Demonstration of Model Community Forests to Promote Community Forestry Development and Improve Livelihood of Local Communities

In Myanmar, 42.92% of country total area is covered by the forest. About 70% of the country’s population is depending on the forests for their living, and forest plays an important role not only for economic development of the country but also for the livelihood development and poverty reduction of the rural people. However, Myanmar has become one of the top ten countries which had the highest deforestation in the world. In order to prevent deforestation and forest degradation as well as achieve sustainable forest management, Myanmar Forest Policy emphasized the participatory forest management as one of the six imperatives. In exercise of Myanmar Forest Policy, Community Forestry (CF) was adopted as an option to improve participatory forest management for the environmental as well as food and economic security in the country. In Myanmar, Community Forestry Instructions (CFI) was issued in 1995 and Forest Department initiated the development of Community Forestry (CF) since then.Therefore, our idea is to establish the 3 Model CFs in different thematic areas as follow so that communities not only from Myanmar but also from the other countries can learn lessons and experience and then develop their inspirations and motivation:Model 1: CF based on agroforestry in Nay Pyi Taw for development of agroforestry designs suitable with local situationModel 2: CF based on community-based tourism as CFE in Shan StateModel 3: CF based on non-timber forest products as CFE in Shan State Together with the establishment of Model Community Forests, capacity building trainings on resource management and enterprise development would be given to the CF User Groups from the project sites. Moreover, Forest Department staffs would be trained to improve their understanding on CFE development. To achieve the objective 1: to strengthen participatory forest conservation and management, as well   as improve the livelihood of local communities, the following main activities are going to be carried out- 1.     To develop three Model CFs with different thematic focus in Nay Pyi Taw and Shan State so that other users can learn, 2.     To implement forest restoration activities such as agroforestry, enrichment planting/natural regeneration of forest, etc., 3.     To initiate community-based tourism CFE, non-timber forest product CFE in selected areas based on their potential products/services, 4.     To provide the capacity building trainings to Community Forest Users for Community Forestry establishment and natural resource management. To meet the objective 2: to promote community forestry-based enterprise (CFE) development, the following main activities are going to conduct- 5.     To provide the capacity building trainings to Community Forest Users of project sites and outside the project area as well as Forest Department Staffs for CFE development, 6.      To hold workshop and prepare the field visits to share the best practices and lesson learned to other CF users, 7.      To join ASEAN Social Forestry Working Group workshop and related events so that the experiences and lessons could be shared among Mekong countries including ASEAN members, 8.      To prepare manuscript of the paper to submit to an international journal so as to share the best practices and lessons learned to other CF users in the country as well as with other countries. Read more...