[Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - boundary=forestry(_compartment) relations (Was "Feature Proposal - RFC - boundary=forest(_compartment) relations")

Bert -Araali- Van Opstal bert.araali.afritastic at gmail.com
Mon Feb 15 14:31:45 UTC 2021


Thank you for your answer David. It is clear to me and your
justifications underline it, that it is your intention to present a
solution in mapping (boundary driven) and tagging to present a
"westerner forestry" philosophy. But I remain with my previous vision
that your proposal, which is in no way incorrect, has too much
conditions and limitations to be considered as a top level boundary
class. In this format, as you can already see from the many questions
and objections, it is not suitable to be used on a top level as was done
with hazard and others, which cover a more broader spectrum of
management / use cases and were specific issues are addressed with
attribution keys.

As I see it all your forestry proposals would fit under a protect_class
15, or one of the IUCN classes.  Your proposal says that if a forestry
area is also a protected_area, an additional protect_class should be
added, meaning that you propose to tag the whole area as forestry and
protect_area with IUCN classification is of minor importance, since your
primary boundary identification remains Forestry. I think that is
definitively wrong and should be the opposite. Protected_area with IUCN
classification is always more significant.

This leaves us with areas which, if you allow me to refer back to
protect_class 12 / 14 / 15 / 19 that apply to resource-protected areas.
In stead of defining very specific "forestry" boundaries, what is
against defining a more general therm, like "natural-resource-area" or
any other more general term, under which the "western forestry" is
defined with a new or existing atrribution key:value.  Much the same way
as has been done with hazard zones.
This would allow to use the same attribution keys for other areas, as
species management, wetland management, water_resource_management
(introduced without proposal !) or even more natural resources.  As you
already mentioned forestry can mean that other natural resources are
managed under "forestry" besides wood extraction, but still to much
limitations to be considered as a top-level boundary tag.

I see most confusion and discussions arising from the very strict
boundary requirements in your proposal. Boundaries are in the non
western world not always, even I dare to say, mostly not clearly defined.
Again this is going to be a long mail for which I apologise but I see no
other way to make it clear.  So allow me to illustrate with some
examples from my home Uganda:

1. Most wetlands and forests are under the jurisdiction of the Uganda
National Forests Authority (NFA). They have a mandate to maintain and
exploit these wetlands and forests defined by law. All those forests and
wetlands (the majority here) are thus "government land" and called
"Central Forest Reserves", within these areas the "Uganda National
Forestry and Tree Planting Act" has to be implemented by the NFA, in
some cases even if there was never any "woody vegetation".  So far so
good, we have an act and a clear definition of forestry in the law.
However, the government never gazetted the official boundaries of most
of these Forest Reserves. Even more, they were so many that smaller
forest were assigned to be managed by local governments and called
"Local Forest Reserves", but also for these never clear boundaries were
gazetted, even worse, the Local Authorities lack the resources or
personnel to implement the Forestry act. So in practice very few
boundaries are clearly marked in the field. Then if they are marked, due
to encroachment and the communities argue about the fact that they were
never gazetted, if the NFA puts boundary stones, often in peoples
gardens, these are removed by the community and huge commotion starts.
So if I would follow your proposal, none or very few could be mapped
with boundary=forestry.

2. Because of 1., someone connected and the lack of official maps or
even a cadastral register that overs the whole country, someone
connected to the NFA decided they will use OSM to map all the Central
Forest reserves, very rough and luckily with a fixme tag that they "are
not official boundaries". All were mapped as landuse=forest, even those
were by far no more tree is present ! In many cases we, the community
already mapped other landuses from field checks, and natural tagging.
But again lots of commotion since the NFA action caused all of these
areas now to be rendered as forests (under the forestry act). We started
to change their forest with relations with boundary=protected_area and
protect_class=15. Still many unhappy users and unhappy NFA because the
borders didn't render.  So we changed it to protect_class=5 or 6 because
it is rendered.  We couldn't find any official document where the IUCN
classes are connected to the local legislation. But still, "not official
boundaries" remains, and except from some historical maps hard to
determine were they are.  In the field, for the few that are there they
are often on private land and not verifiable without entering encroached
"private" property and danger for life and limb. Still, if I refer to
your proposal, none of this would be a candidate for your proposal !

Example on OSM: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/677824323 and
https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/711261339#map=16/0.0825/32.4835.

3. Regarding indigenous use.  If there are people who clearly marked
their territory it is them.  They mark it by making marks on trees or
other "natural means".  However, again not official but they are allowed
to harvest, hunt and extract wood from the forest.  They do it in a
sustainable way but in some cases, targetting specific valuable species
like mahogany trees (by the way protected but they don't care, they have
to make a living somehow) are extracted for commercial purposes, and
replanted but the old monumental trees are all disappearing.  Not all of
them do this but some. There areas are sometimes located partially or in
full in national parks but also on non-protected land, common,
government land but in their eyes it is their land, not regulated as in
reservations like in the US. So, again referring to your proposal:
boundaries, officially not gazetted, check in the field yes they marked
their boundaries where they are in their opinion (lots of conflicts with
other surrounding communities) but they are officially mandated and
allowed to harvest, hunt and extract wood in a sustainable way. So your
proposal boundary=forestry, check, yes all conditions as described
fulfilled although it is not, because the main activity there or main
purpose is to allow them to continue their traditional lifestyle of
harvesting and hunting, but hey, who doesn't like a nice smartphone or
fancy bike to run through the forest and impress your neighbours... they
are people like us and deserve to enjoy the same rights and luxuries.

4. The wetlands. All our wetlands are government land. In some of them
the government allows extraction of papyrus reeds (for roofs), some have
designated areas for rice fields, used a sewage filters, drinking water
extraction and... the swamps, marshes and other wood covered areas as
"forestry areas", used for wood extraction, charcoal burning etc... .
Mandated mostly to the NFA who lacks financial and human resources to
implement the act, and no clear boundaries.  Some of them located in
nature reserves, some of them ramsar some of them not.  Your proposal:
Clear boundaries no, one can question even if it is possible to define
them because the wetlands are sometimes seasonal and some of them shift
! Wood extraction = yes, sustainable = sometimes, use of other natural
resources  yes, protected area = different interpretations, so I believe
according to you no forestry ? Although some of these forest are like
islands in the wetlands nd thus have a clear but ever changing boundary,
not marked with other physical means in the field.

5. As last example, Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary. This sanctuary is located in a
forest reserve, concession of NFA.  They breed rhinos and also the
rhinos maintain the scrub and forest in a natural way, but with support
of human intervention.  Because of the rhinos the whole sanctuary, and
thus the forest reserve is fenced. Resources used: wood extraction /
charcoal burning =  yes, animal farm, breeding (species management),
yes, nature reserve = no, compartments = yes (compartments, fenced are
made to prevent overgrazing by the rhinos so they are forcefully moved
through the forest). Clear boundaries = yes.  SO where do we end up if
we follow your advise ? Boundary=protected_area = no, boundary =
forestry = yes but its an animal sanctuary / breeding farm, ok I can tag
that additionally. But again practical problem: they also make a lot of
money with tourism, this caught the eye of some opportunistic government
people so they decided to stop the concession and take over the
sanctuary, as justification: violations of the Forestry and Tree
Planting act. SO are we again going to risk live and limb to define it
as boundary = forestry ?


That is why I think a less restrictive general new boundary value would
be much more suitable, which allows us to carefully propose a general
term for the management of natural reserves and where we use carefully
and diverse chosen attribution to provide details, of which "western
forestry" is just one variant.
Please do comment and advise how we can handle these examples , I am
sure many similar challenges exist throughout the world ! And yes be
bold, I fully support deprecating landuse=forest because that is even
worse !

Greetings, Bert Araali

On 15/02/2021 12:14, David Marchal via Tagging wrote:
>
> ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
> Le dimanche, 14. février 2021 18:48, Bert -Araali- Van Opstal
> <bert.araali.afritastic at gmail.com> a écrit :
>>
>> 2. As mentioned in 1. the term as it is presented in this proposal
>> seems discriminating to me. Let me explain with an example: large
>> parts of forests in Africa and South-America are harvested,
>> maintained using similar management strategies as in forestry by
>> indigenous tribes and communities., however they are not considered
>> forestry areas.  Forestry, especially how it is described in your
>> proposal, is a term introduced by the western world. I know there is
>> lots of confusion about the landuse=forest tag but we should avoid to
>> introduce an alternative which caused a lot of objection and anger in
>> the non-western world.
>> When people started mapping on OSM in Africa, these were mostly
>> Western expats and Western NGO workers. Africans started mapping tree
>> covered areas as forest, since that was the most common "western
>> English language" term they were used to. They were corrected in
>> terms that we should generally use natural=wood with the
>> justification that most of our forests are not managed or
>> maintained.  You can see were the commotion started, yet another
>> western culture interpretation, that indigenous people who live in
>> and from the forest and many communities surrounding them don't
>> manage their forests. They do, for ages and very successfully. It
>> would be to bold to say better and more successfully then in the
>> western world.
>>
> You seem to know them better than me, so please tell me if my
> reasoning is wrong. I would say that such use cases are not
> encompassed by the proposal. You are right when you explain that the
> exposed forestry notion is a westerner concept. As you say, these
> cultures are very different of western ones; forestry, as a western
> concept, is about long-term, (often acutely) planified management of
> resources. It is often about obtaining more wood from wooded areas
> than they would produce if left wild, and prevent an exhaustion of
> forest resources.
>
> This approach, AFAIK, is void in such cultures, which are mostly
> holistic and do not have the "nature vs. humankind/culture" manicheism
> the westerners have: such cultures consider themselves not separated
> of the surrounding land and respect it like they respect other humans.
> Consequently, they often only take from the forest what they need, and
> this harvest is typically too small to exhaust or unbalance the forest
> ecosystem. Consequently, they do not need forestry as westerners
> understand it. In addition, it is likely that the wooded areas they
> use have no materialized limit. I think they just go in the forest and
> take what they need, without caring about the concept of limit, which
> is void if the forest is a common land. That point alone prevent the
> application of the proposal to such cases.
>
> Ultimately, I think it is up to the mapper to decide if the proposal
> is applicable to common customs; as it seems it is not the case, I
> assume there is no problem with the proposal itself. There may be with
> mappers trying to apply the proposal to such cultures, but, then, the
> problem is with the mapper incorrectly trying to apply western
> concepts to non-western cultures; the western concept (her, forestry),
> is not wrong; the problem lies in how the concept is (mis)used.
>>
>> 3. It promotes the use of tagging a specific managed area combined
>> with other purposes, f.i. a managed wood through forestry with a
>> protection class of a different category. This is in contradiction
>> with the philosophy that we need to tag each mapped feature
>> separately. In case their is overlapping use or duplicate use of the
>> same area, it is better practice to map and tag them separately so we
>> support the broadest range of data consumers and renderers.
>>
> Remember that forestry is not a goal, it is a mean. It can perfectly
> be used for protection, wood production, general public access, and
> all that in one single area. One problem of the current OSM customs is
> that it it tries to have one tag for each landuse purpose (farmland,
> industrial, residential), but forestry does not work this way. As it
> is only a mean, it can be used for one or more, maybe concurrents,
> goals, and these goals are intricated.
>
> When you decide to forbid the use of heavy machinery when logging, you
> may do that for environmental protection (prevent soil compression),
> social acceptance (in France, the use of such machines is contested,
> and is discouraged when logging takes place on exposed areas or near
> roads/walking paths) or economical reasons (too costly), but these
> factors are intricated: even if you only choosed that forbidding for
> economical reasons, it will de facto have a protection and social
> effect. Such intricate decisions are routinely taken in forestry, at
> different levels, maybe multiple times in the same operation on the
> same piece of land, and, unless you are the decision maker, you simply
> can't tell the whys. Even foresters are often not able to precisely
> guess the exact reasons and effects of such decisions, so we cannot
> expect general audience (mappers) to be able to do that. I think that,
> even if we could so, forestry is simply too complex to allow such
> separation of goals.
>
>
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