What is community-based forestry and what is this course about?

Dr. Wangari Maathai won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize for “her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace.”  While she is accomplished in many areas, this award honors her for founding the Green Belt Movement which, over the course of 30 years, has mobilized poor women to plant 30 million trees in her native Africa.  But it wasn’t the trees themselves that raised her efforts to international acclaim.  It was Dr. Maathai’s “… holistic approach to sustainable development that embraces democracy, human rights and women's rights in particular. She thinks globally and acts locally. … Maathai combines science, social commitment and active politics. More than simply protecting the existing environment, her strategy is to secure and strengthen the very basis for ecologically sustainable development.” (Quotes from the official press release of the Nobel Prize Committee.  See www. nobelprize.com)

These words describe the goals and methods of community-based forestry worldwide.  Community-based forestry promoters seek nothing less than to secure social and ecological well-being for all by working to enhance participatory decision-making and sustainable benefits at a local level which are equitably distributed. 

Forest ecosystems once covered much of the land area of the northern & southern hemispheres.  These currently and formerly forested lands are teeming with human communities – traditional and contemporary, urban and rural, autochthonous and transplanted.  In an era in which environmental management and other policy initiatives are being decentralized to more local levels, it is no wonder that many are turning to community-based forestry as a way to reconnect people to the land and to achieve the joint social and environmental goals of sustainability.

In this course, community-based forestry is studied as a robust example of how sustainability can be achieved through institutional change.  It is often said that forest management is not about managing trees, but rather about managing people.  This course will focus on the people, policies and institutions which dictate the use of forest resources.  It is fundamentally a policy course which examines how people at the community level are working to co-manage forests and market forest products for sustainable social & environmental benefits.  Throughout the course we will use community-based forestry as a way to explore three issues:  a) how do communities, businesses and government work together to manage common pool resources in ways that promote social and ecological well-being, b) how can good ideas and pilot projects be scaled up to change the dominant social-political-economic systems that affect natural systems, c) what are some of the social justice and diversity issues in resource management and how do community-based approaches address or exacerbate inequity?  We will examine cases from Vermont, the western US, Canada and the developing world. Lessons learned will be broadly applicable for many community-based efforts to promote equity & environmental sustainability.

This semester, I have added a service learning component to the course, in which students will work long distance with a community-based forestry organization to enhance their website.  This project was chosen as a way to get to know one organization in a different context well and to understand better how one can work “long distance” on a community-based effort.  Students will also develop their web saavy – not only the technical skills involved in building a website, but also a more critical understanding of the role of the web in grassroots efforts.