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ENVS 295/ FOR 285/ NR 385 Community-based Forestry at Home and Abroad

ENVS 295/ FOR 285/ NR 385 Community-based Forestry at Home and Abroad. Jan 16, 2007. Course Learning Goals. Practice : Activities & goals of community-based forestry (as an example sustainable, community-based resource management) Diverse forms in different countries & contexts

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ENVS 295/ FOR 285/ NR 385 Community-based Forestry at Home and Abroad

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  1. ENVS 295/ FOR 285/ NR 385Community-based Forestry at Home and Abroad Jan 16, 2007

  2. Course Learning Goals Practice: • Activities & goals of community-based forestry (as an example sustainable, community-based resource management) • Diverse forms in different countries & contexts • Critiques: issues of ecology, economy and equity

  3. Course Learning Goals Theory : • Key economic and sociological concepts that underlie community-based resource management • What constitutes a socio-political-economic system that determines practice and how such systems might be changed

  4. Course Learning Goals Technology: • What websites can and do communicate; audiences and expectations • Specific skills in designing a website and developing content • Implications for grassroots efforts in a web-oriented society

  5. Course Learning Goals Service: • Understanding one CBF group in some depth, including their local context • Understanding the challenges and benefits of developing a reciprocal relationship long distance with a community-based group • Good group process and collaborative skills in creating a product of use to a social change organization

  6. Elements of Community-based forestry Communities share in … • decision-making and benefits, and • contribute labor and knowledge, • in managing forests and utilizing forest products, • with the goal of achieving social well-being and ecological health.

  7. Additional elements of CBF • Participatory processes • Multiparty • Transparent & fair • Economic activity • Means to an end? • Not just preservation • “small business model • Equity • In both process and distribution of costs & benefits • Attention to ancestral rights • Ecological sustainability

  8. Idea(l)s of Community • Place vs. Interaction vs. Identity • Homogeneity vs heterogeneity • Culture, ethnicity, class • Power, interests • Internal vs external linkages • horizontal vs vertical ties • bridging vs bonding social capital • Ambiguity: specificity vs inclusiveness • “community” is all about exclusivity

  9. Idea(l)s of Community cntd Working with Ambiguity… • “Community” has multiple, often powerful meanings that appeal to diverse groups • Instrumental Use • by powerful & powerless • to reorder, restore or maintain soc-pol-econ relationships • Ask: As opposed to what? • Gesellschaft – functional (market) relations • Scale – small vs industrial? • Ownership: Orientation re: governance & benefits • Be as clear as you can

  10. Common characteristics of rural Forest Communities • physically isolated • relatively poor/ “pockets of poverty” • high poverty • high unemployment • little local capital • lack of control over forest resources: • government control of most forest land • external ownership of private timber land and sawmills • degraded forest resources: • Often due to extraction for export to urban centers • Also do to competition for other land uses • little reinvestment in the land and local communities • politically and economically weak

  11. Challenges & Opportunities: Community conditions Changing demographics: two paths This graph roughly represents the issue that some rural areas are growing and thriving and others are experiencing economic and population decline. Even within rural communities, some families are doing well and others struggling due to current economic changes, including the decline fo the tradition forestry industry.

  12. Challenges & Opportunities: Community Conditions Changing economies & demographics: two paths

  13. Common characteristics of rural Forest Communities continued • dependent on forest in diverse ways (not just commodities but also subsistence, recreation and cultural practices) • strong identity with the place • deep concern over the fate of the local forests • deep concern about local socioeconomic conditions • diversity among residents • history of conflict over resource use: • between community and the national government over forest management • between interest groups and the government over forest management • among local user groups

  14. “It seemed like a good idea at the time…” Recurrent themes in: • Notions of community • Bureaucracy • Silviculture • Eucalyptus • Clearcuts, regulation forestry … • “Community stability” and sustained yield units • International development models • Privatization of communal property Always ask: • Who benefits? • Who loses? • Context, history, power relations

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