Poverty-Forests Linkages Toolkit - IUCN

16 OVERVIEW
POVERTY-FORESTS LINKAGES TOOLKIT
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Community Forestry, Production, Conservation, as
appropriate;
The main forest sector donors and any sectoral development
donor working groups (especially in countries
where forestry is the subject of a SWAP);
National NGOs with forest sector or biodiversity
conservation interests;
International NGOs with similar interests, such as
IUCN, WWF, CARE, TNC, WCS;
International or national NGOs or CSOs with an
interest in the rights of forest peoples;
Private sector interests such as associations of foresters,
or concessionaires; and
Academia (e.g. forestry school at the national
university)
gathering has taken place (in projects or otherwise)
on local people’s forest dependence; and to which
areas of the country it relates.
iv) To check whether the country is developing components
of a national forestry program (see Annex
1 for some of the countries which are); what results
the nfp has to show; whether any attempt to link the
nfp with the PRS has been made; and if so how and
with what kinds of data.
v) To understand how data to be forwarded for FAO
Forest Resource Assessments are compiled, and to
find out whether either methods or data might be of
use to the toolkit users.
The purpose of interviews conducted with Ministry or Department
of Forests employees and other forest stakeholders is:
i) To discover if and how the Ministry/Department of
Forests currently feeds data into the PRS process. If
the entity is a Ministry, the individual or unit that
liaises with the PRS secretariat may do so directly. If
it is a department within a larger ministry, the data
pathway will be more indirect.
ii) To understand what data flows into the Forestry
Ministry or Department from the local level, how
this data is collected, how often it is collected, and in
what format it is collated and presented for national
level use. Since many Forestry Departments in poor
countries are very short of resources, it is often the
case that local-level data collection has mainly taken
place through the vehicle of donor-funded projects.
Data may have been collected in a variety of formats
and may be very hard to compare from area to area
or over time.
iii) To discover what documentation exists on community
forest management, and on any other projects
concerned with forests and local people; what data
Understanding the interfaces
between levels of authority
In many countries involved in the PRS process, decentralization
has taken place in recent years, and the old links
between center, province and local level have weakened or
become more complicated at the very time when clearer
and stronger information pathways are needed. At the same
time, as Tara Bedi et al (2006) note, in some countries the
PRS process has as yet scarcely been communicated to the
local level or to the local officials who are involved in it.
Before the toolkit’s potential role can be assessed, it is
vital that line management and information pathways
connecting the local and national level for annual data
gathering and for the PRS process be well understood,
and potential information breakpoints located. Information
may pass sectorally, or be collated at local government
level and forwarded to a national ministry (such as
that for Local Government). The national level and the
local level may have different views about their respective
responsibilities, or reporting lines may be pretty clear, if
complex, as in the example from Tanzania. New technology
may be being brought in to help this link to be made
more effectively.