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International Seminar on Cultivating : Alternative Management Practices and Techniques for Community Forestry

23 - 25 September 1998

Rama Gardens Hotel, Bangkok, Thailand

Session 1: Day 1, Wednesday, September 23

With support from:

CONTENT

1 INTRODUCTION

2 CHARACTERISTICS OF COMMUNITY FORESTRY IN SELECTION COUNTRIES

2.1

2.2 Nepal

2.3 Bhutan

2.4 China Page 2 of 9

3 HISTORY OF FOREST ORGANIZATIONS AND THE REACTIONS OF THE FORESTERS TO THE NEW PARADIGMS

3.1 India

3.2 Nepal

3.3 Bhutan

3.4 China

4 PROPOSALS TO CHANGE THE NEGATIVE RESPONSES OF THE FORESTERS TO PARADIGM CHANGES AND TO EXPEDITE THE PROCESS OF CHANGE

References

FORESTERS’ REACTION TO COMMUNITY FORESTRY PARADIGMS

IN SELECTED COUNTRIES

Dr. Ajit Kumar Banerjee

9, Greek Church Row Extension

Calcutta-700 026, India

1. Introduction

In recent times, in different parts of the world, but particularly in South, South-east Asia, Central and South America, local people living in the forest fringes are getting associated in some aspects of management of their neighborhood forests. This association has been brought about in some instances by government initiative or else has government’s tacit consent when villagers themselves took over the task at their own initiative. The type of forest involved, the degree of involvement, or the nature of association vary from one to the other country, but one common feature is that the fringe people are coming forward to participate in forest management provided they feel assured of receiving sustained benefits of varying degrees. The latter may include some or all of the following: tenure changes in favor of the fringe people, free or subsidized collection of non-wood forest products, share of the final timber product, complete management control of the specific forests allocated to them and others. It has to be realized that these demands are manifestation of a deep- seated desire of the fringe people to get back the forest that they have lost to the state in the recent historical period. The demand is long standing, sometimes vocal, other times violent, but only recently do we see some of the demands are being officially accepted. However, this fringe people-forest association is spread over a very small percentage of the total forest area of the countries concerned.

The reaction of this change on the government forest officials have been varied, some very favorable, others negative. The most dominant among the differing reactions is the reluctance of the government officials to give away the powers and the authority that they had over the forests so far, to the local people. This reluctance have been one of the major bottlenecks to the expeditious spread of the new paradigm even in places where the other factors including government policies are favorable. It is therefore necessary to look into the negative reactions including the reluctance phenomena closely and think of the measures to confront it. Page 3 of 9

The paper has three sections. The first section deals with the characteristics of the community forestry of a few selected countries of Asia. The second section describes the history of the forest organization of the countries concerned and the reaction of the foresters to the community forestry paradigms as observed by me in my personal experience and/or noted in documentation, the latter being almost non-existent. The third section briefly analyses the reasons for the noted reactions and puts forward some proposals to deal with the problems.

2. Characteristics of Community Forestry in Selected Countries

We will discuss the community forestry paradigms as obtained in India, Nepal, Bhutan and China. Although these four countries are close neighbors, community forestry in them have different characteristics and have made varied progress.

2.1 INDIA

Initiated as an experiment in 1972 in a 1256 ha. Sal ( Shore robusta ) coppice degraded forest near Arabari in the district of Midnapore, State, community forestry has made great strides in India. (Chatterjee 1996; Singh et al 1997; Poffenberger et al 1996). The basic features of this new form of forestry management, which has now been adopted with some modification over large parts of the country, consist of allocating a government owned forest block (for a specified period which varies but usually reasonably long) to the people of the neighborhood village which traditionally use the forest, although without any documented rights or privileges. The people of the village form a protection committee with the local government forester as the convener to look after the forest, participate in preparing a block forest management microplan, assist in its execution and in lieu of it is entitled to collect non-timber forest products regularly and a share of the revenue from the final timber products to be equitably divided between the members of the committee. The arrangement of association of the village people with the forest department for forest management is referred to as (JFM).

JFM in the seventies had a slow pace of progress. It really took off in the later part of the eighties when the village people of the southern part of West Bengal not far from Arabari realized that the villages associated with the experiment at Arabari are going to receive a handsome share when the final products namely poles and small timbers of Sal ( Shore robusta ) and its associates are sold annually as the annual yield of the coppice rotation of 10 years. In the meantime, some of the government foresters, although a very small percentage of the whole, encouraged the villagers to join JFM. The Government of West Bengal State also at this time issued the required orders to allow the share (25%) of the revenue from the final products which was promised at the start of the Arabari experiment. The Government of India followed suit with advises to other provincial governments to accept JFM which eighteen of them did by 1998. Although not covered by legislation, the states’ and the center’s government orders provide the sanctity of official acceptance. As of today, around 38000 protection committees are functioning in India, majority of which has many success stories to write. The total area covered by them spread all over India is about 1.5-2.0 million ha. which is however about 2 % of the total forest of India. These hitherto degraded and degrading forests under JFM are reviving due to villagers’ protection and in many cases villagers are already getting their due share of the usufruct.

In spite of apparent success of the paradigm, most of the forests except the degraded forests and the wastelands have been kept out of the orbit of the JFM.

2.2 NEPAL

Nepal’s forestry particularly the hill forests have a checkered history so far its ownership and usufructship are concerned. The forests in the early part of the fifties belonged to the government although large parts of it for example that of the most of the terai, being unhealthy and out of reach due to poor infrastructure were traditionally used by the local people. In 1959, the panchayat system was introduced when the hill forests in particular were transferred to the panchayats. Sometimes later again it was transferred back to the government. During the 1960 and 1970s, the state of the hill forests deteriorated substantially. Large parts of valuable terai high forests were also illegally cut down by contractors. In the eighties, the forests, mainly that Page 4 of 9

of the hills, were handed over to the panchayats, and with a new forest policy thereafter, it was decided to transfer forest blocks from the panchayats to the actual users of the blocks concerned. In the early part of the nineties, this order came through and with the support of donor agencies, forest transfers to the users were initiated by the foresters. It was legislated that the users, under the assistance of the forest personnel, will prepare management plans of the forest blocks attached to the users, who will manage the forest according to that plan. The entire usufruct will go to the users. The government officials will only oversee that the operation by the villagers do not in any way break the plan provisions.

Up to 1993 for which some official estimates are available, only a very small percentage of the forest area, scheduled to be transferred, have actually been transferred. The progress is slowest in the terai. Amongst the transferred forests, barring a few forest blocks where the plans have been breached, most have been rehabilitated. In other words, community forestry as practiced in Nepal is promising but the pace of its introduction is very slow.

2.3 BHUTAN

Forests in Bhutan are still pristine except where these are near the population centers such as the towns, and the villages. The forest areas near the population centers are often degraded or visibly degrading pointing to the nature of problems that the country will face as the population increases. The villagers have many traditional rights of forest products such as fuelwood, medicinal plants, other non-wood forest products as well as certain quantity of building timber at periodic intervals. An experiment was carried out to introduce social forestry in such areas in the foothills in 1980s with limited success. In 1990s, with the assistance of the World Bank, the forest department is trying to introduce a few pilot experiments with the village users managing allocated forests near their village. This pilot work is on an inception stage and the results are to be evaluated after some time.

2.4 CHINA

China’s history of people’s close association with the forests starts around 1950s after their war of liberation. The ownership pattern of the forests in the 1950s consisted dominantly of two types: state and collective ownership. The large forest blocks such as the ones found in Heilongjiang or Yunnan or parts of Central China belonged to the State/Center while the extensive but comparatively smaller forest blocks in different stages of degradation belonged to the collective. Village Committees were entrusted with the responsibility of managing the collective forest with the assistance of its members.

By 1980, it was clear that the forests in China were depleting including the village collective forests blocks. The two recent inventories quoted by Ministry of Forestry, Republic of China (1995) have shown that "China loses an average of 440 000 ha of forestland owing to converting forestland into farmland and excessive requisition of forestland" in which the collective forests have a substantial share.

With the land reforms of 1980s, the management of collective forestland found a new paradigm. The new system is referred to as ‘Contract responsibility system’ in which a family or a group of families are allowed to make use of portions of the collective land by forest development for a specific number of years which may vary from 30-100 (in Hebei province, for example). The family units have different types of mutually agreed contractual obligations. The contract family gets the responsibility through an auction by paying an auction price and a share of the forest benefits to the collective. Besides this contract responsibility system, there are also other categories of community association now in practice in China. For example, in Hunan province, the collective land is divided amongst the production groups (generally members of a hamlet) which then distribute the forestland to its member families for individual family management. For all practical purposes, the forestland becomes a privately used property just as it is in the case of the "Contract responsibility system’. These recently introduced methods are yet to be systematically evaluated, but in small areas, it has shown promise (such as in parts of Sichuan). The contract system and privatization system (as in Hunan) are now being extensively introduced in almost all north, central and south China provinces in the collective forest areas.

3. History of Forest Organizations and the Reactions of the Foresters to the New Page 5 of 9

Paradigms

The reaction of the forestry personnel to the new paradigms is to a large extent dependent on the history of forest organizations to which the personnel belong. We will therefore briefly describe the specific historical characteristics of the forestry departments of the selected countries particularly on aspects which have bearing to the expected attitude of their forestry officials to the new paradigms of people-forest association.

3.1 INDIA

Indian Forest organization is now about 130 years old, born as a measure to preserve valuable forests for national use. The forests, except those which were under private ownership of princely states, were divided into three legal categories called reserved, protected and village forests. After 1947, the year of independence from the foreign rule, the government nationalized the private forests as well. The forest organization, which consisted of a few officials at the beginning in 1870s, grew into a large cadre of 150 000 persons as of today (Poffenberger 1996). They are engaged to protect the reserved and the protected forests, carry out forest management and development, provide direct national needs of constructional, industrial and local needs of forest products and sustain the indirect recreational, biodiversity and soil and water conservation uses of the forests. However as the forests are distributed all over the country with thousands of kilometers of open borders with little amity or understanding between the local people and the government officials, the role of the foresters gravitated towards policing. In fact, the training of the foresters emphasized the policing role, soldierly discipline and conduct, particularly at the grass root officials. This was supported by legislation that gave the officials enormous powers to keep the people away from the forests. These roles produced a hierarchical order in the organization and a false understanding of most of the officials manning the organization that the hierarchy is not subservient to the people but their master. Nevertheless, the forests could not be protected by the foresters. The density of forests reduced visibly and about half of the 68 million forests of today is open forests or waste lands (FAO 1993). The forest productivity did not increase, gap between the supply and demand of forest products widened and the indirect uses of the forests including maintenance of biodiversity left much to be desired.

Two main arguments that the forest officials advance in favor of their role vis-a-vis community forestry in the last more than one hundred years are: the village forests which were not managed by the forest department have all but disappeared from India. Where they do exist, they are in extremely degraded condition showing thereby that empowering peoples’ association with forests is not that good as is often made out to be. In contrast, the argument runs, a large part of the reserved forest which were under direct control of the forest department have been well preserved. The second argument is that the forest organization has achieved technical excellence in various aspects for example in preparation of forest working plans, in artificial regeneration, in social forestry and so on, which the villagers will take many years. At the present time, most of the foresters dispute the idea that the organization has failed to deliver, continue to be proud of its policing role, soldierly discipline, and call for more administrative and punishing powers for themselves to effectively manage the forests and its products.

The new paradigm of JFM is an anathema to the majority of the officials as the paradigm runs counter to what they stand for, limits their powers over the forests and its products and expects them to play a second fiddle to the uninitiated forest villagers in forest plan preparation and technical management. We would very roughly reckon that in India, not more than about 5% of the foresters have taken JFM as a serious alternative management proposition.

It does not mean that the forestry officials did not have a very important role in introduction or spread of JFM. As mentioned earlier, a forest official started the movement of JFM as early as 1972 in Arabari, Midnapore District, West Bengal Province (Chatterjee 1996). This was followed by a significant number of field foresters backing up the movement of JFM in different parts of India. But our claim that the number of adherents of JFM is small and not powerful enough in devising favorable changes, arises, apart from our observations and discussions, from a number of points listed below:

1. In all the official orders sanctioning JFM, the forests being allocated for management to the village people are only the degraded forests which the forestry personnel have been unable to protect. The high forests having valuable crop are excluded from the ambit of JFM. 2. The forest protection committee composed of village people has the local forest official as the convener, thus de facto entrusting the official to influence the functioning of the committee. 3. The micro management plan of the forest block in the JFM is supposed to be written by the village people but the management provisions in almost all plans are clearly dictated by forest department Page 6 of 9

conveners. The government rules also establish that the major benefits from the forest block will be given to the villagers, only a certain number of years after the villagers have joined the JFM. In these intervening years, the villagers have to prove bona fides of their seriousness about forest management according to the micro management plan. 4. The forest department has reserved for itself the power of rescinding JFM on certain condition which is arbitrated by the forest officials. 5. he powers of punishing the forest block offenders continue to lie with the forest officials; the committee is not empowered in this behalf. 6. Most of the foresters are wary of those NGOs who emphasize the role of the villagers in the forest management rather than that of the forest department.

3.2 NEPAL

The Forest Service of Nepal, although somewhat hierarchical in the pattern of that of India and Pakistan services, is comparatively of recent origin. The districts are headed by the district forest officials who are poorly supported in the context of the mountainous nature of the countryside and lack of infrastructure. In consequence, the arm of the forest administration has not been able to effectively reach all the forests and/or to deal with them. Due to frequent changes in policy, the district forest administrations, had been once in a while under the aegis of the panchayats in many forestry matters although technically advised by the Central Forest Organization. The forest officials particularly in the grass root levels are often unclear about their powers and functions. They normally are engaged in protection rather than in silvicultural work as the afforestation or technical management of forests has not yet reached any large momentum. With the users’ forestry gradually coming into vogue, the foresters are now placed in the dual contradictory capacity of liaisoning with the users and at the same time acting as policemen to try to catch them as forest offenders. This position makes them vulnerable to the wrath of the people and decidedly not an appropriate candidate to support users forestry management.

The reaction of the officials to the paradigm of users’ forestry has been varied. The department has a very dedicated core of community foresters, who independently and with the support of the donor agencies, have been able to bring about one of the best people-oriented forest legislation in the South and South-East Asian region. Besides this core, however, the majority of foresters are not ready to aggressively pursue the policy of transfer. This is obvious from the fact stated earlier that only a very tiny portion of the hill and terai degraded forests have so far been transferred to the users. The reasons as found by us are:

a. The officials are extremely cautious and like to follow the rules and regulations in letter rather than in spirit. Lack of staff, excessive time required for demarcation with limited number of surveyors, difficulty of locating the users, conflict resolution between users, time required for writing management plans etc. are cited as the factors to explain the delay. But in fact, they are apprehensive of being hauled up by the senior administrative authorities if something goes wrong. This feeling is very strong and can not be so easily dislodged.

We like to discuss a small experiment (World Bank 1992) done under the aegis of the World Bank over a year in 1992 in two districts in Nepal to support the point made in the last sentence. The results of the experiment described below in brief were not published but we believe it has a great deal of significance.

With the consent of the Forest Department, an NGO was appointed by the World Bank to pass on a message repeatedly to the forest users in half of the forest villages of the two selected districts. The message was: "the Government has agreed to transfer the forests to you. The reason why it is not being transferred is that you, the forest users, are not showing any interest in the matter. If you are interested, you should approach the local forest officials and get the transfer work completed quickly". The balance half of the villages in the district were considered as ‘Control’ in the experiment where no such message was delivered. The object of the experiment was to get an approximate idea if the demand of forest transfer by the villagers increases with repeated messages and if so whether the rate of forest transfer will concomitantly increase. The results of the experiment were two fold: the demand for forest transfer increased tremendously from the selected villages where the message was read out repeatedly so much so that deputation started coming to the district office demanding transfer but (ii) the rate of transfer did not show any increase. The conclusion is that it is not the lack of demand that is slowing the transfer process but something else.

b. The majority of officials do not think that the users’ forestry is sustainable. According to them, so long Page 7 of 9

foresters are around, the users will follow the rules; otherwise they will decimate the forests. One interesting incident, which was not publicized, will make the comment clear. In the early part of 1993, the transfer of forest was stopped completely for a short while by the verbal orders emanating from the higher officials. The reason was that in one forest block, the users have cut down more trees than what was prescribed in the plan. This order was endorsed by a large number of forest officials as the incident appeared to them to be the harbinger of disaster to come in due course. To an outsider, this endorsement may look rather anachronistic as it is well known that deforestation continues in forest areas under the complete control of the forest department. c. There is a strong belief that the powers and the privileges associated with forest management will go away with the users taking over the forest management and hence the perusal of the policy is self- defeating.

3.3 BHUTAN

The Forest Organization in Bhutan is very small compared to the forest that the country is endowed with. Most of the forests are however not worked as they are far off from habitation, in high mountainous region where infrastructure is poor to promote commercial exploitation. Only recently some parts of the forests are being opened for timber management, pilot experimentation etc. Other areas are being opened for habitat development, wild life tourism and biodiversity conservation. The complement of staff is being slowly expanded.

The forest organization has a section dealing with social forestry and is engaged in promoting social and community forestry rules and regulations. As there is still plenty of forests in the country, the majority of foresters do not find any justification to initiate community forestry. On the contrary, they believe that the people have already too many rights which should be controlled and abolished if the degradation that is setting in near the population centers are to stop. They are in favor of more control rather than less which is likely if the forests are transferred to the villages for management.

We do not like to deal further with Bhutan. But the reason why this country has been selected for a brief discussion is to flag that unless Bhutan foresters also look at the community forestry paradigm seriously at this stage, their forests are likely to diminish as it happened in every other country of S and S-E Asia and is also taking place in Bhutan near the growth and population centers.

3.4 CHINA

On the face of it, the forest organization in China is highly decentralized. The Provincial Forestry Bureaus are more or less independent of the Central Forest Department except where some centrally managed subject impinges on the provincial forests. The counties (of the provinces) in their turn, although nominally under the technical direction of the provincial bureau, are quite independent in administrative and financial matters. The townships under the counties have similarly substantial administrative and financial options independent of the county. The village collectives who own and manage large areas of forests, barring some legislation and government decrees and policy directions, can also independently pursue their own forest policy and administration. In reality however, the situation seems somewhat different. Particularly in the past and even now to a large extent the policy directions come from the province if not from the center. The village leaders also, in spite of their apparent independence oftentimes toe the official line.

After the liberalization move of the early 1980s, however, the situation is changing fast and independent actions at the village levels, supported by the townships, are being noticed.

The change in paradigm in China is quite different from that of the other three countries we have discussed. Whatever the policy pressures were from the top to the local units, there is no denying the fact that very large forest areas were under the control of the community from around 1950 onwards. The present change in the paradigm of collective held forest management is promotion of transferring forests from the community to sections of the community (called production groups), or groups of families or to individual families. In case of China, therefore, we have to discuss how the forest organization is facing this form of paradigm change for collective forests. In the matter of provincial or centrally managed forests, however, there is a lot of talk of technical improvement but none whatsoever of community participation in management of these forests. Page 8 of 9

As discussed earlier, the county and township local units are to a variable extent financially independent which means that these offices have to gather part of its own needs of fund for running routine, staff and sometimes development cost. Any changes in the paradigms that may shrink the resources of the units are inconvenient and unacceptable to them. There is therefore very little chance of any change in the status of ownership or usufructship of the government owned forest farms which generate most of the required funds. The village collective forests are however another matter so long the taxes earned by the government units at different levels from village or collective forest felling are not disturbed. The reaction of the foresters to change in execution methods of development plans in collective forests does however deserve mention.

In donor supported afforestation plans in the provinces (say in Hebei, Hubei, Jianxi, Sichuan, Hunan etc.), the local government forestry bureaus such as the townships or forest farms operate as the conduits for passing on the financial subsidy to the villages and simultaneously carry out the tasks of technical extension and technical support. In lieu of this service, these units are compensated by the project often with logistic and infrastructural support but are not assisted with the additional expenses required in the support operation. The units usually collect a part of this from the afforestation costs allocated in the project by being somewhat non- transparent to the community about the subsidy and investment for various operations. For example, the township forest farms will produce seedlings for the project to earn some profit for the farm and so on. Thus, any change of execution method in favor of the community that does not allow the units to collect the needed additional funds from afforestation operation is likely to be opposed. The project provisions create this problem which can be easily taken care of by assisting the government units with the additional funds required by them for project support. We reiterate that this practice of having lack of transparency is not due to any personal benefit but is a tactic for the unit to financially survive in order to participate in donor supported community or private forest development in the villages. This element of lack of transparency however delimits the full participation of the community in forest development.

4. Proposals to Change the Negative Responses of the Foresters to Paradigm Changes and to Expedite the Process of Change

Before we discuss our proposals, we would summarize the responses of the foresters to community forestry and set down the possible reasons for them.

In each of the selected country, there is a small core of foresters who enthusiastically support community forestry. The overall response of the majority of the officials however, except in China, is reluctance to accept transfer of forests to community. Where a minority accept the new paradigm, it is only with respect to parting to the community with parts and pieces of powers that the officials enjoy and that too only with respect to the forests that are largely disturbed or destroyed. In regard to China, the situation is different namely lack of any discussion so far to part with the large commercial forest blocks that are managed by the government in favor of the community.

We reckon that the following are the major reasons acting singly or in combination that have kept such a large percent of the officials from endorsing community forestry although in many cases such as JFM of India is in fact a mellowed form of forest-people association in which only a small part of the management powers are transferred to the associated people:

a. The foresters feel that community forestry as is being advocated now is only the beginning of a series of steps which will end up with demands by the people for complete empowerment to manage forests including the high valuable national forests. The apprehension is not wrong as such demands are already noticed. According to them, this will be disastrous with serious consequences on timber supply, soil and water conservation, biodiversity and wild life preservation. b. The forests under community management may show some improvement in the short run but the improvement will be unsustainable. The ‘tragedy of commons’ will visit the forests and the forests will deteriorate. With increase of population, the community will encroach upon the forest area for cultivation, cut trees for additional household needs and decimate them for financial gains as soon as the trees reach commercial size. According to their argument, the status of the community forests in the long run will reach a similar fate as has been reached by the village forests of India, collective forests of China, hill forests of Nepal and the forests of Bhutan near the growth and city centers. c. The forest officials do not believe that the village people are knowledgeable enough to handle forest management either technically or administratively to improve or even sustain forest productivity. By community management, the forests will be fragmented and application of scientific management practices will not be possible. d. The powers and facilities that the officials have deservedly earned over decades and are enjoyed will Page 9 of 9

be lost. Even the security of the jobs will be in jeopardy. These will not however in any way help the forest development, rather will push it to the contrary.

We will not contest the above arguments in this paper. We will start with the premise that community management has to be encouraged to become the dominant paradigm in future forestry management in developing countries. The proposals given below are few among many that may be listed but are considered by us to be vital for community forestry development.

1. The task of the transfer of forests to the community should be entrusted to a new department namely Forest Reforms Department, to be temporarily established. Required number of foresters should be attached to the department to prepare microplans in consultation with the users. As soon as the transfer is completed and the management microplan prepared, forest department will take over other residual tasks of the community forests. Such a step will expedite progress of community forestry. 2. The political persons, administrators and the forestry technicians should be trained in community forestry particularly in respect of attitudinal changes required in accepting community management of the forest resources. The technical officials should also be trained in management of non-timber forest products, small forest block management, use of simple tools etc. that are likely to be associated with community forest management of small blocks. This will reorient the foresters to the knowledge needed for community forest management. 3. The foresters should be allowed the required facilities including country visits to look in depth into the future scenario where the foresters will be called upon by the community themselves to assist the community technically and administratively, as is now seen in USA’s Ameri-Indian Forest Reserves, or in the private and community forests of Swiss or German Alps. This will eliminate the foresters’ apprehension that they will be redundant in community forestry 4. In China, the forest officials may start thinking of involving people in the management of large forest blocks now under the complete control of state authorities.

REFERENCES

Chatterjee, Angana P. 1996. Community Forest Management in Arabari: Understanding Sociocultural and Subsistence Issues. Society for Promotion of Wastelands Development, New Delhi

FAO. 1993. Forest Resources Assessment 1990, Tropical Countries: FAO Paper 112. Rome, Italy

Ministry of Forestry, People’s Republic of China. 1995. Forestry Action Plan for China’s Agenda 21. Beijing

Poffenberger, Mark with Bhattacharya, Pradyut and others. 1996. Grassroots Forest Protection: Eastern India Experiences. Research Network Report No. 7, Asia Forestry Network. Berkeley, USA

Singh, Samar. Dutta, Avinash and others. 1997. Participatory Forest Management in West Bengal. WWF- INDIA. New Delhi.

World Bank (mimeo). 1992. An Experiment on Participatory Forestry Development in Nepal. Washington, DC.