation of natural forests and woodlands through some form of participatory forest management (PFM). Many countries have now developed, or are in the process of developing, changes to national policies and legislation that institutionalise PFM. Early support for PFM was partly motivated by interests in improving the conservation status of forests that were largely out of reach (both in terms of physical access and resource availability) of forest departments (cf. SpringateBaginski et al. 2003). However, this soon gave way to an interest in PFM as a route to improving local livelihoods (Arnold 2001). This shift in emphasis took place within the context of a global focus on poverty reduction and the recognition that the very location of many of the world’s poorest people in and around forests suggested an important role for forests in poverty alleviation (Sunderlin et al. 2005, Hobley 2006). However, while the contribution of forests to national economic development and poverty reduction is often argued to be significant, there is a lack of clarity on the magnitude of this contribution (Oksanen et al. 2003). This is particularly true for PFM, which, because of its direct engagement with local communities, appears to be an obvious way to achieve poverty reduction. There is a growing recognition, however, that PFM has been increasingly advocated and promoted on the basis of unsubstantiated assumptions about the likely benefits and virtues of this approach (Schreckenberg et al. 20021, Thin and van Gardingen 2003, Sunderlin 2006). In particular, there are concerns that the benefits from PFM may not be sufficient to cover the costs (including potentially heavy transaction costs) imposed on the poor, raising doubts over the longer-term viability and effectiveness of the approach. A growing body of evidence suggests that persistently poor people often have only derivative possibilities of benefiting from PFM (Glasmeier and Farrigan 2005). This is because comanagement processes, and the institutional arrangements that oversee their implementation, may easily be dominated by wealthier or more powerful members of the community, producing an outcome that perpetuates or even reinforces social, including gender, inequity (Edmunds and Wollenberg 2003, Carter and Gronow 2005, Sarin 1995). In the worst case, termination of ‘open access’ in favour of ‘controlled utilisation’ may actually result in negative impacts on the poorest and marginalised members of the community, who become excluded from the forest user group (or equivalent) and thus lose access to the resource (Nhantumbo et al. 2003, Yadav et al. 2003). If PFM were widely considered to increase inequity, it would not be a politically sustainable

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process, both from the perspective of social justice (Timsina and Ojha 2004) and from the purely pragmatic perspective that increasing disparities might lead to or exacerbate social break-down, migration and unrest. Most studies on the impacts of PFM use single-case analyses and focus on only a few variables that have significant influence within the specific conditions of selected communities (Pagdee et al. 2006). Furthermore, as Glasmeier and Farrigan (2005) concluded following their review of 250 cases of community forestry, few reported cases have made a more critical evaluation of poverty. In 2005, therefore, the Ford Foundation and CARE International collaborated to fund the multi-country Action Research on Poverty Impacts of Participatory Forest Management (ARPIP) project to examine the impact of PFM on poverty, with a particular emphasis on understanding the distribution of costs and benefits between different groups of people. The project was coordinated by the authors of this paper, then both at the Overseas Development Institute in London, who were responsible for designing the research methodology and providing support on data collection, data analysis and national-level synthesis to the research teams (through three international project meetings and individual country visits). The research was implemented in three countries (Nepal, Kenya and Tanzania) where CARE International had ongoing field projects interested in gaining a better understanding of the poverty impacts of PFM and which represented very different models of PFM (see below). Following a brief review of key concepts, this paper opens with a discussion of the methods used and then presents the results in terms of the nature, distribution and sustainability of PFM benefits. The subsequent discussion focuses around the factors that determine distribution and equity impacts at the local level. Key concepts Participatory forest management Many terms and definitions exist for PFM (some of the main ones being community forestry, collaborative forest management and joint forest management) but this paper uses the following definition: ‘Participatory forestry refers to processes and mechanisms that enable those people who have a direct stake in forest resources to be part of decisionmaking in some or all aspects of forest management, from managing resources to formulating and implementing institutional frameworks’. This is the FAO definition of participatory forestry2 with a minor modification (see italics) to recognise the fact that participation in some forms of PFM is limited to some, rather than all, aspects of forest management. There is a great deal of variability in the institutional arrangements for PFM (Glasmeier and Farrigan 2005), the

This report of a survey of PFM practitioners highlighted the fact that, in spite of their strong theoretical commitment to the PFM process, many practitioners had serious doubts about how well it was achieving its goals. http://www.fao.org/forestry/site/participatory/en

PFM: a route to poverty reduction?

impacts of which the project wanted to capture3. Variables include the level of control exercised by communities, the institutions involved, and the way in which costs and benefits are shared within communities, and between communities and the state. Table 1 provides a brief overview of some of the key characteristics of PFM in the study areas in Nepal, Tanzania and Kenya. The three countries differ particularly in the maturity of their programmes, with Nepal representing the most mature while Kenya has only just formally permitted PFM and Tanzania lies in between. Another key difference is that PFM is organised around specific forest user groups in Nepal and Kenya while it is managed by existing subcommittees of the village government in Tanzania. In Tanzania, the ARPIP case study communities were located in the Eastern Arc Mountains and represented both types of PFM found in the country: three communities with community-based forest management (CBFM) and four communities with joint forest management (JFM, all in high biodiversity value forest) plus two control communities (Vyamana, this issue, URT 2008). Although Nepal has several types of PFM (including leasehold forestry and collaborative forest management), the eight case study communities in this study were of the standard ‘community forestry’ type in which an area of forest is handed over to a community forest user group (CFUG, abbreviated as ‘user group’ in this paper). They were all, however, subject to interventions from CARE projects that focused on making community forestry more ‘pro-poor’ (see later), while the two control communities had neither project interventions nor community forestry activities (Maharjan et al., this issue). In Kenya, PFM is being implemented through community forest associations (CFAs), comprised of individual and product-based user group members. At the time of the fieldwork (2006), the legal framework for PFM had not yet been finalised but there were many pilot projects around the country, implemented by different organisations. Four PFM pilots (each with a neighbouring control community) were selected in different agro-ecological zones together with one site under traditional community-based management (the Maasai-managed Loita Hills) predating the formal government PFM programme. Poverty Poverty has multiple dimensions (World Bank 2001). The aim of the research was to capture as wide a range of the impacts of participatory forest management on poverty as possible. Different concepts of poverty result in different approaches to measurement (Lok-Dessallien 1998), for example, poverty may be conceived of as absolute or relative, as a lack of income or failure to achieve capabilities. The use of participatory methods has greatly encouraged the exploration of local understanding and perceptions and many argue that there is no objective way of defining poverty (CPRC 2005, Chambers 1999). The project therefore took an approach informed by the Sustainable Rural Livelihoods framework which describes livelihoods in terms of five main

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types of asset: physical, natural, human, social and economic (Carney 1999). The livelihoods framework also helps in capturing issues of risk and vulnerability and highlighting the importance of the specific context. However, it has been criticised for paying insufficient attention to social difference, power relations and the policy context. Thus, particular attention was paid to these aspects in the design of the research methodology, including separate assessment of impacts on ‘political’ capital at both household and community level. Pro-poor and equitable The ultimate objective of the research was to contribute to the development of a more pro-poor and equitable implementation of PFM. The term ‘pro-poor’ requires some definition (Hobley 2006). Although PFM may be considered pro-poor if it achieves an absolute improvement in the lives of poor people, this paper also considers the relative size of improvements (or costs) experienced by households in different wellbeing categories. Drawing on definitions by the OECD (2006) and ODI (undated, cited in Hobley 2006), PFM is considered pro-poor if it enhances the assets and capabilities of poor men and women, supporting more productive and sustainable livelihoods. Furthermore, PFM is considered ‘equitable’ if the costs and benefits are fairly apportioned between different participants. What can be deemed ‘fair’ in any particular context, of necessity requires a value judgment. As discussed by Mahanty et al. (2006: 2) “the ‘benchmark’ for measuring equity needs to be situationally determined to account for social contexts, norms and values”. In their framework for analysing equity in community-based natural resource management, Mahanty et al. (2006: 6) distinguish economic equity (distribution or allocation of resources) and political equity (representation/ participation and influence in decision-making), both of which are key concerns in the present research. They further look at equity between social groups within a community, between stakeholders at different levels, and between localities and generations. Of these, this research focuses on equity within communities and – by addressing the sustainability of PFM – on equity between generations. METHODS The ARPIP project began with a literature review on the impacts of PFM (Schreckenberg et al. 2007a), which was used to shape the research questions and also played a useful role in confirming, contradicting and supplementing the field findings (with experience from a range of countries in which PFM is at different stages of implementation). Both published and grey literature from 2000 onwards was consulted. The overriding concern was to evaluate the impact of PFM on poverty and equity, and hence the case studies chosen (33 in all) were limited to those that provided greater detail of

For the purposes of this paper PFM is used as a general term and country-specific terms are used as appropriate.

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Table 1 Overview of PFM characteristics in the ARPIP case study areas in Nepal, Tanzania and Kenya Nepal community forestry, Churia region (edge of the Terai)

Tanzania communitybased forest management (CBFM), Eastern Arc Mountains

Tanzania joint forest management (JFM), Eastern Arc Mountains

Kenya participatory forest management, various locations around the country

Extent and development of PFM programme

Since late 1970s, now including over 14 000 community forest user groups (CFUGs).

Following pilot implementation since early 1990s, PFM introduced by Forest Act of 2002. By 2006, CBFM involved 1 100 villages, covering over 2 million ha of forest.

Following pilot implementation since early 1990s, PFM introduced by Forest Act of 2002. By 2006, involved 719 villages and covered 1.6 million ha.

Pilot projects in existence since 1996. Forest Act of 2005 (operationalised in 2007) formally allows for PFM nationally.

Ownership of the forest resource

State forest land

Village forest reserves

State forests or national parks

State forests

Type and value of the resource

Some Churia forests highly degraded, others with relatively good stocking of (or potential for) valuable timber.

Previously open access forest unless some village management system in place.

Typically high biodiversity value forest, sometimes with plantations.

Typically indigenous forest with high biodiversity and water catchment values; sometimes also with plantations.

Decisionmaking in forest management

Management agreement signed between local community forest user groups (CFUGs) and Forest Department ‘in perpetuity’. Management plans usually reviewed every 5 years.

Management by Village Natural Resource Committee according to bylaws developed with District foresters and approved by the District Council.

Joint Management Agreement (JMA) over sharing of costs and benefits of forest management between forest owner and neighbouring village governments.

Forest Management Agreements being signed between Kenya Forest Service and newly established Community Forest Associations (1 per forest block).

Membership and governance

All community members can join new CFUGs. New members pay membership fee and annual subscriptions. CFUG committee must include women and dalits.

All members of a village automatically part of PFM through their elected village government.

All members of a village automatically part of JFM through their elected village government.

Community Forest Associations are umbrella groups for different product-based user groups. Individuals pay fees to join user groups. Membership open to any users within 5km of the forest.

Community members carry out forest patrols and provide labour for cutting firebreaks as determined in bylaws.

Community members carry out forest patrols and provide labour for cutting firebreaks unpaid.

Community members carry out forest patrols and provide labour for cutting firebreaks unpaid.

Can be collected as outlined in forest operational plan. Free collection permits issued by committee.

Can be collected as agreed in JMA. Depending on ownership, collection permits issued by forest department or park authority.

Can be collected as outlined in forest management plan. Collection permits obtained from Kenya Forest Service.

ARPIP case study area

Organisation of management

Access to subsistence products

Ability to generate income from forest products

CFUG committee organises patrolling (usually employing poorer members) and forest labour. Can be collected as outlined in forest operational plan. Collection permits obtained upfront from CFUG – usually cheaper for members. Products can be collected for sale if permitted in operational plan. Upfront permits paid to CFUG. Valuable products (like timber) often sold through the CFUG. Govt. requirement that CFUG and local market needs must be met before sales outside CFUG. CFUG pays 15% tax on sales income of two commercially valuable timber species.

Commercial use of products is allowed if permitted in management plan. Upfront payment required to village government. Community imposes and retains fines.

Commercial use usually not allowed but community may share in any revenue. Community retains fines or confiscated products.

Sources: MNRT (2006), URT (2008), Maharjan et al. (this issue), ARPIP Team Kenya (2009).

Dependent on site, but generally limited to non-consumptive use such as butterfly farming, beekeeping and ecotourism. Community can retain fines or confiscated products.

PFM: a route to poverty reduction?

the impact on the livelihoods of different social groups of the population. Each case was analysed to determine (i) the impact of the PFM on different stakeholders, and (ii) the type of PFM represented and which of its characteristics were primarily responsible for the impacts observed. This analysis was based only on a limited selection of published information about each case study and may not necessarily have reflected the full range of impacts of each case. The review helped to formulate several research questions which were further developed with the project’s research partners (CARE Nepal, the Kenya Forestry Research Institute (KEFRI) and CARE Tanzania) during a joint workshop, and have been summarised for the purposes of this paper as: 1. What are the nature, distribution and sustainability of the impacts of PFM? 2. What factors determine the equity of PFM impacts within communities? In order to answer these questions, a common research methodology involving a combination of quantitative and qualitative tools was applied in all three countries (Schreckenberg and Luttrell 2006). The methodology was designed to capture: i) the impact of the introduction of PFM on different aspects of poverty, ii) the impact of different types of PFM, iii) the impact on different groups of people in PFM and non-PFM situations, in different poverty categories and at the household (individuals) and community level, and iv) the impact of PFM relative to other income sources. The emphasis was placed on the distinction between benefits to individual households, the user group and the community as a whole. The methodology was tested in at least one community in each country before being finalised at a second project meeting. Much of the literature relating to the impacts of PFM is weak on proving causality. To check whether or not observed changes might have happened even without PFM, a quasi-experimental approach was used with two types of counterfactuals: controls in space (control communities) and time (recall within communities). In Kenya, where PFM typically only includes some members of a community, nonparticipants acted as a third type of ‘control’. The process involved the collection of secondary data, community profiling, household surveys and focus groups to investigate particular issues in more depth. Recognising that communities are not homogenous (Guijt and Shah 1998), with different households using and depending on the forest in a variety of ways, the sampling frame for the questionnaire was stratified by wellbeing. A participatory wellbeing ranking (Pretty et al. 1995) was carried out in each community to obtain a representative sample of households in different wellbeing categories. Although entrenched discrimination within the community may affect the robustness of the ranking process, it was considered preferable to post hoc allocation of households into wellbeing categories on the basis of just one or a small group of variables. The local criteria and indicators used in participatory wellbeing ranking are more in line with the multi-faceted conception of poverty taken by this project and help to highlight community members’ priorities

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and perception of needs, reflecting the ‘action’ nature of the research process. With the exception of a few of the communities in Nepal, the wellbeing ranking gave rise to four groups. Although named differently in each country, in this paper the four groups are termed rich, middle, poor and very poor. A household sample was selected randomly from each wellbeing category in proportion to the size of the categories with around 40 households surveyed in each community. The action elements of the research included the implementation of activities based on the research results in some, or all (in the case of Nepal) of the communities. This included joint analysis with the communities through the use of participatory tools and feedback meetings and, in the case of Nepal, the use of community members as enumerators, facilitators and project implementers. The participatory tools used included ranking and scoring exercises, participatory mapping and transect walks, historical and seasonal timelines, enterprise budgets and radar diagrams. In all three countries, the results were also fed into the national policy process. The project context of the research meant that the core methodology was adapted to suit the information needs of each team. Therefore, the results are not directly comparable and it has been considered more appropriate to take a case study approach for this analysis. This paper draws on the national reports produced by each country team as well as some of the individual community reports and the papers by Vyamana (this issue) on Tanzania and Maharjan et al. (this issue) on Nepal. RESULTS: THE NATURE, DISTRIBUTION SUSTAINABILITY OF PFM IMPACTS

AND

This section reviews the benefits (and costs) of PFM implementation grouped under five different facets of poverty, based on the sustainable livelihoods framework. In each category, some impacts of PFM may be felt at the household level while others are enjoyed by the whole community. The focus in this discussion is on how impacts are distributed within communities. This is followed by an assessment of whether the overall benefits are greater than would have been obtained under a non-PFM situation and how sustainable they may be in the long-term. Economic capital Household-level benefits Economic benefits at household level are of two kinds: direct benefits from forest products and indirect benefits from related income generation activities. In the case-studies, the initial impact of PFM on direct collection of products was generally negative. In the Kenyan PFM and Tanzanian JFM cases, restrictions on harvesting were already severe before PFM (though permits were available for collection of some products), but more effective community patrols introduced by PFM clamped down on widespread illegal harvesting. In the case of the Upper Imenti community in Kenya the cost of permits increased but the transaction costs to obtain

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them decreased (as they could now be obtained locally). In Nepal and the Tanzanian CBFM villages, the introduction of controlled use to what had been open access forests had a more dramatic effect, leading people in some communities to resort to collection from other forests. This restriction was particularly hard for the poorest households who, in six of the eight Nepali user groups, were most reliant on the community forest for their forestbased income4, because middle and rich households with larger land holdings were able to draw on their own private forest and tree resources. This echoes another study on four community forest user groups in Nepal which found that poorer households felt the restrictions on forest use more than wealthier households (Malla et al. 2003). Overall, forest-related incomes declined for most households in five of the eight ARPIP study user groups. The loss of cash income from forest-related activities since the establishment of the user groups was particularly striking for the poor and very poor. However, a few of the user groups have provided poorer households with land inside the community forests for intercropping or cultivation of non-timber forest products, resulting in the poorest respondents earning the highest cash incomes from community forestry (Maharjan et al., this issue). In the Tanzanian study communities, the importance of forest products for the very poor is shown by the fact that the GINI coefficient in all communities is lower (suggesting more equality between rich and poor) if forestbased incomes are included in the calculation of overall incomes. The impact of forest incomes on lowering the GINI coefficient is greatest in the control communities (where there is a situation of free access for all), closely followed by the communities implementing JFM (where all households have equal access to subsistence products from the forest). However, CBFM has only a minimal impact on the GINI coefficient reflecting the fact that, although the possibility of commercial use means that more value can be earned from the forest, the requirement of high up-front harvesting fees and access to transport means that this potential income is out of reach for poorer community members (URT 2008). In the Nepal Terai, Iversen et al. (2006) similarly established that bidding systems for forest products such as timber or the subsidies attached to timber exploitation favoured wealthier households with greater access to cash. The overall contribution of forest products (from both private and PFM sources) to household incomes in the Tanzanian case study communities did not change markedly with the introduction of PFM. Only four of the seven PFM communities were actively extracting products from their PFM forests (two CBFM and one JFM forest being temporarily ‘closed’ by the village natural resource committees to allow for regeneration). In three of these four communities, income from PFM forests increased, with absolute incomes (mostly non-cash) being very similar for all wellbeing groups except for rich households in the one

4

CBFM community with good timber, who could afford the fees required to benefit from timber sales (Vyamana, this issue). In Kenya, young men who had previously been active in illegal harvesting of forest products (poles and charcoal particularly) were especially hard hit by the introduction of PFM. In both Dida and Kereita, some young men were providing labour for free (e.g. for forest patrols and management) in the hope of gaining paid employment (e.g. as an ecotourism guide) at some later stage. In several communities, poor youth continued to harvest products (like poles) illegally on behalf of some very rich non-participants. The second type of household-level economic benefits associated with PFM in all three countries are newly introduced income-generating activities. These include: (i) forest-based activities such as beekeeping, butterfly farming, cultivation of non-timber forest products, ecotourism, etc., that are intended to add value to the forest; (ii) forest-related activities such as tree nursery and woodlot establishment designed to reduce pressure on forest resources; and (iii) activities that are unrelated to the forest (mushroom farming, fishponds, cultivation of aloe vera, for example) introduced to compensate for reduced access to forest products. Typically, income-generating activities do not provide a widespread revenue source. In the Tanzanian communities, where they were mostly of the ‘compensatory’ kind and primarily associated with JFM, the benefits reached very few people (almost entirely either committee members or betteroff households) and were not very lucrative (Vyamana, this issue). In Dida, Kenya, some activities such as beekeeping, butterfly farming and cultivating Casuarina woodlots were very successful and made a significant contribution to some participants’ livelihoods. Evidence from Tanzania and Kenya suggests, however, that income-generating activities are rarely taken up by the poorest as they require upfront investment of capital or land. Butterfly farmers, for example, obtained gross annual earnings ranging from just $8 to over $520, the amount depending on their investments in the activity, as well as on the butterfly species and season5. For very poor people in Dida, PFM has created a new barrier to entry as they are no longer able to obtain a free permit for collecting pupae from the Kenya Forest Service, but first have to pay to join the butterfly farmers’ user group. Unlike in Kenya and Tanzania, the case study user groups in Nepal have made an effort to enable the poor to benefit from income-generating activities in two ways. Firstly, they support activities of specific interest to the poor (such as cultivation of non-timber forest products within the community forest). Secondly, they provide soft loans (and some grants) to enable poorer user group members to engage in activities of their choice (such as petty trade and goatkeeping) (Maharjan et al., this issue). Community-level benefits Emerging very clearly from the ARPIP case study

In this study ‘income’ included both cash and non-cash (subsistence) income.

PFM: a route to poverty reduction?

communities in Nepal and Tanzania, as well as from 65% of the literature review case studies, is the suggestion that PFM can be an important new source of community-level benefits. It is perhaps useful to distinguish those benefits being contributed by households within the community (e.g. membership fees, permits and fines) and those from external sources such as ecotourism or researcher fees and sales of forest products. While the former are new in the sense that they were not previously available for use at community level, only the latter represent a genuinely new injection of income at the community level. The right to commercial use of products makes a big difference to the level of these external benefits as can be seen in Tanzania where a CBFM case study community with harvestable timber was able to earn $2 300 in a year from fuelwood collection permits and user fees for commercial use of charcoal and timber, while the JFM case study villages (where only subsistence use is permitted) earned $150 or less from researcher and ecotourism fees, fines and confiscated products (Vyamana, this issue). In the Kenyan community forest associations, membership fees provide a small income to product user groups and the umbrella association they in turn are members of, but income from sale of collection permits accrues to the Kenya Forest Service rather than the association. In Dida, Kenya, although income-generating activities benefited a small and mostly better-off group, there was nevertheless a general sense among survey respondents that the community as a whole had benefited from the increased money circulating in the community as a result of these activities, e.g. through a growth in the number of ‘shops’ in the village (ARPIP Team Kenya 2008). In Nepal, the combination of membership fees and revenue from forest and other product sales enabled case study user groups to spend from $184 to over US$20 000 in 2006 (Maharjan et al., this issue). In a separate study in the Nepal Terai region, Iversen et al. (2006) found that eight community forest user groups each had annual revenues of over $6 600, 75% of which came from timber. In the ARPIP case study user groups, an average of 37% of user group expenditure was invested into forest management, a similar amount went towards ‘community development’ activities (typically physical infrastructure), and much of the remainder went towards loans (to fund income-generating activities) for poor and very poor members. As community level incomes from PFM increase, the issue of how these funds are distributed (economic equity) becomes critical, an issue considered in more detail in the discussion section. Natural capital In both Nepal and Tanzania, community members perceived improvements in the condition of their forest which they attributed to PFM, in contrast to a general deterioration

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perceived in the control communities. Most of the literature case studies similarly described improvements in forest condition, and several also mentioned the impact of forest management on water courses. None, however, assessed the environmental impact of PFM on neighbouring forests and the way in which the environmental benefits of the protection of one forest may be offset by increased pressure on neighbouring open access forest resources. In this study, the Tanzanian experience was particularly interesting: in all three CBFM communities, the CBFM bylaws were being applied to all forest patches in the village leading to more widespread improvement. However, this was not the case in the one JFM community with adjacent non-JFM forest to which villagers shifted their use (Vyamana, this issue). A similar shift of use was found in a few of the Nepali communities with nearby non-user group forest. Better forest condition may come at a cost. In Tanzania it was associated with increased wild animal damage to crops, with the poor being most affected due to the location of their fields and their inability to pay watchmen or provide family labour to guard their crops. In Nepal both crops and livestock were damaged by wild animals, leading one user group to introduce livestock insurance and specific income-generating activities to compensate for this problem (Maharjan et al., this issue). In all three countries access to land (principally for agriculture or grazing) is a key determinant of household wellbeing. As discussed above, the provision by some Nepali user groups of land leases to poorer members for intercropping within the community forest was a key factor in providing them with some cash income. In Kenya, public pressure on politicians led to the new Forest Act of 2005 including a provision for a (re-) introduction of the taungya system (or ‘non-resident cultivation’) in PFM areas, though this has yet to be implemented. Physical capital In the case of Tanzania, income generation at the household level was too low to have an observable impact on household assets. However, the four communities which had generated income from PFM had all used their funds to construct school buildings and repair community infrastructure, activities that were not undertaken in control communities. The eight case study user groups in Nepal invested a total of $24 800 in community infrastructure in 2006, providing benefits such as improved roads, schools and village electrification not seen in the non-PFM communities. As also found by Dev et al. (2003) and Timsina (2003), there were complaints from some poor members that they did not benefit from the improved educational infrastructure because they could not afford to send their children to school. In the ARPIP case, this led to user groups using their funds to provide uniforms and scholarships to students from poorer families. User

5 All amounts in US$ are either as presented in the original research document or use the exchange rates available for the date of fieldwork/ reporting.

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group funds were also sometimes used to cover the costs of household level improvements such as replacing thatched roofs (Maharjan et al., this issue). In Dida, Kenya, the impact of PFM on household assets (plates, spoons, cups, bicycles, TV, radio and mobile phones) of PFM participants was generally positive with 60% of survey respondents stating that they had experienced an increase in these assets since 1995, and mainly attributing this increase to their involvement in PFM. By contrast, only 30% of the non-PFM respondents in Dida and 29% of respondents in the neighbouring control village had experienced an increase (ARPIP Team Kenya 2008). A similar trend was seen in Kereita, the community with the second most developed PFM pilot in the Kenyan sample, but benefits in the other sites where PFM was just starting were very low. In both Kenya and Nepal, some communities were able to use their new PFM institutions to negotiate with external service providers to improve community infrastructure (see below). Human capital No specific health benefits resulting from PFM were mentioned, though there was a general perception among Tanzanian respondents that improved forest condition led to greater availability of medicinal herbs (accessed through specialist collectors). Although food security was better in the Nepali user groups than in the control communities, it was not possible to attribute this directly to PFM except in cases where, for example, a user group had provided food aid to members following a flood. In Tanzania, both PFM and control communities experienced an improvement in food security which was probably therefore unrelated to PFM. The exceptions were the very poor in PFM communities who perceived an increase in food shortages, which may be related to a PFM-linked reduction in their ability to fall back on forest-based incomes during difficult periods (Vyamana, this issue). Not only did PFM participants in all three countries receive more training than survey respondents in non-PFM communities, they also received training on a much wider range of topics, some of particular benefit to individuals (e.g. on specific income-generating activities), and some of more general use to the community, such as environmental conservation, forest management, good governance, etc. In Tanzania, training was particularly associated with incomegenerating activities introduced in JFM communities and therefore involved mostly the committee members engaged in these activities (Vyamana, this issue). In the Nepal ARPIP user groups, targeted selection made sure that the proportion of trainees in each wellbeing group reflected their proportion in the wider community. Social and political capital One of the most obvious impacts of PFM in the ARPIP study communities was a change in community-level governance

and social cohesion. In all three countries, PFM led to the creation – or re-invigoration in the case of Tanzanian Village Natural Resource Committees – of a new institution charged with forest management. In Tanzania, zonal committees (bringing together several PFM villages around one forest) provided an opportunity for committee members to meet and network, and four of the seven committees were also members of a national PFM network. As the focal point for PFM issues, the Village Natural Resource Committees have also become important interlocutors between the village and the forest department. However, although committees in the CBFM villages were dominated by the poor, those in the JFM communities were disproportionately dominated by the rich, and only one of the committees (in a CBFM community) had sufficient representation of the very poor. This under-representation of the poor and very poor is not unique to PFM, being equally evident in the case-study village education committees (Vyamana, this issue). In the Kenyan case, representation of users is achieved first within user groups and then, through user group representatives, at the level of the Community Forest Association. The associations in both Dida and Kereita were able to negotiate with external actors (government departments, NGOs and projects) to bring new activities to the community (such as ecotourism facilities and an electric elephant fence). With the exception of the traditional Maasai management institution in Loita, the other association committees were typically dominated by retired civil servants, who had the time, income and status to devote their energies to the PFM initiative. Three out of the five committees had only one or no woman member. Three had no representation of young men, considered a problem since they are often the main illegal users. In terms of wellbeing groups, the committees were dominated by people in the middle and poor wellbeing groups with three having no rich members and none having any very poor members (ARPIP Kenya Team 2009). The Nepali user groups, which were appreciated as a new forum for social dialogue, also succeeded in negotiating with external agencies (e.g. to bring electrification to the village). They were helped in this by their membership of the Federation of Community Forest User Groups of Nepal (FECOFUN) which provides advice on rights and how to advocate for them. The focus in these communities on good governance as a result of CARE’s involvement has meant that individuals have also seen an increase in their ability to make their voices heard and engage in political decision-making. Contrary to reports in the literature (Timsina 2003) of user group executive committees dominated by elites, the power balance in the ARPIP case study user groups was shifting towards the poor and ultra-poor who made up the majority of the committee in five of the eight user groups. Women dominated three of the committees and made up nearly half of the members in the other five committees, while specific efforts were made to include low caste members. Although rich individuals still held over half of the officer posts on the user group executive committees, two-thirds of household survey respondents were satisfied that decisions were taken

PFM: a route to poverty reduction?

to the benefit of all members (Maharjan et al., this issue). Overall then, it would seem that PFM in the case study communities, in line also with the findings of the literature review, has had a relatively positive impact in terms of ‘opening up avenues of interaction’ with external actors (Oyono et al. 2006). However, progress on political equity within the community, i.e., enabling very poor and marginalised community members to access the decisionmaking table has been relatively slow, particularly where there has been no external support. Contributions of PFM to overall livelihood compared with non-PFM situation Taking into account both the benefits discussed above and the costs, does PFM provide more net benefits overall than a non-PFM situation? Are the impacts the same for all participants? In all of the ARPIP sites, agriculture and livestock remain the main sources of income with forests frequently seen as a land reserve for agriculture and/or grazing. While the absolute returns from PFM forest products were often relatively low, in some cases they did provide an important supplementary income. However, it is not clear whether, without the ability to capitalise on the timber and on land, such incomes could ever be significant in poverty reduction. Forest products such as firewood, construction poles, grazing and fodder remain essential subsistence products for most rural households in Kenya, Tanzania and Nepal. In Kenya, PFM is being introduced in forest reserves where restrictions on collection of these products were already formally in place. Here the new income-generating activities introduced with PFM seemed to have had an overall positive impact for participants in Dida. A detailed examination of the different types of benefits resulting from PFM in Dida (Table 2) suggests that some impacts also benefited the wider (non-participating) community. Amongst PFM participants, livelihood improvements were most important for the two middle wellbeing groups with the very rich experiencing improvements regardless of whether they were PFM members or not and the very poor often unable to get properly involved (ARPIP Team Kenya 2008). At the other Kenyan PFM sites, where PFM was not yet well-developed and the level of participation was low, there was no clear overall benefit, though a few individuals earned an income from income-generating activities. In Tanzania, almost all people in three of the four villages actively using their PFM forest saw a small increase in their overall forest-based income (which included products from their private forest resources) following the introduction of PFM. However, the overall impression was that the increase in non-forest benefits (principally from income-generating activities) accrued to only a few people and did not make up for the decrease in forest benefits (the loss of collection of forest products) and increased costs in terms of forest guarding and fire-protection. PFM did provide a new (if generally very small) source of community-level income which was used to fund infrastructure improvements of

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potential benefit to all villagers (Vyamana, this issue). In five of the eight user groups in Nepal there was a decline, sometimes almost complete, in the proportion of incomes being derived from forestry (all sources combined) for all wellbeing groups since the establishment of the user group, while the other three user groups showed no great change. The decline in forest benefits flowing directly to the household (due to well-enforced restrictions on the use of the community forest) was to some extent being compensated by a rerouting of benefits via the community level in the form of grants, loans, employment and shares of communal benefits such as schools and roads. Nevertheless, in seven of the eight user groups, community forestry-related activities only accounted for a minor part of most people’s household income (less than or around 10%). Sustainability of the (new) benefit streams An important question to be answered is whether PFM forests can provide a sustainable stream of benefits for their users, and whether they can do so without leading to degradation of nearby forests. One of the early issues in community forestry in Nepal was the need to move from passive to active forest management in order to increase the yield of products from community forests (Yadav et al. 2003). Community forestry guidelines in Nepal require communities to reinvest 25% of their community funds in forest management (Iversen et al. 2006) and the average spent by the eight ARPIP user groups was 37%. Even active forest management may not be enough, however, if the forest size is too small relative to the number of user group members. In the two case study user groups with the smallest forest area per household, members were not satisfied with the volume of key products and had to resort to illegal firewood collection in nearby national forests. This is a particular concern given the high level of immigration into the region, leading to serious problems of whether and how to include newcomers in user groups already suffering from limited resources (Maharjan et al., this issue). This shifting of forest product collection to neighbouring forests appears to be quite common in many of the case study communities (particularly during the initial restrictive phase of PFM) in all three countries. In Tanzania, some CBFM communities avoided this problem by imposing the same bylaws on all their forest patches. This suggests the benefit of a landscape approach to ensure sustainable forest product flows. With respect to PFM-related income-generating activities, one issue that arises is the question of whether the demand for the resulting products will be sufficient for all community members to benefit from these activities. In the case of Dida in Kenya, for example, butterfly farmers already complain that their incomes are constrained by the lack of market demand (mostly international for museums, butterfly collectors and weddings) as well as growing competition from projects in other forest areas such as the Amani project in Tanzania (ARPIP Team Kenya 2008). Similarly, the general promotion of ecotourism as a potential income-

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Table 2 Overall impact of PFM (since 1995) on households in different wellbeing groups in Dida, Kenya Differences between PFM and non-PFM members in Dida

Differences between wellbeing groups (A=rich, B=middle, C=poor, D=very poor)

Half of those who reported a positive change in wellbeing attributed it to PFM. Almost all PFM members earn an income from PFM-related activities. CFA loans only available for PFM members.

Absolute value of PFM-related incomes tends to be higher for wealthiest group, but can contribute a significant proportion of overall income in other groups (e.g. around 27% in group C).

Physical assets

Better housing (roofs). No overall change in household assets in contrast to a decrease experienced in Vimburuni.

Improvements in roofs are attributed to PFM. PFM membership influences whether or not households experience an increase in assets.

For the two middle income groups, PFM membership is very important in determining whether or not they perceive their assets to have increased. But it is less important for the very rich (whose assets increase regardless of PFM membership) and the very poor (whose assets decline).

Food security

Periods of food insecurity have increased but are less than in Vimburuni.

No difference in food security.

Insufficient data.

No overall change in health status.

PFM households perceive an improvement in health status whereas non-PFM households perceive a decline.

In the two middle income groups, PFM members are more likely to perceive that their health status has improved.

Increase in attendance at meetings attributed to general awarenessraising rather than being PFM specific.

CFA committee includes members from categories A, B and C, but no representation from Group D. The committee includes some women and some young men.

Many PFM members have improved their own land with Casuarina poles or Aloe vera cultivation. Few nonPFM members have done this. Both have benefited from elephant fence.

Upfront investment for poles and Aloe vera cultivation mean they are more common in the richest group.

Impact of PFM

Economic

Health

Political

Natural

General trend within Dida community (and comparisons with Vimburuni control community) Increase in cash flow due to PFMrelated income-generating activities has had positive impact on Dida’s enterprise economy. Community Forest Association (CFA) bank account available for loans. No overall change in perceived wellbeing, in contrast to the perceived decline in wellbeing in Vimburuni.

Dida respondents attend more meetings than in Vimburuni, and more today than in 1995. PFM activities are perceived to have increased the status of the community (e.g. it receives many visitors). Capacity to engage with outsiders has improved. Half of the Dida population say the forest is more important to them now, compared with only 18% in Vimburuni. Elephant fence has reduced crop damage.

Source: Modified from ARPIP Team Kenya (2008). Data from a survey of 40 households in Dida and 37 in Vimburuni.

generating activity in most of the case study communities in Kenya and Tanzania is not a realistic proposition. Linked to this is the importance of the method of introduction of PFM on the effectiveness of PFM-related activities. In the ARPIP case studies in all three countries, income-generating activities have been introduced by external projects and government institutions which have provided a large amount of related capacity-building. The move in Nepal for user groups to use their own funds to promote income-generating activities suggests that the sustainability of the process could be enhanced, but only if user groups have adequate funds, capacity and the will to do

so. An advantage of communities funding their own incomegenerating activities may also be that they better reflect local needs and markets unlike the one size-fits-all package that was introduced into the case study communities in Tanzania. Many income-generating activities, particularly in Kenya and the Tanzanian JFM cases, where forest product use is severely restricted, are not directly dependent on the forest (e.g. woodlots, fishponds and goat-rearing). A longerterm concern is that if the link to the forest is not clearly established and maintained, there will be no obvious reason for communities to conserve the forests. Developing forestbased PFM benefits is therefore very important.

PFM: a route to poverty reduction?

DISCUSSION: What factors determine the equity of PFM impacts within communities? Based on the evidence from the ARPIP case study communities in Kenya, Nepal and Tanzania, and the literature review carried out, this section analyses the main factors that determine whether PFM benefits are distributed in such a way as to reach the poorest within communities. How benefitsharing is organised sometimes depends on the level of the overall community-level benefits received – with higher benefits leading to a need for more transparent and bettertargeted distribution mechanisms. The discussion begins, therefore, with a brief review of some of the main factors determining the overall benefit received by communities. Subsequent sections, which discuss the factors affecting the distribution of benefits at the household level emphasise the need for an explicit poverty focus, appropriate institutional design (that reflects issues arising in forests of different value and ensures representation and voice for all), attention to equity rather than equality, and appropriate support (by government and civil society) to the PFM implementation process. Determinants of community-level benefit flows A number of contextual factors, (those which are hard to change for individual PFM initiatives) are key determinants of the overall benefit flow to communities. A first set of factors relate to the value and size of the resource. Thus, the open access and degraded forests of community forestry in the Nepal Middle Hills region and CBFM in Tanzania often result in initial forest closure for regeneration of the resource. The protected high biodiversity value forest that is the subject of Tanzanian JFM and Kenyan PFM also provide relatively little revenue for communities because of concerns by forest managers about the impact of PFM on biodiversity. Only communities with high value timber in their forests, like some of the ARPIP cases in Nepal’s Churia region and one Tanzanian CBFM village, as well as reports from communities in Mexico (Klooster 2000), Guatemala (Nittler and Tschinkel 2005) and Cameroon (Oyono et al. 2006), are able to derive a significant revenue from their forests. Linked to the value of the forest is the number of households (or individuals) who must share in the benefits. As shown by Maharjan et al. (this issue), user groups with very small areas of forest relative to household numbers cannot supply enough products to meet all the needs of their members. A second group of contextual factors relates to the rights a community has to use its forest products. While subsistence use is important, the ARPIP case studies suggest that commercial use is necessary to fundamentally improve livelihoods. Only where timber or a valuable NTFP were available for sale was there significant potential for income generation at community and household level. However, the poverty impact of commercial use is not a straightforward issue, leading – as discussed above for Tanzanian CBFM and for income-generating activities in both Tanzania and Kenya – to possible elite capture of income-generating opportunities,

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suggesting the need to accompany commercialisation of the resource with controls to ensure equity (see below). The ability to exploit forest products commercially increases the number of interests in the forest management activity and the use of products may be subject to the vagaries of political decision-making. In Tanzania, a temporary ban imposed in 2006 by central government on commercial harvesting of forest products in all types of forest tenures caused great concern in one CBFM village which reported a decrease in both household and community-level incomes and a “fear that we might exhaust our community bank account, as we are spending without collecting any revenues” (URT 2008). After the removal of the ban, a new regulatory arrangement required commercial harvesters to obtain a $200 harvesting licence from the district authority. Villagers felt that this contravened the original CBFM arrangements where licensing was done in consultation with the community and denied opportunities for village members to harvest forest products commercially as none of them could afford the licence (URT 2008). In Kenya, there has been similar vacillation around the issue of non-resident cultivation in forest reserves (the taungya system), which has been subjected to several bans in the last two decades, only to be reintroduced under political pressure. Non-resident cultivation is a highly prized means for many land-poor households to obtain land for farming, while planting and maintaining trees, and – for many PFM participants – the expectation is high that it will be an important part of the PFM process. A final set of contextual factors influencing PFM-related benefit flows is the local governance situation. In the case of Nepal, for example, the presence of the Maoist People’s Army near many of the ARPIP case study communities may be one explanatory factor for the important role of user groups in substituting for paralysed government institutions and social services, as well as their engagement in propoor activities. In Tanzania, Brockington (2007) questions whether it is realistic to expect any kind of PFM to reduce poverty in an environment where all extra incomes are siphoned off by the powerful. Poverty reduction as a clear objective One of the findings of the ARPIP literature review is the importance of having poverty reduction as an explicit objective in order to achieve pro-poor outcomes. Furthermore, where the primary objective has been something else, such as conservation or even sustainable forest management, the achievement of pro-poor outcomes has been problematic (Schreckenberg et al. 2007b). This was confirmed by the ARPIP fieldwork, which further highlighted the need to distinguish between stated objectives and the real motivating factors on the ground. In Tanzania, for example, both JFM and CBFM cases studied had conservation and poverty reduction as stated objectives, but no specific action was taken in any community to ensure that outcomes were pro-poor. Even the predominant employment of poor people for boundary

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marking arose because richer people did not want these jobs (URT 2008). That village natural resource committees, in spite of being democratically elected village institutions, could not be relied upon to represent the interests of the poor was made clear by many of the survey respondents (URT 2008). All stakeholders in the Kenyan case studies appeared to believe that PFM can reduce poverty but most seemed unsure how (ARPIP Team Kenya 2009). While contributing to community livelihoods is a stated objective in the new Kenyan PFM guidelines, none of the pilot projects studied had this as an initial objective. The maturity of a PFM initiative appears to affect the degree to which livelihood objectives are prioritised. Thus, 80% of survey respondents in Isecheno, where PFM had only been introduced three years previously, gave forest conservation as their main objective for participating in PFM, with 74% and 54% doing so in Kereita and Upper Imenti (both with seven years of PFM experience), while in Dida (ten years of PFM experience) all respondents were bold enough to say that they joined in the expectation of economic benefits (ARPIP Team Kenya 2009). Only in Dida was there a small amount of systematic targeting of the poor, with a move towards including poor people in the community forest association and a requirement that they be included in income-generating activities (e.g. through subsidised up-front costs). Only in Nepal, was there an explicit attempt in the ARPIP case study user groups to use community forestry to contribute to poverty alleviation. All had carried out participatory wellbeing rankings to identify and target the poorest within communities and were implementing a varied range of activities to meet the needs of their poorest members. While PFM initiatives in Kenya and Tanzania had carried out stakeholder analyses, they had not specifically tried to identify poorer and more forest-dependent households.

the Forest Management Agreement. These activities take place over at least a year and involve many meetings for all interested community members. The opportunity cost of time is particularly high for the poorest for whom sale of labour is the main source of income (Kenya ARPIP Team 2009), and for whom the membership fees required to join the association may be a real barrier, with the result that they benefit least from any PFM-related income-generating activities. Though revitalising a village committee rather than creating a new institution, the PFM establishment process in Tanzania was similar to that in Kenya. In addition, in Tanzania the 3-7 year delay in signing JFM agreements or getting CBFM bylaws approved by the District Council was very discouraging for communities as any royalties during this period continued to be reaped by local government. In the Nepal case study user groups, handover of community forests took place within 1-1.5 years but the initial costs here too were largely unpaid although some of the operational costs were then covered from the growing user group fund. The question is whether the relatively laborious PFM establishment processes, for which communities need a new set of skills and some capital, are the most appropriate in situations in which the additional benefits of PFM are expected to be relatively minor. This could be where the potential value of the forest to the community is very low either because of its level of degradation or because high biodiversity value leads to heavy restrictions on its use as in the case of Tanzanian JFM. In such cases, it may be that a simpler and less costly ‘PFMlite’6 process would be more appropriate (Schreckenberg et al. 2007b) or even a modified version of the often already existing fuelwood collection systems and local employment arrangements with forest departments. At the very least, consideration should be given to reducing the transaction costs for the poorest by minimising requirements for donating labour and attending meetings.

Appropriate institutional design Reducing costs in low value forest Achieving a pro-poor outcome is in part dependent on matching the form of the PFM institution and the related transaction costs to the context and value of the forest. In the case of degraded forests or where a ban on commercial use leads to relatively low returns, an over-complex design can cause costs to outweigh benefits both for the whole community and/or for specific groups within the community. PFM costs may be particularly high during the initial establishment phase. In Kenya, for example, the new PFM guidelines recommend the involvement of at least eight community members (in addition to several forest officers) in the team facilitating the stakeholder analysis, the preparation of the draft management plan based on participatory resource assessment, zoning and boundary marking, elaboration of the rules and regulations of the community forest association, and negotiation, drafting and signing of

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Combating risks in high value forest Where the potential value of the forest to the community is high, PFM institutions must be robust enough to withstand potential corruption and elite capture. That increasing PFMrelated revenue can lead to conflict between different social groups has been reported from many countries, including Cameroon (Mvondo 2006, Oyono et al. 2006) and Guatemala (Nittler and Tschinkel 2005). In the ARPIP case studies, elite capture of income-generating activities was observed in both Kenya and Tanzania. In Tanzania, stories of injustice (e.g. of the rich bribing the committee in order not to be prosecuted, or a treasurer left unpunished in spite of swindling CBFM funds) existed in all the ARPIP case study communities that were generating incomes from their forest (URT 2008). In one community, timber revenue was kept by the forester apparently because he felt the community was too ignorant to set up a bank account and manage the money (URT 2008). Iversen et al. (2006) report serious cases of corruption

As far as we are aware, the term ‘PFM-lite’ was coined by Phil Franks of CARE International.

PFM: a route to poverty reduction?

in user groups in the Nepal Terai region and argue that it is naïve to expect this to be combated by ‘empowerment and participation’ in contexts where local forests generate substantial revenues. The two CARE projects working in the ARPIP Nepal case-study user groups were active in promoting governance literacy classes, monthly user group budget reports and annual public hearing and public audit exercises to discuss the user group’s income and expenditure in recognition of this potential problem (Maharjan et al., this issue). Another activity to support transparency (and monitor the cost/benefit ratios experienced by different people) is the use of individual record booklets in which user group members can track all their contributions to the user group (such as labour, fees or interest payments on loans) and all benefits received. Ensuring fair representation McDermott (this issue) argues that those who can access new decision-making space (and the resources to implement decisions) are most likely to benefit from community-based forestry. In the ARPIP case study communities, the ways in which the main decision-making space for PFM were set up varied greatly between the three countries. In Tanzania, the PFM process is managed by the village government and all village residents are automatically included. In spite of what would seem to be high legitimacy, village natural resource committees reproduce traditional power structures, are not representative of the poorest in the community and do not specifically consider their needs, e.g. when drawing up community forestry bylaws (Vyamana, this issue, URT 2008). Overall, PFM benefits in Tanzania were relatively low. However, the two communities with the highest community-level PFM income also scored highest on a participatory assessment of resource committee governance, suggesting that the prospect of access to this new resource may mobilise people into action to best utilise the relevant ‘decision-making space’. In Kenya and Nepal, PFM is organised around user groups, which are a form of civil society, existing in parallel to local government institutions. The pro-poor outcome of these different forms is again complex. While specifically created user groups can ensure that it is the most active forest users who make decisions, they do raise the issue over who these users are accountable to, what rights they have to make decisions over the resource and whether such ‘interest groups’ are likely to prioritise poor people’s needs. For example, in Kenya, the 2007 PFM guidelines require one community forest association (itself an umbrella group of separate product-based user groups) to be set up around each forest block – a forest management unit defined by the Kenyan Forest Service and with no link to local community use or traditional boundaries. Amongst the case study communities, the three in which PFM was initiated by an NGO (as opposed to the Forest Service) nevertheless tended to have associations aligned with community institutional boundaries, at least allowing them in theory to be representative of the poor in their communities. Overall, the case studies showed that the very poor participated less in

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PFM – in part because of membership fees and lack of time to attend meetings – and were not represented on association committees. The situation is rather different in Nepal, where, according to the 1993 Forest Act and 1995 Bylaws, there is a requirement at establishment for community forest user groups to ensure that all local users are included. User groups typically relate to an area of forest traditionally used by the community in question. Problems may arise later, however, when new people migrate to the area and are unable to pay joining fees, which become more expensive the more ‘successful’ a user group is in generating an income for its members. Within the case study user groups, there had been a concerted effort to promote fair (proportional) representation of all community groups (wellbeing, gender and caste) on the executive committee in advance of the requirement for this in the revised 2009 national community forest operational guidelines (Maharjan et al., this issue). Representation alone is not enough, however. Both the Tanzanian and Kenyan data show that even when poor people do attend meetings they are less likely to voice their concerns. The success of the Nepal user groups in targeting activities specifically at the poorest and in making most members feel their needs were considered in decision-making is therefore likely to be in large part due to the governance and empowerment focus of the supporting NGO projects. Related to the representation issue is the relative size of the forest resource and the PFM group. ‘Moderate size’ is one of four resource system characteristics listed by Ostrom (2004) as being conducive to the establishment of collective action. Average forest sizes differed greatly in the ARPIP case studies, averaging 142 ha in Nepal, 5 450 ha in Tanzania and, in Kenya, ranging from just 41 ha in the case of Dida to many thousands of hectares for the other case study community forest associations. The fact that Dida has been so much more successful in terms of overall income generation and establishment of effective (if not yet equitable) PFM institutions than the other Kenyan cases is perhaps related to the relatively manageable size of its forest. Linked to the size of the resource is the size of the PFM group. Research in Nepal has shown that taking decisionmaking down to the smallest unit (the hamlet) leads to the most effective participation (Dev et al. 2003a). The larger the group, the more difficult it is to ensure that information is shared effectively with all members and that the quality of participation (i.e. the ability of people to make their needs heard) is high. Average user group size in the ARPIP Nepal case studies was 146 households (compared with a guideline size of 100 households), while the Tanzanian villages ranged from 108 to 700 households. In the Kenyan case, there is no upper limit on the size of an association, which may include any interested participants living within 5km of the forest. Organising effective communication and communal management at this scale may be quite a challenge. Ensuring equity rather than equality in benefit-sharing A key feature of most forms of PFM is that some decisions on

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benefit-sharing have to be taken at community level. One of the main decisions is whether this benefit sharing should be equal or equitable. In the case of the former, all households receive an equal share of products regardless of need, as in the case of the Tanzanian JFM communities where all households received similar amounts of fuelwood. However, inequitable outcomes of treating all forest users equally, are noted in a range of case studies from Nepal and India (Maharjan 1998, Conroy et al. 2002, Dev et al. 2003, Malla et al. 2003, Yadav et al. 2003), where community forests supply only a small proportion of fuelwood requirements, for example, and poorer households have smaller private land holdings from which to make up the deficit. Similarly, where users were permitted to collect unlimited quantities of leaf litter for animal bedding, this benefited wealthier households with higher numbers of livestock. In one of the ARPIP case study user groups in Nepal, which had a small plantation of mangos in its forest, an equal number of mangoes were distributed to members even though betteroff households might have been able to purchase these for themselves. The alternative – equitable distribution – is not straightforward to define. One interpretation is that everybody receives products in proportion to their need. In Orissa, India, for example, Conroy et al. (2002) report on a case where free access for all is permitted for abundant products (such as grazing), while scarce products are distributed on a needs-based system. No such systems were found in any of the ARPIP case study communities. However, another way of achieving some degree of equitability is to sell products communally and then redistribute the earnings in some targeted manner. This was the case for timber sales in all the Nepal case study CFUGs, where most timber was sold communally and income then entered the user group fund for further disbursal. Whether or not poorer households obtained a ‘fair’ share of the resulting income (e.g. through grants and loans) was then dependent on their ability to make their needs felt at the user group level. Another option is to subsidise products for poorer households. The current system in Nepal and the planned system in Kenya already allow for reduced permit costs for PFM members vis-à-vis non-members. In Kenya, no additional subsidies are foreseen for poorer households. However, several of the Nepal user groups subsidised their timber for the poorest members, requiring them to pay only 10-15% of the price charged to other members, which is already only a third of the general market price. Iversen et al. (2006) have queried whether internal subsidies are really in the best interests of the community, arguing that it would be better for user groups to realise the maximum possible value of their timber by selling it on the market and then distributing the total revenue earned. This outcome however, assumes the presence of a functioning redistribution system. Another case illustrating the difficulties of combining good business practices with targeting of the poor is Dida, Kenya, where butterfly-farming is organised through a semiautonomous body with a strong business focus. This means that suppliers are selected on the basis of performance, with

no preference given to either the poor or even to members of the butterfly farmers’ user group (ARPIP Team Kenya 2008). There is a large literature that discusses the challenges of organising commercialisation of non-timber forest products in a manner both beneficial to the poor and sustainable from an economic perspective (Marshall et al. 2006, Belcher and Schreckenberg 2007, Neumann and Hirsch 2000). Yet another way of providing benefits in a more equitable manner is to recognise that poorer households may need different products and to focus forest management on increasing the yields of these products. Thus, poorer households in the ARPIP Nepal case study user groups were less interested in timber because, unlike better-off households, their houses were not constructed using timber. Their preference was to receive more fuelwood and poles and, as outlined earlier, the poorest were also particularly interested in the forest as a source of land for cultivation. That assumptions should not be made about the interests of the poor is demonstrated by the case of one dalit man who was offered employment as a forest guard by his user group but preferred to receive a loan that enabled him to start a rickshaw-pulling business (Maharjan et al., this issue). This highlights once again, the importance of ensuring that all poor and marginalised community members are wellrepresented at the decision-making table. Supporting the process of PFM establishment As outlined above, there is no clear link between the poverty outcomes of PFM and whether it is a government or civil society-led activity. Experience from the ARPIP case studies suggests that both partners have an important role to play, supporting the recommendation by Pokharel and Nurse (2004) for strategic alliances among government, project and NGO service providers to ensure pro-poor outcomes. Support is needed not only during the initiation of PFM activities, but also during subsequent phases (Brown et al. 2002). The government context Looking at the three ARPIP case study countries suggests that the capacity of PFM to contribute to improving livelihoods improves as the process matures, with most progress being achieved in Nepal where the relevant policy has gone through several iterations since the late 1970s and now provides a very supportive framework. The new draft community forestry operational guidelines (2009) specifically require 35% of total user group income to be allocated to poor households for their empowerment and livelihood improvement (Maharjan et al., this issue). At the other extreme, the supportive policy statements of the 2005 Forest Act in Kenya are yet to be converted into equally progressive PFM guidelines. Villagers appeared more ready to commit to PFM than government staff, for whom policy signals and incentives are still very recent (Kenya ARPIP Team 2009). Implementation of PFM requires a significant change in the culture of forest department bureaucracies and the support available to foresters. In Tanzania, the CBFM

PFM: a route to poverty reduction?

implementation process through district government foresters is more progressive than the JFM process facilitated by the central government Forestry and Beekeeping Division. Even one of the control villages had a relatively good experience of forest management with support from its district forest officer (who may, however, have benefited from the experience of colleagues in two nearby CBFM projects). Although supposedly a devolution process, JFM in Tanzania has not been accompanied by the necessary change in the different levels of the forest department bureaucracy and the relationship between the forest department and communities is characterised by mistrust derived from years of a ‘fences and fines’ approach. Amongst the ARPIP case study communities, the two (one JFM and one CBFM) affiliated with the Amani Nature Reserve – an autonomous entity able to act partly outside the sphere of the forest department – had higher governance scores than other communities (URT 2008). The greater the difference between previous forest management practices and the new PFM system, the greater the need for start-up funding is likely to be, to help with the setting up of new institutions and preparing management plans and technical inputs in forest management. In Tanzania the lack of resources to support the PFM process was a serious constraint for foresters. Those foresters working in areas without project support were unable to visit villages regularly and this was one reason given for the long delays between initiating the PFM process and signing agreements (URT 2008). The need for organisational capacity cannot be overstated; indeed the skills in facilitation and process appear to be as important as access to finance (Schreckenberg et al. 2007b). Civil society support An important difference between the three ARPIP case study countries is the presence in Nepal of a strong national federation of community forest user groups. FECOFUN is able to support local implementation, providing skills, advice and help in negotiations with local government, at the same time as being able to advocate for the rights of user groups at national level. Representing a third of the country’s population, FECOFUN has become a political force to be reckoned with, even taking the government to court when it tried to increase the taxes on timber from user groups in the Terai region. Experience from PFM in Guatemala has also shown the value of the development of networks for augmenting knowledge about marketing and prices, an essential element in helping communities increase their benefit flows (Nittler and Tschinkel 2005). Other authors have emphasised the importance of providing communities with forest management skills and support where high value timber extraction and processing are possible (Fomété and Vermaat 2001, Yadav et al. 2003). Nothing similar exists in Kenya or Tanzania, though recent efforts through the EU-supported EMPAFORM

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project7 have started the process of building national PFM networks. Elements exist as in the case of the ArabukoSokoke forest in Kenya, where the Forest Adjacent Dwellers Association brings together the individual community forest associations responsible for different sections of the forest perimeter. With its origins predating the formal PFM process as a lobbying group to prevent politicians from degazetting part of the forest for ‘resettlement’ during the 1997/8 election campaigns, this umbrella association works alongside the environmental NGOs (which have been instrumental in facilitating the PFM process around this highly biodiverse forest) to negotiate strongly to promote the livelihood interests of local people. In Tanzania, no similar organisations were available to help the case study communities negotiate better agreements with forest departments or to advise them on possible pro-poor activities. CONCLUSION: CAN PFM CONTRIBUTE TO POVERTY REDUCTION? In the ARPIP case study countries, PFM is being implemented in response to the concern that – without it – forests would continue to be under-managed by overstretched forest departments, resulting in further forest deterioration. PFM seems to offer a good way forward in this respect: perceptions in the ARPIP case study communities confirm reports in the literature (Blomley et al. 2008) suggesting that forest condition improves with PFM. But does PFM also represent a route to poverty reduction? The ARPIP case studies and literature review suggest that PFM can contribute to improving livelihoods and thus to poverty reduction – but that it may do so (i) with a time lag, both because forests are often initially ‘closed’ for regeneration and because an appropriate institutional set-up takes time to develop, (ii) by rerouting benefits from the household level to community or user group-level (so that households access these benefits in a different way), and often (iii) in a less than equitable manner. The ARPIP study suggests that rights to commercial use of the forest (accompanied by sufficiently robust institutions) are needed if PFM is to generate sufficient income to contribute to poverty reduction beyond simply sustaining flows of subsistence products. Whether or not more rights to commercial use will be devolved to the user group remains an important question in the implementation of both the Kenyan PFM and the Tanzanian JFM model. However, as indicated by Mahanty et al. (2006), equity is not only an issue within communities but also between localities and between stakeholders at different levels. Therefore, the decision on whether those involved in PFM have the right to make a profit from the resource is affected by the public good status of forest resources. The Government of Nepal’s imposition of a tax on surplus timber sold outside user groups, for example, gives a clear indication that forests are

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seen as a national public good with benefits that should be distributed equitably among as well as within communities. Depending on the level of income generated from PFM, different institutions are needed. In situations where communities can extract only a low value from the forest, attempts need to be made to keep transactions costs low. In forests with high biodiversity or important environmental services (values which typically accrue at national or international level and do not necessarily translate into local benefits), the compensation of local people for the costs they bear, through schemes such as payments for environmental services (including more recent forest-based carbon offset initiatives), remains an option. In forests with high value for local communities, institutions need to be strong enough to safeguard against misappropriation of funds. The increased transparency and accountability provided by public hearing and public auditing events in Nepal are one means of ensuring this. Achieving equitable distribution of the new communitylevel benefits that may arise from PFM requires an understanding of, and engagement with, the varied circumstances, and forest-based needs, of different users. Assisting communities in this process of developing and implementing a pro-poor approach requires both a supportive policy context and skilled facilitation. Nepal has taken the decision to regulate for a pro-poor approach, with the 2009 community forestry operational guidelines insisting on the use of participatory wellbeing ranking to identify the poorest, combined with a requirement to spend 35% of user group funds on ‘pro-poor’ activities. As the ARPIP study shows, fair representation on committees is important but women, the poor and other marginalised groups also need to be supported (e.g. through empowerment and governance literacy training) to ensure that their views are taken into account in defining these ‘pro-poor’ activities. Whatever form PFM takes it is important to recognise that its establishment is a dynamic process which requires long-term commitment from government agencies and civil society to support communities through inevitable lows (such as governance problems, low levels of participation, internal and external conflicts, and high cost/benefit ratios). With appropriate facilitation, however, PFM can provide a new framework for negotiation of forest-related benefits and can increase the capacity of both poor households and poor communities to use these new decision-making spaces to negotiate for a better and more sustainable flow of benefits. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The authors gratefully acknowledge the contributions of the ARPIP team members to the research presented here and thank Jeff Campbell (in his former Ford Foundation capacity) and Phil Franks of CARE International for their support of and interest in the ARPIP project. Particular thanks go to three anonymous referees and to Melanie McDermott, Maksha Maharjan, Vincent Vyamana and M.T.E. Mbuvi for their valuable comments on this paper.

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SCHRECKENBERG, K., LUTTRELL, C., ZORLU, P., MOSS, C. and THASSIM, L. 2007a. Participatory forest management and poverty reduction: a review of the evidence. Unpublished draft, ODI, London. SCHRECKENBERG, K., LUTTRELL, C., ZORLU, P. and MOSS, C. 2007b. A way out of poverty? A review of the impacts of PFM on livelihoods. Keynote paper presented under Theme 4 ‘PFM and Livelihoods: Role of PFM in Poverty Reduction’, 1st National PFM Conference, 6-8 June 2007, Kenya Forestry Research Institute (KEFRI) HQ, Muguga, Kenya. SPRINGATE-BAGINSKI, O., YADAV, N., DEV, O.P. and SOUSSAN, J. 2003. Institutional development of forest user groups in Nepal: Processes and indicators. Journal of Forest and Livelihood 3(1): 21-36. SUNDERLIN, W.D. 2006. Poverty alleviation through community forestry in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam: An assessment of the potential. Forest Policy and Economics 8: 386-396. SUNDERLIN, W.D., ANGELSEN, A., BELCHER, B., BURGERS, P. and NASI, R. 2005. Livelihoods, forests, and conservation in developing countries: an overview. World Development. 33(9): 1383–402 THIN, N. and VAN GARDINGEN, P. 2003. Legal, institutional and policy issues affecting access to Common Pool Resources (CPRs): Forestry. Background paper for a DFID staff workshop on CPRs in forestry, fisheries, water management, and rangelands, 19th March 2003, The University of Edinburgh & Edinburgh Centre for Tropical Forests (ECTF). TIMSINA, N.P. 2003. Promoting social justice and conserving montane forest environments: a case study of Nepal’s Community Forestry program. The Geographical Journal 169(3): 236-242. URT. 2008. Action research into poverty impacts of participatory forest management (ARPIP): Case studies from the Eastern Arc Mountains of Tanzania. Forestry and Beekeeping Division, Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism, Dar es Salaam. 124pp. VYAMANA, V.G. 2009. Participatory forest management in the Eastern Arc Mountains of Tanzania: who benefits? International Forestry Review 11(2): 239-253. WORLD BANK 2001. World Development Report 2000/2001: Attacking Poverty. Oxford University Press, New York. YADAV, N.P., DEV, O.P., SPRINGATE-BAGINSKI, O. and SOUSSAN, J. 2003. Forest management and utilization under community forestry. Journal of Forest and Livelihood 3(1): 37-50.

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Participatory forest management in the Eastern Arc Mountains of Tanzania: who benefits? V.G. VYAMANA CARE International in Tanzania, Uluguru Mountains Environmental Management and Conservation Project, P.O. Box 289, Morogoro, Tanzania

Email: [email protected]

SUMMARY Participatory forest management (PFM) is being promoted throughout Tanzania as a means of achieving conservation and improving livelihoods. This paper presents the results of a study in nine villages in the Eastern Arc Mountains to investigate the impacts of two institutional forms of PFM – Joint Forest Management (JFM) and Community-Based Forest Management (CBFM) – on the livelihoods of different well-being groups within communities. PFM was found to provide a new, though small, source of community-level income that was used to improve community physical capital. Household incomes from PFM forests generally increased slightly for most groups. However, technical and administrative obstacles prevented the poorest from taking full advantage of the benefits of forests under CBFM, while benefits from JFM-related income-generating activities were captured by village elites. Overall the results suggest that PFM implementation in Tanzania is improving forest conservation but not realising its potential to contribute to reducing poverty and social exclusion and, in the case of CBFM, may even be increasing the gap between rich and poor.

Keywords: CBNRM, forest conservation, livelihood, forest incomes, governance

La gestion forestière participative dans dans la région de l’Eastern Arc Mountains de la Tanzanie: qui en bénéficie? V.G. Vyamana La gestion forestière participative (PFM) est promue au travers de la Tanzanie comme moyen de parvenir à la conservation et à l’amélioration du niveau de vie. Cet article présente le résultat d’une étude dans neuf villages des Eastern Arc Mountains pour étudier les impacts de deux formes institutionnelles de PFM - la gestion forestière jointe (JFM) et la gestion forestière basée sur la communauté (CBFM) - sur le niveau de vie de différents groupes de bien-être dans la communauté. La PFM se trouva fournir une nouvelle, bien que petite, source de revenu au niveau de la communauté, utilisée pour améliorer le capital physique de la communauté. Les revenus individuels dans les forêts à PFM s’étaient vus accroître légèrement pour la plupart des groupes. Toutefois, des obstacles techniques et administratifs empêchaient les plus démunis de prendre vraiment avantage des bénéfices des forêts en CBFM, alors que les bénéfices des activités générant des revenus liées à la JFM étaint capturés par les élites des villages. Les résultats d’ensemble suggèrent que la mise en oeuvre de la PFM en Tanzanie améliore la conservation forestière, mais qu’elle ne réalise pas son potentiel de contribuer à une réduction de la pauvreté et de l’exclusion sociale, et que, dans le cas de la CBFM, elle est peut être même responsable d’élargir le fossé entre riches et pauvres.

El manejo forestal participativo en las Montañas del Arco Oriental de Tanzania: ¿quiénes son los beneficiarios? V. G. VYAMANA En toda Tanzania se está promoviendo el Manejo Forestal Participativo (PFM, por sus siglas en inglés) como forma de compaginar la conservación y la mejora del nivel de vida comunitario. Este artículo presenta los resultados de un estudio en nueve pueblos de las Montañas del Arco Oriental diseñado para investigar los impactos sobre el nivel de vida de diferentes sectores de la comunidad de dos modelos institucionales de PFM, el Manejo Forestal Conjunto (JFM, por sus siglas en inglés), y el Manejo Forestal Comunitario (CBFM). Se descubrió que el PFM proporcionaba una fuente nueva, aunque limitada, de ingresos comunitarios que se utilizaba para desarrollar el capital físico de la comunidad, y que en general los ingresos de cada familia aumentaban un poco en zonas con bosques donde se practicaba el PFM. Sin embargo, los obstáculos de tipo técnico y administrativo impedían que los más pobres aprovechaban al máximo los beneficios de los bosques gestionados bajo el modelo del CBFM, mientras que los beneficios de las actividades generadoras de ingresos del JFM fueron acaparados por los élites de los pueblos. En términos generales, los resultados sugieren que la implementación del PFM en Tanzania está favoreciendo la conservación de los bosques, pero que no está realizando su potencial para reducir la pobreza y la exclusión social. Resulta posible incluso que el uso del CBFM está aumentando la distancia entre ricos y pobres.

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INTRODUCTION Recent global trends in forest management have focused on the devolution of forest tenure and management from state authorities to local communities through community-based approaches to securing and managing forests, generally referred to as Participatory Forest Management (PFM) (FAO 2003). PFM became a central strategy to ensure sustainable management and conservation of Tanzania’s forests in the 1990s. Tanzania’s Forest Policy (URT 1998) and legislation (URT 2002) recognises two forms of PFM – community-based forest management (CBFM) and joint forest management (JFM) – which differ in terms of forest ownership and cost/ benefit flows. CBFM takes place on village land or private land, with the trees being owned and managed by the village government through a Village Natural Resource Committee (VNRC), a group or an individual. In CBFM the owner carries most of the costs and accrues most of the benefits relating to management and utilisation. The role of central government is minimal while the district authorities only have a role in monitoring. In contrast, JFM takes place on ‘reserved land’ that is owned and managed by either central or local government and normally in forests protected for biodiversity or water catchment values. Villagers in JFM agreements share management responsibilities with the forest owner. PFM in Tanzania was envisaged to help deliver two broad policy outcomes: improved forest condition and improved people’s livelihoods (Blomley and Ramadhani 2006), in a manner congruent with the general national poverty reduction process (URT 2005). The last few years have seen a strong government interest in expanding PFM across the country. By 2006, 11% of the total forest area was under PFM and 1821 villages (or 17.5%) were involved in the process (Blomley and Ramadhani 2006). At the same time, there has been increasing concern to understand the extent to which PFM is managing to achieve its aims (URT 2003). There seems to be general agreement that PFM (both in the CBFM and JFM form) improves forest condition (Sauer and Abdallah 2007, Blomley et al. 2008), but conflicting results have been reported on its contribution to livelihoods (Topp-Jørgensen et al. 2005, Blomley and Ramadhani 2006, Luoga et al. 2006). This confusion is in part caused by the way different authors have defined livelihood outcomes of PFM, with some focusing narrowly on incomes from forest products and others taking a broader approach and including impacts of PFM-associated income-generating activities and improved stoves (e.g. Luoga et al. 2006, Mrosso 2006). This is particularly the case for JFM, which is characterised by a very limited level of decentralisation, that denies communities user rights for commercially valuable forest products, limiting their potential forest-based income (Blomley and Ramadhani 2006, Ribot 2002 cited in Tacconi 2007, Topp-Jørgensen et al. 2005). A second reason for conflicting findings regarding the livelihood impact of PFM is the way in which authors have defined communities. Those studies that claim that PFM is successful in improving people’s livelihoods have

treated communities as homogeneous entities (Wily 2000, Luoga et al. 2006, Mrosso 2006). The picture is less clear in studies (Iddi 2003) which take the now widely accepted view that communities are in fact highly differentiated (Ellis and Allison 2004). The problem of ‘elite capture’ under PFM and other forms of decentralisation has been widely reported in Tanzania (Iddi 2003) and elsewhere (Carter and Gronow 2005, Platteau and Gaspart 2003 cited in Ellis and Allison 2004, Ribot 2002 cited in Tacconi 2007, Shackleton et al. 2002). This paper suggests that while PFM is good for improving forest condition and overall community level income, it may have negative impacts on poverty reduction resulting from increased income inequalities among community members as a result of weak representative decision-making processes and local elite capture. The paper summarises the results of research undertaken to assess the impact of PFM on different groups within communities in nine case study villages within or adjacent to the forests of Tanzania’s Eastern Arc Mountains (URT 2008). Part of a three-country study (see Schreckenberg and Luttrell, this issue), the work in Tanzania was undertaken through the Socio-economic Monitoring Programme (SEMP) of the Conservation and Management of Eastern Arc Mountain Forests (CMEAMF) project managed by CARE International in Tanzania and was guided by two research questions: 1. Can PFM contribute to livelihood and poverty reduction by providing rural people with a sustainable and equitably distributed stream of benefits greater than those obtained under a non-PFM situation? 2. How do the impacts (both positive and negative) on poverty and equity of different forms of PFM compare? The CMEAMF project was interested in the livelihood impacts of PFM because it was considering expanding PFM in the Eastern Arc, but was concerned that the very high biodiversity (and related focus on conservation) in the area might reduce the potential poverty-alleviating impact of PFM. METHODS Selecting the case study villages Within the CMEAMF project area, three regions that had been practising PFM or had initiated a PFM process were purposively selected to include the two major forms of participatory forest management in the area as facilitated by a range of institutions. Where possible, two communities - one engaged in JFM and one engaged in CBFM - were randomly selected from each region. In two of the regions an additional control community without PFM initiatives was randomly selected. The nine study villages and their main attributes are presented in Table 1 and their location shown in Figure 1.

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TABLE 1 Main socio-economic and ecological characteristics of case study villages in the Eastern Arc area, Tanzania

Community first settled in the area

PFM process started

PFM bylaws approved

Mfyome

2598

1964

1999

2002

Kiponzelo

2489

1973

Lulanzi

3642

1974

1999

2002

District

Iringa rural Kilolo

Village

Control community

Rainfall (mm/ year)

Vegetation

600

Miombo woodlands

1000

Miombo woodlands

1000-1600

Montane forest

Mgambo

2110

1974

1996

1997

600-800

Tropical forest

Mikwinini MswahaDarajani

589

1974

1996

1997

1800-2200

Montane forest

3186

1975

Gombero

1119

1966

2001

Morogoro

Changa

3120