Making community forestry work :
William Bendix and Christo Fabricius
Growing partnerships between communities, scientists and officials
 A
group of people hover in a circle under the midday sun in Machibi, a rural
district near King Williams Town in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa.
In the centre of their circle lies a makeshift pie chart, complete with pictures
of forest resources and long blades of grass to denote pie slices. They move the
pictures and grass blades around, reaching agreement on the proportions. It is
here, with their knowledge and these basic tools and methods that the
possibility of building the road to a sustainable future may begin.
South Africa possesses an abundance of natural resources and strong
conservation awareness and policy, but there still remains the problem of a lack
of capacity to manage and develop these resources sustainably. Various
organisations and institutions, such as the Department of Water Affairs and
Forestry and the IUCN World Conservation Union have thus identified the
sustainable use of natural resources in rural areas as an international and
national priority, with Community Forestry as primary importance for the
National Forestry Action plan. Community forestry itself relies on the people or
communities who most utilise forest resources to manage them in a sustainable
way, in return for greater recognition and access to these resources.
The root of the problem with community forestry lies in a lack of available
information of how forest resources are used amongst rural communities, coupled
with the fact that government Departments often lack the manpower and capacity
to effectively manage these resources by them self. There is therefore a need
for new approaches to create successful community forestry
The Rhodes University Environmental Science Programme, along with the
University of Transkei , the Fort Cox College of agriculture and supported of
DWAF (Department of Water Affairs and Forestry), has launched a programme that
aims to establish a monitoring system for community forestry. The aim of
monitoring is to enable people to keep track of their use of resources and show
if this is sustainable or not, while learning what works and doesn't work as the
process unfolds. What makes this system unique is that it lends equally from
formal or scientific knowledge and informal, local knowledge to track changes in
forests, while at the same time improving skills and knowledge amongst
officials, researchers and communities. The underlying principle of the
programme is to involve local communities in managing forests on state and
community land, assisted by scientific specialists with the goal of each group
benefiting from the partnership.
The programme uses Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) methodologies as its
basis and combines these with conventional scientific surveys of plant, animal
and water resources. The essence of PRA is that local communities participate
actively in the development process, using various tools such as games, symbols
and even acting. This approach enables the revival of local knowledge and allows
communities, officials and researchers to learn from the process. Furthermore,
it makes monitoring possible in remote areas, saving cost to the government
while providing rural communities with valuable skills such as resource planning
and management.
 The
programme was put into practice in Machibi in October 2000 to test some of these
ideas. Here, a representative group from the community was selected by the South
African National Civic Organization (SANCO) to work with the research
specialists and the Department of Water Affairs & Forestry. To make sure
that the community was represented fairly, men and women of all ages and status
were included in the group. During the course of the programme, various PRA
activities were undertaken with the community group in order to develop and
implement a list of indicators, namely plants and animals to record and track
over time.
Firstly, a list of all forest resources was first collected and organised
into a pie chart using blades of grass as pie slices and pictures of resources.
This allowed all group members, even those who weren't fully literate, to
participate in the exercise and agree on the results. Once complete, the
information was recorded. Resources could then be grouped according to what the
community saw as most and least important.
Similar exercises were then conducted with smaller groups to define more
specifically the most important resources such as medicinal plants, poles and
brush-wood for kraals, honey and water gathered from the forest itself.
 Another
example of PRA activities used was resource mapping to assess where the
community gathered various resources. This mapping can be done on the ground
using various objects such as stones and leaves as symbols indicating resources,
or by using paper and marking pens as it was in this case. Again, the process
aims at active participation and clear understanding. Indigenous forests were
clearly prominent on the map, and it became evident that various resources were
obtained from various forests. This activity also gave a clear indication of
what permits and other regulations were required, and what was considered out of
bounds even though some participants confessed to still collecting these
resources illegally.
Other activities included drawing pie charts to illustrate incomes, as well
as creating seasonal calendars and trend lines. These showed how the community
perceived the state of the forest according to who was controlling them at the
time.
From all these exercises, the important question arose: "Whose job should
it now be to regulate the use of these forests?"
The programme recognises that there are various problems and challenges it
has to face, and these are to be dealt with in follow up projects and reports as
the approach becomes more focussed.
As the roots of the process take hold, it is expected that cultural divides will
be bridged by allowing communities, scientists and officials to work together
and share their understanding for the maximum benefit of all. Georgina Cundill,
an Anthropology major from Rhodes University who worked as a facilitator in the
project, believes this is already happening. "People really do pull
together, they want to build up the project and make it work", she says of
her experience.
All indications show that local livelihoods can be improved by reviving a
rich traditional knowledge for the better use of forest resources, while
communities, students, officials and scientists from different cultural
backgrounds learn from one another's knowledge and grow a partnership built on
mutual respect. As professor Christo Fabricius of the Rhodes University
Department of Environmental Science states, "We've only just started, and
envisage a rural Eastern Cape where communities, NGOs and government join forces
to manage rangelands, forests, wildlife, water and soil so that it lasts for
many generations."
Christo Fabricius may be contacted at c.fabricius@ru.ac.za
Or visit Rhodes University's Environmental science
web-site.
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