Contribution of community forestry in the central dry zone of Myanmar to achieving sustainable and equitable forest management

This study examines 59 cases in order to assess the possibility that Community Forestry (CF) practiced in the Central Dry Zone of Myanmar will help achieve sustainable forest management (SFM) and equitable forest management. We concluded that CF hardly contributes to the achievement of SFM because of poor management plan implementation user groups or group members are too busy and lack capability, contrary to the logic of participatory development assuming that local people conduct activities autonomously. Other hindrances to achieving SFM were the difficulty of having seedlings ready at the right time because the process of community forest establishment could not be controlled, and difficulty of rehabilitating vegetation in the dry zone. CF helps promote equity between the Forest Department and villagers, but the risk of CF is that it widens inequity among villagers by excluding non-user group members from forest management. These difficulties and risks of CF in Myanmar provide implementation lessons for other types of participatory forest management.