Step 7: Develop Agreement with the Landowners' Group

Action: Once the landowners' Group incorporation procedure is underway the Senior Forester and Area Technical Assistant then prepare a draft agreement between our Programme and the Group. This draft agreement is then checked by our field coordinator and then brought to the village where it is explained to and discussed with the clan elders using their local language. If they approve, it is then signed. If they want to make changes, then the agreement is redrafted until a suitable agreement is reached.

Rationale: The agreement is important so that everyone is clear as to what the enterprise will entail and what everyone's role and duties are. We are very serious about enforcing all provisions of this agreement - if there are violations, we then immediately respond in the prescribed manner.

Example: The agreement generally covers the equipment that the Programme will loan the Group, the terms of this loan, what timber will be cut, how the timber will be marketed, the manner in which reforestation will occur, and that the Group cannot make agreements with an outside timber company for a period of ten years.

This Agreement is very useful in future dealings with the clans. For instance, although our agreements state that no Group will cut trees smaller than 70 cm dbh (the government's legal limit is only 50 cm), one clan wanted to cut trees that were below 60 cm. When we found out, we immediately told them we would remove our equipment unless they followed the guidelines in the Agreement. They did.

In a similar instance, another Group failed to replant the 2 ha of forest that the Agreement specified they should do at their own expense. Again, we were able to use the Agreement to get them to comply.

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