Managing the Miombo Woodlands of Southern Africa - PROFOR

processes and into decentralized regulation, in providing technical advice that is relevant to poor
rural households dependent on miombo, and in devising a more effective and realistic national-level
regulatory framework.
The call for forest institutional reform raises questions about what makes for “good” forest institutions
in the fi rst place. Drawing on some of the lessons of the 2004 World Development Report Making
Services Work for Poor People (World Bank 2004), fi ve principles help to defi ne institutional
performance (and good performers). These are:
• Delegating. There is an explicit or implicit understanding between multiple stakeholders that a
service (or goods embodying the service) will be supplied.
• Financing. Financial resources are provided that enable the service to be provided, or there is a
mechanism in place to ensure that the service is otherwise paid for.
• Performing. The service is actually supplied.
• Using information. Mechanisms are in place for obtaining relevant information and performance
against expectations and formal or informal norms.
• Enforcement. Institutions are able to impose sanctions for inappropriate performance or to
provide rewards for good performance.
These principles suggest quite radically different ways for forest organizations to operate in the
region and would require a process of institutional introspection, as well as national leadership,
to see them through a process of credible reform. It is unlikely that forest departments will ever
be able to engage with communities suffi ciently to facilitate local organizational and producer
group development. Rather, forestry departments should ensure that other service providers
with more strength at the community level are armed with the necessary forestry perspectives
and tools. Forestry departments are better placed to review and approve locally meaningful
management plans, provide support for serious fi re or insect outbreaks where necessary, and
provide technical advice.
Getting forestry onto the poverty reduction agenda
Over the past fi ve years, two instruments have helped to catalyze a focus on poverty reduction.
These are Poverty Reduction Strategies, ostensibly government-driven initiatives to articulate the key
priorities for achieving poverty reduction targets; and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs),
which have helped to identify progress in achieving poverty reduction.
A key outcome of both of these instruments has been that national planning processes have been
much more strongly linked to budget allocation processes, in particular because spending priorities
to meet poverty reduction objectives are more clearly targeted as a result in most countries’ Medium
Term Expenditure Frameworks. These, in turn, provide a framework for general budget support
targeted at particular sectors through donor-fi nanced instruments. This has had a variable effect on
rural productive sectors such as forestry and forests that are multi-sectoral, and in general forestry
has been marginalized in the process. There are certainly cases where forestry has benefi ted from
targeted public spending fi nanced by instruments such as Development Policy Loans (DPLs) from
the World Bank, such as in DRC. Some reviews have suggested, however, that DPLs are perhaps not
58 MANAGING THE MIOMBO WOODLANDS OF SOUTHERN AFRICA