ABSTRACT
As innovative forestry, community forestry has transformed the traditional slash-and-burn method and the large-scale utilization style of government forestry management to a system of forestry based on strong community participation. It plays an essential role in guiding and facilitating rural poverty alleviation. This paper describes how the community forestry component of the China-Netherlands Poverty Alleviation Project (CNPAP) has helped the farmers meet the challenge of poverty alleviation through the creation of a model involving household forestry, science and technology demonstration households and independent farmers’ organizations to implement ecologically sensitive poverty alleviation projects in helping the poor.
INTRODUCTION
Community forestry is a conceptual transformation from traditional rural forestry to a new form with a strong focus on popular participation. Modern community forestry is based on forestry as a resource industry in which local people fully participate. It plays a key role in mitigating the interrelationships among economic, ecological and social factors in rural community development, helping the poor increase their income, lessening their burden, protecting forest resources, improving the quality of the environment, providing employment opportunities for the people, and therefore, facilitating harmony between man and nature. As a result poor farmers who participate in it are both enthusiastic and involve themselves actively. The innovative use of participatory approaches in community forestry is a new way of thinking, which through the process of participation helps farmers recover certain rights that belong to them.
CHALLENGES FOR POVERTY ALLEVIATION IN MOUNTAINOUS REGIONS
Poverty is a problem for both developing and developed countries. China is an ancient country and civilization. However, it is still at the so-called "preliminary phase of socialism" ("she hui zhu yi chu ji jie duan"). Agriculture has been the biggest challenge for the Chinese Government. Since its rural reform policies in 1980s, the Chinese Government has gradually realized that the biggest problem in China is still agriculture. Rural population increase and overexploitation of natural resources have led to the degradation of a fragile environment, which raises difficult questions for the government.
The greatest challenges for poverty alleviation are in the rural mountainous regions, where inadequate transportation systems, lack of information, poor living and working conditions, low quality of labour, low productivity and so forth are contributing factors to poor health and sanitation facilities, lack of cultural life and other poverty-related problems. The Chinese Government has made incessant efforts to combat poverty, and consequently, the absolute number of the poor and the poverty ratio are decreasing. However, it remains a difficult task to continue poverty alleviation efforts and to find ways to help vulnerable groups avoid returning to poverty. Therefore, it is essential to adopt practical and efficient poverty alleviation models in order to ensure that sustainable community development can be realized.
UNIQUE FEATURES OF THE CNPAP’S APPROACH TO COMMUNITY FORESTRY
Community forestry is one of the most important components of the China-Netherlands Poverty Alleviation Project (CNPAP). The project is characterized by "one approach and two awarenesses", that is, it puts into practice participatory approaches and develops environmental awareness and gender awareness. As a result, in project activities farmers are empowered with the "seven rights", which are: the right to knowledge, to speak out, to decide, to implement, to manage, to use and to own. Therefore farmers are encouraged to take an active part in project design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation.
People-centred principle of participation
The direct beneficiaries of the community forestry project are the poor households in the remote project area. The people there have the opportunity to participate voluntarily in some of the project activities. They are encouraged to voluntarily participate in choosing those activities that they can undertake and to take training in relevant forestry technical skills. This proves to be effective in helping them develop their own mountainous resources from which they can benefit in the shortest period of time. At the same time, their technical and managerial skills are improved, which ensures that the sustainable development targets can be reached.
Environmental protection awareness
The dialectic relationship between environment and development has received careful attention in the field of community forestry. In community forestry, poverty alleviation activities cannot be encouraged if they are undertaken at the cost of environmental degradation. Under the CNPAP, the conventional approach to community forestry focusing on large-scale planting of trees is replaced by household-based forestry, where households manage to return their crop lands to forest on the hillsides around their homes while at the same time, soil and water conservation measures are taken. The development of the household-based forestry economy has improved the well-being of farmers and prevented further environmental deterioration.
The awareness of gender equality
Attention needs to be given in community forestry to the issues related to gender equality by encouraging women to participate in project activities and making efforts to create employment opportunities for them. In project design and implementation, women’s participation is essential. In so doing, women are able to get out of their families and develop themselves in a wider society. Thus building gender awareness is a way of improving the ability of women to participate in social activities and changing their degraded social status.
BUILDING THE PARTICIPATORY SUSTAINABLE POVERTY ALLEVIATION MODEL
The key for community forestry is the process in which groups with different economic, social, political and cultural interests can participate. However, this way of participation cannot simply be done by applying a framework predesigned by external experts or helpers. It can only be meaningful if it is done through two-way communication between the local people as project partners and the external experts and helpers, after which a common understanding with regard to the project can be made. This understanding reflects the interests of various stakeholders and is the baseline for project design and implementation. Only based on this way of working together with the local people will participatory community forestry make sense, as can be seen from the experience of the CNPAP. The CNPAP’s sustainable poverty alleviation model of "household forestry, demonstration household and independent farmers’ organizations" is the result of this effort.
Creating household forestry
The foundation of the CNPAP’s "development style" of the sustainable development poverty alleviation model puts particular emphasis on full coverage of the village in project planning, project design based on households and subsidies allocated directly to poor households. At the same time, in the process of project implementation particular emphasis is placed on the impact of the project on the environment. Thus water and soil conservation measures are a key feature of community forestry. Specifically, the features of the household forestry are as follows:
With regard to project participation, emphasis is given to the principle of voluntary participation of farmers, government agencies and technical bureaus. A bottom-up approach is adopted in project design, selection, implementation, monitoring and evaluation.
The project design favours small-scale and relatively scattered activities.
The selection of trees to be planted is based on species which farmers prefer, and trees which can offer good economic returns within a short period of time are planted so as to ensure the sustainability of the forestry activities.
Trees are planted on the hillsides around farmers’ homes and barren mountain land suitable for forests, and cultivated slopes are returned to forest, with appropriate soil and water conservation measures taken.
When trees are planted, measures are taken to forbid clearing by burning or clear-felling. Various water and soil conservation measures taken ensure "three conservation" hillsides, that is conserving water, conserving soil and conserving soil fertility.
To avoid soil erosion, timing of activities is restricted in terms of seasonal plantation. For example, unless activities must be done in the summer (such as tilling the soil in bamboo stands), everything else which might affect the soil is arranged after the rainy season.
Through establishing a system of science and technology demonstration households, the project can have an impact across a much larger number of people, bringing more benefit to the local people as they learn from each other’s technical skills and experience.
There is a high level of transparency in financial management, in which the project carries out inspections, provides subsidies as rewards, publicizes the awards granted and disburses the funds on a timely basis so as to encourage farmers to carry out soil and water conservation measures effectively.
Figure 1. Participation process for household forestry
Innovative science and technology demonstration sites
The principle of tripartite participation has always been a priority for the community forestry component of the CNPAP, which emphasizes not only the participation of farmers but also of government offices and technical bureaus. Technical staff play an important role in disseminating technical information, participating in project design and planning, and provide the technical training and instruction on which the system of science and technology demonstration households is based. Several years of experience have shown that increasing the technical knowledge of farmers is a prerequisite for them to improve their technical skills and their capacity for project participation. Moreover, it has greatly increased farmers’ incomes and created an incentive for their ongoing participation in forestry activities.
The design of three-level training network
Due to the interdisciplinary nature and multi-party involvement of community forestry activities, it is not possible to provide a single type of training for all those involved. Thus the project designed a three-tiered training programme based on the needs of the different parties involved in the project, namely training of trainers, training of science and technology demonstration households (including training of indigenous specialists) and training of farmers.
Figure 2. The training framework
Designing technical materials on community forestry
Farmers are the main participants in community forestry. However, due to social and economic constraints, poor rural households often lack the necessary skills for participation and their mindsets are still dominated by some traditional management methods in forestry, which is an impediment to the dissemination of new technology. Therefore, the CNPAP organizes experts in community forestry to design practical technical materials for the farmers which are easy to understand as part of the capacity building programme.
Improving the technical service system
To increase the scientific content of the household forestry programme, a large number of forestry technicians with relatively high theoretical background in forestry, years of work experience, passion, perseverance and selflessness are needed. For this reason, the CNPAP has employed forestry experts from the Chinese Academy of Forestry, Anhui Agricultural University and Anhui Forestry Department to teach selected technical staff participatory methods and intensive technical skills and knowledge. These people have become trainers after the training and established themselves as technical training service groups to train demonstration households, rural skilled people and farmers in different forestry seasons. At the same time, technical journals such as Practical Technology in Forestry and Forestry and Society are distributed to the demonstration households to expand their horizons. By so doing, each participant in the training has learned one or two technical forestry skills, which have been beneficial to their self-development.
Establishing the science and technology demonstration household system
Household forestry is based on a people-centred principle with particular focus on people’s participation and project sustainability. The CNPAP provides quality training for householders, who have in turn become qualified technical leaders. They play an important role in teaching and helping others grasp the necessary skills and knowledge in forestry and in so doing ensure the sustainability of the project.
It is important to note that the CNPAP’s approach to the system of demonstration household in forestry is unique in some respects. In other projects it is common to select demonstration households at the outset of project activities and through them to disseminate experience and knowledge on a broader scale. This approach involves complicated procedures and high operational cost. In contrast, in the community forestry component of the CNPAP the demonstration households are identified in the process of implementing the household forestry project. Subsequently a network of demonstration services is then built around the identified households, and agreements are signed between the CNPAP and the households which stipulate the type of service to be provided and the number of households to be served by the demonstration households. This has proved to be effective in serving both project implementation and forestry demonstration purposes with the active participation of other households. It is also a way of saving operational cost and enhancing the productivity of the farmers. In addition, these agreements stipulate that monitoring will be conducted by the CNPAP with regard to the services provided by each demonstration household. Moreover, small subsidies are given as rewards to those with good performance.
Enhancing farmers’ ability of self-help
Establishing independent farmers’ organizations
In the course of the project, it was found that the household-based forestry was still based on small-scale agriculture with limited economic output. Thus, not only was it urgent to consolidate and improve it, but also to support the establishment of independent farmers’ organizations based around the system of science and technology demonstration households. The CNPAP aims to develop human resources and enhance the self-education and self-help abilities of farmers through this channel. Thus, the establishment of independent farmers’ organizations represents a higher stage of development of the family responsibility system and is an important guarantee for the sustainability of agriculture and forestry in rural areas. It represents both a learning process and consciousness raising for farmers.
Role of the independent farmers’ organizations
organizing farmers to participate in the management of the organization (enhancing their selfmanagement ability);
providing technical training (improving their vocational skills);
creating employment opportunities for surplus labour;
providing opportunities for women to participation in community activities;
increasing the prices of forestry products which are cheap and difficult to be sold and stabilising the price and market for non-timber products;
providing technical support and market information.
Types of the independent farmers’ organizations
Operational management type - After the household forestry project was implemented, to make up for a lack of necessary skills and knowledge in operational management, some households voluntarily established special interest groups to help each other. These later joined together to become independent organizations such as the chestnut growers association.
Community development fund - In order to protect the forest and lessen the burden on the natural resources as a result of overcutting of trees, steps were taken to implant environmental awareness and promote sustainable utilization of resources by farmers. Based on the voluntary participation of farmers, and with a modest amount of financial support from the CNPAP in the form of a Community Development Fund, community development organizations such as the forestry farmers associations have been established.
THE CNPAP’S ACHIEVEMENTS IN COMMUNITY FORESTRY
The CNPAP as a five-year bilateral project has developed the sustainable poverty alleviation model of "household forestry, science and technology demonstration households and independent farmers’ organizations" benefiting 15 245 households, which counted for over 80 percent of the poor population. It completed the afforestation with bamboo, chestnut, fir trees and other economic trees, at the same time improving the production of the low-yielding chestnut, bamboo and tung oil trees over a total area of 3810.5 ha. From 1998 to 2002, the total economic income of the subproject reached RMB7 868 000, with an average cumulative increased income of RMB510 per household and average annual increased income of RMB102 per household. The economic income accounted for 32.8 percent of the total investment of RMB20 584 000 of the household forestry, which also accounted for 292.8 percent of the Dutch fund of RMB2 687 000 spent in the household forestry subproject.
Through the project, three forest farmers associations aimed at the protection and comprehensive utilization of the secondary growth forest were established. A total of 369 households joined the associations, in which engineering techniques were used with regard to mountain closure and planting trees of 616.6 ha. As a result, the secondary growth forest has been protected and wisely utilized, with important consequences for reducing soil erosion. In addition, farmers’ awareness of environmental protection has also been raised.
A total of 230 training sessions on forestry technology were organized, in which more than 8536 people attended. More than 35 000 copies of training materials were distributed during the training. As a result, farmers have learned practical knowledge and grasped one or two new forestry technical skills, which are necessary for them to improve their forestry management abilities.
The system of demonstration households has had 160 households take the lead in disseminating technical information, practical techniques and knowledge in forestry to 1707 households. The average income from forestry per household was RMB408 before the households became the demonstration households. In contrast, after they became the demonstration households, their income from forestry activities increased to RMB1142, an increase of 180 percent. The average income from forestry activities of the households influenced by the demonstration households increased by RMB259, an increase of 113 percent. Therefore, this project is widely accepted by the local people because of its sustainable potential.
Case study 1
In Liangganchong Village of the Shangtushi Township, 107 chestnut households voluntarily established their own chestnut growers association with the aim to solve the problems in chestnut production and marketing. After these associations were established, 10 households which have chestnut production and management experience were chosen as the demonstration households and given relevant skill training. These households became leaders in facilitating and helping others learn and grasp the necessary skills for chestnut production and management. As a result of the upgrading of low-yield forest, 15 000 kg of chestnuts were harvested in the village for that year, being an increase of 11 000 kg. Their income increased by RMB66 000, being an increase of RMB616 per household. Moreover, among the 10 chestnut demonstration households, the largest amount of chestnuts harvested reached 1500 kg/household, representing an income of RMB9000.
Based on the above achievements, a chestnut production service centre was also established with the view of providing the farmers living in and around the village with assistance in chestnut production and integrated pest management.
Case study 2
With regard to reasonable utilization of forest resources, correcting the wrong practices in forest exploitation and restoring the fragile ecosystems, the community forestry subproject of the CNPAP supported 119 households in Songlin Village of Taiyang Township to establish a forest farmers association. After the association was established, 188 ha of natural secondary growth forests were protected. At the same time, farmers were encouraged to use the branches, bushes and wood chips in the forests to grow edible fungus. In that year, 140 000 bags of mushrooms were grown and sold, which resulted in an income increase of RMB100 000 with an average net income of RMB300 per person. In 2001, the total production reached RMB150 000 with an average net income of RMB427 per person.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
The sustainable poverty alleviation model of "household forestry, science and technology demonstration households and independent farmers’ organizations" as developed by the CNPAP has proved to be effective in poverty alleviation and environmental protection. It is a reflection of the innovative way of thinking of the CNPAP, which has value for disseminating to other parts of China the successful experience of the project.
The independent farmers’ organization is an innovation in modern rural economic cooperation, and is thriving. It builds the capacity of poor farmers in self-development, self-help and self-management, which is necessary for them to get out of the vicious cycle of poverty. Also, it is a way of training those farmers who have skills to take the lead in fighting poverty. Moreover, through protection and sustainable utilization of natural resources, it provides village surplus labour and especially women with employment opportunities, which is important for social stability in rural areas. It is through this effort that farmers have the opportunity to increase their incomes and their ability to pay reasonable agricultural taxes. Thus it is a way of assuaging the conflict between the farmers and the government.
With the unique feature of self-help of farmers, the independent farmers’ organizations play a role in uniting people to achieve their common objectives in a way which cannot be done by a single household or a community or even the local government. In addition, these organizations are helpful for farmers in terms of helping them learn and grasp updated technical skills and knowledge, reducing their operation and management costs and increasing forestry production and incomes.
Community forestry has managed to avoid the influences of the government and set a new starting point different from traditional modes of forestry development. It tries to avoid governmental administrative interference through the adoption of participatory approaches and empowering the poor in poverty alleviation. However, one has to realize that this is done with the support of international donor projects. It has not been implemented in government projects on any substantial scale. Thus, without external support, efforts have to be made by stakeholders, especially the government, to open a space for the growth of community forestry. This is an issue which deserves more attention and exploration by interested parties.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Lei, Xiangdong. 1996. Social and economic organizations in social forestry. Forestry and Society 1996(6): 2-4.
Li, Weichang & He, Peikun (ed.). 1998. Social forestry: theory and practice. Yunnan Press. 228 pp.
Xu, Guozhen (ed.). 1998. Rural forestry. China Forestry Press. 219 pp.
Xu, Guozhen & Li, Weichang (ed.). 2002. Community forestry. China Forestry Press. 331 pp.
Xu, Jiaqi. 2001. Systemic agriculture: the participation and choice of farmers in forestry poverty alleviation and development. Forestry and Society 2001(1):6-9.
| [22] China-Netherlands Poverty
Alleviation Project, Huoshan County, Anhui Province 237200, China; E-mail:
tianmu@mail. hf.ah.cn [23] China-Netherlands Poverty Alleviation Project, Huoshan County, Anhui Province 237200, China; E-mail: tianmu@mail. hf.ah.cn [24] Center for Environment, Development and Poverty Alleviation, Huoshan County, Anhui Province 237200, China; E-mail: [email protected] |
