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A New Dawn For Community Forestry In Bolivia

Bolivia’s so-called “agrarian revolution” has set out to institutionalize community forestry, but under models developed by community-based organizations. CIFOR has been strongly involved in informing and facilitating public debate. Photo by Peter Cronkleton

Bolivia is moving forward on agrarian and forest reforms aimed at facilitating access to land and forest resources for indigenous people and rural communities. These reforms will enhance their livelihoods while promoting the sustainable use of forest resources in keeping with land-use potential. The focus is on consolidating community-based forestry management, a process in which CIFOR is playing an important role informing the public policy debate.

Susana Rivero, Bolivian Minister of Rural Development, Agriculture and Environment

In early 2006, a leftist government was carried into office in Bolivia on a wave of popular disenchantment with neo-liberal reforms that dated back to the mid-1980s. These policies had failed to achieve the promised economic growth and poverty alleviation, but they did bring some changes for the nation’s forests.

In the mid-1990s a new law was passed that sought to bring about sustainable forestry, and to promote some forestry decentralization that increased the responsibilities of forest management for municipal governments, primarily by assisting forestry agencies to tackle illegal practices. This new forest law also opened the door for indigenous people to formalize territorial claims, and to gain exclusive rights over the forest resources inside these claimed lands.

However, this policy has had contradictory implications. For example, forest users with greater access to assets and better market positioning have benefited from the situation, but it tended to discriminate against the rural poor, including smallholders and indigenous communities. Furthermore, sustainable forestry management was further undermined by policies aimed at making agricultural commodities competitive in international markets and legalizing large-scale agricultural encroachment onto public lands.

In 2006, the new government embarked on a new approach. Its so-called “agrarian revolution” included distributing available public lands, mechanizing small-scale agriculture, and expanding organic crops. It also set out to institutionalize community forestry, but under models developed by community-based organizations. These policies can have negative impacts by increasing the pressure on forest resources to generate local income, but they also constitute an opportunity to take into account local and indigenous needs, as well as integrated perspectives on forestry management.

Given this context, CIFOR entered the national policy debate with a broad perspective on how forests contribute not only to ecosystem conservation, but also to local economic growth and poverty alleviation. CIFOR engaged with key social organizations and drew on science-based arguments and policy research in the region.

CIFOR has used this information to advance forest reform in Bolivia by drafting ideas for policies and programs that will assist the Ministry of Rural Development, Agriculture and Environment (MDRAyMA) to refocus its rural development priorities to emphasize community-based forest management. These ideas recognize the value of non-timber forest products, as well as timber; promote vigorous, small-scale forestry enterprises; strengthen community capacity for forest management; and value the local forest users’ knowledge and cultural diversity.

In April 2007 the Ministry, in collaboration with CIFOR, the Forest Superintendence (SF) and the Bolivian Confederation of Indigenous People (CIDOB), held a three-day workshop on the future of community forest management in Bolivia. Other supporting institutions included the Ford Foundation, FAO, SNV, Tropenbos, RRG, PROMAB, ForLive, Jatun Sach´a Project and CERES.

Aproximately 180 people attended, including 69 indigenous and colonists representatives, as well as leaders from community-based management initiatives, government agencies, NGOS, and other forest-based institutions from Bolivia and around the world. Forest management experts from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Brazil shared their ideas and experiences, revealing a wide range of different approaches, strategies and challenges.

The outcome was an agenda, which was agreed upon by the central government and social organizations, that outlines key elements and priorities for forest policy reform. CIFOR’s role in informing and facilitating the public debate was explicitly recognized by Susan Rivero, the Bolivian Minister of Rural Development, Agriculture and Environment.