The Borana Collaborative Forest Management Project (BCFMP) was one of the first Collaborative Forest Management activities which succeeded in putting the community at the centre of natural resource management. The BCFMP worked in partnership with regional and local government departments, as well as the traditional Borana” Gadaa“ institutions.
The BCFMP helped transform conventional, government-led natural forest management into a Participatory Forest Management (PFM) approach, enabling local people to secure their resource rights. For the local communtities, involvement in the PFM process was their first real experience of ownership of a development process.
PFM has become a strong incentive for the local people to protect the forest on which their livelihoods depend.
A PFM manual developed by the programme was adopted by Ethiopia’s regional and federal governments. In addition, SOS Sahel Ethiopia and FARM-Africa, in collaboration with other stakeholders, organized an International Conference on Participatory Forest Management, Biodiversity and Rural Livelihoods in Africa in March 2007 which brought together prominent figures from academic, development and policy circles in Africa.
The BCFMP has made a significant contribution to changing the view that pastoralism is damaging to the Ethiopian environment.