Horizontal,Environment & Social Reform

Cooperation and Development Section ■ Delegation of the European Commission to China and Mongolia

NATURALFOREST

MANAGEMENTPROJECT

Project Objectives

This project is to contribute to the environmental stability and sustainable development of local communities by testing and demonstrating an increased range of options for sustainable management of natural forest resources for a variety of beneficiaries, thus enabling the communities to make better use of forest resources and to develop economic alternatives to forest utilisation.

Main Programme Activities

The Project is being implemented in Sichuan (BaoXing, PingWu, and SongPan counties), HuNan (YanLing and YongShun counties), and HaiNan (ChangJiang) covering 58 Administrative Villages (comprised of almost 300 Natural Villages).

The main areas of intervention are:

1. NaturalForest Management – NFM – (Strategic and Operational Planning, Forest Co-Management, and Silviculture Treatment Demonstrations)

2. Community Development – CD – (including Micro-credit; but also micro-infrastructure, alternative livelihood and thematic demonstrations,

3.Training (supporting NFM and CD demonstrations) & Dissemination of all lessons learned

4. ProjectManagement InstitutionBuilding (PMO – Project Management Office & FMO – Field Management Office – support & management training)

The project’s executing authority is the State Forestry Administration’s “National Forest Protection Programme Centre” – established in conjunction with a 17 province ban on logging in 1998. The project supports the NFPPC’s efforts to develop approaches and models for reducing risks associated with forest resource use. NFMP lessons-learned are relevant to the implementation of tenure reform” and “environmental compensation” mechanism for forest resources introduced in 2008 in China.

Current Activities Status (30 June 2009, end Project Year 6):

The Project Financing Agreementwas signed on 20 February 2002. An amendment to the contract extended the project by two years (to 30 June 2010). Final deadlines for all field level demonstration and piloting activities is 30June 2009 – and is 30September 2009 for Thematic Demonstrations. The final project year will be devoted to evaluating project activities, formulating & disseminating lessons-learned, and concluding selected training efforts – and in commissioning “policy studies” to link NFMP approaches and concepts to existing national level policies.

Natural Forest Management activities now fully completed include:Multi-resource Forest Inventories,Plan preparation (Land Use, Ecosystem, Strategic, and Operational); Development of forest co-management systems;Piloting Silviculture modeling; Increasing local capacity in above areas has been a key focus of the NFM Component and a continuing area of project support through evaluations and the formulation of lessons learned.

Community Development activities now fully completed include:Participatory village planning and resource assessments; micro-infrastructure projects; Micro-credit programme (piloting separate models for village groups (18), SFEs (4), and NGOs(1)); Vocational training for redundant SFE workers. Formulation of lessons-learned will focus on how to mainstream CD responsibilities into existing official institutional frameworks.

Overall, several short-term “evaluation” consultancies were completed for each component by the end of current project year – and will form the basis of policy studies to be conducted in PY7.

What people say about the project?

The EU-China NFMP has collected many stories of project impacts through Knowledge, Attitudes, Practices surveys at the county level to ascertain the areas of most significant change to village level beneficiaries. Ms GYR is 42 year old mother in SuCunVillage, BaoXingCounty in a family that includes her husband and two children."Our village is located on the hillside, there is a river at the foot of the hill, a few hundred meters distance … from a ravine. In summer, when it rains, water becomes muddy, it is not fit for drinking or washing, … and harms people’s health. In winter, the ravine is dry, drinking water is a big problem … washing clothes and face is a problem, pig feeding is also a problem. People go down the mountain to carry water. When my husband is not home,I carry 70 – 80 jin and am tired and fall and I have to go again… year after year. Since NFMP has realized the first project … to deal with villagers drinking problems. Now it is quite good. All villagers have water pipes. We drink clean water … we can have clean clothes. We can take a shower at night and sleep. That is so comfortable”

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Last update on1 July 2009