Conflict to Co-Management: the Case of the Blue Forest

Jennifer Gates

Comm. 1080

December 18, 2010

Comprehensive Final

Conflict to Co-Management: The Case of the Blue Forest

Congratulations to the United Nations and the Conciliatory Committee Committee, and to the organizations (CATIE, COATLAH, COHDEFOR, FAO, FONP, FTPP, OLAFO, and SNV) for helping establish this program for the people and their communities in Honduras. A special thanks is given to the three communities, namely San Ramon, Nueva Granada, and Brisas del Norte, who came came together considered and meet individual and collective needs, gained trust in each other and interested organizations, and in protecting the future of the Blue Forest. I have high hopes that this project will continue to be a success, and I would like to encourage the continued and expanded role of the Conciliatory Committee Committee now and into the future. In addition, I wish to include my recommendations (in this document) for explaining the use of the excellent work that has happened up to this point and carrying the resolution into the future as I explain the use of principles of conflict resolution to:

Improve the comprehension of the cultural dimensions,
Move beyond accusation and victimization,
Correct power imbalances.

Conflict has arisen in the Blue Forest project between members of three communities competing over access to, and equitable use of, the jointly held areas of the Blue Forest.

With this in mind, I wish to briefly refer back to a few of the core conflicts of the Blue Forest project to refresh your minds as to the nature of the conflicts and with some of the processes used to get to this point. In doing so, I can address each topic using the overall conflict of holding to agreements as well as building trust, and use information from this project. The three communities involved with this project are: San Ramon, Brisas del Norte, and the Nueva Granada. These three communities, forming a group called Piedras Amarillas, entered into an agreement called the National Honduran Corporation for Forestry Development (COHDEFOR), an organization that helped established harvesting and usage rights of the Blue forest for all three communities. Two communities out of the three, Brisas del Norte and Nueva Granada, unilaterally decided that the original plan was inequitable and that they could not maintain a reasonable livelihood and uphold the agreements of the Piedras Amarillas. Soon Brisas del Norte and Nueva Granada were illegally harvesting and exporting timber, and selling the goods to truckers who would transport the timber to surrounding markets. The Piedras Amarillas group kept the forest rights but illegal harvesting undermined and cheated the group's efforts for supporting and maintaining the law. Though originally all three communities were working together in the Piedras Amarillas, according to the case study, “discontent arose within the group over management of funds, the decision making process, and the way timber quotas were allotted” *(Case Study, page 109). To explain the reason behind such discontentment of the three communities, I wish to explain each of the community's background.

Beginning with the San Ramon, they are the oldest community, and while poor, have the highest standard of living of the three communities. San Ramon is also the furthest community from the forest area (3 hours walking distance over rough terrain) which makes it hard to get to and from the forest in order to prevent illegal logging and makes managing designated harvest areas difficult. As an economically disadvantaged community they lack the resourced to improve or repair the roads and putting them at the greatest disadvantage of the three communities in relation to use of the forest. To make matters worse, San Ramon is the most heavily represented community in the Piedras Amarillas and must abide by legal harvesting guidelines which requires them to follow difficult bureaucratic procedures, pay high taxes, and endure complicated payments schemes. Therefore, they feel like they are the most disadvantaged and hurt of the three communities.

Next, the Nueva Granada community's poverty level is in the middle with their location lying between the other two communities involved with the Blue Forest project. It takes about 1 ½ hours to walk from their community to the forest over rugged terrain. They are not as educated as the people of San Ramon, they lack understanding of the importance of holding to legal agreements, and they do not trust the people of San Ramon. They are the second most disadvantaged of the three groups for accessing the forest.

Finally, the community of Brisas del Norte has the highest poverty level, lowest employment, and lack access to social services, and is the newest and least established community. They are located on the edge of the forest giving them the best access of the three communities. Because this community is the most economically disadvantaged and lack education (or schooling), they felt that the laws were a hindrance to their livelihood and existence and began working with smugglers and truckers to export timber to earn a living. Brisas del Norte felt justified in breaking the law to provide for themselves and became defensive when their community would be punished for illegal logging activities.

Now that the background is in place, I will proceed to discuss my 1st topic of conflict resolution, improving the comprehension of cultural dimensions, and use examples from the case study of the Blue Forest project. As mentioned previously, San Ramon, within the Piedras Amarillas group, was having issues of exercising their legal rights for logging due to distance, poor road conditions, and lack of finances to improve road conditions even though they were the richest of the three communities near the Blue Forest. However, San Ramon decided to resolve this conflict by requesting assistance from the third party organization COHDEFOR. COHDEFOR was already familiar with the circumstances of the three communities. They decided to reach out to San Ramon first because they were the only community keeping the law and were being hurt by the illegal activities of the other communities. Next they went to Nueva Granada and finally, Brisas del Norte. By starting with the community that was the most hurt by illegal activities, San Ramon, COHDEFOR was able to build trust since San Ramon recognized that they needed help. The COHDEFOR then decided to approach the second community, Nueva Granada, and held a joint meeting there since it was not as confrontational as Brisas del Norte and since Nueva Granada was located between the three communities.

Later, a Conciliatory Committee was formed, consisting of representatives from each community. The tasks given to Conciliatory Committee were first, to discuss any issues the communities had a concern about at the time, second, find solutions, and third, establish fair rules. By including people from each of the three communities in the Conciliatory Committee the various cultural dimensions unique to each community were discussed, thereby improving comprehensive awareness. To start with the first task, here are some of the issues discussed when the committee desired to consider the needs of each or all of the communities.

One of the issues discussed was educating the three communities on improved methods of agriculture such as using mulch to provide crops with nourishment rather than their traditional slash and burn techniques. In this way they were able to still have good crops while allowing for good forest production, maintenance of the natural ecosystem, and help with climate and the surrounding forest areas (i.e. water storage for drinking and agriculture, as well as obtaining efficient use of agriculture), so as to understand how to better take care of their environment to help make the forest work well for them as much as possible. Along with learning to take better care of their environment, the legal procedures for harvesting and selling lumber were simplified to accommodate the education or ability of all three communities rather than use the former complicated system which was too cumbersome for Brisas del Norte and Nueva Granada. Educating the communities and streamlining their systems reduces the temptation to revert back to old habits of illegal forestry.

In the case of the people of Brisas del Norte, the establishment of a school to educate the current and the future generations ensures that this knowledge will not be lost and creates a barrier to falling back into old patterns. Furthermore, providing medical assistance to the people of Brisas del Norte as they work legally in the forest continues to build and maintain trust.

The committee's second task was to find solutions that helped communities to become accepting though trust and to be understood (or heard). One example of building trust with one of the communities, Brisas del Norte, was when the OLFA team (a member of the Conciliatory Committee early on) helped free captured smugglers who were imprisoned by the forestry inspectors and police. When the smugglers were caught and imprisoned the Brisas del Norte community realized they could be at risk if they broke the law, and the actions of OLFA to free the imprisoned smugglers made them realize that the committee was trying to help them not punish them. This really started to build trust.

Finally, the third task for the committee was to establish fair rules such as respecting human rights, being flexible, and working together. One of the challenges to working together was that some words offended different groups. In order to fulfill this last task, the group had to discover and replace offensive words such as, “inventory” (which reminded the three communities of former disputed activities of the Piedras Amarillas group), with the word, “diagnosis”. Even though these words were not directly involved with the problem, they were barriers to trust. By changing these words, the committee was able to show their willingness to respect cultural differences and maintain the trust needed to solve the bigger problems.

The 2nd topic of conflict resolution I would like to discuss the methods used of moving beyond accusation and victimization. Many times people fear the unknown such as changing procedures of logging for the three communities. Anger is often a result of fear and misunderstanding. When people misunderstand the need for change and do not know if it will harm or benefit them, there can be a natural tendency to fear or anger. Fear can be eliminated by means of providing opportunities for work, so people (communities) can continue to survive and perpetuate growth within each individual community. In order to reduce the anger exhibited by these three communities, each of them needs to feel understood, loved or validated, and supported **[Week 10 Power Point_Anger by Wilmot and Hocker (pp. 222-231), side 13]. An example of lessening anger in real issues through understanding, the committee listened to the concerns expressed by the representatives of each of the communities. In this way each community was given a voice to allow each to feel heard and understood. As the committee and outside agencies listened and heard the concerns expressed by each community, each community felt validated and began to open up communication.

One of the communities in the Conciliatory Committee, San Ramon, suggested to the COHDEFOR organization that half of the tax money from forest harvesting be used to provide road building assistance and infrastructure. The COHDEFOR organization helped further trust by validating this request from the San Ramon community. Another community's voice was validated when the COHDEFOR organization supported Brisas del Norte, the poorest community, with medical and educational support. Thus, fear and anger dissolved and became replaced with understanding and trust.

As the committee and the supporting organizations move forward, they can continue to seek improved outcomes through the continued use of the principles of conflict resolution. This will require extending similar measures to outside communities, continuing to support basic community needs and involvement from organizations like COHDEFOR, OLAFO, and Piedras Amarillas. By involving these other communities bordering the Blue Forest, they too become aware of the need to follow proper and legal procedures for forest harvesting so that progress does not halt (or that the already established system does not collapse) and to ensure resources are available to future generations. Another benefit of including these outside communities is the ability to receive input and ideas in areas of concern to them. In expanding the committee in this way they must be willing to revisit original areas of concern and new areas of concern brought by these new communities such as farming, education, legal harvesting, and sustainable forestry practices. In doing so they can more quickly resolve conflicts and lessen or possibly avoid accusation or victimization all together; likewise OLAFO, COHDEFOR and Piedras Amarillas can remain involved through continued medical relief, educational support, road and infrastructure, and other as yet unknown benefits while allowing the new comers to maintain a reasonable livelihood and develop trust.

In order to move beyond accusation and victimization, concerns and issues must be openly discussed in the committee so that each group feels included and that no one feels suspicious that another group has bad intentions. This will help build trust and reduce accusations and victimization.

The 3rd and final topic I would like to discuss is correcting power imbalances as a means of conflict resolution. To begin with, each of the three communities were assigned a portion of the Blue forest to manage allowing each community the opportunity to benefit from the natural resources. This ensures that each community does not feel left out or taken advantaged of by their neighboring communities. Another way power imbalance was resolved, was to ensure that each of the three communities were represented in the committee to ensure all voices are represented and understood. In this way decisions made by the committee like simpler ways of providing legal documentation and procedures are more easily accepted. Finally, to have power balanced, elections should be held regularly for committee representatives, perhaps every few years (2-3 yrs.) to ensure new concerns are addressed, power stays in balance, and issues don't become ignored by representatives in the committee, and to replace committee members who might be working against the committee.

In finding ways to correct power imbalances in conflict situations I would like to mention two specific examples from the Blue Forest project. The first example is the correction of power imbalance provided to the Brisas del Norte community when the committee helped provide for education and medical assistance. In this way the people of Brisas del Norte, present and future, would be able to compete more equally with the other communities. The second example of correcting a power imbalance was when the El patronato (a revived group of the Piedras Amarillas group) helped work out a deal that the government would return 50 percent of the taxes collected from legal logging activities to help finance community projects such as road building and infrastructure for drinking water to return resources back to the community and correct a power imbalance between government and communities.

In closing, I wish to express my thanks to the great work done by all those involved so far, both the agencies and communities, in finding common ground and implementing lasting resolutions to the conflicts addressed in the case of the Blue Forest. Although this has been a long process, each community that has participated so far has been able to look inward to see how their decisions affect others and outside themselves in order to work toward mutual benefit. It is my wish that the Blue Forest project will continue to be a success now and into the future. As mentioned in the beginning, the principles of conflict resolution can be effective in improving the comprehension of cultural dimensions, to move beyond accusation and victimization, and correct power imbalances. I hope the communities in Honduras can use these techniques and others to ensure a bright and successful future in the years to come.

Works Cited

*(Case Study, page 109; heading: Conflict Background or History).

**[From e-mail: Week 10 Power Point_Anger by Wilmot and Hocker (pp. 222-231), side 13].