4. In which ways is the initiative creative and innovative?
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There are 5 basic steps of the project implementation as follows.
1) Public relations extension
Based on more local participation concern, an action plan for local authorities focuses on promotion, raising awareness, and ways to accommodate relevant on ground community forestry obstacles.
2) Legal community forest establishment
Once a community’s concern on sustainable forest management is raised with substantial needs to resolve their forestry problems, an assembly of village members is arranged to democratically select a committee of village councillors on the community forest. Then, a CF application form (CF.1) with at least 50 signatures of adult village members who are over 18 years of age, and resident in the village must be submitted to local forest officials. After submission, the area where community requested for legal community forest establishment will be verified officially (CF.2) by forest officials in close cooperation with the applicants. Then, the community gathers to produce a self-developed proposal on community forest management (CF.3) for RFD approval.
3) Training of personnel and local representatives
RFD provides the technical training to strengthen capabilities of 200 other agency officials and at least 2,000 community representatives particularly in community forestry, planning at local level and related laws on a yearly basis. In addition, the knowledge communication is disseminated through various channels such as leaflets/brochures etc.
4) Forest management supported by government
RFD also provides financial support of 100,000 baht in average to the community where a participatory forest management plan is in place. The money must be used as seed fund to operate planned activities with local forest officials’ assistance through knowledge, collaboration and co-operation.
5) Performance monitoring
The performance monitoring of each community forest (CF.4) is jointly monitored by officials and community forest practitioners, and then must be reported to the RFD headquarter on an annual basis.
In addition, to achieve the planned forest activities with effectiveness, the community is free to access additional funds from local government offices or the private sector.
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5. Who implemented the initiative and what is the size of the population affected by this initiative?
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The stakeholders in the implementation of community forest project can be divided into 3 groups.
1) Key stakeholders who play considerable roles on the project determination, design, implementation, and leadership consisting of 2 sub groups
a. Government officials such as the director general of RFD, director of community forest management bureau, director of community forest management division, director of local forest resource management office, sub director of community forest management and community forest officials of all local forest management offices.
b. Local leaders such as mayors, head of local government offices, including heads of sub districts and heads of community forests.
2) Primary stakeholders who are given negative impacts directly. Here are residents in 21,850 villages within 5 km radius from forest reserves
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4) Secondary stakeholders. This group is also involved in community forest projects partially under RFD jurisdiction and other government departments, including academia, Kasetsart University, private companies for instance RATCH (Ratchaburi Electricity Generating Holding Public Company Limited (Thailand) and THAI Airways and NGOs such as the Sueb Nakhasathien Foundation.
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6. How was the strategy implemented and what resources were mobilized?
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To implement the community forest project effectively, the participation of all stakeholders is considered mandatory and a key element. But without finance, the performance may be limited. The criteria for budget allocation of the project is as follows:
1) The community that has already been given RFD approval as the official community forest with competency to carry out the project is prioritized.
2) The potential of local forest offices and field officials.
3) Covering the whole country.
4) Unit cost of activity, and the number of villages that have been targeted.
The subsidies supported by government for communities’ activities on forest management will be directly transferred to the target communities’ account. This shows the best and sincere concern in the reduction of corruption.
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7. Who were the stakeholders involved in the design of the initiative and in its implementation?
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1) The unity of community with gender equity and youth cooperation.
2) Reducing the conflicts and developing a close partnership between the community and government officials with a joint objective on sustainable forest management.
3) Reducing expenses and increasing revenues of communities with less forest disturbance.
4) Reducing migration of the rural population to the urban area, and as a result of participatory forest restoration, forest function is back to supply enough water for communities’ agricultural crops.
5) At least 592,000 ha of forests are community-based management by 9,015 villages.
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8. What were the most successful outputs and why was the initiative effective?
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There are 4 levels of performance monitoring and evaluation of the implementation of community forest project as follows.
1) Community level: the elected community forest committee itself acts as a coordinator to monitor and verify whether the progress of implementing activities as planned in addition to find solutions to encounter on-ground problems during the implementation of the project.
2) Collaboration between official and community levels: each project will be evaluated at the end of the year by a joint report made by officials and communities. The report summary contains the results of performance, problems, and solutions.
Furthermore, based on 16 items of criteria of community forest classification, there are 4 classes such as 1) good 2) moderate 3) basic (needed to be improved) and 4) poor (needed to be cancelled). The joint evaluator is requested to make comments, and classify evaluated projects, including provide recommendations that the projects should continue or not.
3) Other offices within RFD level: staff at all levels both from local and central areas are involved in monitoring and evaluation. Not only local RFD staff in charge of the project implementation and technical assistance to the community on a regular basis, but also the staff from RFD headquarters from different offices such as the section of planning and monitoring, community forest management bureau, the monitoring and evaluation section of planning and information bureau, including the Inspector General of RFD involvement.
4) External level: the results of Chulalongkorn University evaluation on the community forest project in 2013 showed that 100% of respondents were satisfied with its progress and performance with an average mark of 3.74 out of 5 with a 95% confidence level.
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9. What were the main obstacles encountered and how were they overcome?
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1) At the initial stage, locals had very low confidence to carry out the project with officials due to a long-term negative image of RFD on law enforcement with rural offenders. Therefore, RFD takes it into consideration, and put efforts to promote better understanding and attitudes with each other, regardless of time.
2) Due to lack of understanding in related laws, informal and formal consultation with locals was prioritized in order to accommodate the progress of the project.
3) The potential to establish official community forest is behind the needs. Based on the RFD fiscal budget is sufficient only for 200 villages to establish official community forests each year, including a number of local staff with skills of public extension are small, but with the cooperation of other agencies from both government and private sectors, for instance, provincial administrative offices, sub district administrative offices, Ratchaburi Electricity Generating Holding Public Company Limited, THAI Airways, including forest rangers contributed their efforts to establish another 7 villages as official community forests in 2013.
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