Towards Wellbeing in Forest Communities: A Source Book for Local Government

Concepts: Four steps to improve local governmental action

There are four steps that local governments can take to improve their response to the poor:

Understand local poverty/wellbeing
Communicate and coordinate with the poor
Take actions that benefit the poor
Achieve a balance across different aspects of wellbeing.

Box 3. What are local governments doing to reduce poverty in Pando?

Municipal governments in Pando are still adjusting to their new tasks and opportunities since the decentralisation reforms started. However, there are some notable successes. Municipal governments have responded to requests from villages to build water systems, school buildings and roads, and supply small electricity generators. And, although healthcare and education services are provided by agencies separate from the municipal governments, the municipal council does play a role by appointing members to oversee the implementation of these services. In the political field, municipal governments have significantly increased the participation of their constituents in municipal decision making. However, the process is still far from achieving its intended outcome.

Because of low funding, the ability of the municipal government to influence the wellbeing of families is limited. Municipalities receive funding from the national government on the basis of the size of the local population; however, it is often not possible to know the actual population. It is difficult to determine municipal populations in Pando, because of poorly defined boundaries and seasonal migration of labour during the Brazil nut harvest—some municipal populations swell to three times their ‘official’ population during the Brazil nut season. Even though migrants are not formal constituents of municipal governments and are not included in per capita budget allocations, local governments often have to provide them with services anyway. As the mayor of El Sena pointed out, migrants can place a significant strain on local budgets, such as healthcare costs during malaria outbreaks.

While decentralisation expands the responsibilities and power of municipal governments to help local residents, these efforts are often duplicated or dwarfed by much larger programmes carried out by the departmental government. The department’s responsibilities include infrastructure, education, healthcare, natural resource management and municipal strengthening. The people heading departmental governments were, until recently, political appointees, rather than directly elected representatives of the department’s population. As appointees they were notoriously unresponsive to public needs, ineffective and, in some cases, seen as corrupt. The 2005 reforms that mandated direct election of departmental governors brought widespread hope that the departmental officials would be more responsive and accountable to their electorate, although initial indications are mixed.

Local government officials meet with a CIFOR researcher at their office in Pando.

These steps are based on observations of dozens of efforts by local governments around the globe.

1. Understand local poverty and wellbeing

To understand the nature of poverty in their area, local government needs answers to the following questions:

Who is poor and where are they located?
What are the characteristics of poverty?
What are the local differences in the way poverty is perceived?
What are the causes and conditions of poverty?
What are the priorities of different groups of the poor?
What are the current livelihoods or coping strategies of the poor?
How well do efforts to reduce poverty work?

Understanding poverty requires learning about the poor and how development activities can help them. It also means understanding how the conditions of poverty change. These questions need to be addressed from time to time to keep local government’s understanding up to date. Poor households are often adept at managing diverse livelihoods to offset risks, so development interventions should take care not to undermine these survival strategies that are working and not to generate dependency. Gathering information about poverty can be part of a monitoring and evaluation programme. Interactive mapping (Tool 1) and monitoring household wellbeing (Tool 2) are examples of tools that can be used for this purpose.

2. Communicate and coordinate with the poor

One of the biggest challenges for local government is to improve communication, interaction and coordination with the poor. In many places, the poor are the last group to receive attention, as they often have little influence in local politics, live in inaccessible areas or suffer prejudice and discrimination based on ethnicity, class or gender.

Yet, building the capabilities of the poor can lead to a strong base for later economic and political gains. Improving communication and coordination can help local government and the poor to develop mutual understanding and constructive engagement to undertake actions together.

Open discussion with the poor should be conducted repeatedly to improve local government’s understanding of poor people’s priorities. The tools on community evaluation of government programmes (Tool 3) and on scenario-based planning (Tool 4) are examples of some ways to do this.

Good communication requires commitment to visit the poor in their homes, fields or in the forest. People may be more willing to express opinions in their own community than in a government office. Physical presence in places where the poor lead their daily lives helps officials to witness firsthand what the poor experience.
Measures to strengthen participation and representation of different groups of the poor and accountability to them are necessary to support the views of the poor in government decision making. Examples of such measures include holding meetings in places more accessible to the poor, instituting secret ballots to vote on decisions, or even simple actions like letting people know that they are invited to voice their opinions. Local government can then work better together with the poor to develop actions to be taken.

Explicit effort should be made to address the needs of ‘invisible’ groups, such as women, children, elderly and some ethnic groups that are especially at risk of being overlooked and marginalised. At the same time, care should be taken to avoid stigmatising or disempowering the disadvantaged, which could freeze them into a permanent category as ‘the poor’. Conversely, poverty alleviation interventions could potentially provoke negative dynamics between impoverished subgroups if the actions are perceived as favouring one group over another, for example women over men, or one ethnic minority over other groups.

3. Take actions that benefit the poor

Local governments can influence poverty through the decisions they make. Opportunities for being more responsive to the poor arise in the planning or budget allocation process each year, as well as in how decisions are implemented. Opportunities can also appear unexpectedly. If local governments are gathering information and listening to their constituents, they will be more aware of actions that need to be taken. Effectiveness also requires the agility to respond while the opportunity is present.

Local governments can create enabling environments that provide freedom and opportunities to make the best use of people’s own capabilities and assets. They can provide support, facilitate cooperation among stakeholders and reduce vulnerability. However, at the same time, local governments should aim at the sustainable improvement of wellbeing.

To respond to the needs of poor people, local governments need to make sustainable poverty reduction a priority and be aware of how the decisions that they make affect the wellbeing of people in their area. Unless reducing poverty is made a top concern, there will always be a tendency to give attention to the concerns of more influential people.

Box 4. The difficulties of making poverty a priority in Malinau

In 2004, a Poverty Alleviation Committee was created in Malinau to reduce the number of poor people in the district. In accordance with a directive from the central government, the committee was required to produce a strategic poverty alleviation plan, home district government programmes, and mainstream funds towards poverty alleviation in the budget.

The committee did not coordinate a coherent or influential poverty programme. Coordination across sectors was problematic, as the committee lacked financial resources and authority. Few members had any experience related to poverty alleviation. The committee’s planning and budget recommendations were not integrated into district decision making. Most district officials saw the committee as irrelevant. The criteria for poverty were imposed by the central government and developed without consideration of local conditions in forested districts.

Meanwhile, the district’s budget rose more than 200% between 2001 and 2003, with funds from the centre still contributing 69–70% of district revenues and districts generating 4–6%. The majority of the districts’ budgets were used to develop new district capitals, mainly for constructing government offices and providing civil servants’ housing and supporting facilities.
In 2004, the Poverty Alleviation Committee chairperson proposed 28 programmes to tackle poverty issues and these were included in the district’s strategic plan. However, the programmes were not included in the budget.

Local government office in East Kalimantan

All these principles are equally important. For example, promoting increased harvests of forest resources in a way that is not sustainable could give people more cash wealth in the short term, but place them at risk when this source of income disappears and they have no means for generating more. Aiming to reduce vulnerability through aid for food or shelter, for example, will not reduce chronic poverty, unless sustainability and opportunities are also addressed.
Certain actions by local government provide higher pay-offs for the poor than others. In Bolivia and Indonesia, the highest benefits to the poor occurred when local government supported:

Access to benefits from timber harvesting and other forest products
Health and education services
Recognition of land rights of the poor
Infrastructure development
Access to jobs
Communication among constituents and with local government.

In many places, local governments are not using the opportunity to use forest resources for poverty alleviation. Local government should support management of valuable forest resources to reduce poverty. They can do this directly through local economic development policies. Even when a local government does not have direct authority over forest resources, it can act as an advocate for people living in forest areas and assist them in dealing with other government agencies. For example, government officials responsible for forest resources who may ignore a request from a poor village would be more likely to respond to a meeting convened by a local government agency. Care should be taken that economic development and forest management activities are consistent with poverty reduction aims.
Some ways in which forests can be managed for the benefit of the poor include improving their access to and control of forest resources, educating the poor on their forest rights, protecting the forest assets of the poor, creating an enabling environment for the development of forestry enterprises and conservation, better distributing forest benefits to the poor, and supporting downstream market development.

From a regulatory perspective, local government can ensure the labour safety of forestry operations, enforce property rights and affect how benefits are distributed. Government can lobby to coordinate regulations across sectors, especially forestry, economic development, poverty reduction regulations and environmental sectors. Local government can support choices of species, quantities and products to be managed that better match the needs and preferences of the poor.

It should not be assumed that forestry is always the most important sector to develop. In some cases, other more intensive forms of land use, employment or other services will be more effective ways of addressing poverty. Forest dependence can become a poverty trap where the livelihood benefits are insufficient to enable people to ever accumulate surplus or have enough economic security to choose an alternative livelihood.

Local government should not benefit only people that already enjoy a strong economic or political position. Preventing elite capture of benefits and protecting the rights of the poor is essential. Transparent actions that call attention to excessive benefits to elites or illegal practices should be encouraged. Monitoring the impacts of actions is essential to adjust and improve future efforts.

4. Achieve a balance across different aspects of wellbeing

Local government can promote projects that strengthen the forestry sector, such as the processing of rattan.

Local government can influence many different aspects of poverty. Balance is needed among the natural, economic, social and political spheres (see ‘What are the dimensions of poverty and wellbeing?’ above) and core conditions that affect people’s subjective wellbeing. Box 5 gives some examples of how local government can influence wellbeing across these different areas.

Development interventions often involve trade-offs where gains in one sphere are made at the cost of losses in another. For example, forest conversion to oil palm generated significant income in Indonesia, but also degraded the forest and increased the vulnerability and food insecurity of poor households which depended on the forest.

Many local governments are quick to focus on the economic sector and give less attention to the other dimensions, because they may be more sensitive or less visible and there is less knowledge about how to deal with them. However, for achieving sustainable development, all NESP spheres are necessary and can be mutually reinforcing.

Where local governments are newly formed, building capacity in these four areas may be necessary. Although many local governments are still struggling with their new mandates, there are positive signs that decentralisation can benefit the poor and improve wellbeing. Being closer to those in need, listening to them, and regarding them as partners in development is a first step. In addition, efforts should be made to enhance the capacity and professionalism of local government, as well as to develop mechanisms for addressing wellbeing in all spheres in a sustainable way.

Box 5. Spheres for local government to improve wellbeing and reduce poverty

Natural Sphere	Economic Sphere	Social Sphere	Political Sphere
Provide and enforce legal frameworks for sustainable forest resource use Support conservation efforts Mediate conflict between customary and legal resource access rules.	Create a stable enabling environment for economic development Attract investors Support small and medium-sized enterprises Facilitate access to capital and markets.	Identify and communicate with relevant social groups Offer mediation for conflicts and disputes among villages or between villages and enterprises Encourage social cohesion Promote collaboration among local interest groups.	Empower villages and vulnerable or marginalised groups through more participation Establish genuine two-way communication with the poor Provide and enforce legal protection and security Increase transparency and fight corruption.

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