|
The goal of the project is to improve poor rural people’s incomes by
strengthening the incentives for sustainable forest management. It is doing
this in three ways. First, by encouraging better forest management and
better marketing practices for gum arabic in Burkina Faso, frankincense and
other resins in Ethiopia, and honey and beeswax in Zambia. Second, by
encouraging collective action to ensure that the benefits derived from these
products are more evenly shared, with a strong focus on ensuring that women
and poor people get a better deal. And third, by informing policy makers and
influencing national policy.
In 2008, Sida commissioned an independent evaluation. At the time the
project still had a year to run, and it was impossible for the reviewer to
make a definitive judgment on its impact, not least because many of the
written outputs were planned for the final year. However, the reviewer noted
that farmers and others directly involved in the project were clearly
benefitting. For example, in Burkina Faso the collective action encouraged
by the project has helped to improve the income of gum arabic harvesters,
especially women, in Yagha Province. As a result, many people who had given
up collecting gum because of the low prices have begun to do so again. They
are now selling through a union, which ensures they secure higher prices.
See ‘Making the most of Burkina Faso’s gum harvest’
The project combines research with development, with CIFOR responsible
for coordination and research, and its local partners responsible for most
of the development activities. According to the evaluation, the local
development partners have ‘successfully been mobilised to work on issues
locally that they would otherwise not have worked on, or at least only at a
low level’. See ‘Sweetening the deal for Zambia’s honey industry’.
Research conducted in all three countries has revealed that poor women
are particularly dependent on NTFPs, which they use either for subsistence
or to earn cash. However, they tend to earn much less than men, even though
they often play an important, if invisible, role in the NTFP trade. For
example, in Zambia, women are responsible for processing much of the honey,
and in Ethiopia they sort and clean frankincense. The Sida review noted that
the project had encouraged women to get more organised in the NTFP supply
chain.
CIFOR has played an important role in developing a draft beekeeping
policy for Zambia’s Ministry of Tourism, Environment and Natural Resources,
and this will eventually provide incentives for beekeepers and a framework
which should encourage them to manage the forests more sustainably. In
Burkina Faso, policy makers have expressed an interest in the collective
action stimulated by CIFOR’s gum arabic research, and CIFOR is contributing
to the formulation of general policy related to NTFPs. In Ethiopia, the
inclusion of several articles in the country’s new Forest Policy can be
attributed, at least in part, to information provided by CIFOR scientists.
During 2009, the data gathered in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia and Zambia will
be used in a cross-country comparative study. The research will help to shed
light on how NTFPs can improve the livelihoods of harvesters and others in
the long chain from the forest floor to the retail market. It will also
answer questions about the importance of collective action and
decentralisation when it comes to managing forest resources. This should
help to influence policy, both nationally and internationally. |
Download PDF
