Forests Sourcebook - HCV Resource Network

needs of implementing partners and involved government
agencies.
Overall, the planning approach adopted at the landscape
level needs to be flexible and able to accommodate new
information, monitoring results, changing contexts, and
resource conditions. An adaptive management approach
may be adopted to allow for individual components of the
plan to be amended or altered (see note 4.3, Using Adaptive
Management to Improve Project Implementation).
While it is ideal to put a great deal of effort into each step
of the planning process, implementation and monitoring
activities and limited financial and human resources will
prevent planning teams and authorities from meeting ideal
levels of action. Therefore, it is important that the planning
team prioritize. Honest assessments of available funds and
costs of specific activities must be carried out by the planning
team, in conjunction with stakeholders, to determine
what can truly be accomplished with limited resources and
which activities should be prioritized. The planners must
also evaluate what other stakeholders are, or could be, doing
to complement actions taken by the team and implementing
partners.
Participatory processes succeed where there are common
purposes that could interest all or most of the population,
where the participatory process is flexible and provides for
capacity building and genuine empowerment, and where
there are income and livelihood incentives. The planning
process has to allow for the inclusion of both community
interests at the micro-zone level and the larger-scale objectives.
Furthermore, while adopting a genuinely bottom-up
approach to institutional development is essential, government
commitment to landscape planning is critical to its
success.
NOTES
1. This note was adapted from a guide developed by the
USFS for the Congo Basin Forests of Central Africa as part
of USAID’s CARPE initiative. CARPE is a 20-year initiative
with the objective of reducing the rate of deforestation and
the loss of biodiversity in the Congo Basin Region of Central
Africa. While the approach used in the USAID CARPE
initiative is still under development, and thus cannot be
pointed to as a success story just yet, it is hoped that the
experience there can guide future successful planning
efforts.
The first phase of CARPE (1995–2002) focused on
research and capacity building in the region. CARPE’s second
phase introduced a more focused approach to program
implementation, concentrating CARPE activities in 12
landscapes across the region. These landscapes were chosen
for their biodiversity and conservation importance and
established as foundations of regional conservation and sustainable
natural resource use.
CARPE focuses on the larger landscape unit to maximize
impact, to promote improved natural resource management
over larger areas, and to broaden stakeholder involvement in
land management activities. In light of this need for multipleuse
management expertise of large landscapes, CARPE leadership
has requested that the USFS take on a more strategic
approach within the program to better benefit from USFS
land management expertise gained from 100 years of experience
in the United States. To that end, the USFS has been
asked to develop planning guidelines for comprehensive
landscape-level planning and the different use zones (as
defined by CARPE) within those landscapes: protected areas,
community use, and extractive use. The objectives of this
landscape planning process are to (i) provide planning tools
and standards to support the promotion of sustainable natural
resource management in the landscapes by CARPE partners,
host-country governments, and other stakeholders; (ii)
highlight processes to encourage stakeholder involvement in
land-use planning; and (iii) provide useful standards for
CARPE management to monitor program progress.
CARPE landscape land-use planning prioritizes three
types of zones to be delineated within the landscapes: Protected
Area (PA), Community Based Natural Resource
Management (CBNRM), and Extractive Resource (ERZ)
use zones. These are referred to as macrozones. Each of
these macro-zones will, in turn, also be zoned for differing
uses and levels of resource protection. Additional USFS
planning guides are available to assist in the development of
management plans for these macrozones.
2. In the context of CARPE, landscape planning will define
the CARPE implementing partner activities on each individual
landscape that are needed to improve land management
conditions across the landscape. The activities outlined
in the landscape plans and the subsequent macro-zone
plans will contribute to the long-term management and
sustainability of forest resources in the region and thereby
contribute to the development of livelihood strategies and
economic development activities for those dependent upon
these resources.
3. The advantage of this focused approach is that it invests
the limited planning time and money on the areas considered
critical within the landscape. As information is gathered
and new trends or needs emerge, additional zones can
be designated. To add a new zone, an abbreviated approach
to the landscape planning process, focusing on stakeholder
involvement, should be used.
NOTE 4.1: INTEGRATED FOREST LANDSCAPE LAND-USE PLANNING 137