Forests Sourcebook - HCV Resource Network

Institutional development of capacity takes time. Thus, longterm
technical assistance appears to be an indispensable part of
future poverty-oriented interventions. Experiences in Brazil
and Mexico suggest that options for the delivery of technical
assistance should include consideration of training of rural
producers and careful exploration of the tradeoffs involved in
privatizing technical assistance because the latter can reduce
the possibility of building up institutional capacity of
government agencies.
Often, investments by national governments in rural
areas are low. This is partly due to an inadequate understanding
of poverty rates and poverty density in forest areas.
Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) have become
the main mechanism for governments in developing countries
and some middle-income countries to define their
budget and policy priorities and discuss those priorities
with the international community. Unfortunately, however,
in the initial PRSPs, interim PRSPs, and National Forest
Programs (NFPs), the pivotal role of forests in sustaining
rural livelihoods, especially those of the poor and marginalized,
has been neglected. There has been relatively little
analysis of the contribution of forests to rural livelihoods,
nor of the measures required to capture or expand the
potential. Forest and tree products, particularly nontimber
forest products, often fall between sectors with neither
forestry nor agricultural agencies collecting data on household
collection, use, and sales (see note 1.1, Mainstreaming
the Role of Forests in Poverty Alleviation: Measuring
Poverty-Forest Linkages).
FUTURE PRIORITIES AND SCALING-UP
ACTIVITIES
In many regions the issues of natural resource management,
poverty reduction, and local empowerment are loosely
intertwined and cannot be tackled in isolation. Most of the
linkages between forestry and rural poverty are also closely
associated with what is happening in agriculture and the
rural economy. For example, conversion of forests to either
temporary or permanent agriculture can contribute to
poverty alleviation. Forestry and agriculture activities need
to be closely aligned with components of rural development
strategies and programs.
This could be done through the following:
■
Adapting forestry and agriculture interventions to changes
being introduced in forestry, agriculture, and rural
economies. For example, agroforestry, tree crop plantations,
and scattered trees on farmland can potentially assist
■
■
with poverty alleviation while conserving forests. Forest
and tree components will be more important where
changes in agriculture result in greater reliance on agroforestry;
this could occur as a result of the availability of
land, labor, or capital favoring tree crops; agricultural
income increasing local commercialization of subsistence
goods such as fuelwood; or improved rural infrastructure
providing farmers with greater access to markets.
Exploiting opportunities that rural development interventions
create for forest-based activities. The growing
importance of nonfarm rural activities as a source of
rural household income and the share of nonfarm total
income accounted for by forest product activities make
this an important avenue by which forests can contribute
to poverty alleviation.
Understanding and taking into account information on
cross-sectoral impacts of forest-based poverty situations.
For forest activities to have pro-poor impacts and reduce
poverty, future activities must focus on better distribution
of resource rights, both property and procedural. Control
over and access to resources critical to growth and livelihoods
is the main governance issue for rural people, including
Indigenous Peoples and other communities with customary
rights. There is a need for greater commitment to
ensure that the rights of communities and forest-dependent
households are entrenched in appropriate legislation and
regulations, that mechanisms exist to implement them, and
that these mechanisms are functioning properly. This
includes establishing ownership and precisely defining
rights, which will provide incentives for the poor to invest in
forest management. Equally important is the need for forms
of governance for common pool resources that can address
the weaknesses in many existing comanagement systems
(see note 1.3, Indigenous Peoples and Forests, and note 1.4,
Property and Access Rights).
Timber harvesting must become more pro-poor. Local
access to and management of natural forests, smallholder
tree growing, and small-scale enterprise development as
strategies to avoid capture by local elites in CBFM are central
to a more pro-poor use of timber (see note 1.2, Community-Based
Forest Management). There is a need to
remove regulatory barriers and excessive state regulation to
facilitate CBFM in areas other than degraded forests and
enable management of forests for multiple purposes. From
an analytical standpoint, there is a need for more research
into pluralistic systems of comanagement that really do
function effectively and equitably and for pilot testing of
those models that show promise.
22 CHAPTER 1: FORESTS FOR POVERTY REDUCTION