Forests Sourcebook - HCV Resource Network

ole in decision making related to the management of forest
resources. In most countries, the strength of legal frameworks
is becoming more important as forest resources
become increasingly scarce and thus the focus of conflicts
between different stakeholders (Lindsay 2000).
General decentralization laws will provide most of the
legal framework for the forest institutions of government,
which must become aligned with those broader laws. An
assessment of the legal frame of reference needed to make
forest decentralization effective may be required. In most
cases, the forest administration alone may be able to handle
many of the desired regulatory changes without resorting to
parliamentary sanctioning.
Participation, empowerment, and poverty alleviation.
An important requirement for decentralization
processes to succeed and ensure transparency is the ability
of local governments to work with local communities and
other private sector and civil society stakeholders. The government’s
underlying political philosophy must allow local
participation in the formulation of local plans and policies
and the local forest administration must have capacity to
manage these interactions. Government should be fully
committed to involving local communities and other stakeholders
in decisions related to implementation of forest
programs. Adequate management of the interactions
between local governments, communities, and private sector
entities that may participate in joint schemes for the
management of forest resources requires, in addition to
capacity to handle technical matters, substantial changes to
attitudes and institutional incentives. When these capabilities
are not available, technical assistance to support intensive
training of government officers, communities, and
enterprises will be needed.
Participation mechanisms are likely to work better when
government institutions and bureaucracy are exposed to
incentives that reward participation; this often means
accountability to local institutions and populations rather
than exclusively to higher levels of government. In those
cases where decentralization is based on local governments
run by officials democratically elected by local constituencies,
participation and bottom-up approaches to forest
management are easier to integrate. But there are other
complementary mechanisms as well, including joint projects
(for example, comanagement schemes), planning advisory
groups, monitored self-regulation of forest-related
activities (particularly relevant for the private commercial
sector), citizen appeals processes for government decisions,
forest forums involving government and civil society, and
mandatory disclosure of forest administration records.
Local citizen group participation, as observed in Bolivia,
India, and Nepal, has contributed to ensuring that measures
imposed by higher levels of government take local conditions
and traditions into consideration.
Participation by communities and local populations in
local government decisions and implementation of forest
programs works better when there are clear and tangible
benefits associated with such participation for all stakeholders.
The flow of information between local governments
and local groups must therefore be adequate to enable participatory
decision making.
Adequate balance of responsibilities, powers, and
resources at each level of government. To function
effectively and efficiently, each level of government and corresponding
agencies must possess sufficient authority to
fulfill the responsibilities allocated to them. While this balance
is hard to determine with precision in practice, authority
without a corresponding measure of responsibility fosters
mismanagement and creates opportunities for
corruption. In the same vein, responsibility without a measure
of power to command resources and implement
actions cannot be adequately discharged.
At the same time, power and responsibility are meaningless
unless each level of government and each agency can
count on adequate financial and human resources. There is
no real local autonomy if higher levels of government have
exclusive control over what programs and projects will
receive financial support (see box 5.5). Transfers of financial
resources to lower levels of government are normally
needed to empower local levels of the public forest administration
to carry out management activities. In some cases,
local autonomy may require retention of forest revenues
captured by local governments.
Apply the principle of subsidiarity. Although there is no
formula for deciding what degree of decentralization is optimal
to ensure good forest governance, certain functions are
best left at the central level and others can best be carried out
locally. Subsidiarity, a fundamental concept behind decentralization,
establishes that government functions should be
carried out at the lowest possible level of government where
capacity exists or can be readily created. The proper application
of this principle requires an assessment of capacities at
different levels of government and of institutions of civil
society and the private sector that could assume responsibility
for various forest management–related functions. Such
assessment is a useful tool for judging the relative desirabil-
162 CHAPTER 5: IMPROVING FOREST GOVERNANCE