Community-Based unmet research and development needs

From its humble beginning as a pioneering 'people-oriented forestry program' in the early 1980s, CBFM has evolved as the national strategy for the promotion of sustainable forest management and social justice. To date, the CBFM Program (CBFMP) covers some 5.97 million hectares of forest lands involving 5,503 individual sites and around 690,000 household beneficiaries. This represents a drastic departure for the earlier forest management approach, which placed 8-10 million hectares of forest land-around, one third of the country's total land area of 30 million hectares- under the control of the soocial elite, particularly the relatively few timber licence operators. In addition to forest resource democratization, CBFM's pro-poor orientation also fits very well with the socio-political development agenda of the present Philippine government on poverty alleviation and the delivery of the basic social services to the more indigent sectors. Moreover, the CBFM strategy hopes to promote community empowerment, sustainable forest management, a healthful and balanced ecology, and the recognition of rights of indigenous peoples to their ancestral domains. Despite the impressive CBFMP coverage, a combination of policy, procedural/operational/ and internal problems persist, jeopardizing its successful implementation. There is consensus from the findings of recent assessments and studies that the current CBFM strategy is yet limited and hardly contributes to the achievement of the overall CBFM objectives. Synthesizing the key results of these studies and assessments, this paper argues that major reforms have to be instituted if CBFM is to be a viable strategy in alleviating poverty and promoting sustainable forestry and social justice. Such reforms should include among others significant improvment in the areas of policy, institutional structures and support, and internal processes and procedures within the communities themselves. An important component to achieve such reforms is addressing the unmet research and development (R and D) needs of CBFM. This should involve following certain R and D principles, improving R and D processes and outcomes, and the effective and efficient use of R and D outputs.