Forest Sector Development and institutional reform

Forests provide a vast array of environmental, social and economic benefits.  Approximately 1 billion people in the world depend on forests for their livelihoods.  In addition to providing jobs in the timber and paper industries, furniture and building materials, forest resources also provide people in developing countries with fuel, food, shelter, medicines and raw materials.  However, access to such a valuable resource is often highly contested. 

FRR has a proven ability to analyse, design and support the political, economic and social reform processes that contribute to real and lasting pro-poor change.  We do this by: 

Some examples of our work in forest sector development include: 

FOREST SECTOR DEVELOPMENT PROJECT: VIETNAM CONSERVATION FUND

The Vietnam Conservation Fund (VCF) is a new financing mechanism that provides small grants to initiate and improve management of special use forests of high biodiversity value on a competitive basis.  The VCF supports the management of protected areas that meet specific eligibility criteria.  FRR assists the SUF management boards, building the capacity needed within the management boards and local communities to access VCF funds, and the capacity required to use the grants effectively. A key priority for the majority of protected areas in Vietnam is strengthened capacity for forest protection and an important of the role is in designing appropriate capacity-building programmes for the protected areas.

ORISSA FOREST SECTOR SUPPORT PROJECT

The Orissa Forest Sector Support Project (OFSSP) was a £1.5 million DFID funded project which aimed to generate pro-poor economic growth in one of India’s poorest states.  Part of a wider programme which included fisheries and tourism, OFSSP focused on policy development, improving the effectiveness of the State's forest sector, whilst ensuring sustainable utilisation of valuable forest resources.  Policy studies were undertaken in key areas, such as deregulation of non-timber forest products, bamboo and promoting utlisation of trees outside forests.  Other intitatives were undertaken to improve the efficiency of the Orissa Forest Department, including introduction of a HR Managament Information System and development of an external communications strategy to enable the Department to communicate more effectively with rural forest dependant communities. 

OFSSP also implemented a number of innovative pilot projects which aimed to encourage the formation of new kinds of partnerships between government bodies, communities and civil society groups and the private sector, to encourage pro-poor income generation activities.  These pilot projects included development of community based eco-tourism operations in selected national parks and nature reserves: providing training and support to women's groups in value addition and marketing of key non-timber forest products (NTFPs), such as siali leaf and tamarind; and technical training and provision of marketing support for bamboo artisans.   Visit the OFSSP website here. 

GHANA FOREST SECTOR DEVELOPMENT PROJECT (FSDP) PHASE I & II

FRR managed the implementation of Phases 1 and 2 of this national level institutional reform project.  The project has strengthened both the demand and supply side for policy reform, to create an enabling environment for reform of the Ghanaian forest sector.  The project has strengthened the organisational, legislative and governance environment to enable forest management to meet policy objectives, by being sustainable and contributing to poverty reduction and economic growth.  Key activities have included:

• facilitating development of a full understanding of national and international policy development and impacts within the Ghana Parliamentary Committee on Lands and Forests;
• training and capacity building in economic and policy analysis within the executive branch of the Forestry Commission (FC);
• a review of forest revenue systems and facilitation of a major policy change which lead to increases in timber stumpage (the previously low level of this tax meant that Ghanaian forest timber was significantly under priced and created perverse incentives for unsustainable exploitation of the forest);
• a review of the forest industry sector through a nationwide consultative process and development of recommendations to ensure that civil society benefits were strengthened;
• development of a benefit sharing framework within forest concession contracts to ensure that increased community benefits from forest management are enshrined in law;
• design and implementation of a national level consultative process in support of the development of a Forestry Commission Service Charter which gives rights to civil society organisations and communities for forest services, and the subsequent dissemination of the Charter through the national media; 
• development and piloting of approaches for participatory forest management planning, including Community Forest Committees and the creation of district level forestry fora as a platform for civil society engagement with the FC on issues including forest law and policy and resource management; and
• support to the merger of four sector agencies, staff downsizing, introduction of new accounting systems, facilitating the organisations first two years of consolidated audited accounts, new transparent measures to disclose benefit sharing payments to communities, a new pay and grading scheme and oversight of move to a new single co-location.

Together with the Ghana Civil Society Strenthening Facility and the Ghana Lands and Forest Policy Support Facility, which were also manageed and implemented by FRR, FSDP makes up a Sector Wide Institutional Reform programme for the Ghanaian Forest Sector.  These sector wide reforms were considered by DFID to be one of the major successes in its Ghana Country Programme. 

FOREST PLANTATION INITIATIVE - MALAWI

The Malawi Forest Plantation Initiative aimed to reform the systems of forest management in the country's state-owned forest plantations.  The objective of the project was to promote greater efficiency and productivity in the utilisation of Malawi's forest resources, with the aim of driving economic growth. The government's policy was to change from a system in which forest management was carried out by the state, to one which allowed government-regulated concessions to private sector and community forest managers.  The aim of these changes were to ensure optimum opportunities for economic development, with a strong focus on pro-poor growth, civil society rights, and generating maximum benefits and options for business partnerships.