This study examines 59 cases in order to assess the possibility that Community Forestry (CF) practiced in the Central Dry Zone of Myanmar will help achieve sustainable forest management (SFM) and equitable forest management. We concluded that CF hardly contributes to the achievement of SFM because of poor management plan implementation user groups or group members are too busy and lack capability, contrary to the logic of participatory development assuming that local people conduct activities autonomously. Other hindrances to achieving SFM were the difficulty of having seedlings ready at the right time because the process of community forest establishment could not be controlled, and difficulty of rehabilitating vegetation in the dry zone. CF helps promote equity between the Forest Department and villagers, but the risk of CF is that it widens inequity among villagers by excluding non-user group members from forest management. These difficulties and risks of CF in Myanmar provide implementation lessons for other types of participatory forest management.

View full abstract

Decentralisation of forest management has advanced across the world, and local people,s participation has been a vital element in achieving sustainable forest management. In 2001, Collaborative Forest Management (PHBM) was initiated by the State Forest Company (Perhutani) in Java, Indonesia, in order to manage state forests in collaboration with local communities. The objectives of this study are to 1) examine the contract configuration and organisation structure of PHBM, 2) clarify changes in the social economy and forest management after PHBM introduction, 3) describe the attitudes of the local people, and 4) discuss the challenges to the further PHBM implementation. The findings showed that PHBM contributed to the suppression of illegal logging, village development, and improvement of the local people’s household economy. However, there was lack of transparency between Perhutani and the Forest Village Community Association (LMDH) composed of local people. There was also a disparity in the degree of awareness on PHBM between board members and non-board members in LMDH. Additionally, whereas full-time farmers depend more on income from PHBM, their satisfaction tended to be relatively low. The reasons for their dissatisfaction could be attributed to both endogenous and exogenous factors of PHBM. We concluded that PHBM had a high potential to manage state forests sustainably through benefit/cost sharing system. However, increasing the satisfaction of participants was still a key challenge. Accordingly, the flexible revision of PHBM agreement including benefit sharing rate as a function of social and economic changes was crucial for long-term collaborative forest management.

View full abstract