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Forestry for Sustainable Rural Development
plantation. Farmers have expressed preference for a mixed
farming system, with both pasture and trees. The village committee
has reported more than 400 "incidents" related to disputes over
this land in the past three years.
Laobaozhai is
one of four sites where the Foundation supported the Yunnan Upland
Management program of research, training, and experimentation. The
Yunnan Academy of Forest Sciences, which had been involved in the
Yunnan Upland Management program in Laobaozhai since 1990 believed
that the key to resolving the conflicts was to initiate a planning
process in which farmers' voices were heard together with those of
technical specialists and government agencies. In the absence of
potential intermediaries such as NGOs, the academy was convinced
that its relatively neutral position as a research institution
would enable it to assist in formulating such a joint planning
process. The Foundation supported the academy in its efforts to
facilitate communication among the different parties involved and
to offer its technical expertise to assist in reaching a consensus
on the design of a mixed pastoral and forestry land-use system.
Changing
Forest Department Orientation
Nongovernmental organizations and research
institutions are important players in the development and
acceptance of community forestry approaches within government
departments. As members of working groups, they conduct research,
assist in project monitoring, and work to institutionalize changes
in forest department orientation. One of their primary roles is to
conduct training programs for forest department staff. An NGO in
Indonesia, Yayasan Bina Swadaya, won State Forest Corporation
confidence to such an extent that it offered regular training
courses for SFC staff at all levels and maintained an office inside
SFC headquarters. In India, the Institute of Bio-Social Research
and Development (IBRAD), the Vikram Sarabhai Centre for Development
Interaction (VIKSAT), the Tata Energy Research Institute (TERI),
Mysore Resettlement and Development Agency (MYRADA), and others
were responsible for developing innovative in-service training
courses for forest department staff. These courses, emphasizing
learning-by-doing rather than through lectures, were highly
successful in introducing new ideas and skills that had not been
taught in formal forestry training programs. IBRAD, for example,
developed ways to reorient staff from their usual top-down
approaches, strategies that combine behavioral psychology with role
playing, case study materials, and field exercises to expose
officers to the personal rewards of participatory planning and
management. IBRAD has become a national expert in this