Comandos de la aplicación

When CF is implemented in Reserved Forests and Protected Public Forests (Permanent Forest Estate – PFE) the Forest Department (FD) under the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation (MONREC) plays a central role. However, when CFs are located in unclassified forests, the areas fall under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation (MOAI) or General Administration Department (GAD) of the Ministry of Home Affairs. Usually, CF establishment under MONREC is much faster than under the MOAI and GAD. There are several steps and procedures to pass through with the GAD, for example sometimes it takes three to four years to get CF certificates. This is because of the absence of a comprehensive National Land Use Policy in Myanmar, which is still in the draft form (Government official interview, Yangon, December 2015).

Regardless of the land classification and agency involved, CFUGs gain a 30-year official lease to co-manage forests with the FD under the CFI. The CFI was promulgated as a way

of promoting/establishing a “Participatory Forestry Approach”, one of six imperatives stated in the Myanmar Forest Policy (1995). However, CFI was developed as an instruction rather than a law because the legislators, at that time, thought that the nature of CF was not distinct from plantation forestry, which was already covered in the existing forest law. In practice, CF is found to be a variant form of participatory forest management rather than plantation forestry. Being an instruction issued by FD rather than a law, the CFI is not strong enough to deal with land tenure issues such as customary land use with local communities and indigenous people. This is a significant reason why CF has not progressed as rapidly as hoped in Myanmar (Government official interview, Yangon, December 2015). Macqueen (2012) confirms that CFUGs in Myanmar still rely on a very insecure CFI that carries little weight in law. If the tenure is not clear or secure in management and use rights, the state can easily take back community forests and control over forest management or reallocate the lands for other use. In this event, the management of community forests by villagers will be undermined, affecting local trust in CF and local people’s willingness to invest time in it.

Obtaining a CF certificate, therefore, does not provide certainty of the duration of land lease, and most CFUG members, apart from a few management committee members, do not understand their rights as they lack legal literacy. In addition, even local FD staff often had a weak understanding of CF concepts, roles and responsibilities, and local people’s rights, in some cases in Myanmar. This issue has been observed more broadly in the Southeast Asian region, where field staff who are implementing CF from government and NGOs have often been unaware of local rights and responsibilities (RECOFTC, 2007). On the other hand, national policy-makers recognise that having supportive policies and laws for CF can aid in effective implementation of the CF system for local forest users (ibid). Hence, the authorities under MONREC are trying to upgrade CFI to a law to identify legal rights, obligations and powers that are not clear to local participants (Government official interview, Nay Pyi Taw, December 2015).

Internationally, there is broad recognition that security of tenure is a prerequisite to improving forest conditions and the livelihoods of rural people. This is evident in countries such as Nepal, where forest management rights have been transferred to rural communities (Larson et al., 2010), and in countries such as in China and Vietnam, where significant forest management rights have been granted to individual households (Xu et al., 2010; Nguyen et al., 2008). In the three sites, a broad bundle of rights (elaborated by Schlager and Ostrom, 1992) had been transferred to the community forest user groups.

CFUG members in my cases held five types of rights: access, use, management, exclusion and alienation rights. They are not permitted to rent out or sell the community forest lands. However, CFUG members in all cases have rights to transfer the community forest land to his/her descendants in the form of inheritance (see Appendix 1). In this regard, granting secure use and management rights through tenure reforms to CFUG members represents a necessary step for improving forest management and consequently for enhancing the livelihoods of CFUG members. As we saw in Chapter 5, CFUG members in the Delta Zone were able to manage their individually owned community forest plots effectively, and to improve their livelihoods from the sale of forest products.

Insights from this research support the view that the initial resource endowment plays an important role in the CF program. Regarding the initial resource endowment, there are two key factors that have shaped the outcomes of the CF program: 1) the quality of forest allocated to the rural community; and 2) the area of the community forest. Mahanty et al. (2009) argue that the quality of forests determines what resources are immediately available, and the nature and extent of investments that are required to achieve a productive resource base. In the early stage of the implementation of CF in Asia, it was commonly observed that most forest land transferred to local people was poorly stocked or totally barren land (Nguyen et al., 2008). Enters et al. (2009) point out that some countries, such as Nepal and the Philippines, allocate some higher value forest resources for CF, but more often CF focuses on degraded forests. Building on the case from Myanmar, I showed that community forests were similarly established on barren lands in the Dry Zone and degraded forest lands in the Delta Zone and the Hilly Zone. The recent findings of Tint et al. (2011) also demonstrate that most of the forest areas targeted for CF in Myanmar are in a relatively degraded condition or have no trees at all. This presents a dilemma. The community wishes to secure access to productive forests for CF so that they can immediately use forest products to obtain livelihood benefits. However, in the study sites, communities often argue that the low quality of forests for CF are too much burden for them and they find it takes a long time for the forest to grow or regenerate, and to be able to extract forest products. In the Dry Zone case, for example, the CF established on barren land has resulted in a poorly stocked forest contributes only a very small portion of livelihood needs. On the other hand, the government remains reluctant to allocate quality forests for CF, as they are afraid of reckless exploitation and poor management by communities. The predominant focus on degraded lands originates, to some extent, from a lack of trust in communities’ capacity to effectively manage higher value forests,

as well as government interests in maintaining a stake in valuable forest resources (RECOFTC, 2007; Gerrard, 2007).

In respect to the size of community forests, the community forest in the Dry Zone is relatively small compared to the numbers of households in the village and their forest product demands. Usually, community forest products are collected in small quantities and are insufficient to meet the needs of each household, particularly when the CF belongs to all households in the village, which is true in most of Myanmar. For example, in the Dry Zone case, the community forest of 15 ha is used by 167 households. The forest products, mainly fuelwood, extracted from the community forest are not enough for the community’s daily needs, driving them to use crop residues from their farms or other sources, such as trees planted within farm boundaries. In contrast, community forests in the Hilly Zone case are moderately large in terms of forest area compared to the numbers of households (as seen in Chapter 6). However, the community forests in the Hilly Zone were established with the main aim of protecting the watershed area of Inle Lake. Accordingly, CFUG members prioritised conserving their community forests rather than using forest products. Community forests in the Delta Zone case are different. The CFUG members individually own their CF plots in various sizes under the CF scheme. In this regard, the forest products are allocated for household use and the members earn money from the sale of products.

In this way, the initial resource endowment, such as quality and size of forest, shapes the availability of forest products and the extent to which these are integrated into local livelihoods. Mahanty et al. (2009) suggest that unless governments have the political will to transfer valuable forests, rural communities will not get substantial benefits from CF. Furthermore, the benefit flow is affected by the size of the forest area, and the number of households involved in the user group. Without addressing these constraints, the potential benefits that can be returned to communities will remain limited (ibid).