This was among the points that IIED’s Duncan Macqueen and James Mayers made clear to a gathering of over 300 forestry experts from communities, NGOs and governments around the world.
James delivered the message in a keynote address to the International Conference on Community Forest Management and Enterprises in Acre, Brazil on 15-20 July.
It enabled community leaders to assess their constraints and opportunities and come up with recommendations for the International Tropical Timber Organisation (ITTO), NGOs and each other — despite four languages being in use during the entire conference.
James called for greater recognition that small forestry enterprises are the norm in the forest sector in many countries, and that they are growing. He pointed to growing evidence that small forestry enterprises work for local development.
And he argued that much of the current thinking about forestry governance needs to be turned on its head — we need to stop rigging the rules in favour of large scale and make sure that resource rights and policy are favourable to small scale. For local development outcomes, investments in information, connection and capacity to support small forest enterprises can be highly effective.
See full presentation (PDF 39KB)
The meeting was organised by the Rights and Resources Initiative in collaboration with the ITTO, the Global Alliance for Community Forestry and The World Conservation Union (IUCN).
Key outcomes from the conference included:
- Brazil: community and civil society representatives from Brazil used the event to meet — for the first time in several years — prior to the conference and prepare a set of recommendations for Environment Minister Marina Silva. She later pledged to develop a new policy and programme to support community forestry and enterprises, and has already organized staff in Brasilia to get it underway. There was lots of press attention, with journalists pressuring government officials to explain why tenure and regulations remained such barriers in Brazil;
- Africa: about 26 representatives from Africa attended, including the Democratic Republic of Congo’s environment minister Didace Pembe Bokiaga and the head of the forest agency, Sebastien Malele. There were also strong delegations from South Africa and Cameroon. They met separately to assess implications for Africa and prepared their own set of recommendations. These include a meeting next year in Africa, a plan to set new targets for community tenure and enterprises for the continent by 2015, and collaboration between South Africa and the rest of the continent to promote community forest enterprises.
- Communities: the Global Alliance for Community Forestry used the event to strengthen their numbers and organisation. The alliance was a co-organiser of the event and co-chaired sessions, a powerful signal in itself. They also organised a final declaration of the event, closed the meeting and met separately after the conference to develop new plans.
- ITTO: the ITTO was obviously pleased with and proud of the event and the current executive director Manuel Sobral committed to including at least some of the conference recommendations in the biannual programme currently in preparation. It is now most probable that at least one of the ITTO’s five thematic programmes will be dedicated to community forestry and enterprises, and that funding will be available for more analytical work, more exchanges, and another conference in 2009.
- The media : the meeting received extensive local media attention — with daily coverage in the local press that highlighted the positive role of communities globally. The meeting also reached Brazilian television, the national press and the international press, with extensive hits from the wire services.
For further information on the conference and a copy of a report on community forest enterprises by Augusta Molnar and the Rights and Resources Initiative team see: www.itto.or.jp/live/PageDisplayHandler?pageId=11&id=3381
For further information on Rights and Resources Initiative see: www.rightsandresources.org
For further information on the Global Alliance of Community Forestry see: www.gacf-online.org
For further information on IIED work on:
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International Institute for Environment and Development
