**3.3 Strengthening the partnership arrangements**

The Community- Government partnership should: (i) include the private sector/ Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) as a partner in the assessment of CFM because private operators often: (a) replace forestry services where these have inadequate means of operation; (b) pre-finance forest related initiatives involving communities including diversification of forestry related income generating activities; and (c) easily link to other government programmes like NAADS for leverage and synergy especially in the area of capacity building; (ii) move beyond forests and consider forest management in a landscape perspective, where forests are only one amongst the possible uses of land by rural populations; (iii) mainstream CFM into Local Government Development Plans. This would open doors for capturing and mainstreaming indigenous knowledge (IK) into local planning and natural resource management initiatives. It would also avail the communities the opportunity to tap into Local Government resources for community development projects.
