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| Field Workshops |
• CAO BANG, VIET NAM
• ANDHRA PRADESH, INDIA
• MACTAN ISLAND, CEBU, PHILIPPINES
CAO BANG, VIET NAM
17-25 September 2003
The Asia Forest Network held its 3rd Regional Field Workshop in Cao Bang, Viet Nam last September 7-12 with the theme "Sustaining and Enhancing Planning and Collaborative Agreements for Community Forest Management." Cao Bang was chosen as venue as it is an example where villagers and communes have been able to get different government authorities to agree on village forest management, without a formal national community forestry policy.
Activities were designed to get participants to learn from each other's strategies. Just like in the previous regional activities, the 3rd Regional Field Workshop gathered a small number of participants to enable a more dynamic and richer interaction.
Some 20 participants came from AFN field partners in Cambodia, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand and Viet Nam. The participating field partners were those who have been facilitating management planning processes with communities and have been developing collaborative agreements with local governments in their respective sites. The Forest Inventory and Planning Institute (FIPI), a government agency under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development in Viet Nam, was co-host to the workshop with the AFN secretariat.
Documentation:
Sustaining and Enhancing Planning and Collaborative Agreements
for Community Forest Management [pdf 1670Kb]
Workshop Field Visit Guide [pdf 162Kb]
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ANDHRA PRADESH, INDIA
10-16 March 2002
In the Indian state of Andra Pradesh, a low cost, rapid forest restoration strategy is being developed relying on community management groups. Closure of degraded forests by forest protection committees is facilitating the coppice and seed based regeneration of nearly two million hectares of badly degraded state forest land. Costs average only 5 to 10 percent of that required for plantation establishment and natural regrowth is faster, yielding many non-timber forest products (NTFP). In both the wet and dry deciduous forests, community enforcement of self-imposed bans on grazing and cutting allow one meter high scrub-lands to transition into young secondary closed canopy forests with 4 to 8 meters within a period of five years.
The workshop allowed professional forest planners and administrators involved with reforestation projects in Southeast Asia to examine the Indian experience with community based natural regeneration as a low cost approach to forest restoration. Participants gained an understanding of policy and field operational strategies that allow district and sub-district level foresters to rapidly assess ecological and social opportunities for initiating regeneration projects.
Participants reviewed the reforestation strategy of Andhra Pradesh and met with both senior forest department officers and field staff to discuss how their policies and practices are changing to engage communities as co-managers of degraded forests. The group also spent time with communities and field foresters in Behrangooda Village to find out how village-based forest protection and assisted natural regeneration is restoring forest ecosystems in the area. The field visits showed how communities are generating income through NTFPs as well as timber management. The visitors reviewed how forest departments, local government, communities, emerging federations, and community credit associations are interacting to form a new institutional framework for forest and watershed management in the region. The workshop concluded with discussions on the relevance of India's experience with community-based assisted natural regeneration for Southeast Asian nations.
Documentation: Community-Based Natural Regeneration [pdf 2321Kb]
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MACTAN ISLAND, CEBU, PHILIPPINES
17-22 February 2002
The Philippines hosted the first regional field workshop on Strategies in CFM Diagnosis and Planning. The workshop aimed to support AFN country partners in the field as they design strategies in their own areas to assist communities and local government officials in conducting forest and watershed management planning activities.
Country partners presented methods that they will use for CFM diagnosis and planning in their sites. Resource persons were invited to share their experiences and present these in such a way that country partners could connect with the experience, giving emphasis on flexible methods that can be adjusted to each country and site specific context.
Participants and resource persons presented HOW they: identify forest user communities and their spatial domain, document indigenous land use systems, conduct an inventory of community strategies for natural regeneration, scope existing dialogue mechanisms between communities and local government, and assess the site's potential for collaborative management.
The following strategies for community-driven planning and management were discussed:
- Reorienting outlook of people in charge of policy implementation towards "People first and forests will follow"
- Building capacity of forestry officials to deputize communities for forest protection
- Reaching communities at the smallest level of community organization and empower them to become resource managers
- Joint forest land use planning between forestry departments and local government units
- Co-management agreements on the field level between regional offices of forestry departments and LGU
- Integrating CBFM with the watershed management approach
- NGOs as means of disseminating information to communities and assistance in preparing resource management plans
- Using traditional land use classifications to understand and explain resource extraction patterns
The workshop was organized in such a way that country partners could interact and learn from resource persons and co-participants. At the end of the workshop, they articulated how their learnings would be used in their own project areas by presenting their revised strategies. Over the next two months after the workshop, AFN will be visiting the country partners to see how their strategies are being applied in the field.
Documentation:
Strategies In Diagnosis And Planning For Community Forest Management [pdf 4453Kb]
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