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Forest governance and decentralisation in Africa
Sharing lessons and seeking opportunities through dialogue.
Participants at a recent workshop on forests and decentralisation called for greater community involvement in forest management across Africa. Photo by Laura German
From April 8 to 11, 2008, the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry of South Africa and the Federal Office for the Environment of Switzerland cohosted the “Workshop on Forest Governance and Decentralisation in Africa,” a country-led initiative in support of the United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF).
The workshop, held in Durban, South Africa, brought together stakeholders from government, civil society and regional and international organisations to share experiences on decentralisation and forest governance from across Africa, through presentations, round-table discussions, field trips and information sessions.
Participants explored: the history of decentralisation reforms on the continent; the relationship between decentralisation and rural livelihoods; means of reconciling biodiversity conservation and environmental service protection with decentralised decision making; forest sector finance and governance reforms; and the management of international trade and investment (most notably, timber and carbon) to ensure benefits flow to forest communities.
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The principle of ‘subsidiarity’ should be applied, so that forest management functions are handed to the lowest possible level where agreed aims can be achieved. This will need to go hand-in-hand with efforts to build human and financial capacity.
Laura German,
CIFOR |
Keynote speakers questioned whether democratic decentralisation has been achieved on the continent; stressed the need to build upon the web of institutions and informal networks through which local aspirations and capabilities are most often manifest; and argued for a new institutional architecture for forest governance in the context of expanded forest-based trade and investment based on the principle of checks and balances.
Workshop participants and other speakers stressed the need to remove regulatory constraints to local communities, ensure the downward accountability of local authorities, strengthen local forest tenure rights, and create opportunities for more transparent and deliberative decision making in the sector.
There was also some consensus on the need to align tenure with institutional capacity to manage forests sustainably, in reference to large areas of state forests managed unsustainably due to insufficient human and financial capacity to regulate access.
Field trips included visits to local communities benefitting from South Africa’s land restitution process, field sites of the “Working for Water” programme, research sites where the impact of plantations on stream flow is being assessed, and certified plantations of MONDI. These provided a concrete demonstration of how forest tenure reforms, cross-sectoral approaches to water governance and the influence of international markets on corporate practice are playing out within the host country.
The initiative was co-sponsored by South Africa, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Norway, the United States of America, Germany and Finland. Technical support was provided by CIFOR and Intercooperation.
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