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ENVIRONMENT: Global Forest Users’ Body Takes Root

Marty Logan

KATHMANDU, Nov 7 2006 (IPS) - One of the most grassroots of people’s movements has planted an international seed.

The Global Alliance of Community Forestry (GACF) was born at a meeting that ended in Nepal’s capital Sunday, with a goal to promote pro-people forest policies that will ensure the livelihoods of the communities that sustainably manage forest resources.

“We are creating a family that has a mission and target: the conservation of natural resources for the welfare of that family and the safeguarding of the biodiversity of our lands,” said Alberto Chinchilla, executive director of the organisation Central American Indigenous and Peasant Coordinator of Communal Agroforestry (known by its Spanish language acronym ACICAFOC).

Costa Rica-based ACICAFOC co-organised the meeting with the Federation of Community Forest Users of Nepal (FECOFUN), attracting 50 international participants from 18 countries.

“We need support to address global issues like the WTO (World Trade Organisation),” FECOFUN Member Secretary Bhola Bhattarai told IPS. “Alone we cannot achieve anything, so we want to see how other communities are securing the rights of their people.”

Nepal has a celebrated community forestry movement. It includes 14,337 user groups whose 1.65 million households represent 39 percent of the country’s population of about 25 million, according to the Ministry of Forests. Forest resources provide 75 percent of the nation’s energy needs and 40 percent of animals’ fodder.

One-fifth of the South Asian country’s total forest area has been handed over to community forestry groups, thanks largely to legislation that is considered among the most progressive in the region.

But all is not well. Forest users’ groups were displaced by both the army and Maoist rebels during a decade-long insurgency that ended at least temporarily after King Gyanendra gave up direct power in April. Many groups also fell behind in their paperwork are in danger of losing their status with the government.

FECOFUN is also pushing the Ministry of Forests to change what the group calls a failed policy to manage forests in Nepal’s terai (its southern plains region bordering India). Jungles there produce the most commercially valuable of Nepal’s timber and the ministry is using the “collaborative forestry” approach to try and obscure its grabbing of resources that should be managed by the community, argues FECOFUN.

Threats also come from abroad, said Bhattarai. Some foreign aid donors to Nepal, and other countries, “are not interested in supporting community forestry but support other non-democratic approaches”, he added. “Multinational companies are also trying to capture rights to forests and we want to counter that.”

In fact, one Finnish company recently tried to get a forestry concession in Nepal, Peter deMarsh of the International Family Forestry Alliance told the conference’s closing session. “In today’s world, all the largest companies are following what they call ‘global fibre strategies’…this is pushing prices down and making access to markets (for community groups) more difficult,” he added.

Thai groups are preoccupied by local and national challenges, according to Somying Soontornwong, manager of that country’s support programme at the Regional Community Forestry Training Centre for Asia and the Pacific.

“We need to know how to scale up and empower our network, to unite our groups,” she said in an interview. FECOFUN can provide lessons in how to create an umbrella body of these groups and the best ways to ensure grassroots participation at all levels of the organisation, added Soontornwong.

Thai groups are also brainstorming how to get a law passed that will recognise their rights – after 15 years of failed attempts, she said. ‘’Last year it (failed) again and then the government wanted to relocate people living in national parks and protected areas, but ethnic people have been in those places for a long time.”

According to Chinchilla, a strong global alliance will empower community forestry groups “to lobby our governments, taking into account the achievements of community forestry in conserving the environment, using resources sustainably, and generating jobs”..

“The important thing is that we realise that the problems are similar at the global level: community forestry is not given its due, biodiversity is at threat, air quality is declining and global warming is increasing,” he said. Community forestry has a strategic role to play in addressing those problems, and it is a growing movement.”

“If the alliance is strengthened our voices can also be heard in international forums like the U.N. and EU,” Chinchilla added.

One of the GACF’s first activities will be to present the alliance at the 7th United Nations Forestry Forum, said Bhattarai. First, the group must approve a charter and name two people from each continent to a global board of directors, he added.