XIV WORLD CONGRESS, Durban, South Africa, 7-11 September 2015 The role of public agencies in strengthening forest and farm producer organizations in developing countries: Results of a self-assessment with the Kenya Forest Service Marco Boscolo (FAO), Oscar Simanto (KFS)2, Philip Kisoyan (FFF Kenya)3, Jhony Zapata (FAO/FFF)4 Duncan McQueen (IIED)5

Abstract A number of FAO activities target Small and Medium Forest Enterprises (SMFE) and forest and farm producer organizations (POs). Some of these activities focus directly on POs, for example through capacity development interventions. Other activities focus on creating or strengthening cross-sectoral and multi-stakeholder platforms for dialogue. A third set of activities focus on improving the “enabling environment” for POs, for example by improving clarity of resources tenure. An often neglected area of support is in strengthening public forest institutions (PFI) as key element of the “enabling environment” for POs (see FAO’s policy brief on strengthening public forestry institutions, and FAO/FFF working paper “Making Change Happen”). In fact, their mandate often includes improvements of livelihood for the rural poor or support to small forestry producers and community forestry. The modalities by which this support is provided are rather mixed and range from providing extension services, facilitating PES schemes, administering incentives programs, maintaining nurseries, etc. However, the impact of their support to POs is rather mixed. In some cases, they are perceived as hindering POs development while in other cases they are a critical element of success. Anecdotally, the countries that have made more progress in supporting SMFE and POs have embraced a stronger “result orientation”. They not only worked to correct tenure insecurity but also allocated human and financial resources for PO support, embedded POs in their programming, established M&E systems to track progress and results and set up mechanisms of consultation and dialogue with the beneficiary group to facilitate communication, decision making, and adaptation. This paper will present the features of a self-assessment tool that has been developed to assess the result orientation of public forestry agencies when it comes to supporting SFME and POs. The self- assessment tool has been developed drawing on the experience of the “aid effectiveness and “development effectiveness” international processes and complemented with inputs from the results- based management literature. The self-assessment tool was being piloted with Kenya Forestry Service (KFS).

Introduction and main objectives

Introduction

The role of forest and farm producer organizations (POs) is increasingly recognized as critical to improve food security, promote sustainability of natural resources use, reduce poverty, advance democratic principles and attend to the needs and aspirations of groups such as women and youth. Evidence from multiple countries indicates that locally controlled forestry (across diverse family, community or indigenous resource right settings) is better than state or private sector alternatives,

both in terms of livelihoods, and forest conservation and resultant climate change mitigation (Molnar et al. 2007; Bowler et al. 2010; Porter-Boland et al. 2012; Stevens et al. 2014) As a result, a number of development initiatives and efforts aim at strengthening forest and farm producer organizations (POs). Quite often, these activities focus directly on strengthening POs, for example by developing their capacity to access markets for their products, improve their business and financial management skills, strengthen their leadership. Initiatives such as FAO’s Coopequity and the work of We Effect and the Forest and Farm Facility also aim at strengthening their internal governance and gender equity. Other activities focus on creating or strengthening cross-sectoral and multi-stakeholder platforms for dialogue. A third set of activities focus on improving the “enabling environment” for POs, for example by improving clarity of resources tenure. An often neglected area of support is in strengthening public forest institutions (PFI) as key element of the “enabling environment” for POs (see FAO’s policy brief on strengthening public forestry institutions, and FAO/FFF working paper “Making Change Happen” – De Marsh et al. 2014). In fact, their mandate often includes improvements of livelihood for the rural poor or support to small forestry producers and community forestry. This is part of a general trend of devolving forest rights to local levels since the 1980s (RRI, 2014) – and the desirable accompanying changes in forest authorities from enforcement agencies towards technical extension agencies (Falconer, 1987). The modalities by which this support is provided are rather mixed and range from providing extension services and technical assistance, facilitating PES schemes, administering incentives and other financing programs, maintaining nurseries, etc. However, the impact of their support to POs is rather mixed. In some cases, they are perceived as hindering POs development while in other cases they are a critical element of success. Anecdotally, the countries that have made more progress in supporting SMFE and POs have embraced a stronger “result orientation”. They not only worked to correct tenure insecurity but also allocated human and financial resources for PO support, embedded POs in their programming, established M&E systems to track progress and results and set up mechanisms of consultation and dialogue with the beneficiary group to facilitate communication, decision making, and adaptation. Objectives This paper will:

 Present the features of a self-assessment tool that has been developed to assess the result orientation of public forestry agencies when it comes to supporting SMFE and POs. The self- assessment tool has being piloted with the Kenya Forest Service.  Present the observations that have been drawn from the self-assessment  Recommendations about next steps

Methods: The self-assessment tool The self-assessment tool has been developed to assess the effectiveness of public forest agencies support to POs. It draws on the experience of the “aid effectiveness” and “development effectiveness” international processes (see OECD 2006) and complemented with inputs from the results-based management literature. The tool was designed to facilitate the identification and discussion of the main strengths and weaknesses of an organization or a group of organizations that pursue a shared goal (in this case supporting POs). The implementation of the tool requires the direct involvement of staff of the organization(s) to be assessed. The self-assessment tool has the following main characteristics:

 It adopts a scorecard approach so that indicative scores can be assigned to various aspects of organizational capacity.  By measuring organizational capacity, it can provide a baseline of the existing organizational capacities of any organization, while replicating the assessment exercise periodically enables tracking changes and capacity improvements over time.  By highlighting capacity strengths, gaps and needs of a targeted organization, the results of the self-assessment can be used to facilitate discussions about prioritized next steps.

The self-assessment tool looked into ten capacity dimension (see Table 1 below).

Table 1: Capacity dimensions Capacity Dimensions Examples 1. Mandate Forest policies and strategies explicitly contain objectives to support producer organizations (POs)

The agency has a strategy/action plan with specific activities, objectives 2. Strategic leadership and expected results regarding POs with indicators and time bound targets

Program priorities and service delivery are defined in an inclusive and 3. Planning processes collaborative way with POs.

4. Human and financial Adequate human and financial resources are allocated to support of SMFE resources and POs

5. Service delivery Agency possesses adequate capacity to deliver services to POs according to various modalities

6. Human resources Budget, opportunities and guidance material exists to support staff in their competency work with POs

7. Monitoring (tracking Progress against plans related to SMFEs and POs is monitored on a regular progress) basis and the results are distributed

8. Using results M&E findings are systematically used to support decision making to information for enhance the performance of the agency regarding its support to SMFEs learning and decision making and POs. Mechanisms also exist to discuss performance and feedback with stakeholders.

9. Partnerships Agency works with other public and private partners to pursue goal of PO support and promotes networks

10. Individual and Individual and organizational rewards exist and are linked to results organizational achievement/ performance regarding SMFE and POs (for example, staff motivation recognized, budget increased if targets met)

During the self-assessment workshop, participants rated their degree of agreement with statements (between one and five statements per capacity dimension), assigning a numerical score (from 1 to 5) according to the scale presented below:

Table 2: Indicator statements rating scale Score Description

NA Not applicable, or information is not available to assess the element 1 Strongly disagree; capacity almost non-existent 2 Mostly disagree; capacity needs strengthening 3 Neutral; little capacity strengthening is required 4 Mostly agree; capacity is acceptable, in no immediate need for improvement 5 Strongly agree; capacity can be a model for others

The rating scores assigned to the statements by each members of the assessment team is then consolidated to provide an overall assessment score for each capacity dimension.

The Kenya Forest Service

Kenya Forest Service (KFS) is a semi autonomous state agency created under the Forest Act 2005 and has been operational since 2007. KFS is mandated to conserve, develop and sustainably manage all forestry and allied resources for environmental and socioeconomic development of Kenya. This mandate includes protecting, maintaining and expanding Kenyan to ensure productivity, sustainability and profitability of natural resource base for the benefit of all Kenyans. KFS operates under the broad national forest policy aspiration aimed at enhancing the contribution of the forest sector in the provision of economic, social and environmental goods and services. KFS has wide coverage nationally and has 47 offices in each of the forty seven Counties. Nationally, KFS has a total 245 subcounty forest officers who provide extension services to farmers. Distribution of sectoral functions between the national government (NG) and the county governments (CGs) are set out in the fourth schedule of the Constitution of Kenya, 2010. In the forestry sector, the CGs have the duty of “implementing specific national government policies on natural resources and environmental conservation”. For purposes of program implementation, this broad policy framework requires to be “unbundled” so that specific interventions can identified for implementation by the CG with the technical support by Kenya Forest Service (KFS). Under the same schedule, the NG is also obligated to conduct capacity building and technical assistance for the CGs in order to create requisite capacity for the implementation of the constitutional obligations for the CGs Both the Constitution, The Kenya Vision 2030 and other development blueprints have established the need for Kenya to work towards attaining of 10% forests cover. This requires that both the NG and the CGs work closely in order to realize this national goal through program and policy implementation. The NG has over the years, been implementing three core programs namely: (i) Forest conservation and management with focus on the management of natural forests in public land; (ii) Forest plantations and enterprise with a focus on the development of industrial forest plantations on public land; and (iii) farm and dryland forestry development with a focus on the provision of forest extension services for the development of private forests, agroforestry and technical assistance to tree growers. Recognising that an expansion in must come from increasing tree planting on farm, it is the latter of these three programmes that is tasked with delivering the goal of 10% forest cover. Under the farm forestry and dryland forestry program KFS has invested resources in supporting forest and farm producer organizations with a view of enhancing their leadership capabilities and entrepreneurial skills. With regard to the implementation of the devolved functions, the bigger responsibility for the CGs is the implementation of farm and dryland forestry interventions with technical support by the NG / Kenya Forest Service (KFS). Following the identification of the functions to be devolved by the KFS Board under the farm and dryland forestry development, the orderly transfer of these functions is very important.

The Devolved Forestry Functions as per Gazette Supplement No. 116 dated 9th of August 2014 provides for the following forestry functions to be devolved, “forestry including farm forestry extension services, forests and game reserves formerly managed by Local Authorities, excluding forests managed by Kenya Forest Service, National Water Towers Agency and private forests”. The Director, KFS upon instructions by the KFS Board “unbundled” (detailed) list of functions that have been identified for devolution to the CGs are as follows; a) Implementation of national policies that is applicable to county forests. b) Formulation of county level specific by-laws and legislation. c) Development and implementation of county forest management plans. d) Identification and setting a part of land for forest reservation, development and creation of county forests. e) Development of nature based enterprises within county forests. f) Forestation and rehabilitation of fragile and degraded ecosystem/forest in community lands. g) Liaison with lead agencies/stakeholders in forest sector at the county. h) Issuance of operation license within the private farms and county forests in community lands. i) Intra-county conflict management on county forest resources and farm forestry j) Promotion of public private partnership management practice in county forests. k) Maintenance of county forest and farm forestry records, databases and information. l) Collection and management of county forest and farm forestry revenue. m) Community awareness creation n) Promotion of tree planting in community, private and county lands. o) Increasing tree cover in private , community and county lands p) Provision of forestry extension services in the county q) Development and maintenance of county forest infrastructure. r) Development of charcoal industry (promotion/use) within county forests and private farms. s) Development of urban forestry programs within the counties t) Enforcement of forest legislations within the county forests and private farms. u) Management of county forests

The forestry functions listed above have already been devolved and county governments are in the process of developing transition implementation plans to smoothly take over these functions formerly undertaken by the national government. KFS has not done any past assessment to determine its capacity to support FFPOs, despite implementing robust programmes and projects across the country aimed at capacity development for producer groups. The support to FFPOs is indirectly implied in some of the above devolved functions (e.g. e.f. h.i.o. and p) to County Governments. The capacity of KFS field officers to provide appropriate extension support to FFPOs in areas of market analysis and development, developing group leadership and entrepreneurial skills is still inadequate.

Results Four officers from the Kenya Forest Service participated in the assessment. Two officers worked in the regular KFS program while two officers worked in the Miti Mingi Maisha Bora (“Many trees, better lives”), the Finnish funded forest sector support program. A representative from a producer group (FF-SPAK) also participated in the assessment. Scores were assigned to each capacity area and a facilitated discussion took place to describe the rationale for the score. A summary of the scores, sorted by the degree with agreement with capacity statements, is presented in Figure 1.

Key observations: general and by capacity area

 Within KFS, there is a difference between the capacities, approaches and attention to POs in projects as opposed to regular KFS activities. As can be observed in Figure 1, project capacities are consistently scored higher than capacities of regular programs. Projects are perceived as being more inclusive and participatory and overall with better capacity in planning, training staff, M&E, working with partners, and financing.

 Overall, policies and strategies do support small producers and POs, even if POs are not explicitly mentioned in legal and strategic documents. Discussions also highlighted that there is a difference between officers in KFS headquarters and field officers where the latter are not familiar with the idea of small forest enterprises. Field staff still struggle with the idea of small enterprises. Also, they have limited capacities to support small enterprises and POs development.

 Clarity and adequacy of policies and plans are consistently scored higher than implementation capacities. Indeed, a weakness was identified in implementation of policies as regarding support to POs.

 In terms of service delivery, the KFS supports POs in the following areas: o Capacity development: Training of Community Forest Association which is made up of different forest user groups, Development of PFM plans and signing of Forest Management Agreements with CFA to facilitate co-management, season long training for farm forestry field schools, establishing farm forestry networks and financial support to FFPOs, financial literacy, group dynamics, developing group leadership, entrepreneurial skills, business skills development, exchange visits to successful FFPOs. o Technical assistance: Provision of forest extension services, tree nursery management, silvicultural practices at farm level. o Financial services: KFS has piloted a loan scheme through a financial institution to support forest and farm producer organizations in Kitui, Embu, Meru, Kwale, Kericho and Tharaka Nithi counties with considerable success. Over USD 1,000, 000 million has been invested in this pilot initiative to support FFFPOs in Kenya and lessons learnt have translated into establishment of a bigger fund by KFS called the Forest Management and Conservation Fund (FMCF). o Association formation and farmer networks: Community Forest Associations, Farm- Forestry Field Schools (FFFS) networks

 Service delivery can point to successful cases and KFS feels proud about the support provided. The complaint is that such support work has remained at a pilot level. Upscaling

successful pilot experiences is perceived as less a matter of knowing “how to do it” and more a matter of having more resources, especially people on the ground. However, they also recognize the need to improve their support to POS in terms of marketing and facilitating market linkages and market information.

 Partnerships were defined as critical to the successful support to POs by participants. Yet, among public agencies, the perception was that they remain largely ad-hoc and dependent on personal relationships. Discussions led to the agreement that a mechanism is needed that would facilitate coordination and complementarity among public agencies. Such mechanism for greater collaboration would have a positive effect on many other capacity areas including: (1) Planning (for example, multiple agencies could coordinate their work plans and strengthen synergies); (2) Service delivery (for example, capacity development interventions could be coordinated); (3) Monitoring and evaluation (a core set of indicators could be developed and used by various agencies for monitoring and learning); (4) Using information for decision making, especially that information that is cross-sectoral; and (5) Information management. Figure 1: Organizational capacities within the KFS to support producer organizations

Adequate

Discussion and next step The self-assessment provided an opportunity not only to discuss existing capacities and issues but also to identify and prioritize key areas for improvement. The following recommendations emerged from the discussions:

 Efforts should be directed to strengthening partnerships among public agencies at the national and at the county level. Concretely, a proposal was tabled to invite other public agencies to form a multi-sector, multi-agency platform to coordinate activities aimed at supporting POs. One of the initial activities of the platform could include the development of a multi-agency strategy to support POs. At the moment neither the KFS nor other public agencies have a strategy to support POs. Such strategy could inform coordination and engagement with POs.

 Another concrete suggestion was to upscale successful piloting of activities. This upscaling could be carried out by operationalizing the Forest Management and Conservation Fund, and in particular by establishing a program within the fund that explicitly supports POs.

 A third area that received recommendations were the inclusion of POs explicitly in policy and strategic documents. Indeed, the self-assessment revealed that POs are not included in the planning process and that the monitoring of activities in terms of their impacts on POs is minimal.

 Now that the forest extension service has been devolved, the county governments will be expected to provide services to support POs. In this regard, the self-assessment tool could be used to identify capacity gaps that need to be addressed for the counties to deliver on their new mandate, including how they can work with service providers in the private sector or NGOs.

 Finally, training was advocated for field staff across sectors to support POs more effectively In summary, piloting of the self-assessment proved effective at:  Assessing the perceived levels of capacity by the agency, with emphasis on the capacity to support SMFE and POs; We believe that the self-assessment tool could also be used by other public agencies that support POs. This information could be valuable for public agencies to better orient and coordinate their activities in support of POs.  Prioritizing the identified capacity needs and discuss how such needs could be addressed;  Development of a capacity development strategy and work plan to address the prioritized capacity needs.  Establishing a baseline of current organizational capacities, in order to track improvements over time. With adaptation, the tool could be appropriate to monitor capacities and prioritize capacity development interventions in county governments and also in other public agencies that, like the KFS, support POs.

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