Fostering Partnerships between Local Communities and the Private Sector
Support to Forest Sector Reform in Kenya, 2004
A combination of corruption and illegal excisions in the latter half of the 1990s reduced the area of industrial plantations in Kenya government forest reserves from 160,000 hectares to about 120,000 hectares. These forest excisions have created major environmental, economic and social problems. Illegal logging in indigenous forests has mushroomed and is negatively impacting on the biodiversity and the vital water catchment protection functions of Kenya's remaining upland forests. Further, uncertainties about the possibility to sustain the industrial round wood (IRW) requirements for Kenya's sawmilling, wood based panel and pulp and paper industries led to a government decision in the late 1990s to ban logging and to close down most sawmilling enterprises. As a result, many displaced forest workers are living in shanty townships, wood costs have soared, and the future survival of Kenya's pulp, paper and wood-based panel industries is under serious threat. A new forest bill and revised forest policy hope to change the trends, and aim to shift the emphasis of forest management to local communities and the private sector. In this context, PROFOR is working in partnership with the IFC and other donors to improve opportunities for partnership among the private sector, local communities and smallholders.
PROFOR has helped to move the national dialogue forward by providing information on a range of partnership schemes and guidelines for engaging companies, communities, and stakeholders. A Forest Investment Workshop hosted by the World Bank and PROFOR in Nairobi in November 2004 identified several possible business-community or business-smallholder partnership-based approaches that could be suitable for pilot scale testing.
PROFOR will continue to support the development of forest sector partnership in Kenya, and three reports are anticipated on the following topics: 1) Kenya Forestry: Economics and Financial Viability; 2) Forestry Partnerships in Kenya A Review of Issues for business- farmer, and government community - business arrangements for wood production; and 3) Kenya Interim Industrial Wood Supply Strategy.
