CFE 7104 Advanced Community Forestry

Course Objectives

Upon completion of the course, students should be able to;

  • Assess the potential of community forestry work within a wide (social, market, political and environmental) context
  • Identify the mechanisms by which competing claims on tree resources are materialized.

Specific skills that students will acquire include:

  • Capability to use and analyse models of the links between forest/tree resources and rural economy.
  • Ability to recommend effective institutional mechanisms for solving tree resource allocation conflicts amidst growing resource pressures and demands.
  • Develop adaptive and integrated plans for implementation of sustainable community forestry projects and programmes using participatory approaches and tools.
  • Ability to assess the effectiveness and consequences (economic and socio-political) of forestry policies, reforms agendas related to community forestry.
  • Formulate mechanisms for effective stakeholder empowerment and group formation to share experiences and lessons learned from community forest / tree management activities.

Course Outline

Principles and concepts

  • Definitions and concepts: Community, Social, Agroforestry, Farm forestry
  • Why Community forestry?
  • Basic principles of community forestry
  • Evolution of community forestry & social values
  • Changing social values and industrial forestry.
  • Community forestry experiences from the Asia-Pacific Region

2. Off-farm tree management

  • Policy framework to support on-farm tree management
  • Alley farming: Have resource poor farmers benefited?
  • Socio-economic factors affecting adoptability
  • Local knowledge and customary practices

3. Access and Rights to Forest Products and Land for Local people

  • Village level issues of land and tree tenure
  • Distribution of Rights between Governments and Forest Users
  • Distribution of Rights among communities of Forest Users
  • Distribution of Rights within communities of Forest Users
  • Property rights, Access, ownership, control, governance: Who has user rights
  • What happens when resources become valuable?
  • Private land forestry policy and silvicultural Activities
  • Conflict management
  • Case studies of conflict resolution and public involvement

4.Community-based Organizations for Forest management

  • Working with forest communities
  • Developing a community-based organization
  • Differing levels of autonomy
  • Forging Institutional Linkages: Vertical and Horizontal
  • How fit are local organizations to govern forest sector?
  • Decentralisation as a means to strengthen the power of local communities

5. Common property resources and regimes

  • Tragedy of the commons and wastelands
  • Sustainability, environmental integrity, population growth challenges
  • Institutional requirements for sustainancy
  • Criteria and Indicators for Sustainable Forest Management
  • Domestication of Wild Woodland tree species

6. Multiple-Use Management of the Forest Resource

  • Agroforestry
  • Farm Forestry: Past and Present
  • Management of Natural Woodland
  • Natural Forest Regeneration
  • Non-Timber Forest Products

7. Economics of Forest products & forest systems

  • Potential of forest products activities to contribute to rural incomes
  • Patterns of change in forest product activities
  • Forestry investment analysis at household level
  • Traditional economic values and non-traditional economic values for forests
  • Marketing issues
  • Value of indigenous knowledge in forest sector & livelihoods

8. Strategies and Approaches and their Implications to community forestry programs

  • Collaborative management
  • Joint forest management
  • Community-based forest management
  • Protected Area Management
  • Participatory watershed management

9. Policy and legislation

  • New Forest Policy: Conservation and development
  • Forest policies and legislation
  • Decentralization and devolution
  • Good forest governance
  • Non-timber forest products: Policy perspectives
  • Challenges to Community forestry Programs

10. Social Research in Community forestry

  • Role of research in community forestry
  • Research priorities
  • PRA methodologies: development & research methods

Mode of delivery

  • Lectures: 30LH
  • Practicals (Laboratory and Field praticals): 30PH

Mode of assessment

  • Continuous assessment (coursework, test) = 40%
  • University examinations = 60%

Basic Reading list

Alen W. L. and Mbaya S. (2001). Land, People and Forests in Eastern and Southern Africa at the Beginning of the 21st Century: The Impact of Land Relations on the Role of Communities in future. IUCN-EARO, Nairobi.

Barrow, G. C. E, The drylands of Africa : Local participation in tree management. Initiatives Publishers.

Cernea, M.M. 1981 Land Tenure Systems and Social Implications of Forestry Development Programs. Agriculture and Rural Development Department, World Bank, Washington, D.C.

Chambers,R. 1983. Rural development, putting the last first. Logman Malaysia

Durst, P.B. 1995. Endangered bounty: Forests' contributions to food security. FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, Bangkok.

Engel P. G. H, 1997. The social organization of innovation: a focus on stakeholder interaction. Royal Tropical Institute. The Netherlands.

Falconer, J. & J.E.M. Arnold. 1991. Household food security and forestry. Community Forestry Note No. 1, FAO, Rome.

FAO. 1989. Forestry and food security. FAO Forestry Paper 90. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome.

FAO. 1993a. Forest resources assessment 1990: tropical countries. FAO Forestry Paper 112. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome.

Gombya - Ssembajjwe, W. S. and Banana, A. Y. (Eds) (2000). Community Based Forest Resource Management in East Africa. UFRIC. Makerere University, Kampala.

Kaudia, A. 2000. Effective Communication Skills In Community Forestry Development. Kenya Forestry Research Institute, Nairobi.

Ludlow, R. and Panton, F. 1992.The Essence of Effective Communication. Prentice Hall New York.

Ministry Of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries (MAAIF), 2000. National Agricultural Advisory Services Programme (NAADS); Master Document of NAADS Task Force And Joint Donor Groups, MAAIF, Entebbe. Uganda. Pp. 32 – 39.

Ministry of Water, Lands and Environment, 2002. The National Forest Plan. Draft for Consultation, Version 2. Forest Sector Co-ordination Secretariat, Kampala.

Mupada, E. (1997). Towards Collaborative Forest Management in the Conservation of Uganda’s Rain Forest. Ministry of Natural Resources. Kampala, Uganda.

Ostrom, E. (2001). Commons, Institutional Diversity of. Encyclopedia of Biodiversity Vol. 1. Pp. 777-791.

Riley, John M. (Sage Publ. Inc. Sage Pub. Ltd). 2002. Stakeholders in Rural Development: Critical collaboration in State-NGOs Partnership.