Co-Chairs’ Summary : Seventh Dialogue on ILCF - Burkina Faso Field Dialogue

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The Forests Dialogue (TFD)  convened a four-day, multi-stakeholder field dialogue on Investing in Locally Controlled Forestry (ILCF), held in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso from 12–15 September, 2011. The Dialogue was hosted by TREE AID and sponsored by Growing Forest Partnerships (GFP) and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA). The dialogue was the seventh dialogue in TFD’s ILCF initiative5, which began with a scoping dialogue in Brussels (2009), followed by four field dialogues (Panama, Nepal, Macedonia, Kenya), an investor dialogue (London) and a writers’ workshop (London).

Previous field dialogues recognized that Locally Controlled Forestry (LCF) involves three groups of rights holders, namely: indigenous peoples, community forestry groups and forestland smallholders. Together, these groups own or manage a significant portion of the world’s forest resources. The Burkina Faso dialogue mainly explored investment cases for community forestry groups.The following two dialogues in the initiative (Indonesia and Sweden) will focus on investment cases for indigenous peoples and forestland smallholders, respectively.

Participants at the London (investors) dialogue agreed that a set of principles (preconditions) and a process model (Steps in Exploring and Implementing a Deal) for ILCF projects would be useful to both investors and rights holders. Building on the momentum from the London dialogue, the Kenya field dialogue and the London writers’ workshop further discussed the relevance, utility and potential content of these principles and process model for ILCF. By learning from local experiences in ILCF, the objectives of the Burkina Faso field dialogue were to:

  • Refine the principles for investment in locally controlled forestry;
  • Define steps in an investment process model critical for successful deals in the investment in LCF;
  • Identify concrete actions for new partnerships and financing mechanisms in Burkina Faso.

The Burkina Faso dialogue brought together 19 International and 32 local stakeholders representing a wide spectrum of stakeholder groups, which include forest owners, local community and community forestry groups, forestry investors and companies, development assistance agencies, national and local governments, collectivités territoriales (namely municipalities), inter-governmental organizations, and international and national non-governmental organizations (see participant list).

This report summarizes key observations and discussion points from the Burkina Faso field dialogue.