Sustainable reforestation: Growing tomorrow's forests today

Lionel Wijesiri

President Mahinda Rajapaksa revealed recently that his government has launched a concerted drive to arrest the country's fast depleting forest cover through a systematic reforestation programme. "We are in the process of increasing the country's forest cover from 25 percent to 35 percent and budgetary allocation has already been made for this," he said inaugurating the Deyata Sevana-2012 National Tree Planting Programme. "It is not difficult to meet this target if we are dedicated and hardworking," he further commented.

It is good news. And, it is a desirable goal. Our forests are at risk. They are being burned, degraded and logged at astonishing rates. It is time we open our eyes to our behaviour, our actions towards our forests.

When the British took over the island in the early in the early 19th century it was said that our forest cover was round 80 percent. Starting in the 1830s, the British cleared large tracts of forest mostly in the hilly central region forest for cinchona and coffee and later for tea and rubber plantations. By the time the British left the island in 1948 the forest cover was down to about 54 percent. Over the past six and half decades, it continued to decline up to 25 percent.

The decreasing forest cover had created many problems in the country. Our forests contain 60 million metric tons of carbon in living forest biomass. We have some 750 known species of amphibians, birds, mammals and reptiles of which 22 percent are endemic. We are home to at least 3,300 species of vascular plants, of which 26.9 percent are endemic. 9.6 percent of Sri Lanka is protected under IUCN categories I-V.

We have a treasure to leave behind to our future generations. Let us protect it!

Forest management and recovery

The forest management system in Sri Lanka at present is based on the government command-and-control approach since more than 98 of the forests are owned and managed by the state. However, experience from other countries, shows that community management of natural forests can derive favourable outcomes for sustainable forest management as well as for upgrading the well being of communities living adjacent to the forests

In recent years our rural communities have come to recognize the key role played by farm land and agricultural productivity within their landscape and economies. Substantial time and resources have been devoted to the conservation of land with agricultural potential and actions which assist farmers in reaping fair economic gain from their products. However, the role of forest stewardship and the contribution of forests to the rural economy are rarely mentioned within any of these conversations at the national or local level. It seems that even though a growing proportion of our precious open spaces are tree-covered, we're not really seeing the forest.

It is therefore critical for the government to induce the rural communities to recognize the many ways in which forest land is important to their local economy, social structure, cultural fabric, and environment, and to actively engage in discussion and action to maintain and capture these values at the local level.

Community forestry

The term 'community forestry' is used in a whole range of different ways. For a start, we can use it to describe efforts by communities - those united by a common interest - to recognize and take advantage of the economic and environmental opportunities afforded by their local forest resource. This definition includes a wide range of community-based activities from starting a local discussion group, to become more active in shaping the management decisions of government authorities.

Community forestry is a worldwide phenomenon which began in developing countries and is gradually sweeping from West to East. Until relatively recently, it has been practiced mostly by communities where lifestyles and livelihoods depend upon access to healthy, productive public forest land. Now the communities are beginning to recognize the mutual benefits (and the benefit to the forest) of dialogue and collaboration.

A pilot project carried years ago in Sri Lanka by the Forest Department on community forestry has revealed that, if properly implemented, it can contribute to improve the community infrastructure and facilities, in addition to the environmental benefits including the generation of forest plantations. These were actually achieved in that particular pilot project through community participation.

However, a major constraint was observed in getting people engaged in community forestry due to their livelihood involvements in labor intensive agricultural activities. From the side of the Government, there have been constraints in allocating staff to carry out community forestry activities due to limited number of ground level officers and lack of adequate skills and experience in coordinating and mobilizing communities.

On the other hand, the present legal framework and procedures that are heavily biased to command-and-control approach restrict the capacity of the Government officials to develop strong partnerships with communities. The results indicate that there should be at least few staff dedicated for community forestry, to make it a sustainable venture in the long run.

Opportunities

Residents participate in decisions concerning the forest. That is the basis of community forestry. Recognizing that neighbouring communities stand to suffer most from resource degradation, community forestry aims to provide local people with the meaningful role in forest decision making.

The community begins by protecting and restoring the forest. In Sri Lanka, community forestry programs can focus on areas where the balance between subsistence cultures and the surrounding forests has been upset by resource depletion and resulting social decline. In such places, the first job is conservation and restoration.

They can provide an invaluable opportunity for society in general to engage the knowledge of those living closest to the land in developing a sustainable relationship with the forests. In partnership with these communities, the government can evolve a philosophy of resource use - a system of social and cultural restraints - that is relevant to the demands imposed by today's technologies, population, and rapidly-changing economy.

Constraints

As new demands for forests emerge and new forest values are formulated, new management models, such as community forests, may be required to address society's changing relationship with its forests. However, success of implementation depends on the extent of achieving and maintaining consensus among the diverse group of stakeholders involved.

Few constraints have to be overcome. In some form or another, conflicts may arise in the management hierarchy when diametrically opposed interests are incorporated into a single decision-making body. It is easy for groups to abandon the process if things do not go their way. So maintaining involvement as well as the balance between the broad range of values and interests involved are important challenges for successful community forests. Participants in these processes will need to learn together and from one another to derive common understandings, rather than arriving at the table with a set of demands and holding fast to entrenched positions.

Another constraint will exist prior to the recruitment and retention of active community stake-holders. Institutional barriers, previous commitments and vested interests of both government bureaucrats and community leaders also pose challenges to these new models. As pressure for more and better public involvement grows, people are increasingly willing to put life and limb on the line in an attempt to gain access to the forest management decision-making process.

However, implementing new management models takes time, effort and resources. There is often a great deal of bureaucratic inertia involved in implementing experimental programs. For those community leaders who are interested in innovation and experimentation with respect to better public involvement or new models of forest management, learning curves tend to be steep.

Practically speaking, community forests offer as a better alternative to the current government's command-and-control system. This novel forest management model will offer potential means toward several desired ends: greater accountability for public officials, meaningful opportunities for local communities to share in the responsibility for managing our unique and vast forest heritage, and perhaps more diverse, healthy forests that provide a wide range of benefits to society.