Community Forestry - Module 4.1 Forestry Training Institute, Liberia Community Forestry as an Approach to Resource Governance Reform and Rural Development Community Forestry - Module 4.1 Forestry Training Institute, Liberia

Processes leading to change in forest governance Centralization concentration of power to central government (Rudqvist, 2006) Decentralization any act in which a central government formally cedes powers to actors and institutions at lower levels in a political-administrative and territorial hierarchy (Agrawal and Ribot, 1999) Deconcentration transfer of power from central government to appointee of the central government. Bureaucratic norms remain unchanged (Ribot et al., 2006). Devolution involving transfer of power from central government to actors or organizations that are accountable to local population in their jurisdiction usually through electoral process (Rudqvist (2006; Ribot et al., 2006). Privatization when government cedes power to private non state actors such as private individuals or corporations ((Ribot et al., 2006) Delegation occurs when government entrust forest management responsibility to non-state actor (Donoghue et al., 2003)

Community Forestry as Governance Reform Participatory forest management strategies are designed to share forest access or revenue with local populations (benefit sharing) and to share authority over the resource with them (power sharing). Power sharing seeks to turn local people into forest managers themselves, as a way of sharing the burdens of conservation and management between the state and local communities.

Issues of internal accountability tend to arise in all types of new community-level institutions. The main need is to be to assist communities to form management systems that allow for constructive debate and are fully accountable to community membership. In the process, a good deal of restructuring of community norms often occurs, generally towards more democratic and transparent norms.

Governance Reform: Opportunities Governance reforms encompass legal and regulatory development, institutions of participation, benefit-sharing mechanisms, development of community based forestry enterprises, and biodiversity conservation. From the view point of social justice, it is important to go beyond the elite in the civil society and explore the possibilities of poor, disadvantaged, marginalized groups participating in governance.

Governance Reform: Challenges At least three important factors affect the forms and degree of citizen participation in forest governance: overriding authority claims to “scientific” forestry knowledge and the legitimacy of centralized bureaucracy; social differentiation of citizen groups in terms of caste, class, ethnicity, religion and gender; and deficits in democratic political institutions.

Governance Reform: Challenges Despite the creation of spaces for decentralized governance, actual processes of policy development, program planning and implementation are still steered, controlled and led by technical officials of state forest departments and development projects. The processes of policy making, program planning and implementation in forestry field are still guided by technocratic mindsets of experts, planners and officials with limited opportunities actually available to local community groups and civil society networks to influence policy-practice processes.

Governance Reform: Challenges Such a technocratic emphasis tends to hide the politics inherent in policy making and local level forest management, minimizing the opportunities for deliberative and participatory policy processes. This is particularly so in the forestry sector in which the colonial legacy of science and centralized state institutions continue to exist at least in the mindsets of forest officials working at the state level. Difference in power and hierarchy between people and foresters continues to be wide and ordinary citizens and forest bureaucrats still have problems of mutual mistrust, with limited possibility of direct deliberative engagement. The majority of foresters still attach great value to what can be regarded as technical-rational approaches because of dispositional (habitual), political (for fear of losing power), and knowledge-related (limited opportunity for critical reflection on bookish “scientific” knowledge) reasons.

Governance Reform: Challenges Devolution policy does not guarantee participation of all. While participation of elite members of civil society has improved governance when compared with the state management of forest, the continuing challenge is to understand how marginalized members of civil society can equally participate in the process. In many situations, foresters tend to undermine democratic deliberation. Even when right to manage forests has been transferred to local communities, in many situations forest officials are found to exercise extra legal and significant degree of influence through technical knowledge.