Forest Policy Statement.

The Directorate of Forestry adopted this Forest Policy Statement under its mission, which is to practise and promote the sustainable and participatory management of forest resources and other woody vegetation, to enhance socio-economic development and environmental stability. The overall objective is to make the forest sector productive in order to serve four basic aims flowing directly from the poverty reduction strategy: a) Reconcile rural development with biodiversity conservation by empowering farmers and local communities to manage forest resources on a sustainable basis; b) Increase the yield of benefits of the national woodlands through research and development, application of silvicultural practices, protection and promotion of requisite economic support projects; c) Create favorable conditions to attract investment in small and medium industry based on wood and non-wood forest raw materials; d) Implement innovative land-use strategies including multiple use conservation areas, protected areas, agro-forestry and a variety of other approaches designed to yield forestry global benefits.
To enable more inclusive and efficient systems in the forest sector, the policy promotes investment in forest resource management by exploiting the leasehold tenure arrangements of the national land policy being proposed to benefit individuals, groups of people and communities. It also supports measures aimed at addressing overt discrimination against the meaningful participation of women in income generating activities. In the forest sector, training and education in forestry, as well as employment in the public forest service, will increasingly be opened up for women. Linkages between established women groups and forestry extension services will be pursued vigorously. Technical assistance and a credit program will be needed to overcome private forest owner’s inability to practice sustainable forest management. Forest authority will exploit appropriate State macroeconomic policies to secure resources to fund such broad-based rural programs that would partly benefit forest owners. Measures and actions on education, training, research and extensions are foreseen as well.
To implement the Forest Policy Statement, the forest sector will follow the 4 programme areas elaborated in the Forestry Strategic Plan of 1996: the Institutional Capacity Building Programme; the Community-Based Management of Natural Forests Programme; the Farm Forestry Programme; and the Environmental Forestry Programme.