19 April 2011: As part of the Global Environment Facility’s (GEF) support to the International Year of Forests (IYF), the GEF Small Grants Programme (SGP) has highlighted successful examples of community-based forest management projects in Indonesia and Iran.

The SGP worked in the Zagros Mountain Range in the west of Iran to compile, register and improve “Galazani,” an efficient traditional method of forest management. The project was supported by the Faculty of Natural Resources at Tehran University and the Department of Forestry in Kurdistan province. The local community played a significant role in providing knowledge of the traditional method and in implementing the technique. Participation of indigenous people resulted in outstanding achievements during the first year, which led to increased academic interest in the method, according to GEF.

Another SGP project, “The Living Fence and the Jungle School: Protecting the Orang Rimba and their Forest Home” supported the Orang Rimba People, an indigenous community that resides in a forest in the Bukit Dua Belas National Park in Sumatra, in their goal of protecting the forest and conserving important biodiversity. Given the low level of literacy, the community used participatory video techniques to create its project proposal and to monitor the project. This flexible approach allowed the indigenous community to successfully implement the project. Results include protection of Sumatran low land forests, and preservation of the habitats of endangered species such as the Jambi giant trees (Dipterocarpus sp.), the Tapir (Tapirus indicus), the Hornbill bird (Buceros virgil) and the Siamang Gibbon (Hylobates agilis). [GEF Press Release]