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by Ananda Weerasinghe

The total area covered by natural forest canopy estimated in 1956 was found to be 2.87 million hectares which corresponded to about 44% of the Island's total land area. The 1983 estimate put this figure at 1.76 million hectares or 26.6% of land area. In 1992 the estimate based on satellite imagery showed that the forest cover stood at approximately 1.33 million hectares or 20.2% of land area (Wickremaratne, 1993). The rate of deforestation was 42,000 ha per year from 1956 to 1983 and 54,000 ha per year from then on.

Deforestation can be planned (timber extraction, land clearance, etc.) or unplanned (illegal felling, encroachment, etc.). According to the same source, the rate of deforestation has been steadily increasing even after setting aside a substantial amount for the Accelerated Mahaweli Scheme.

A human settlement bordering a forest

The Government is also aware that illicit timber felling goes on unabated. For instance, the volume of illicitly felled timber increased by 12% in 1999 (Central Bank Annual Report, 1999) and substantially from 2,912 cu metres to 5,662 in the following year (Central Bank Annual report, 2000). According to the same source, the number of forest offences too rose to 4626 in 2000 from 3928 in 1999.

One of the critical effects of forest deterioration and its consequent increase in surface soil erosion is 'desertification' due to which the dry zone hydraulic civilization is in the brink of collapse. Tennakoon (2002) reports that the western half of Anuradhapura district covered by Wilachiya, Rambawewa, Nuwaragampalatha West, Medawachchiya Divisional Secretary divisions show the most advanced phases of desertification and if this trend is not altered the North Central plain will be a desert by the end of the next 40 years. Silt accumulation in the large irrigation reservoirs of Kotmale, Rantembe, Victoria and Polgolla has also been reported to be major concerns of the authorities.

All these go to show that the country's forest cover is not adequately protected thus endangering future food production and life itself. The pertinent question is, what is being done to overcome this situation?

Forest Department is one of the oldest Government agencies in this country with the mandate to protect the natural forests. Their functions have been directed towards enforcing the forest law and in the process, prosecuting offenders and preventing illegal operations.

In 1980 the Government announced a major change and the National Forest Policy statements were expanded to read "to involve the local community in the development of private woodlots and forestry farms through a program of Social Forestry". In other words, Government realized that a handful of officers of the Forest department alone cannot protect the forests satisfactorily and that they must join hands with the people in this effort.

Participatory forestry attempts to establish a partnership between Forest Department and communities who have hitherto had a very poor relationship with a lot of mutual mistrust. The communities that we are talking about consist of those living adjacent to forests and others who have some interaction with forests and can easily fall into the following categories:

* Residents of traditional old villages

* Settlements (medium and large irrigation schemes and other colonies set up by the State)

* Encroachers into State forests for chena farming some of whom are now engaged in producing cash crops

* Encroachers into State forests for the establishment of tea and rubber

* Estate labour

It is essential to understand the behaviour of people that we have to deal with because in new settlements and encroached areas, people's reactions cannot easily be predicted. Generally in rural societies, new 'classes' of people have emerged who are different in behaviour from the traditional villagers.

A class of people would be those who are educated and employed in the State and private sectors and having acquired land and other assets. Another class consists of people who have acquired wealth through producing cash crops and other agro-based products and/or engaged in trading. There are also people who have become tea or rubber smallholders and some of them are also employed and wielded influence over State officials and politicians. Then there are the illicit dealers of timber and other wood products who are also a powerful group of people.

Thus, the target group that a participatory process has to deal with is highly heterogeneous. This needs a good understanding of social behaviour and able to adjust participatory processes that are required in various situations.

Some of the problems affecting our society particularly the rural society need to be addressed before a good partnership is established. The first and foremost is unemployment particularly among youth who have acquired varying levels of education. We see today that village youth who have undergone training as welders, mechanics and electricians in State training institutions remain unemployed and are unable to make use of such training.

Similarly those who have followed computer training courses and other advanced courses not to mention university degrees are also among the job seekers.

In the sixties and seventies village youth who acquired education found jobs in the State departments because the working language was Sinhala. But today most of the jobs are in the private sector where English is a necessity and therefore urban children get preference. Village youth cannot compete with those coming out of private and international schools for jobs in the cities. This has led to frustration and manifests in the form of social insecurity and has become a major problem for rural parents.

The problem of rural unemployment should be addressed before any form of participation can be envisaged. Youth have to change their attitudes and skills to meet the challenges posed by the open economy by taking up to small and medium-scale enterprises for which there is tremendous scope in the villages.

These have not adequately been addressed by Government agencies but a number of projects and non-governmental agencies have already taken the initiative. Forest Department should join hands with other such institutions in this effort and there is provision for this in the Forest Resources Management Project. Unless the communities see a tangible benefit for their burning questions, we cannot expect them to follow the FD just to pick up the leftovers.

How to bring about participation is discussed under three sub-topics namely, why it is needed? What exactly is meant by it? and how to manage a participatory project?

Why participation is needed was discussed from the Government's viewpoint but it is also necessary to look at it from the people's side. Natural resources and community assets that were managed by the people during the rule of kings were taken over by the colonial governments and the traditional systems of management were abolished. People thus lost their sense of ownership of their resources and often had to sit and watch these being plundered by the rulers themselves. Post-Independence governments too continued the same process.

This is how people developed the 'dependency syndrome' and up to now governments have done very little to change this attitude. It was not until the nineteen seventies when governments realized that without the involvement of the communities, natural resources cannot be protected satisfactorily. Since then various government agencies have been trying to involve the people in management and spent colossal sums of public money with varying degrees of success. People are no fools and will not allow themselves to be manipulated by external agencies that attempt to keep them under their control under the guise of participation.

There are three ways by which the Government can enlist communities to protect natural resources:

1. Coercion - that is by applying force on the people. This is the role of law enforcement by FD and Police where persons who break the law are punished. Experience has shown that this has failed and we all know why. Even the Police Department has now realized that they need people's support to combat crime.

2. Incentives - that is by providing incentives for people to plant trees, manage them and work with FD in various ways. When the incentives stop, people also stop participating because most projects have no mechanism to sustain the changes brought about through the incentives.

3. Learning - that is by educating people that they can work with the Government for mutual benefit, conscientiously changing their attitudes that favour such psychological changes and empowering them to act as equal partners with the Government.

The first two options have been tried out unsuccessfully and that leaves us with the third which is at the same time difficult to achieve.

What do we exactly mean by participation? Partnership may be best understood by looking at its commonest form, namely legal marriage between man and woman. The elements of partnership may be simplified as follows:

* Co-operation between two individuals (or organizations) with mutual benefit

* The roles, responsibilities and commitment among the players should be clearly defined and accepted

* Facilitates continuous learning through trust, vision and commitment to common objectives

* Increases resources base and allows opportunities for creativity

* Allows for conflict management

* Community participation envisages to improve livelihood of people through sustainable delivery of services, better response to development needs and broad-basing of work programs and activities

Participatory forestry involves entrusting communities to manage and develop forests resources and take the responsibility for it while the FD would reserve the legal right to prosecute offenders and enforce the law. It means that FD gives up some of its 'power' and transfer to communities effectively through a process of learning and organizing. Both FD and communities (through their own organizations) have to go through this process of learning and reach the ultimate stage of mutual benefit and self-reliance. It is like a parent gradually handing over family responsibilities and assets to the offspring, which is done conscientiously and with commitment. The two things, giving up by FD and taking over by the communities have to go parallel to each other and in a complementary manner.

How realistic and feasible is this? The FD has been and still is a law enforcing agency intrigued by factors that make it difficult to implement a partnership with communities who hitherto have been at the receiving end of bureaucratic arrogance. On the other hand, are communities prepared physically and psychologically to take over the roles expected of them? Both these need to be carefully examined and understood before a program is planned to implement community participation.

What needs to be examined is not the change in attitudes among a few 'extension oriented' staff in FD but the overall change because organizational culture would override individual behaviour under normal circumstances. Each and every official of FD needs to understand the process of participation and be committed totally to implement it sincerely if it is to bring benefits to the people.

The community on the other hand, consists largely of resource limited primary producers struggling to eke out a living among many odds and depending on certain forest products for their existence.

They generally see the FD official as an 'enemy' rather than as their saviour. Communities for well over a century have been subject to dependency on the government for operation and maintenance of their own resources have now to empower themselves by thinking of their own problems and collectively through their own organizations take action to benefit themselves.

This is what we refer to as 'empowerment' and again a situation rather difficult to achieve mainly due to improper implementation techniques and not so favourable attitudes of officials engaged to bring about such change.

If the FD official becomes a person who is willing to listen to communities, guide them to take appropriate action to make use of existing and available resources thus bringing them benefits by way of more employment, additional incomes and also treat them as equal partners in a common effort then the people would rise to fulfil their obligations.

In this partnership there is mutual trust among FD and communities, understand each others' strengths and weaknesses, willingly help each other by promoting self reliance among communities and by protecting forests on behalf of the government. Whether FD has matured to this level is a question. Therefore a third party is necessary to implement this change and monitor the progress, guiding both FD and the communities.

This third party is the Project Management Unit who in turn must be supervised by the Ministry and the lending agency. The Ministry is a accountable to the nation.

Project Management should be competent enough to understand and interpret concepts and objectives and formulate outputs and activities. It should be able to guide the implementing agencies and if necessary push them to implement what the project has planned. Projects usually have an inbuilt monitoring and evaluation mechanism that provide information used for management decisions. Professional managers know how to monitor to activities, benefits and their impacts.

Unfortunately the present trend in Sri Lanka is to treat projects as dumping grounds for retiring officers. It is controversial whether a serving or retired officer of an implementing agency is in the best position to bring about a major social change among the staff of that agency.

The role of a Project Director is very much different from that of a department head and the government ought to rethink on this concept.

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