Fostering capacity building through outreach

Power over forest management does not equal power over forest use.

We learned this while communicating research findings on impacts of charcoal production on forest use and livelihoods in six Tanzanian villages in which we conducted fieldwork. (Charcoal is a bioenergy produced from trees in the forest.)

Our research showed that charcoal producers on average obtain lower income per bag of charcoal in villages that have legal rights to manage their forest resources than in villages where illegal forest use occurs. In our scientific papers, we provide a range of potential explanations for this finding. Maybe it is related to taxes? Perhaps charcoal bags differed in size thus in price?

The real reason was more complex. During our outreach in the villages, we realized that we had overestimated the power charcoal producers had over forest use in villages that have rights over forest management. In these villages, forest use is strictly regulated. Buyers need to purchase forest concessions (lease a piece of forest) to produce charcoal from. Charcoal producers currently do not have enough money to purchase such concessions. Hence concessions are bought by buyers from outside of the village, who hire charcoal producers as laborers. Buyers provide producers with low wages to avoid a loss of income related to taxes that they could otherwise avoid. If charcoal producers refuse to work for such low wages, buyers bring in producers from outside of the village.

It was clear solutions needed to be found. Together, charcoal producers and village leaders thought out a plan to transfer power over forest use from buyers from outside the village to charcoal producers in the village. Village governments will help charcoal producers to purchase forest concessions in the short term. On their turn, charcoal producers will donate part of their income to a fund managed by a charcoal producer association, which they can eventually use to purchase their own forest concessions in the future.

This experience highlights once again the great importance of scientific outreach to avoid “helicopter research”. One important benefit of outreach is that it allows for the integration research findings in the daily lives of those who live in the research area and beyond. By sharing our findings and facilitating discussions, we automatically empowered villages to work together to define the challenges they face and find solutions for those challenges.

We show that research outreach has great potential for capacity building by researchers, without having to step out of their role as scientists. Capacity building through outreach occurs purely through the transfer of knowledge and facilitation of discussions. There is no need for researchers to step into the role of advisors.