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The Role of Public Forest Agencies in Strengthening SMFE and Producer XIV WORLD FORESTRY CONGRESS, Durban, South Africa, 7-11 September 2015 The role of public forest 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,
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