INTRODUCTION

Some twenty years ago, forestry projects in developing countries were focused mainly on commercial industrial forestry and forest industry development. Now the focus of most national forestry development agencies is more on projects oriented towards direct improvement in the welfare of the rural poor and improvement of the environment-projects that involve community forestry, social forestry, natural forest conservation for local and global environmental benefits, and agroforestry projects that contribute to food security and self-reliance. With this shift in emphasis, and the associated shifts in the ways in which the forestry sector interacts with other sectors, has come a need for the development of new strategies and approaches for the assessment of forestry project impacts.

Project Impact Assessments

Forestry projects^[1] have many different types of impacts on people involved in the project, on the broader economy, on local social, cultural, and political institutions, and on natural resource systems and the environment. It is these various impacts on people and society, and on natural resources and the environment, that are of concern in this discussion, particularly in terms of how they most effectively can be assessed.

Assessments provide information that decisionmakers need to:

• define problems and opportunities that merit project intervention;

• formulate, appraise, and choose among alternative designs of forestry projects;

• monitor and evaluate ongoing projects to improve project performance; and

• evaluate projects after completion to provide information to help improve the planning and implementation of future projects.

Policymakers and decisionmakers in national and international forestry development organizations recognize the need for adequate project assessments, and many guidelines for such have been produced in response to such needs. However, in practice assessment often is either neglected, or only partially or poorly executed, with important elements that affect impacts being ignored. Reviews of past assessment activity in the forestry/agroforestry sector suggest the need to improve the design and use of impact assessments by:

• Including a broader range of project impacts in project assessments at the planning stage. In the past, assessments have tended to focus on financial and economic impacts. Much less attention has been paid to social, institutional, and environmental impacts and the sustainability of projects. A recent review for the World Bank of 115 agriculture and rural development projects approved between 1983 and 1986 found that “relatively few projects have dealt explicitly with long-term resource management issues... only about 50 percent of projects mention resource problems in the project rationale” (Barnes and Olivares 1988). Another area frequently neglected is the social and institutional impacts. A review of the large body of forestry project interventions in the Sahel reported that “few if any of the chosen approaches have solicited or encouraged local collaboration and participation... many of the basic principles of project design are artificial, and in discord with local economic and ecologic realities or potentials,” and that the implementing agencies were seeking to “apply laws which are inadequate, counter-productive and impossible to enforce” (Weber 1982). A survey of impact evaluation in agroforestry projects found that, of the 198 projects that provided information on the subject, less than half were attempting any type of impact evaluation, and most of this was confined to just evaluating numbers of trees planted and area under agroforestry (Scherr and Muller 1990).

• Strengthening assessment procedures and improving the usefulness of outputs. Even in the economic assessment area, performance in practice has been weak. A recent review of 170 publications dealing with agroforestry economics disclosed only 15 which provided a useable ex post economic analysis (Swinkels 1990). Another review found that reports of impact studies were often difficult to interpret or compare; with the project analysts displaying problems in selecting impact indicators and methods of evaluation, and in distinguishing intermediate and final impacts (Scherr and Muller 1990).

• Linking assessment activity and associated data generation activities throughout the project development process. In some organizations, the various assessment activities associated with a project tend to be isolated from each other, and little attempt is made to coordinate data collection and information from one stage to another. Consequently there is a lack of continuity in the way in which the project is being assessed, with different bases for assessment being adopted at different stages in the project's life. Also, decisions are often taken during the project development process on the basis of assessments of one type of impact only, e.g., economic impact, rather than on the basis of consideration of all the relevant impacts and the interactions among them. Thus, the project proposal could originate from an assessment in terms of technical criteria, such as wood yields, this is then examined in terms of its administrative and financial implications, and is finally appraised in economic, and possibly social, terms as it reaches completion. The danger with this sequential approach is that what may be technically best may not be viable in terms of one or more of the other social and economic criteria. By narrowing down the range of alternatives at an early stage in the project process, it is all too likely that the option which would best accord with the overall criteria and constraints faced in pursuing the project's objectives is prematurely discarded, or is never considered. Stronger links and a broader approach to impact assessment are needed throughout the project process.

• Improving the effective use of assessments. Decisions often are made on the basis of one type of impact, such as economic impact, rather than on the basis of a range of impacts and their interactions. Different impact criteria may be used at different stages of project development, so that assessment results at different project stages cannot be compared. Better links between project impact assessment and decisionmaking are needed.

The Purpose of this Document

Assessments of forestry projects are conducted to provide information needed to make informed decisions about projects at all stages in the lives of projects. Thus, information needs and priorities should be set throughout the project development process and clearly specified by decisionmakers working closely with analysts and those impacted by forestry projects.

The present document provides decisionmakers with a view of the strategic context and the issues that need to be considered in developing an effective process for forestry project impact assessments. Those doing assessments constantly have to make trade-offs, e.g., between detail/accuracy and cost/time constraints; between breadth of coverage and depth of coverage; and between quantitative and qualitative approaches. Decisionmakers and policymakers should be involved at the strategic level in making decisions concerning such trade-offs, since impact assessments should be undertaken to answer the questions that are important to them as well as those that are important to project participants, and people impacted by a project. As such, decisionmakers should participate in an interactive way with analysts and participants to make sure that the right questions are being asked and defined so that time and effort are not wasted on obtaining the wrong information, or too much information. Impact assessment activity can be expensive. Only enough information should be generated to satisfy the needs of the decisionmaker. Determining the point of sufficiency of information becomes, in and of itself, a strategic issue.

The poor record of past forestry project impact assessments, often related to poor project performance, is partly due to failure to appreciate the importance and even the nature of some of the impacts and the linkages between forestry projects and the institutional frameworks within which they exist. It also reflects the difficulties and problems that analysts, planners and decisionmakers are confronted with in trying to put assessment into practice for the new generation of forestry projects and activities. These weaknesses understandably have been of concern to governments and donors alike. The purpose of this document thus is to explore ways of strengthening the approaches to assessing impacts and to provide a strategic overview of institutional issues associated with the new generation of forestry/agroforestry projects and the assessment of their impacts.

Part I explores how the new generation of forestry projects contributes to sustainable development and how these projects fit within a broader institutional planning context. Institutions help determine the nature, extent and magnitude of forestry project impacts and, in turn, institutions can be impacted, sometimes significantly, by activities and projects in the forestry sector. Thus, institutions become a key consideration in looking at issues and strategies associated with forestry project impact assessment. Part I also looks at the intersectoral issues which arise in the relation to the broader role of forests in development. Part II deals more specifically with the implications of Part I in terms of strategies and processes for the assessment of forestry project impacts.