The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) hopes to use a pilot forest management program that stresses community involvement as a model for the Asian Pacific region.
The Participatory Forest Management project, with funding from the government of the Netherlands, was started in 2007 and has stopped illegal logging and forest fires in 15 districts in Mongolia, and its pilot phase will end in January. One of the program's hallmarks is giving locals a sense of ownership of the forest by tapping new sources of income from forest products. Residents are now clearing dead trees to sell for construction and as firewood, as well as harvesting nuts and berries to sell at local food markets.
In the program's three years, "forest fires have essentially disappeared," according to the U.N. "We saw that things were going wrong when trees were logged illegally and streams and rivers started to dry up," said Batjargal, a herder from the district Bugat, which is about 280 miles west of Mongolia's capital Ulaan Baatar. "So the local people wanted to establish a forest user group," a move that Batjargal said has given him and his neighbors a "feeling of ownership."
