Company- Community Forestry Partnerships. Case Study; Kenana Sugar Company

Abstract

In the last two decades, there is a great degradation in the environment of Sudan as a result of deforestation. The inclusion of the institutional forests in forest policy of 1986 was made in order to enhance and encourage all the institutions to adopt the activity. Two institutions managed to establish institutional forests, namely; El-Rahad Irrigated Scheme and Kenana Sugar Corporation (KSC). Even for these institutions there is a relative paucity analyzing company-community partnership. Moreover, there is no lettle information that explores the relationship between the Forests National Corporation (FNC) and the institutions, strategies and methods of application. Kennana Sugar Corporation institutional forests were selected for this study. The broad objective of this study is to explore the nature of the institutional forest with special emphasis on the strategies and evolution of institutional forests in Sudan, to investigate the degree of success of institutional forest and the possibility of transferring this model to other institutions and assess the main constraints confronting the activity. Two types of data were used to collect the necessary information, namely; primary and secondary data. The primary data was collected through interviewing, and self-administered questionnaire with the local people and the administrators, respectively. The main findings of the study were; the adoption of institutional forests was made without specification of the strategies and the objectives of the institutional forests. KS C institutional forest, in the absence of extension unit in the administrative level of the institutional forest, is run by foresters without enough background in forestry extension.Accordingly the administrators rely on top-bottom approach for the assignment of different tasks to appointed committees "Not elected" and delegation of authorities. Neither public meetings nor home visits are made toencourage the participation of local people. Moreover, KSC restrict the introduction of the tree component in the agricultural land. The formation of local institutions and performance of the species is made by the KSC. The main conclusions of the study area; the absence of scientific extension unit is behind the constraints confronting the community forestry activity; formation of local institution to administer the community forestry is the utmost need of the local people. The main recommendation is; KSC should establish a separate extension unit in the administration level of the institutional forests to run the extension program.