|
Souti Yanfou is one of four sites in the Fouta Djallon Highlands to
benefit from the Landscape Management for Improved Livelihoods (LAMIL)
project managed by CIFOR and the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF). LAMIL
built on an earlier series of resource management projects, also funded by
the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which helped
to establish the concept of forestry co-management in Guinea. These projects
were successful in one sense: they improved forest protection in some areas.
However, there was limited buy-in from local communities, whose involvement
in managing and protecting the forests was marginal.
The new project, which began in 2005, assisted existing community groups
to reorganise, encouraged greater participation of women, and helped to
establish the institutions and regulations required for the co-management of
four ‘classified forests’. These are forests which are managed for a range
of purposes, including conservation, timber production, agroforestry and
farming.
While CIFOR concentrated on promoting and researching co-management and
market enterprise development for non-timber forest products (NTFPs) within
the classified forests, ICRAF encouraged farmers in the buffer zones to
adopt new agroforestry technologies and plant higher-yielding varieties of
their staple crops, especially cassava and groundnut. If farmers within the
buffer zones could increase their yields and diversify their sources of
income, there would be less pressure on the forests.
By increasing agricultural productivity and improving access to markets,
LAMIL has helped to raise incomes and generate enthusiasm for the principle
of joint forest management. Farmers who have adopted new agroforestry
technologies and planted high-yielding varieties have significantly
increased their earnings.
‘Some of these beneficiaries have more than tripled [their] annual
revenue and they are also helping to increase vegetation cover,’ says Louis
Corronado, the deputy director of USAID’s Guinea mission. The increase in
income has enabled farmers to buy livestock, establish orchards and pay for
the education of their children. See
‘Jagger gets satisfaction’.
According to CIFOR scientist Terry Sunderland, the technical adviser to
LAMIL, the project was greatly assisted by the strong support and
involvement of the ministries responsible for resource management. Forest
management committees in the four LAMIL sites have signed co-management
contracts with the Ministry of Agriculture, and staff from the Forestry and
Water Directorate collaborated with researchers on the production of a
co-management guide. Indeed, co-management has now been recognised by the
directorate as an effective way of managing forests.
The forest management committees have the right to manage the forests in
partnership with the local offices of the Forestry and Water Directorate,
and the right to exclude outsiders. Members of the local management
committees can collect NTFPs, such as wild fruit, medicinal plants and
fuelwood. But those who are not members must pay for this privilege.
In several areas, forest management committees have banned hunting and
local reports suggest the bans are helping to restore wildlife populations.
A follow up to the LAMIL project, focusing on the border between Guinea
and Sierra Leone, began in 2008.
‘It is a measure of the success of the first phase that USAID was
prepared to provide further support to promote forestry co-management in
another area,’ says Sunderland.
The project, which is known as the LAMIL-transboundary activity (LAMIL-TBA),
takes place in an area that has experienced rapid population growth, caused
by a combination of the exodus of refugees from Sierra Leone during the
civil war, declining soil fertility and widespread forest loss.
Balinga says he learned some important lessons from LAMIL, and these
lessons have influenced the approach taken in the transboundary project
area.
‘We found that some of the local government officials fought against
co-management during LAMIL,’ he explains. ‘They feared that they would lose
their authority to manage the financial revenues coming from the forests.’
To avoid tension in the project sites along the border, LAMIL-TBA held a
series of workshops for government officials to explain what co-management
entailed.
The concept was enthusiastically embraced both by government officials
and by local villagers, to an extent that surprised the scientists. After 13
years of involvement in co-management, the forest management committee in
Nyalama had 180 members. In contrast, the forest management committee
established in Soya by LAMIL-TBA attracted over 465 members within a year.
Over an 11-year period prior to LAMIL, the forest management committee in
Nyalama raised 6.3 million Guinean francs (about US $1250) from membership
and other revenues, and the same again during 2 years of LAMIL. In less than
a year, its counterpart in Soya raised over 4.5 million Guinean francs (US
$900) from membership fees alone.
The LAMIL projects have combined research with development, and the
findings in Guinea will help to inform a comparative study of co-management
which will draw on CIFOR’s work in Cameroon, Ethiopia and Zambia. The
LAMIL-TBA study site has now become one of the research sites for the
Landscape Mosaics project, also jointly managed by CIFOR and ICRAF.
|
Download PDF
