Local communities play a major role in the conservation of forests. Explain
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Local communities play a major role in the conservation of forests
Many people of a great variety of cultures and land-use practices live in or around tropical forests. Although these people are all in some way dependent on forests, they have little else in common. In recent years, however, it has become much harder for forest-dependent people to use local forests and their products, owing to deforestation, logging, population pressure or legal initiatives such as the declaration of state forests, national parks or wildlife reserves. In many countries, plans to protect forest ecosystems have failed to address the needs and knowledge of local forest-dependent communities (Anan 1996; Wily 1997; Tuxill & Nabhan 1998; Kumar 2000). Participation by local people is essential to any conservation effort.
In forest conservation, participation is often associated with community forestry, which refers to forest management or co-management by people living close to the forest. Legal, political and cultural settings for community forestry vary widely, and the term covers a wide range of experiences and practices. Community forestry is often associated with South and Southeast Asia, but it is also common in other regions (Wily 1997).
Although local participation is important in forest conservation, there are circumstances in which it is absolutely necessary, for example high population pressures and resource use conflicts, communal ownership and in smaller and more vulnerable protected areas (Roche & Dourojeanni 1984). In such cases, conservation without local participation is doomed to failure. Nevertheless, participation in itself provides no guarantee of success. The outcome of participatory processes often depends on additional factors such as institutional or legal frameworks, and the education or interests of local people and other stakeholders. As the case studies in this paper show, governments and their agencies play a significant role in participatory processes by providing-or not providing-an 'enabling environment'.
This paper deals with different perspectives of participatory processes and, briefly, the key elements of enabling environments, for example institutional and regulatory frameworks, land tenure regimes and various forms of capacity building. This paper is based on an earlier paper by Isager and Theilade (2001), which provides a more detailed discussion of participation and forest conservation. Our intention is to give an overview of political and cultural contexts in which participatory processes will inevitably take place. We also offer some practical suggestions for improving these processes.
What is participation?
The concept of participation originally grew out of radical criticism of mainstream development projects in the 1960s and 1970s. Critics who asked why development projects often failed to meet their objectives came to the conclusion that a lack of participation was the reason. Too many projects, they argued, were designed and implemented without consultation or cooperation with the people whose lives they affected. Since then, participation has become one of the buzz words of development. It now seems that every project description or plan adopts a 'participatory approach', often because this is required by donor organizations for political reasons. Unfortunately, project planners and implementers frequently use the word 'participation' while continuing a traditional style of management that does not involve local people (Wily 1997). Nevertheless, true participation may lead to more effective conservation of forest resources