Document(s) 1 of 2

Conflicts related to use or abuse of the forest are common all over the country and municipal governments are frequently the obligatory stakeholder of reference. Many of these conflicts are related to deforestation and illegal exploitation of forest products. The municipal government’s intervention could range from playing a relevant role in the negotiation to simply filing a charge with COHDEFOR, the Environmental Defense Attorney or some other public office.

In the cases of exploiting ejidal forests, conflicts linked to exploitation contracts are common, generally related to demands by those with usufruct rights or people settled on the land. The conflicts generate different kinds of problems and hinder the implementation of logging activities to the point of paralyzing them. In the municipality of Jano, a conflict with a sawmill has impeded logging for three years. In Yocón there has only been one exploitation in five years, due to serious problems linked to land tenure.

Both municipalities belong to the department of Olancho, where land use conflicts are very frequent, and the municipal governments are unable to achieve satisfactory arrangements that permit forest exploitation. With a surface of 23,905 km², mainly apt for forests, this department is the most extensive in El Salvador. It has a complex set of forestry problems, because in addition to its forest wealth, it is strongly pressured by the agricultural frontier. The following insert illustrates the conflicts over use (or abuse) of the department’s forestry resource.

The Corridor of Death

This is the name of a stretch of highway between the community of Limones, in the department of Olancho, and Mame, in the department of Colón. It is an important forest corridor since it crosses municipalities with great forest wealth: Salamá, La Unión, Jano, Yocón and Mangulile, and links with another forest corridor located in the route from Campamento to Juticalpa, Gualaco, San Esteban and Santa María del Real. Agriculture, livestock raising and logging in huge pine or broadleaf forests are done throughout the zone.

Interesting management initiatives have emerged in these municipalities, which have a very low socioeconomic level but great forest wealth. In 1998, various mayors in the region jointly requested an increase in the percentage that COHDEFOR must transfer to municipalities for forest exploitation within their territories, but without result. Some cattle ranchers from the area thus resolved to charge all trucks carrying lumber through the region 500 lempiras ($30), justifying this illegal charge by the fact that loggers only exploit the forest and leave no benefit in the municipalities.

The productive potential of the municipal forests in these corridors is very important. For example, the cutting capacity of the forests in northern Olancho could exceed 60,000 m³ of pine per year; but recorded cutting rates in the past two years did not reach half of that figure and various municipalities did no cutting at all due to various problems (conflicts with occupants in Guayape, contract problems in Jano, lack of management plans in Manto, Guata and Silca).

During the past five years, the municipal governments have improved the management and administration of their forests with the support of the Municipal Forestry Development program. At least 13 municipalities have worked in protection and micro-watershed conservation activities and prepared assessments and work plans to declare various micro-watersheds in Guarizama, Manto, San Francisco de La Paz, El Rosario, La Unión and Guayape. In addition, Environmental Units have been duly organized in more than 10 municipalities. These units tend to develop activities based on forest management plans: demarcation of micro-watersheds, fire fighting and prevention, exploitation, reforestation and others.

In 1996, 17 municipalities jointly created the Foundation for Municipal Development, focused on forest management. The effort was not successful, but it demonstrated the municipal governments’ interest in framing their activities within the sustainable development concept. Municipalities such as Guayape, Concordia, Silca, Yocón, La Unión and Guata have formulated and are implementing their own operational and management plans for exploitation of the ejidal forests.

The area’s municipal governments have a trust fund called the Fund to Support Municipal Development, which was backed at the beginning by the PROLANCHO Program (SAG/European Union). This fund permits them to contract local technical assistance to work on the annual operational plans, forest fire prevention and other activities related to managing their forests.

Some of the problems these municipalities face are: the politicization of their authorities, falling lumber prices, conflicts over land use and difficulties getting COHDEFOR to approve the operational and management plans. But the most serious problem is the illegal extraction of forest products, which has generated a popular movement called Pro Veda, partly backed by the municipal governments themselves, to get total prohibition of exploitation of the area’s forests.

The municipal governments have made an effort to strengthen their management capacity and generate wealth through exploitation of their forests and there are some successful cases of sustainable management. The current situation is chaotic, however, with a high degree of ungovernability, since neither national nor municipal authorities have found a viable way to develop the region through rational and sustainable resource exploitation.

Nonetheless, the region’s potential is so great that its current problems will surely be surmounted. To do so, all the stakeholders must unite, setting aside their personal or group interests in favor of a management that ensures the perpetuity of the resource.

Relationship between governmental and local actors

MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT RELATIONSHIPS WITH THE FOREST AUTHORITY

There is no official forestry management coordination policy between Honduras’ central agencies and municipal governments. In fact, the coordination that exists in preparing and approving the management plan and other issues tied to forest management responds more to the will of the officials involved than to an established policy. This fact is exemplified in the following testimony: “Efforts have been made to coordinate, but it has been difficult. In the municipalities we deal with, there was a desire to organize community fire prevention brigades, but despite the good will of COHDEFOR field technicians, nothing could be concretized due to indecision in the institution’s upper echelons” (Cabrera, pers. comm).

There have also been multiple and serious discrepancies between the State Forest Administration and local governments. Some municipal governments resent COHDEFOR imposing legal criteria to support decisions that frequently oppose local interests. For this reason, they often accuse the forestry authority of complicity in irrational forest resource exploitation. As these charges are not investigated, COHDEFOR has lost credibility and often appears as the main cause of forest depredation.

A case that illustrates this type of conflict occurred in La Campa, a small municipality in the department of Lempira. Due to presumed arbitrariness by COHDEFOR personnel in the area,¹¹ the community, with support from the mayor’s office, decided to expel the institution’s employees and prohibit timber and pine resin extraction in the municipality. Years later, during the 1995 Forest Campaigns with Local Governments, the mayor of La Campa invited the COHDEFOR general manager to visit the municipality and relations were reopened.

Despite these difficulties and the absence of clear policies, there are concrete experiences of coordination between COHDEFOR and municipal governments that have had good results both in forest management and exploitation and in administering protected areas. Through COHDEFOR’s delegation, municipal governments grant slash and burn permits to landowners who want to do controlled burning on their lands; together with the permit, they are given instructions to prevent forest fires. In some cases, as in the localities in the southern part of the department of Lempira, the municipal governments have helped eliminate this practice.¹²

The Forest Campaigns with Local Governments were held between 1994 and 1998, coordinated by COHDEFOR and financed by German cooperation (GTZ). These events, which represented a very important effort, had optimum results in the relations between municipal governments and the forest authority.

¹¹ In La Campa, COHDEFOR fined a carpenter the equivalent of $500.00 (his income for nearly two years) for cutting four pine trees. In contrast, the loggers were cited several times for serious violations, but never fined or closed (Tucker 1999).

¹² Lempira Sur Project.

MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT RELATIONS WITH LOCAL STAKEHOLDERS

This section describes the local stakeholders involved in municipal control of forest management and discusses their perception of the local governments’ role. The relationship between municipal governments and local actors depends on various factors, such as the articulation of the existing social forces and the municipal government’s size and political and economic weight.

Local organizations

Patronatos, or civic patron boards, are local organizations through which citizens defend their common interests; they have had a leadership role in the forest issue. For example, in 1991, a sawmill was functioning in the municipality of La Iguala that the neighboring residents argued “brought no benefits, but a lot of problems.”¹³ The Pro-Municipal Development Patronato requested the mayor to close it, since the new Municipalities Law granted him the competence to do so. As the mayor did not welcome the request, the Patronato organized the residents, who went on strike and requested the departmental governor to suspend all municipal government members. The sawmill finally had to leave the municipality.

¹³ Testimony of a neighbor of the municipality in the video, “La Iguala: rescate de un bosque” (COMUNICA 1992)

Women’s groups that organize to implement specific forest activities are another interesting actor in the local sphere. In El Cajón, for example, the Cajón Dam Watershed Management Program (PROCAJON) has promoted these associations to develop activities related to tree nurseries, given their proven capacity and willingness to do the work.

Associations of owners and users of forests and private reserves have gathered force in recent years and are struggling to gain spaces that allow them to obtain greater benefits from their areas in usufruct or under dominion. Such is the case of the National Association of Forest Area Owners (ANAPRAF), whose application for legal status is currently being processed and which aims to work through the municipal associations.

The different groupings linked to municipal governments or promoted by national institutions to administer resources or work in disaster prevention should also be mentioned among local actors. These include the Municipal Development Councils (CODEM), the Local Councils of Protected Areas (COLAP), the Local Watershed Councils and the Water Boards.

Political parties and churches

The political parties still have weight in the local sphere and some have led fights to preserve the forest resources. For example, two leaders who died defending the forests in Yoro and in Catacamas belonged to the Democratic Unification Party.

Other actors traditionally linked to forest management are the educational institutions and churches. Local churches often contribute to the forest management processes; for example, the Catholic Church in Gualapo coordinated Local Forest Forums. In the Mosquitia, the Moravian Church supported Miskito organizations in forest conservation.

The private forestry sector

Other significant actors in the local sphere are logging companies, truckers and informal producers. This sector generates jobs and does important works such as roads, bridges and highways, which represents a benefit for the communities. In addition, the lumber manufacturers must pay rates or taxes for the activities they develop in the municipalities.

Even so, there are important conflicts between this sector and the communities, in which the populations often reject the companies’ industries in the belief that they only come to extract timber, damage the water sources and destroy the wildlife habitat. These conflicts directly affect the municipal government, above all when the companies exploit ejidal forests. The municipalities can sign exploitation contracts with the lumber companies and impose conditions that benefit them; in addition, the contracts are an important source of income for their budgets.

If the community opposes commercial use of the ejidal forests and the presence of lumber companies, the municipal governments find themselves forced to choose between the income generated by the logging contract and the political cost of confronting a population that is against the activity. In addition they expose themselves to a series of legal conflicts such as land tenure disputes, claims to rights of possession and even a refuting of the contact that could complicate their relationship with both the population and the lumber companies even more.

This situation, which has come up in several municipalities, at times with regrettable consequences, deserves special attention, as it threatens the possibility of forest management being a motor force of local development. The reasons the communities reject the lumber companies must be analyzed and the quota of responsibility in each case accepted so the problem does not grow, reducing the development options of municipalities that have important income potential in their forests.

Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs)

The NGOs with an environmentalist orientation are also important because they support the municipalities with resources and technical capacity. The case of MOPAWI (Development of the Mosquitia) is very interesting, as it shows how an entire region can be supported by an NGO’s credibility and its managerial capacity to promote the region’s development; in fact, nearly all activities projected for the Mosquitia seek an alliance with MOPAWI. In general, given their structure, with agile administration and the legal capacity to process projects, NGOs can contribute not only technical aspects to the municipalities, but also planning, social aspects and other elements needed for a successful initiative.

Although NGOs tend to have a lot of weight, few of them work directly in the forestry field and fewer still coordinate their activities with the municipal governments. The majority of them do very low-scale reforestation, producing plants in their own nurseries that they share with the municipal government or using plants the municipal nurseries produce. In general, NGOs are valuable allies of the municipal governments and support them significantly so they can improve their ability to co-manage protected areas, above all in the cases of agreements where both parties share rights and responsibilities.

There have been some cases of NGOs that use the local governments to obtain funds then twist their mandate, misappropriating the resources or using them for their own interests, which makes some municipal governments reluctant to relate to them. It is more common, however, for NGOs to be important municipal government allies, supporting them technically and guaranteeing follow-up to projects that could not be implemented without that support.

Ethnic Groups

Indigenous groups have gained space and become protagonists in local forest management. In 1995, some groups belonging to the Coordinating Body of Indigenous and Black Peoples of Honduras (COPIN), together with six municipal governments in the departments of La Paz and Intibucá, opposed the transporting of lumber products. They succeeded in getting a 10-year forest prohibition imposed to halt tree felling in the area by lumber companies using traditional exploitation techniques and leaving no benefits for the communities.

In general, these groups have their own statutes, which have more legal force than the Municipalities Law. The indigenous or Garífuna groups try to enforce the International Labor Organization’s International Convention 169,¹⁴ which gives them the faculty to use the natural resources on their communal lands under authority from their own ethnic group.

The relationship of these groups to local government depends on the proportion of the indigenous or black population existing in the municipality and the municipal government’s make-up. In the infrequent cases in which the municipal representatives are themselves from ethnic communities, they are respectful of these peoples’ customs even if they act in the name of the municipal government, as is the case in Guajiquiro. In these cases, the ethnic group can ally with the municipal government to solve community problems.

There are, however, municipalities such as Tela and Trujillo, with a numerous indigenous population that is inadequately represented in the local government. There the relations between the ethnic group and the municipal government are quite tense, above all due to land tenure conflicts. In these cases, the groups pressure for solutions to their problems through national mobilizations.

Development projects¹⁵

 ¹⁴ This convention on indigenous and tribal peoples in independent countries went into effect in Honduras in 1995.

¹⁵ It is difficult to enumerate all the projects linked to the forest sector, but a recent document established that 15 different projects were functioning in 2002 (ESNACIFOR 2002).

Development projects implemented in the municipalities are one of the most important forces in Honduras’ local forest management scene. While there are many examples, the case of Lepaterique is one of the most representatives (see insert). In general, such development programs and projects significantly support the local governments’ forest initiatives, both those with an exclusive forest orientation and those that incorporate the forest component as part of their work plans.

These projects have promoted the design of different participation mechanisms that have been very successful. The Municipal Development Council in the municipality of Guajiquiro could be mentioned as an example. It has functioned for many years and has proven to be more effective than some legal mechanisms. The same is true of the local forest forums encouraged by the GTZ in various municipalities or the Forest Management Program supported by PROLANCHO.

In addition to short-term benefits, the projects amplify discussion around the forest issue. Municipalities that previously gave their forests no importance become reference points of forest management once the citizenry becomes more aware of this issue and access to new management technologies translates into more and better job opportunities.

Lepaterique: an example of local forest management

Lepaterique is a municipality in the department of Francisco Morazán. It has a population of over 16,000 and a territory of 498.8 km², mainly apt for forests. The municipality has 46,000 ha of ejidal forest made up of ocote pine (Pinus oocarpa) and to a lesser extent oak and evergreen oak (Quercus sp.). It is currently processing a management plan for 14,600 ha of forest.

Forest activity is very important in Lepaterique, with resources from the sector representing 50-60% of the municipal budget (approximately $92,300). The most important economic activity is resin extraction; the largest peasant resin company in the country (Cooperativa Agroforestal Lepaterique Ltda.) started there.

In 1992, with the arrival of the Sustainable Conifer Forest Management Program (MAFOR) implemented by COHDEFOR with support from the Government of Finland, the municipality’s forest management got a big boost. Different activities were promoted to make the community aware of the issue and organizing was done around a training program. As a result, Lepaterique became a national and international forest management model.

The main institutions and organizations linked to forest management are the Municipal Forestry Office, the Forest Management Fund, the Cooperativa Agroforestal Lepaterique Ltda., the forest rangers, forest micro-businesses, truckers’ associations and the Santiago Technical Institute. The agroforestry cooperative of resin producers has 900 members who extract over 500 barrels of resin a month.

The Municipal Forestry Office administers forest management through various activities. For example, it has a forester who reviews management plans and formulates recommendations for the mayor to either authorize or reject. The office has nine permanent employees and hires occasional personnel for various forest management tasks; it has dasometric and computing equipment, GPS and a motorcycle.

In 1998, the Santiago Technical Institute had its first graduating class: nearly 100 bachelors of forestry science. The institute depends on the Ministry of Education and has support from the National School of Forestry Sciences, the MAFOR Project and the European Union, which provide materials, equipment and student grants.

The Forest Management Fund is a non-profit association made up of organizations and individuals participating in forest management. It maintains a record of all forest activities conducted in the municipality and collaborates in the control work; the forest rangers work in close coordination with it. The fund’s presence and the quality of its work, which it coordinates with the municipal government, generate confidence on the part of the COHDEFOR authorities.

In addition to this organizational structure, one of the main achievements of the forest activity in Lepaterique is the community’s increased technical capacity. At least 20% of the population has received some type of training linked to forest management and there is strong awareness of the forest’s benefits.

Despite these accomplishments, there have been problems with the forest management model the municipality has tried to promote. Such is the case of IMPROFOR and INDUMALSA, two national industries established in Lepaterique with community shareholding capital; both had to close due to administrative problems and bad technical assistance and the communities lost their investment, which largely discouraged the shareholders.

There are also aspects that must be dealt with to improve the forest management. For example, the Montaña Yerba Buena protected area is in Lepaterique; while it supplies nearly a third of the water used in Tegucigalpa, no economic mechanism has been designed to recognize the environmental service these forests provide.

Lepaterique stands out as a forest management model for the region and inspired the “Central American Process of Sustainable Forest Planning Criteria and Indicators.”

Analysis of the municipal forest management processes

THE DECENTRALIZATION PROCESS

An important decentralization process that began in Honduras in the nineties and was sketched out in various laws and general and specific policies aimed at strengthening the local governments has had an important impact on the country’s forest management. From the legal perspective, many competencies linked to forest activity were transferred to the municipal governments, direct management and administration policies for the ejidal forests were drawn up, assistance in implementing the national forestry policy was designed, and contracts, conventions and other elements related to management of the forests and protected areas were signed. This process has also opened spaces for strengthening municipal autonomy through the receipt of income generated by forest exploitation. It still must be further strengthened, however, if it is to fill the gaps it currently has deal with.

Coordination between COHDEFOR and the municipal governments

The central government, essentially through COHDEFOR, retains the majority of competencies linked to productive forest management in protected areas. In the case of ejidal forests, although the municipalities have been given more responsibilities, the majority of local governments have not assumed them or taken advantage of the opportunities these competencies could represent.

In addition, the mechanisms needed to permit local governments to assume the transferred competencies effectively have not been clearly defined. Those governments that have been able to implement their new responsibilities have had the support of cooperation projects or other outside actors such as NGOs. The majority of municipalities know very little about the new forest management competencies. In general, the mayor is the best informed, though there is an effort to train the UMA heads. Other municipal officials have little information on the subject, which leads them to commit errors, for example by adjudicating contracts to individuals or entering into competency conflicts with COHDEFOR.

Although COHDEFOR is the most important central agency on the forest issue, it has no policy for coordinating and transferring knowledge and technical capacity to the municipal governments. The limited coordination that has taken place has been due to the good will of the officials involved. In some cases, COHDEFOR officials stick to the hierarchical structures and try to impose their viewpoints, which has sparked conflicts with the municipal governments. In addition, COHDEFOR is dealing with internal problems that limit its advisory capacity and prevent it from assuming its function of collaborating with municipal governments in managing the forests with full responsibility.

The limitations in the forest management decentralization process are not due only to the central agencies’ policies and actions, however. The municipal governments have their own limitations, such as the fact that their officials change every four years, which makes the continuity of forest management difficult over time. In addition, their activities depend heavily on the political interests of the local actors and in the majority of cases, the sustainability of the forest is not a priority.

The municipalities’ incentives and capacities

Probably the greatest element motivating municipal governments to get involved in forest management is the possibility of increasing their budget and improving the local economy through forest exploitation. A second mobilizing factor is the electoral constituency’s interest in the forest issue. In fact, this interest has generated changes in the campaign messages of mayoral races, which are now more oriented to protecting the forest, in many cases the municipality’s main resource.

The possibilities of pulling in income are abundant and varied, but do not fulfill the municipal government’s expectations. Sometimes central government transfers do not reach the obligatory legal percentage (5% of the national budget). The transfer of 1% of the real value of the forest resources exploited in municipal territory is a very low percentage. With respect to exploitation of the ejidal forests, which offer wide-ranging possibilities, the municipal governments’ lack of technical and economic capacities acts as an obstacle to their use.

In theory, municipal governments with more forest resources could significantly increase their budget by appropriately managing both the ejidal forests and the income they get from exploitation of national forests within their territory. The experiences have not been encouraging, however, and even those cases that have been successful, such as Lepaterique, have not proven to be sustainable.

Ignorance about the activity, traditionally linked to the private sector, could be one cause for the low forest income level. There are proven cases of inability to administer the resource efficiently. Municipalities with annual cutting quotas exceeding $60,000 have not managed to develop a basic capacity to manage and take advantage of the forest.

Another factor that influences low forest income is the lack of transparency in resource management in some municipalities. The excess power concentrated in the mayor, with no clear, obligatory and systematic accountability mechanisms, permits the flight of resources that should be going into the municipal coffers.

Municipal governments complain that the money from the fines imposed by COHDEFOR for forest infractions never get to the municipality where the infraction was committed. Indeed, they are not even collected, because COHDEFOR does not make the effort, thus encouraging impunity and lack of credibility in the system. The municipal governments think they could be more effective in dealing with infractions and invest the collected fines in local development.

Document(s) 1 of 2