Tropical deforestation is singled out as one of the more critical issues facing African countries during the last few decades. In discussing causes of forest depletion, local farmers are often the first to be identified. However, these local farmers have been living in legal, political, social, and economic environments that have had tremendous effects on the system of natural resources management in Africa as well as elsewhere in the tropics.This research project was designed to generate testable hypotheses evaluating the effectiveness of forest policies dating from 1985 in Francophone West Africa including Mali., Senegal, Niger, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Cote d'Ivoire, Benin, and Togo. Since 1985, because of factors such as the droughts of the 1970s and the 1980s, the growing pressure of humans on forest resources, the failure of six decades of centralized forest management policies, and the influence of the international community, national authorities have undertaken a series of reforms of their forest policies to adopt a decentralized management of forest resources. This decentralized forest management policy is aimed at involving local people in the development and the management of their forest resources, promoting local governance, increasing revenues, and achieving sustainable forest management. The actual situation is that new policies have been or are being implemented throughout the region, but until now an inability to evaluate their effectiveness for sustainable forest management exists. The purpose of this research was to identify ways to overcome this problem.The research was limited to reviewing written information on forest policies and legislation, conventions and programs that are related to forest management, to interviewing knowledgeable persons based in Washington, DC, who are interested in forest policy in Africa, and to personal and professional observations in the United States and in Africa. From the review and interviews, a conceptual analysis of key components of forest policies was made to highlight their meanings and usefulness in evaluating decentralized forest management policy. This analysis led to the formulation of hypotheses about decentralized forest management and the enumeration of criteria and indicators of sustainable forest management to measure the effectiveness of new forest policies dating from 1985 in Francophone West Africa. / Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BSU/oai:cardinalscholar.bsu.edu:handle/186763 |
| Date | January 2000 |
| Creators | Thiam, Boubacar |
| Contributors | Chandler, Paul M. |
| Source Sets | Ball State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Format | ix, 118 leaves : col. map ; 28 cm. + 1 guide. |
| Source | Virtual Press |
| Coverage | fw----- |
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