Growing Forest Partnerships

In October 2009 a dedicated web site: www.growingforestpartnerships.org was launched. Please visit for full details of the initiative, videos, further resources and links.

Growing Forest Partnerships is an initiative designed to facilitate local and international partnerships and investment to support stakeholders in their efforts to improve forest livelihoods and ecosystem services.

GFP started work in February 2009, developing pilot processes in three countries: Ghana, Guatemala and Mozambique.

Ghana

In Ghana, where IUCN convened the start-up, a core group of four people, including one representative each of civil society, forest communities, government and the private sector, ran a diagnostic process. This identified key gaps in current forest sector activities that needed filling and worked with a diverse group of people from forest community level to senior government officials to agree on common objectives and priorities.

The Ghana team is now working on a detailed plan that will tackle the key issue of forest governance and participation, particularly as concerns access and rights to use forest resources and capacity strengthening for all groups concerned. Ghanaians who have been part of the process so far have been excited about the fact that it has almost been the first time that a forest process has managed to bring in such a wide range of forest actors.

Guatemala

In Guatemala, the FAO was responsible for catalysing the first actions. There, an initial meeting of forest sector actors identified three priorities for action: forest governance, and in particular the marginalisation of forest communities and indigenous people from some forest decision making processes; financing for forest activities and access to finance by the poorest groups and information sharing and communication. Since that time, a national co-ordinator has been appointed, following terms of reference defined by a group of Guatemalan forest actors, and he is supporting the development of a work plan that addresses these three issues and a cross cutting theme of capacity strengthening.

Some action has started to take place already: in August, indigenous and community forest organisations from across Guatemala convened a meeting to explore the idea of setting up some kind of national alliance that can ensure that the voices of marginalised groups are heard more clearly at national and international level. And in the Guatemalan forestry authority, a small team has been appointed to start working on ideas for finance instruments that can benefit smallholders and forest communities.

Mozambique

In Mozambique, IIED supported a Mozambican organisation, Centro Terra Viva, to facilitate a national diagnostic process. This started off with a discussion at national level about priority issues in the forest sector and was followed by a series of regional workshops to agree on priorities. The five key issues that Mozambicans identified as being important were: rights to use of forest resources by local communities; lessons from community based natural resource management, particularly as concern small and medium forest enterprises; conservation of forests and how to make it work for people and forests; emerging issues such as production of biofuels and the threat they may present to food security as well as to forest land cover and, finally, climate change and the potential opportunities for compensating local communities in their effort to protect forests.

Following on from the regional discussions, the Mozambican team, (now being steered by a national steering group that includes government, civil society, community representatives, private sector and national representatives of the international catalytic group), have identified three pilot sites where solutions to some or all of the key issues can be tested. At the moment, planning is going on with communities and other actors at a local level to draw up detailed work plans.

What’s next?

Now that work has got underway in three countries, GFP is looking at extending its support for national  processes to five more countries and has so far started discussions with key forest actors in Bolivia, Liberia and Nepal.

At the same time, GFP has been supporting an international process looking at investing in locally controlled forestry. This has been supporting three international alliances of forest  “rights holders” – the people who live in, depend on and are the traditional owners and guardians of a huge part of the world’s forests – to explore the challenges they are facing in getting adequate support – financial, technical, political - for their  management of their forest resources. Part of this, still under development, is supporting those alliances to strengthen their voices and their messages, through a range of actions. Part has been to hold dialogues with investors and other forest actors, exploring those challenges and identifying possible solutions, a process which has been facilitated by The Forests Dialogue. And in the longer run, it is hoped that these dialogues and the links made through the increased profile of forest rights holders at an international level will result in concrete actions and partnerships that are working to strengthen the management of forests by rights holders on the ground.