Lessons Learnt on Sustainable Forest Management in Africa

Background

The extent and situation of forests in Africa have been quantified and described in the recent FAO reports on “Global Forest Resources Assessment 2000”, the “State of the World’s Forests” (2003) and “Forest Outlook Studies for Africa” (FOSA – 2003). These, and several other studies, for example by CIFOR, UNEP and IUCN all point at a rather bleak situation for Africa’s forests – resources are being depleted and/or mismanaged; institutions are weak; policies, laws, tenure patterns and economic incentives are often not conducive to achieving sustainable management and use of forests; national governments and donor partners alike give low priority to forest issues; etc. A result of all this is that the potential contributions of Africa’s forest resources to poverty reduction, economic development, and ecological and hydrological stability are far from being realised.


The importance of basing approaches on how to achieve Sustainable Forest Management (SFM), aiming at making forests contribute to improved livelihoods for current and coming generations, on “lessons learnt” has been repeatedly stressed. There is much experience and written material available in Africa from which to derive both positive and negative lessons. However, there has been little effort to analyse this material in a more systematic and unbiased way, aiming at understanding when and why a particular combination of economic, ecological, political, social, cultural, legal and other factors lead to success and when to failure. And, more importantly, even less has been done to derive guidelines from such analyses on how to transfer and extend positive lessons to larger areas, more people, and/or other countries. What mechanisms and conditions must be in place for such transfers to succeed?

Issues of this nature, and approaches on how to address them, are discussed in many of the international fora and processes concerning forests, e.g. the IPF/IFF processes in the 1990s, and now in the UNFF. Although it would be of particular importance to countries of Sub-Saharan Africa, in view of their dependence on their natural resources for economic development, to benefit from and contribute to these discussions, Africa has had a very low level of participation.

To address these shortcomings, an initiative called “Lessons learnt on sustainable forest management in Africa” has been taken by concerned
parties in Africa, at FAO and in Sweden.

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