Project 1 - Underlying causes of deforestation, forest degradation and poverty in forest margins
Context and Objectives: Project 1 has evolved in response to the need for work on (a) the causes of deforestation and forest degradation, including particularly the influence of policies in other sectors and macroeconomic policies; (b) how policy decisions and resulting policies are likely to affect forest conditions and human welfare; and (c) the pathways through which policies do and can reach policy makers and influence their behaviour. In the process of carrying out their activities, the project personnel are helping to expand the currently very limited forest policy research capacity in tropical countries.
A significant point about Project 1 is that its objective is not to reduce deforestation and forest degradation per se. CIFOR quite correctly views that choice as being up to the partner countries involved with Project 1 activities. Rather, in the process of carrying out its activities, the project intends to improve the capacity of policy makers and opinion leaders to make more informed decisions about forest use. This orientation clearly avoids putting the project in an advocacy position, thus ensuring that the results of its work can more effectively be used by policy makers who are cautious about outside groups coming in and suggesting what is right and wrong.
Priorities and Relevance of Work: The project has a well-articulated set of criteria for priority setting within the project and has a current portfolio of priority topics that all are relevant and of priority concern in many forested tropical countries. The logic of the geographical regions in which Project 1 operates is clear, and the Panel agrees with the initial choice of locations.
Project 1 currently comprises five activities (research projects) that fit within the priorities developed by CIFOR and are the chosen vehicle for demonstrating/influencing policy-makers. These are:
1. Global and conceptual background studies on key issues;
2. comparative studies on extra-sectoral influences in Bolivia, Cameroon, and Indonesia;
3. policies affecting Miombo woodland management and use;
4. extra-sectoral and forest policy influences in Central America
5. political economy of policy formulation and impacts of policy research.
The Project activities consider the international public goods requirement for CGIAR research through approaches that explicitly involve international comparisons of results, and development and dissemination of methodologies that can be used easily in many countries, and are being widely disseminated, e.g., through an international e-mail list that facilitates widespread dissemination of result and feedback from participants - both researchers and policy makers and analysts actually involved in management and administration of country level forestry activities.
CIFOR's comparative advantage in this project comes from (1) its deliberate establishment of a reputation of impartiality and neutrality with regard to the various advocacy positions that exist concerning forest use and management; and (2) the fact that there are few other institutions that are addressing Project l's issues in the comparative and s manner in which Project 1 is addressing them.
All the topics addressed by Project 1 are relevant and timely in terms of the key issues related to the theme of the project. If expansion of activities is contemplated, the Project might consider research on policy issues related to global forest values, e.g., biodiversity and carbon sequestration; and it might focus more on policy issues related to watershed management and the negative downstream externalities associated with deforestation and forest degradation. Links between poverty and deforestation/forest degradation are an additional promising area for more research.
Outputs: The research provides syntheses of the state of the art economics research on deforestation, as well as more regionally focused themes. The approaches used are by design not particularly sophisticated in comparison with more traditional, academic quantitative economics research. Rather, the Project supports a more pragmatic, problem oriented approach that meets the CIFOR focus on problem solving and information for real world policy decisions. The research done can be defended on the basis of its content, approaches, transparency, rigour, and likely spillovers (even for the country specific research). The project has produced some 32 publications, indicating a solid output of project staff.
It is difficult to assess the final impacts of the research output produced in Project 1. However, the Project Team has set up the mechanisms to reach relevant decision makers, including a distribution and discussion list, the production of useful publications, and use of the Internet to extend the results of its work and generate policy relevant discussion. The Panel commends Project l's use of the Internet to convey results of its own research as well as key outputs from other relevant and related policy research activities.
Summary Assessment: The Panel considers the work of Project 1 to be relevant and productive in terms of CIFOR's overall goals and objectives. The project staff have been productive in terms of outputs and the output from the project is considered timely and relevant for developing country forest policy discussions.
Project 2 - Forest Ecosystem Management
Context and objectives: The project on Forest Ecosystem Management (FEM) is designed to increase knowledge and understanding of forest ecosystem functioning and its relationship with human well-being, provide sustainable, productive and equitable management options for forested ecosystems; provide efficient ways to resolve land use conflicts; and enhance national capability for studying forest ecosystem function.
FEM encompasses the development and demonstration of efficient ways to characterize sites to help formulate options for sustainable forest management including biodiversity. Much of the work is being done in conjunction with the 'Alternatives to Slash & Burn' (ASB) Benchmark sites in the Western Amazon Basin, Indomalesia and humid tropical West Africa. 'Plant Functional Attributes' (PFAs) and gradient-based survey design procedures are central to much of this work.
Outputs and achievements: Project 2 has produced a number of review papers and articles in peer-reviewed journals. Some tangible products include: (a) the PFA pro-forma method, including procedures, manuals, documentation and the FUNDAT/PFAPRO computer package for data management of site physical features, vegetation structure, plant species and PFAs; (b) digital elevation models (DEMs) and physical environmental data for each of the benchmark sites; (c) a new version of the DOMAIN software package installed on the CIFOR Home Page, downloaded by users in many countries, and designed to infer distribution patterns of plants and animals and to generate spatial models (thematic maps) of potential range distributions of biota; (d) the development of an operational prototype of FLORES (Forest Land Oriented Resource Envisioning System); and (e) organization of many training workshops in biodiversity assessment and in forest growth modelling and yield prediction.
Quality of Work: Rapid biodiversity assessment using the 'Plant functional type' (PFAs) approach has been a major strength of this project. However, this tool needs to be further refined and tested under a variety of ecological situations. Sustainability of timber harvests is another developing component; this component has been linked to Project 4 on 'Criteria and Indicators of Sustainability'. Ecosystem management with community participation is still an evolving theme, through the FLORES model.
Relevance and priority of work done: The Project is relevant to the objectives of CIFOR in understanding biophysical and socio-economic environments under which forest ecosystems function and for evaluating their implications for natural ecosystem management. This project through a comparative study programme in diverse ecoregional situations could contribute towards arriving at generalizations on forest ecosystem functioning and its implication for management at a regional scale.
Links to other non-CIFOR projects and activities: There are many international programmes such as the MAB (Man and Biosphere) of UNESCO that are interested in conserving natural forest resources with benefit to local communities. Others such as the Subsidiary Body of Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA) of the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD) and DIVERSITAS are concerned with biodiversity science, its management and conservation. CIFOR is building linkages with these international initiatives and to the GCTE (Global Change & Terrestrial Ecosystems) programme of the International Geosphere Biosphere Programme (IGBP).
This Project has relevance to CIFOR's involvement in system-wide initiatives through ASB (Alternative to Slash & Burn) and could link up with the CGIAR Systemwide Genetic Resources Programme (SGRP).
Summary and overall assessment: The work on PFAs needs to be refined further and tested in different ecological systems for wider acceptance. This Project is in a phase of major transition. The shift in emphasis currently occurring from PFA-related research to general ecosystem level research is helpful in making the Project more broad-based and interdisciplinary.
Flores is still developing. It is still a long way from making FLORES work on the basis of field testing against the right kind of data sets. The following two comments are given with a view to making this effort meaningful:
1. Traditional forest dwellers should be viewed as an integral part of forest ecosystem/landscape functioning, while distinguishing external human pressures. Such a view would drastically alter our perspectives on 'biodiversity and ecosystem functioning/management. A much broader view of biodiversity needs to be integrated into this study - a perspective ranging from the subspecific, going through species and ecosystems, to the landscape levels and looking at the humans as a component within ecosystem/landscape, managing and adapting biodiversity for system stability and resilience. This approach to tackling the problem would demand (a) a closer collaboration with other organizations such as ICRAF concerned more with human-managed ecosystems in forested areas, and (b) more effective linkages at the process and system levels between ecology and the human dimensions.2. FLORES is a step in the direction of developing a broader perspective to ecosystem management. However, there is need for far more interdisciplinarity to be built in through discussions within CIFOR, with partner institutions and with knowledgeable external experts. This approach becomes particularly important in the context of the limitations of the types of the available social data and the difficulty in generating the kind of data required for FLORES to work.
Project 3 - Multiple resource management of natural forests
Context and Objectives: The main purposes of Project 3 are to: (1) contribute to the development or improvement of technologies for management of natural forests, including secondary forests; (2) promote better forest management by contributing to policy dialogue and providing recommendations for appropriate silvicultural prescriptions; (3) strengthen research capacity, particularly of collaborators, as well as adoption policies and approaches; and (4) tighten the links between forest science and management practice through mechanisms to foster the dissemination and use of existing, state of the art information.
In meeting these purposes, the Project deals with: (a) Improved management of production forests (IMPF) which aims to introduce or improve management practices that are environmentally sound and economically feasible on larger blocks of primary and degraded forest where logging is taking place and where human settlements are sparse; and (b) Integrated small-scale management of secondary and residual forests (SMSF) which links closely to, and complements the work in Projects 7 and 8 on community and small-holder forestry and farm forestry, although the latter projects tend to focus more on indigenous groups. In dealing with both areas, the research response of the Project concentrates on: - (1) reduced impact logging for more efficient, environmentally sound management; (2) ecologically based silviculture to sustain regeneration, increase commercial productivity and quality value of logged-over and secondary forests; (3) complete economic and social valuation of forest outputs (goods and services); and (4) policies to promote adoption of techniques developed and consideration of the complete economic values associated with forests.
Outputs and achievements: The project has produced a great number of useful publications, including some 17 refereed journal articles, 13 papers in books and proceedings, and 11 manuals, guidelines, harvesting codes, and other types of guideline publications. The project also is producing computer software to improve planning of harvesting operations for reduced impacts.
IMPF work includes nine activities, of which five focus primarily on the reduced impact logging (RIL) activities. Included are studies in eight sites in Asia and Africa, as well as Latin America. The success of this collaborative research has been noted, and several countries are taking concrete steps to implement RIL. A global synthesis of lessons learned is being developed to provide the international public goods (IPG) focus of the work.
SMSF work in Project 3 includes six activities that use primarily comparative studies and with a focus so far on the Latin American humid tropics. Sites for comparative studies have been established in Brazil, Nicaragua and Peru. In addition studies on the ecology and silviculture of young and older secondary forests are being conducted in Costa Rica. In addition, synthesis work is being done on growth and yields in African tropical rainforests and on management of secondary forests in the humid tropics of Asia, Africa and Latin America. This project will be involved with researching management issues associated with the Bulungan Research Forest on Kalimantan.
Relevance and priority of work: Work on secondary forest management is highly relevant in terms of the future of forestry in the tropics. It is a topic that has been neglected and is long overdue for serious research. While some other institutions have been looking at secondary forest management, particularly in the context of "fallow forest" management, CIFOR's perspective is broader and includes degraded forest and other areas that have not been under agriculture. At the same time, CIFOR is addressing the highly relevant issues of livestock encroachment on natural tropical forest areas, particularly in the American tropics.
The work on reduced impact logging also is relevant and timely, although CIFOR, at first glance, would not seem to have a comparative advantage in the work related to commercial logging, since other national and some international organizations are doing research related to the topic. Further, many feel that this is not an appropriate topic for an international, publicly funded research organization; rather, they feel that that countries should require commercial forest products and logging companies to fund and undertake such research as part of their responsibilities in logging concessions and in management of their own lands. A deeper look at CIFOR's reduced-impact logging (RIL) research, however, shows that it is very well tailored to CIFOR's niche as an interdisciplinary institute working on issues relating to international public goods. The principal objective of the RIL research is to develop and test new policies that will promote the use of reduced-impact technologies as a component of sustainable management of forests for multiple outputs (including environmental services as well as timber and non-timber products). The co-ordinated studies being carried out by CIFOR in seven countries representing the three tropical regions are designed to answer questions such as: Why do regulations designed to control logging practices work in some places but not in others? Why are biophysical impacts from logging greater in some regions than in others in spite of similar timber and terrain conditions? How are non-timber values such as biodiversity, water and soil quality, NTFPs and other customary uses of forests, affected by logging practices and what control mechanisms are in place (or could be devised) to reduce impacts from commercial activities on these values? By collaborating on these questions with a large variety of institutions, including government agencies, universities, national research institutes, and the private sector, and by doing international comparisons that focus on policy issues important in all countries, CIFOR's research on reduced-impact logging brings to the subject a perspective that no single NARS, government agency or private company could provide.
Summary and overall assessment: The Panel concludes that, in general, this project is operating effectively and is addressing important issues. Its work is recognized in partner countries and elsewhere. Technology, biophysical, and socioeconomics disciplines are working well together in a multidisciplinary fashion. This is an area of research where CIFOR needs to tread carefully, given the focus of much of it on large scale, commercial activities that should, in principle at least, be funded and carried out by private interests. A final point to note is that, based on its field trip to Latin America, the Panel concludes that Project 3 needs to consider adding stronger capacity to research the social dimensions of smallholder and community secondary forest management.
Project 4 - Assessing the Sustainability of Forest Management: Developing Criteria and Indicators
Context and objectives: Since the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED 1992, the Rio "Earth Summit"), several international and national initiatives have been developed, in response to Chapter 11 of Agenda 21, and to the Principles on Forests, to identify and implement instruments known as Criteria and Indicators (C&I) at regional and national levels.
Similarly various national working groups, specialized certification bodies, non-governmental organizations and industrial institutions have committed themselves to the task of identifying and employing C&I to evaluate the sustainability of forests at a forest management unit level.
These processes have been driven by the increasing demands of several groups of citizens against deforestation and forest degradation and by the recognition of certification and eco-labelling as instruments to maintain access to international markets, and to stimulate market sectors in which the goods produced from certified forests obtain a higher price than those originating in uncertified ones.
C&I at national levels and the topic of certification related to forest management units, were the subjects of great attention from the Intergovernmental Panel on Forests (IPF), which agreed several proposals to promote their development and diffusion. Simultaneously, various conceptual, methodological and political disagreements were made explicit which had prevented consensus on issues that were considered fundamental to introducing these instruments into the international arena.
The underlying concept of this project is to contribute to the development and evaluation of technologies to determine whether forests are being managed on a sustainable basis (initially at the individual forest management unit level and in the second phase seeking to link to the national and regional levels). Six specific objectives are concerned with the development, testing and refinement of C&I for selected sets of characteristics such as biodiversity and socio-economic values.
Outputs and achievements: The intended outputs of Project 4 included:- (a) criteria and indicators that are objective, cost effective and relevant for assessing aspects of sustainable forest management, particularly social impacts of forest management and biodiversity; (b) criteria and indicators for sustainable management of forests managed by local communities; (c) guidelines on decision support methodologies for evaluation of the sustainability of forest management based on qualitative models of the interactions of criteria and indicators; and (d) generalized methods and technologies for developing performance thresholds for key indicators.
The first phase of this project, completed in 1996, had substantial effects at national and international levels and provided most of the main elements for current efforts. A total of 1100 C&I from various sources were tested in various places in Austria, Brazil, Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire, Germany and Indonesia. The project analyzed the potentials of the C&I as instruments for the establishment of policies, supervision, evaluation, project design, and the certification process. It also established the level of information required to verify the results, as well as the capabilities and experience demanded by field work, to produce reliable results in any evaluation, even if based on different sets of C&I.
Due to the fact that the main part of the socioeconomic and biodiversity instruments will not be completed until 1999, it will only be possible to assess their quality, adequacy and initial impact around the year 2000.
Quality of work: The planning of both phases involved many staff and the highest level of intellectual input. The field testing of the first phase was carried out intensively and rigorously under conditions of varying difficulty by CIFOR staff and partners who were fully committed to this enterprise and its interpretation. The second phase currently in progress reflects the gains of the first phase and incorporates added social and genetic inputs at high levels. Discussions with staff indicated that, as before, they will continue to work on both biophysical and social indicators. However, given the considerable challenge of social indicators, these will continue to demand considerable research; this will be in addition to research on the interpretation of different kinds of indicators which is the main focus of the second phase.
Relevance and priority of work done: The work of Project 4 clearly addresses Objectives 2 and 4 of CIFOR's mission and has significant global relevance.
The concentration of CIFOR's project on C&I at the forest management unit level responds to the need for a neutral institution to participate in this process. Also, as an international centre, it has been capable of developing comparative studies on the initiatives accomplished in various countries, and on the approaches that support them. The study had a positive impact on the international debate on C&I. as was shown by the importance accorded to the work presented by CIFOR in three inter-sessional meetings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Forests (IPF). The C&I have been recommended by the African Timber Organization, the Intergovernmental Panel on Forests, and the Forest Stewardship Council, and noted in several journals and consultancies. These studies have allowed the Centre to present recommendations, methodologies, guides, etc., so that the various initiatives become capable of defining C&I that are relevant at a local level, have solid scientific support and are internationally compatible.
Links to other non-CIFOR projects and activities: As in phase 1, the research and field testing are done in places located in representative countries: Brazil, Cameroon, India and Indonesia. The Panel noted the concerned expressed by some staff of the Government of Indonesia that relatively little work has been carried out in Indonesia but was assured by CIFOR staff that in fact Indonesia has received more attention than any of the countries in which C&I research has been carried out; this has involved natural forests, community forests, plantations, biodiversity and social C&I in five sites.
CIFOR's work on C&I is not exclusively developed within Project 4. CIFOR's Project 5: Plantation Forests on Degraded or Low Potential Sites takes the lead on development of Plantation C&I. Work on development of Biodiversity C&I and related performance thresholds takes place in co-operation between Project 4 and CIFOR's Project 6: Conservation of Biodiversity and Genetic Resources.
Conclusions and suggestions: Project 4 consistently fulfils the criteria used by CIFOR in defining its research priorities. It is an example of how interdisciplinarity should be brought in at all stages of project formulation and implementation although the C&I themselves appear not to be fully integrated. In its initial phase it had significant impact at international and national levels. Its second phase, similarly to phase 1, implies the production of relevant and original international public goods, employing frontier science on the subject. While the C&I are being completed, CIFOR must develop methods for their dissemination and implementation; this activity will require substantial resources and meticulous planning to capitalize on the enormous effort spent on the development of these instruments.
Project 5 - Plantation forestry on degraded or low potential sites
Context and objectives: The objective of this project is to identify biologically and economically sustainable and locally acceptable plantation forestry for degraded or low potential sites. While doing so, the emphasis is on 'small-scale' plantations on degraded/low potential sites in the tropics. This regional project is justified: (a) on the basis that we know so little about promotion of plantation forestry at farm level for the vast majority of species, (b) as a means for creating tools and approaches to foster stakeholder participation in decision making, costs and benefits; and (c) to ensure effective procedures to resolve conflicts.
Carbon sequestration, through conservation of the remaining natural forests is now being recognized as an important strategy to cope up with 'global change'. At the same time, the demand for wood and wood-derived products is also increasing substantially resulting in a significant shift in timber production from natural forests to plantations especially in the tropics, with a greater reliance on wood produced by small holders. Developing a man-made forest resource that will be biologically and economically sustainable and socially acceptable is one of the challenges now facing many tropical countries.
Outputs and achievements: Project 5 has 3 publications in conference proceedings and an edited book with 3 Chapters, and 2 research papers; there are also a few CIFOR occasional papers. CIFOR has collaborated with ACIAR and CSIRO in editing a volume on 'Management of Soil, Nutrients and Water in Tropical Plantation Forests', based on papers contributed by leading experts in this area.
Development of Information systems such as TROPIS and adaptation of already existing forest growth model, PLANTGRO, based on field testing are other useful outputs. TROPIS currently holds data on 11,000 plots with 2100 species in both plantation and natural forests, which would be of great value for those interested in tree growth. The project has been successful in establishing a field trial network to study site management of the inter-relation period in fast growing tropical plantations. However, concrete results from this comparative study are yet to come out; this to some extent is understandable since there is always a lag phase in forestry research.
Technologies and models are expected to come out of this project. The output is aimed at developing management and policy options for small holder based plantations, (b) appropriate technologies for plantation forestry in low potential sites, (c) improve data sharing for improved options and (d) for improved tools for evaluating sustainable plantation forestry. One of the activities is on rehabilitation ecology based on successional concepts, using plantations to catalyze succession in degraded lands.
Quality of work: A major activity of the project is a comparative study of site management of inter-rotation period in fast growing tropical plantations across geographical regions. There are elements of a good programme in this study. The work elements in this project are well conceived with the intention of looking at the impacts of plantation forestry on soil fertility status, on a long-term basis. Looking at organic residue and cover management, would provide options for long-term sustainability of plantations. Site selection in the chosen tropical countries should have attempted to cover more of the possible ecological situations - climatic and edaphic; this is significant because of the random choice of sites, under all ecological situations, by the State Forest Departments to raise plantations. Such an approach by the Forest Department without appropriate consideration for suitability of climatic conditions and initial site characteristics have often lead to long-term unsustainability of the plantations.
An activity such as compilation of information on diseases in Acacia plantations is perhaps not appropriate for CIFOR, this is better done as part of national programmes, perhaps with the assistance of a specialized institution.
Work to be done on rehabilitation based on successional concepts is important, particularly in the context of multi-purpose use of small-holder plantations of local communities.
Relevance and priority of work done: The project includes a wide range of plantation forestry, information system development, reclamation of Imperata affected lands, fungal pathogens in tropical Acacias, edited volume on Diptero-carps, etc. Comparative studies on plantation forestry of the kind already initiated on the basis of a network of study sites, as well as degraded site rehabilitation based on forest successional concepts are best done by CIFOR; it agrees with CIFOR's stated objectives.
Links to other non-CIFOR projects and activities: The project is linked to bilateral funding provided through ACIAR, IDRC, and private industries.
Summary and overall assessment:
1. For the plantation management network, site selection should cover more ecological situations in the region, systematically.2. Widening the scope of the Project towards developing mixed plantation forestry models would be of added value.
3. Rehabilitation of degraded systems is looked here at from a narrower context of single species plantation forestry, or through introductions in degraded secondary open forests. However, rehabilitation ecology in a broader sense demands a multi-disciplinary approach based also on mixed plantation forestry and species compatibility in mixtures, forest successional concepts for rehabilitation, soil fertility and water management through species manipulation and appropriate ecotechnologies, linking ecological and social processes for local community participation, etc.
4. The project might also incorporate locally developed technologies and try to build upon their traditional knowledge base. The quality of social science work should be more carefully and systematically evaluated, rather than leaving it to partner organizations.
Project 6 - Conservation of biodiversity and genetic resources
Context and objectives: The importance of biodiversity and genetic resources for current and future ecosystem health, industry, socio-economic development, and human welfare are well recognized at the international and national levels by agencies, non-governmental organizations, politicians and the media. Yet knowledge is sparse on the extent and patterns of variation within and between forest ecosystems, tree species and forest-dependent species of other plants and animals. Biodiversity itself is included in most schemes of criteria and indicators for sustainable forest management but little is known of the methods of assessing it and the optimum systems of management to conserve it.
The objectives of Project 6 are to promote understanding of the interactions among landscape processes that reduce biodiversity (habitat disturbance and fragmentation) and of the local processes that affect the genetic structure and behaviour of populations (gene flow, inbreeding, pollination systems, etc); this knowledge is essential for the determination of threats to conservation and for the development of methods to measure and monitor biodiversity.
When CIFOR was established most efforts worldwide were concentrated on the micro-scale processes of genetic diversity. CIFOR itself began work on genetic diversity but in the last five years it has taken up studies of biodiversity at higher levels and it has begun to emphasize the integration of genetic systems with landscape level processes; attention has been concentrated primarily in the humid and sub-humid tropical lowlands and uplands in Asia, Africa and Latin America plus the seasonally dry forests of Indochina, India and Central America.
Outputs and achievements: Project 6 has produced a large number of publications in peer-reviewed journals and in conference proceedings (particularly the book published in house on "Measuring and monitoring biodiversity"). In addition it has produced computer software that is now in widespread use.
The outputs of the project were intended to include determination of the impacts of disturbance and fragmentation at different levels of intensity on in situ conservation of a range of ecosystems and species, resulting in management prescriptions for managed and protected areas. A range of tools for the assessment of biodiversity were intended to range from molecular to remote sensing techniques and to include geographic information systems and computer software for genetic analyses.
It is too soon for CIFOR's research to have had much direct impact but it has great potential for impact on the scientific and policy processes at global and national or local scales. Above all it will demonstrate the impacts of land use policy decisions on forest biodiversity at all levels and it will lay the foundation for work on the critical levels of criteria and indicators for biodiversity assessment in sustainable forest management. By the year 2000 spatial and process modelling should have been developed and the models validated on the ground, thus improving the cost-effectiveness of conservation programmes and enhanced production potential of managed forests. Products such as POPGENE have a long impact pathway since the immediate beneficiary is the research geneticist who in turn translates his/her own work for the policy-maker and land manager.
Quality of work: A total of 13 separate titled activities have been initiated within a well argued and presented conceptual framework (indeed the strategy document for this project produced by the Project Leader is a model for the understanding of issues and the planning of research in this broad topic). The project is concerned with the use of latest technologies and their refinement to develop real management models; it is not at the cutting edge of developing the techniques themselves. However, the scientific thought and interpretation of results to date has been of high quality and there is evidence that the staff work well as a team under a strong leader. The Project has relied on contractors and partners, particularly for the provision of the social science element of the Project, but there is a strong case for the employment of external experts in this subject to achieve the cutting edge research that is required. Further it is not clear which CIFOR staff members could assess or monitor the social components; a recognition that "management" is a human influence rather than just "disturbance" could enhance the interdisciplinarity of the Project.
Relevance and priority of work done: Of the 13 activities, eight consider the impacts of forest management activities including logging on diversity in a range of countries and species; four deal with the development of techniques for biodiversity assessment; and one concerns a simple provenance trial of a single species on two sites. Although it was intended to examine physiological aspects of genotype-site matching, this latter activity is site-specific, applied, atypical of CIFOR research and unimportant to the global value and overall progress of Project 6 but the others have coherence and high priority globally. They are closely related to some of the key issues identified by the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA) of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and for which CIFOR has a comparative advantage.
The impact pathway of this project is unusually long. Partners have principally been national scientists and the principal physical outputs are used firstly by scientists who will then assist national policy-makers and local land managers to develop sustainable management systems. There is considerable global debate about the quantitative evaluation of biodiversity (in terms of human wealth and welfare as opposed to numbers of species) but it is clear that the project's activities will contribute significantly to the evaluations themselves and to the public understanding of conservation management issues. In relation to CIFOR's institutional mission, the project contributes directly to three of the four objectives and will contribute to the fourth in the long term.
Links to other non-CIFOR projects and activities: The Project has collaborated with specialists in Australia on modelling to stratify and describe environments; in Canada on the development of a widely used computer programme for genetic analyses; in the Netherlands and USA on the development of techniques for rapid remote sensing of forest areas for assessment and monitoring of biodiversity; and in the UK on laboratory training for molecular geneticists; it collaborates appropriately with IPGRI and FAO in system-wide activities related to genetic resources and with other relevant CIFOR projects.
Conclusion and summary assessment: Project 6 is well planned and orchestrated with some immediate and many long term benefits. It has had good output of scientific publications and computer software, with one genetic analysis program being recognized as the world's leader. The greatest achieved and potential impact is the wider realization of the need to integrate genetic resources and biodiversity into land use planning evaluations.
Future activities should include the production of more expanded and detailed handbooks and training manuals for CIFOR's remote sensing, GIS, environmental modelling and molecular analysis software (e.g. the inclusion of bootstrap/jackknifing techniques in POPGENE) to make them user-friendly, to make their results understandable to non-specialists, and to highlight especially the applicability of the various methods to different problems.
Project 7 - Local livelihoods, community-based management and devolution
Objectives and Context: Project 7 focuses on the problem of how policies and institutional arrangements affect the livelihoods and resource management practices of forest-dwelling and forest-dependent people. Through research in many tropical forest areas, it seeks to identify those policies and institutional structures that harmonize conservation goals with changing human needs under economically fluid and politically volatile situations. While it has consistently maintained this focus, Project 7 has evolved considerably. From an initial stress on assessing livelihood strategies, formulating typologies of local forest management, and designing methodologies for measuring rural incomes, the Project has moved on to a stronger emphasis on identifying the causes of particular policy outcomes and indicating directions for improving policy effectiveness.
The recent world-wide trend towards decentralization of control over forests and shift of responsibility for forest management to local communities and structures is a central concern of Project 7. The Project seeks to analyze the impacts of such movements toward devolution of power and to determine methods for implementing adaptive management of forests that includes both local communities and state authorities. Major activities that serve as case studies have been developed in Africa (Miombo woodlands, Madagascar) and Asia (Indonesia) with additional activities in India, China and the Philippines. A future strengthening of activities in Latin America is planned.
Outputs and Achievements: Despite a slow beginning, the Project has now put together a coherent vision of how its diverse activities and research at several sites come together to produce a package of materials that eventually will be of use both to partners interested in understanding their national experiences and to those who will use the case studies for cross-country syntheses.
The Project has been active in organizing seminars, interdisciplinary work groups, workshops, and designing frameworks for developing adaptive management plans. Project scientists have been less successful in producing publications other than in-house papers, although several works are now under review or are soon to be published. Among significant outputs are papers on methodologies for assessing rural incomes and on typologies of local forest management.
Quality of Work: Project scientists have successfully identified a number of important, overarching, "cutting-edge" questions and have developed a most promising framework for pulling together project activities and case studies into a coherent whole. Project scientists have also devoted considerable time to crucial, but less easily evaluated activities, such as capacity-building in the NARS. The limited publications that have resulted, are of high quality. The project leader suggests that more input from the biophysical scientists at CIFOR would have improved the forest management aspects of the Project.
Relevance and Priority of Work Done: The Project is central to the goals and objectives of CIFOR and the CGIAR since it focuses directly on improving livelihoods of forest-dependent poor local people. While many institutions and projects are looking into similar issues, Project 7 attempts to address the questions in an interdisciplinary manner and in areas across the tropics. The Project as now planned will offer both important and readily usable country-specific information to partner institutions as well as theoretically important syntheses of the many case studies.
Links to other Non-CIFOR Projects and Activities: The Project has co-sponsored activities with several other initiatives in the same area of research, including the International Forest Resources and Institutions Research Program at Indiana University (U.S.). It has collaborative arrangements for research and training with a large number of country institutions and NGOs.
Summary Assessment: The Panel considers the questions posed by Project 7 to be highly relevant to CIFOR's work and the present framework adopted by the Project to be most promising. The Project has, however, a less than satisfactory record of outputs, particularly of refereed publications. This shortcoming may to some degree reflect a more general need within CIFOR for better career counselling and mentoring. The Panel also agrees with the Project leader that a more interdisciplinary approach, especially more collaboration with ecologists or other biophysical scientists, would significantly strengthen the research and enhance its worth for forest managers.
Project 8 - Sustainable Use and Development of Non-Timber Forest Products
Objectives and Context: The use, management, and sale of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) are of great economic importance to many of the small-scale farmers and forest managers who are to be the ultimate beneficiaries of CIFOR's work. While considerable research has been done on particular tropical species and their uses, much of that work is scattered and does not go beyond the description of site-specific situations. Project 8 takes a broader and more synthetic approach to NTFP research and attempts to identify general trends and patterns in the use of forest products. Based on research into multiple products in tropical and subtropical forest areas in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, Project 8 scientists are working toward the development of theories and models that can predict future changes in forest product use and the effects of those changes on the state of forests. Project 8 is also analyzing changing patterns of smallholder dependency on NTFPs across the tropics with the objective of proposing and evaluating options for institutional arrangements that harmonize improved forest product-dependent development with conservation goals.
Outputs and Achievements: The development of a programme of research activities by Project 8 was delayed somewhat, largely by the complicated processes of project reorganization that occurred during CIFOR's first few years of existence.
Despite these initial difficulties, the Project has, within the last several years, assembled a sizeable, interdisciplinary group of researchers engaged, with partners, in seven principal field research activities throughout the tropics. Apart from the core strategic activities, Project 8 researchers together with partner institutions and collaborating scientists, also conduct a substantial number of ancillary activities.
The group has already established an impressive record of outputs that include a variety of stable research partnerships implemented, books and refereed articles published, and workshops organized. The Project is now in the process of pulling together its site-specific research and case studies into an integrated network.
Quality of Work: The project has already made a substantial contribution to the scientific community engaged in forest product research. While it has yet to implement or bring together a "flagship" activity that researchers in the entire field look to for leadership, it has initiated several smaller projects that are well known to and respected by researchers in particular subfields. The project has organized meetings and published their proceedings including articles that are or will be consulted widely by researchers in the field.
The Project's array of activities includes several important activities that clearly fit into the Project's strategic plan and can be expected to yield globally meaningful results. Several of its secondary activities, however, reflect an earlier phase of more opportunistic and less strategic project development. The Project as a whole is moving towards more coherent and strategic planning and priority setting, and a clear focus on internationally significant research.
Relevance and Priority of Work Done: The Project's direct focus on smallholder producers places it at the centre of CIFOR's stated mission. Project scientists have put considerable effort into identifying overarching questions important to specialists in the field by organizing workshops and commissioning overview papers. The coming together of research findings and insights from the Project's rather scattered activities into an integrated and more broadly relevant whole is a challenge toward which project scientists are making progress. It is in the integration and synthesis of NTFP research findings that CIFOR has a clear advantage and is producing an important product for the global community.
Links to other Non-CIFOR Projects and Activities: Project 8 is linked with other institutions and research initiatives in both formal and informal ways. Among its more important ties are research partnerships with the International Network for Bamboo and Rattan, the Chinese Academy of Forestry, the Programa "Manejo sostenible de bosque tropical" (PROMAB, Bolivia), the University of Campinas (Brazil), as well as with a number of universities in Europe, North America, Latin America, and Southern Africa. The participation of scientists seconded from international research organizations such as ORSTOM has also helped to ensure effective if less formal ties with yet other institutions including ICRAF.
Summary assessment: The Panel agrees that Project 8 is engaged in both relevant and high quality research. Its recent record of outputs certainly places it among CIFOR's more active and successful efforts. Changing the name of Project 8 from one emphasizing products to a name that focuses on problems, processes, or populations, might help insure that the important area of research into forest management technologies developed by smallholders - missing from many other CIFOR projects - would receive more effective attention throughout the institution.
Project 9 - Research impacts, priorities and capacity evaluation
Context and objectives: Throughout the developing world there is a recognized shortage of trained, experienced and informed forest research staff and a frequent lack of skills and methods for research management and prioritization. Research often receives low priority for funding from both national and international agencies yet there is a major need for new research and information in the light of newly perceived roles of forests and trees, and the new types of forest decision-making and management. This project arose from the earlier Research Support Division in CIFOR and consequently it still contains elements of support as well as research per se.
The unifying objective is to support research management by bringing appropriate, structured information to research decision-making processes. The specific objectives are to develop methodologies and use them to conduct studies and evaluations relating to research impact assessment, priority setting appropriate for the evaluation of research for natural resources management and forestry-related research capacity assessments.
Outputs and achievements: The principal activities have involved other CIFOR projects, particularly Project 1, and a number of overseas collaborators. However, the immediate beneficiaries have been CIFOR itself (the development of the centre's management information system and the concepts of project strategy documentation) and the partners in southern Africa (SADC) regional research assessment exercise and the subsequent European Union project.
The stated objectives of the Project do not lend themselves to classical research publication but valuable documents presented to the Panel included a summary table of CIFOR's project objectives and outputs and a substantial document on CIFOR's impacts and outputs for all projects. One significant publication (Journal of World Forest Resource Management 8) reported the methodology and results of a detailed enquiry and model-building effort to reflect the capacity of national institutions in southern Africa. This research sought to identify methods for the recognition and encouragement of collaboration between partners; it was not to develop quantified methods for evaluating such partnerships but it attempted to capture the extent to which research organizations interact with other institutions (i.e. information exchange or educational interactions, or effective research partnerships). It provided a comprehensive method for the quantification of institutional capacity itself.
Quality of work: The activities of the Project have been largely conceptual and related to research capacity and management. The Project staff consulted widely with other CIFOR staff and, for the SADC exercise, with national scientists in the region. Considerable intellectual effort went into developing methods for the presentation of CIFOR's outputs and impacts for its own projects and into the methodology for institutional capacity evaluation.
Relevance and priority of work done: The resultant methodology for capacity evaluation is complex and unlikely to be used in extensor by national institutions but, once completed under CIFOR guidance, it might be used as a standard for future monitoring. Its value in identifying and stimulating collaboration lies in highlighting trade-offs when considering research partnerships. It may be useful for national institutions in approaches to donors wishing to support research capacity development; for some CIFOR projects it should be useful in identifying research partners in geographic and disciplinary areas that are far from the project developer's expertise. It is not yet clear how the project aids research prioritization but in principle all the Project's activities are relevant to CIFOR's fourth objective.
Links to other non-CIFOR projects and activities: The research capacity evaluation was conducted for all the countries of the SADC region and the results were accepted by the regional co-ordinating body (SACCAR). This body will use them in approaches to donors and the African Academy of Science intends to adopt the research capacity survey methodologies to complete a "Pan African" capacity assessment. Additionally CIFOR will supply data to the new series of baseline studies planned by ISNAR.
Conclusions and overall assessment: Future work on the evaluation of research capacity and collaboration will concentrate on the other two tropical regions (West Africa and Latin America); these have notoriously less history of collaboration between institutions and a relative shortage of published information on research per se or on research management. The Panel suggests that the project itself should consider ways of simplifying the current model of evaluating research capacity while enhancing the evaluation of collaboration.
Further, the project to date has not demonstrated any progress with its objective of research prioritization methods. The Panel suggests that a major activity for the next period should be the development of research prioritization methods both for national or regional problems and for CIFOR's own research programme.
As currently defined, Project 9 is a research project but the terms of reference of the Project's staff are a combination of research and research support.
Project 10 - Policies, Technologies and Global Change
Context and Objective: CIFOR needs to maintain an active knowledge of the major global trends in forestry in order to contribute effectively both in the international policy debates about forests and in ensuring that CIFOR's long-term research directions accurately address important and emerging problems. With this need in mind, the objectives of this relatively new project are to:
> maintain a comprehensive overview of the state of the world's tropical forests and of international institutions addressing their development and conservation;> analyze major global trends in the patterns and structure of international supply and demand (in the broadest sense, including all goods and services that societies derive from tropical forests); and
> participate in international fora and negotiations with policy recommendations and options, based on CIFOR research, and identify priority research areas for the future through feedback from these fora.
The realization of these objectives should enable CIFOR more effectively to contribute to the international policy debates on tropical forests, and provide the global context within which CIFOR's more specific thematic research is undertaken.
Outputs and achievements: In addition to producing a number of papers, and in keeping with a main purpose of the project, Project 10 staff have produced a number of briefs and syntheses for CIFOR use in various fora. The project has produced a number of papers that have had widespread circulation and have helped to expose a variety of people to CIFOR and its activities and output.
Specific activities include a study of the possibilities to strengthen international legal regimes for forestry for the Intergovernmental Panel on Forests (IPF). Probably, the most relevant activity of Project 10 throughout the period was its contributions to the IPF of the Commission on Sustainable Development of United Nations, that held its four sessions between September, 1995, and February, 1997.
The Presidency of the IPF, as well as its Secretary, considered that CIFOR's intervention was significant. Out of the recommendations made by the IPF, CIFOR acquired the responsibility of co-ordinating the implementation process of the Action Proposal oriented to the establishment of research priorities at international levels, and the means to develop them. The relevance of CIFOR's participation was acknowledged by its incorporation into the Inter-Agency Task Force of the Intergovernmental Forum on Forests (IFF), constituted by the General Assembly of the United Nations as a follow-up to the IPF.
Although it is clear that Project 10 has had the capability of ensuring CIFOR an international presence throughout its short existence, as has been shown by the case of its participation in the IPF, the other nine projects also deserve credit and, in fact, have contributed directly to the successful work of Project 10.
Relevance and priority of work: The relevance of CIFOR'S research in the policy community as well as its impact on the formation of global, regional and national policies are related to the output of this project. The Panel recognizes that good quality research is not the only prerequisite for a positive impact on policy-making. It also is necessary to have concrete strategies and mechanisms to feed information effectively to international fora and organizations, and to have the strategy and mechanisms to receive adequate feedback so as to improve CIFOR's research agenda. A fundamental task of this project should be to provide CIFOR with these strategies and to suggest the means for their implementation. Although the above is the project's main task, it also does independent analysis on various forest policy issues, mainly as input to the international dialogues through such fora as the IPF, IFF. and WFC.
Project 10 also has research activity related to the global trends in the structure and patterns of the demand and supply of the products and services provided by forests. There are other government and NGO actors in this field and it is not clear that CIFOR has a comparative advantage with respect to the major governmental and non-governmental organizations that actually deal with the subject at international levels. CIFOR's independence may give it an advantage in certain aspects of this work.
Summary and assessment: Overall, the Panel judges Project 10 to comprise a useful and complementary set of activities to CIFOR's other nine projects. Due to the fact that most of the tasks implied by the project must be based on the research completed within the other nine projects, this is an unusual project within CIFOR's research activity clusters. The relevance and quality of the results achieved through this project are closely related to the general quality of CIFOR's research.
While, it has been successful so far in bringing to international attention select outputs from CIFOR research, it does not have an explicit strategy to synthesize and reach out in various ways with the results of the research activities of the other nine projects. Accordingly, the Panel suggests that a priority activity for CIFOR and Project 10 is development of a strategy and accompanying mechanisms for effective outreach to policy makers. More specifically, the Panel believes that Project 10 activities are a blend of outreach, research, and information service functions for CIFOR senior management (provision of timely information for planning and other purposes). Project 10 could be considered more in the context of outreach, with its research elements being moved in closer association with activities in Project 1, or under another configuration that might result from reorganization of the current project structure. The Panel notes that CIFOR is reviewing its comparative advantage and role in broad trends analysis work.
