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MANUAL OF PROCEDURES FOREST RESOURCE MANAGEMENT PLANNING IN THE HFZ SECTION B - OPERATIONAL PLANNING |
GHANA FOREST SERVICE
MARCH 1998
Preface
The Manual of Procedures for Forest Resource
Management Planning prescribes the important tasks to be carried out in order
to adequately plan for forest resource management in the high forest zone in
the interest of the nation and for the benefit of the resource owners.
The planning process can be divided into
strategic and operational planning. Strategic planning sets objectives to guide forest resource management in the long term. Operational
planning ensures that programmes of
operations to achieve strategic objectives are adequately planned and
sufficiently resourced. The new planning process will also provide for local
consultation in resource management planning. The Manual is produced in two
sections:
Section A - Strategic
Planning: Prescribes the
requirements for strategic planning at national, forest reserve and district
levels. Instruction sheets describe the procedures to be undertaken by
the Forest Service in ALL high forest zone districts in conjunction with the
resource owners and District Assemblies and other interest groups.
Section B -
Operational Planning: Prescribes the requirements
for planning of forest operations for forest reserves and TUC operations off
reserve by the Forest Service in ALL high forest zone districts in order to
successfully implement strategic plans.
The Manual has been written to guide forest
officers responsible for preparing and implementing forest resource plans but
will also be of value to other interest groups outside of the Forest Service
particularly the resource owners and District Assemblies.
Forest resource management planning is a core
activity at the very heart of our new Forest Service, we expect that the
services we provide in this regard will be of the highest standards as set down
in this Manual. It is beholding on all officers to be very cognisant with the
procedures laid down in this Manual:
“ignorance of the law is no excuse for committing an offence.”
Procedures documented in this Manual represent
the best practice at the time of writing. It is important that individual
Instruction Sheets are kept up to date and new Instruction Sheets added as our
knowledge improves and techniques are refined.
This Manual replaces all previous guidelines on
management plan preparation.
Table of Contents
B1.1 Introduction
to the Planning Process
B2. Operational Planning Methodology
B2.1 The
Operational Planning Annex
2. Forest
Reserve Operational planning: an overview 5
3.
Structure of the Operation Planning Annex 6
B2.2 Summarising
TUC Activities
2.
Responsibilities of the Forest Service for the TUCs
B2.3 Summarising
Plantation Programmes
2.
Responsibilities of the Forest Service for Plantation Activities
B2.4 Fire
Protection Operations
1.
Introduction to the Planning of Fire
Control Measures
2.
Identification of High Risk Areas
4.
Operational Planning for Fire Control
B2.5 Preparation
of the 3 Year Rolling Plan
1.
Introduction to the Three Year Rolling
Plan
2. Process
of Preparing the 3 year Rolling Plan
B2.6 Preparation
of the Annual Programme of Works
ANNEXES:
EXAMPLES OF OPERATIONAL PLANNING FORMS
Table OP 1:
Forest Reserve Operational Planning
Form OP 2:
3 Year Work Programme
Form OP 3:
Year 2 and Year 3 Outline Costs
Form OP 4:
Work Breakdown Structure
Table OP 5:
Time and Responsibility Charts
Form OP 6:
Cost Breakdown for APW
B1. The Planning Process
B1.1 Introduction to the Planning Process
1.
General
1.1 Forest
resource management planning takes place in two stages; strategic and
operational.
Strategic planning sets objectives
for forest resource management and prescriptions for achieving those
objectives. The time frame for strategic planning is medium to long term.
Section A of the MoP prescribes the
requirements for strategic planning.
1.2 Operational
planning follows on from strategic planning, it details the operations and
resources required to implement the prescriptions. The time frame for
operational planning is short to medium term. Section B of the MoP prescribes
the requirements for planning of forest operations to ensure that the strategic
resource management plans are successfully implemented.
1.3 The MoP is
to be used primarily by regional and district staff of the Forest Service to:
(a) Operationalise forest reserve management
plans.
(b) Operationalise any portions of district
forestry development plans that the Forest Service has agreed to
implement.
(c) Plan for administration of timber
harvesting in TUC areas outside reserves
1.4 The
new Forest Service is required to operate in a business like manner on behalf
of its clients. The following principles are
to be upheld during planning of all forest operations:
Accountability: the Forest Service will have to account
to its clients for all retained
revenues on reserve and service charges outside reserves. We must therefore be
able to justify resources that we
intend to use and account for them afterwards
Cost effectiveness:
the manager must ensure that all operations are properly costed and that
minimum resources needed to complete the operation to the required standard are
used. This will include the effective use of contracts to undertake specific
tasks, rather than maintaining unnecessarily large labour forces
Quality. The
Forest Service has a duty to ensure that its planning and subsequent
implementation and monitoring are carried out to the highest professional
standards, not only to meet the demands of the land owners, but also to satisfy
the international certification requirements for sustainable forest management.
2.
Outline of Procedures
2.1 The District Forest Officer with
assistance from the regional office, will be required to examine the (strategic
level) forest reserve management plans
for all reserves under his control and to itemise five year targets in
terms of protection ( length of fire
lines to be constructed, fire breaks to be maintained etc.); production (areas to be surveyed and logged, areas to
be planted, thinned, harvested etc.); infrastructure
(road and track improvement, building and maintenance etc.) and community
development over the next five
years. The output from this exercise
will be an Operational Planning Annex to each forest reserve management plan.
2.2 The District Forestry Development Plan is
a strategic planning document prepared by the District Planning Officer and
members of the District Assembly Environmental Committee. Aspects of its
preparation have been covered in Section A of this MoP series. It will tend to
concentrate on off-reserve forestry activities, though not entirely so and it will
be part of an overall district programme covering other sectors such as
agriculture, water, mining and wildlife.
The inference being that the structure of these particular plans is
unlikely to be uniform around the country. However they should all provide a
list of targets for a five year period.
2.3 Separate TUC (5 year) Operational Plans
will have been produced for both on and off
reserve by the contractors which are subject to a standard approval
process by the DFO and the RFO as part
of the TUC management system (refer MoP Sections C and F in this series)
2.4 Under the programme for commercial
plantation development, separate plans may have been drawn up with private
sector investors to plant convalescence areas unsuited to natural regeneration
on reserve Again the details of these
projects will need to be summarised and those activities that have relevance to
the Forest Service in terms of staff
inputs need to be listed. Proposals for
off-reserve plantation development will feature in the District Forest
Development Plan.
2.5 Lastly, for those reserves under threat
of fire, the DFO will be required to prepare a fire plan. For many reserves this will be adequately
covered in the strategic plan, but there will be critical reserves where the level
of interventions are such that a separate programme has to be embarked upon and
in such circumstances a five year Fire Plan will have been prepared as a
separate step. In such circumstances this plan will also need to be reviewed as
part of the process of determining the
priorities for the operational plan for the district.
2.6 Programmes for the development of NTFPs
will normally be covered adequately within the Operational Planning Annex for
on-reserve or within the District
Forestry Development Plan for the expansion of marketing opportunities in the
district as a whole. Similarly, the
programme for floral and fauna biodiversity and watershed protection
will be covered within the Forest Reserve Operational Planning Annex, which
will summarise any work required to survey,
demarcate or monitor the coarse grained protection areas. The identification of the fine-grained
protection areas is an activity which is part of the stock survey process
(refer MoP Section D).
2.7 The strategic plan may indicate that
certain forest reserve operations, for instance boundary maintenance can be
undertaken in collaboration with the local communities. Such intentions should
have been indicated within the Operational Planning Annex. Separate guidelines are being produced which
will further assist staff in operational planning for collaborative resource
management.
2.8 The DFO needs to draw all these plans and
proposals together and identify the inputs that the Forest Service will need to
provide in order for the various programmes to be kept on target. This is done in the form of a three year
rolling plan which itemises those
activities that the district forestry staff and work force will need to provide
time and physical resources to. Those
forestry activities that are being carried out in the district for which the
Forest Service does not need to devote specific staff time or labour, and hence funds, need not be included within
the rolling plan. The first year of the
plan will be completed in the most
detail since this is the Annual Programme of Work and should have all labour,
subsistence, operational costs and developmental costs itemised. The planning process is illustrated in
Figures 1 and 2.
2.9 This MoP does not contain technical
recommendations on forest operations. The relevant technical MoP must be
consulted to help identify activities to be carried out.
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Plantations MoP A MoP for Plantations Planning MoP B MoP for Nurseries MoP C MoP for Plantations Field Operations MoP D MoP for Plantation Thinning Operations High Forest Management
MoP A Strategic Planning MoP C Timber Production (On-reserve) MoP D MoP for Stock Survey and Yield Allocation (also covers fine-grained protection) MoP E Harvesting Schedules MoP F Timber Production (Off-reserve) The Logging Manual Guidelines Forest Protection in Ghana (Protection Strategy ) Fire Control Guidelines, Guidelines for Plantation Development Collaborative
Forest Management Guidelines |
B2. Operational Planning Methodology
B2.1 The Operational Planning Annex
1.
Introduction
1.1 This Instruction Sheet provides guidance on the processes required
to identify those key activities to be carried out under the Strategic Forest
Reserve Management Plan for the next five years.
1.2 For those reserves with no strategic plan
fully prepared, it will still be possible to pull together a provisional
programme of operations, to be supplemented by information from TUC Operational Plans, Plantation Programmes
and a Fire Plan. Assuming the strategic plan is completed within the five
years, it would then be necessary to revise the annex accordingly.
1.3
The
Annex for the first five years should be completed as part of the preparation
of the forest reserve management plan as a natural continuation of the planning
process taking advantage of the additional support from the regional planning
team that should be available at the time of the strategic planning process.
2.
Forest Reserve Operational planning: an overview
2.1 Part
II of each forest reserve management plan contains proposals for:
* management
zones for protection objectives
* management
zones for production objectives
* management
for beneficiary objectives
For each management zone the proposals will state:
* measurable
objective [performance standard]
* management
regime
* management
prescriptions
* rights
and responsibilities
For each management zone, a provisional programme of operations should
be prepared by the DFO in order to carry out the prescriptions. All the
programmes for the reserve are then reviewed by the DFO, prioritised and
compiled together along with the appropriate maps to produce a five year
operational plan.
2.2 The DFO prepares the provisional
programme of operations covering the next
5 years for each management zone using the composite Form OP 1.
A target for the end of the five
years should be entered for each main activity, entering a zero for those
activities regarded as not applicable to the reserve. At this stage operations are not broken down into detail, the
emphasis being to get the broad picture.
Where the DFO feels confident in entering targets for the intermediate
years then this should be done. The
last column of Form OP1 (remarks/implementor) can be used to indicate the type
of labour to be used (local contract, direct community support -either
voluntary or paid, Forest Service workers etc.)
2.4 Ideally, at the stage of preparing the 3
year rolling plan, the district staff will be in possession of not only a
current strategic plan for the reserve, but TUC Operational Plans, Commercial Forest Plantation Agreements and an
overall Fire Plan for the reserve. That
ideal situation may not be in place for some years and the DFO may be faced
with putting together a 3 Year Rolling Plan with little supportive
documentation. In such circumstances, a
best attempt has to be made with the preparation of all these plans put as a
top priority for years 1 and 2 and an acceptance that the 3 Year Rolling plan will be heavily modified as
additional information becomes available.
3.
Structure of the Operation Planning Annex
3.1 The
annex is brief and covers the following sections:-
.
1.
Overview of Programmes for Years
.... to ....
Biodiversity
Protection.
Summary of any expansion of areas to be protected in the period by sub
zones
and any key activities with
respect to demarcation or improvement of protection.
Fire Protection
Main aspects of the fire plan
Area of high fire risk. Existing
fire protection measures
Establishment/expansion proposed during period
Patrolling proposed
Timber Production
Status of existing TUCs. Proposals for new TUCs
Expected volume production over period
Plantation Development
Existing resources to be maintained
Expansion by Forest Service/Taungya under period
Plans for commercial forestry development
Convalescence Areas
Changes expected from status quo over the period
Enrichment Planting proposed
NTFP Production
Any particular developmental proposals
Community Development Aspects
Formation of user groups, community
assistance in protection
Infrastructure Developments
Road /bridge construction by community, forest service or contractor
Buildings proposed
2. Summary of Main Activities and Targets
See Table OP 1 Forest Reserve Operational Planning
3. Indicative Revenue Generation
Summary
of Expected Income for years 1-5
|
Category |
Yr 1 |
Yr 2 |
Yr 3 |
Yr 4 |
Yr 5 |
Target 5 years |
|
Timber |
|
|
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|
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Plantation thinning |
|
|
|
|
|
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Plantation final fell |
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|
|
|
|
|
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NTFP |
|
|
|
|
|
|
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Others |
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|
|
|
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Total |
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4. Comments:
i.
Previous Planning Period - Successes/failures, lessons drawn
ii
Assumptions (does programme require a major increase in investment and
operating costs)
Prepared
by: ............................. Date:
DFO