Going to scale with Participatory Forest Management: early lessons from Tanzania

SUMMARY The paper provides an overview of experiences in Tanzania to date in ‘scaling up’ Participatory Forest Management (PFM) from what has until recently been a ‘project-driven’ approach to one that is mainstreamed and embedded within national and local government institutions. It highlights the valuable role that projects have played in influencing policy, developing new models and tools, but also some of the pitfalls of the project approach, particularly with regard to local expectations, the lack of sustainability and failure to integrate within local institutions and systems. In addition, the paper assesses the degree to which different models of Participatory Forest Management (PFM) have delivered on their two main policy objectives — sustainable forest management and improved rural livelihoods. The paper outlines some of the enabling factors as well as constraints to further dissemination and scaling-up of PFM in Tanzania — looking at political, institutional, social and economic dimensions.