Bringing the Voice of Forest People to the World

Key players in the forestry world are again recognizing that the health of forest ecosystems depends on what people want from forests. Yurdi Yasmi and Lisa Kelley report back from the IUFRO Congress.

Forests for people: Coming back into focus

More than 30 years after ‘Forests for People’ was the theme of the 1978 World Forestry Congress, this agenda is resurfacing with new hope. Key players in the forestry world are again recognizing that the health of forest ecosystems depends on what people want from forests, as well as institutions that help them achieve their goals. The resurgence of these ideas was particularly evident at August’s IUFRO World Congress in Seoul, attended by more than 3,000 forestry experts from 110 countries.

Throughout the Congress, speakers emphasized the connection between people and forests. In her keynote address, Director General of CIFOR Frances Seymour discussed the critical need for the international community to work together to better understand the connections between forests, climate change, and communities. Similarly, in a message given on behalf of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Jan McAlpine reminded listeners that next year is the International Year of Forests with the theme ‘Celebrating Forests for People.’ Keynote speaker and 2009 Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom also weighed in with field findings showing that including communities in resource management is much more likely to achieve sustainable development than excluding them.

As the Center for People and Forests, RECOFTC clearly has important work ahead. These messages are central to our work, and were the focus of RECOFTC’s activities at IUFRO, as described in an interview with RECOFTC’s Yurdi Yasmi with The Congress Daily. Without a doubt, local people have recaptured the world’s attention. At the close of the Congress, IUFRO member organizations adopted the Seoul Resolution, which committed to focus scientific research and international collaboration on six thematic areas. The first item on the list – Forests for People.

For more reports on the Congress, we recommend IISD’s extensive coverage.

RECOFTC at the Congress: Conflict over forest and land

One issue that profoundly affects local communities and indigenous peoples is community-outsider conflict over land use. To draw attention to the high stakes for communities facing conflict, RECOFTC organized a side event, Forest Conflict in Asia, analyzing how various outside interventions (e.g. logging, mining, plantations, protected area developments) threaten customary arrangements for resource management.

At the event, we presented findings from our analysis of eight recent conflict cases in Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Thailand, and Vietnam. Going beyond telling stories, we examined the common impacts, underlying and direct causes, and management strategies for conflict in the Asia-Pacific region.

We found that community-outsider conflicts, driven by broader socio-economic developments (as well as by poor coordination between development and conservation agencies), result in anxiety and fear, disharmony, high financial costs, and resource degradation for communities. Simultaneously, the results show how conflict can sometimes be a constructive entry point to discussions about more participatory forest management. In some cases, stronger collective action developed out of conflict, and in others, communities gained greater awareness about the importance of clarifying tenure arrangements.

Addressing conflict equitably and holistically will help ensure that new climate change mitigation and adaptation schemes can be implemented successfully. It will require a joint effort, and certain open-ended questions remain to be explored, including:

• To what extent will resource conflict affect the implementation of climate change mitigation and adaptation schemes?
• What actions are needed to prevent the emergence of conflict?
• What efforts, including capacity building, are needed to more effectively manage conflicts that have emerged?

We provide early answers to some of these questions in our newly released Issues Paper, and an accompanying Conflict Bibliography compiles more than 100 resources related to conflict and conflict management. Now we are eager to hear your thoughts.

For more information, please contact RECOFTC’s Dr. Yurdi Yasmi at cbts@recoftc.org.

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