Signatories

Mr E Cioffi
Director General
European Commission, DG IB

Mr P Soubestre
Director General
European Commission, DG VIII

Dear Sirs

RE: FUNDING OF SMALL-SCALE COMMUNITY PROJECTS BY THE "TROPICAL FOREST BUDGET LINE", B7-6201

The undersigned NGOs are happy to note that the European Commission supports the participatory approach in many of its Communications and Regulations.

The Regulation on 'Operations to promote tropical forests' (No 3062/95) in particular acknowledges that "forest peoples play a key role in managing the environment, in particular with regard to the conservation of tropical forests" and that "actions shall be evaluated with the participation of local people". It also states that possible recipients of funds from budget line B7-6201 include "local or traditional communities", "NGOs and representative associations of forest peoples".

Given that we work in close cooperation with NGOs and Indigenous Peoples organisations in tropical forest countries, we know that many of these organisations are involved in a daily struggle to manage and preserve the forests. Most of them are in need of funding. Owing to the nature of their work, they need small amounts of money which can be disbursed quickly .

Despite this, to date the funds from budget line B7-6201 have not been spent on small-scale community projects. Although projects of less than ECU 100,000 are eligible for support in theory, they are not funded in practice because they have proportionately larger management overheads.

However in many cases small projects contribute proportionally much more than large ones to the conservation and sustainable management of the tropical forests. Small projects can also benefit local people most and are most cost-effective.

For all these reasons, the undersigned NGOs strongly support the setting up of a small grants fund within the tropical forest budget line. We believe that the innovative, bottom-up nature of such a project would be in line with the Commission's own decentralisation policy.

However, we are aware that the Commission itself does not have the administrative capacity to manage a small grants fund. We suggest that another organisation could be in charge of the administration, while the Commission retains its decision powers. This situation would be similar to the small grants fund managed by the European Human Rights Foundation and the Dutch government's small grants fund for tropical forests which is managed by the Netherlands Committee for IUCN. Mr Marin committed himself to finding out about the Dutch programme and its possible relevance to the European Commission in his answer to a parliamentary question last year (E-0710/96, 29/4/96).

We are also aware that two organisations have already put forward a proposal or have been discussing proposals with some of your colleagues. Despite this, no progress seems to have been made in developing a small grants fund.

We would therefore be grateful if you could answer the following questions:

Do you think a small grants fund could be set up within the structure of the European Commission's tropical forest budget line?
If so, how do you think it could work and what would be the time scale for setting it up?

We would like to suggest that you look closely at the possibility of a small grants programme similar to the European Human Rights Fund (administered by the European Human Rights Foundation). It receives ECU 700,000 every year from budget line B7-7040 'Subsidies for human rights organizations' which it awards as grants to as many as 131 applicants (1996). Grants are for one year and have a maximum of ECU 10,000, with no minimum amount. The European Human Rights Foundation is in charge of assessing applications and administering the grants, as well as evaluating projects (including on site visits) and reporting to the Commission on a regular basis. Administration is kept to a minimum to ensure optimal use of funds.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely

Ariane Crampton
Fern, Brussels Office

On behalf of:

Saskia Ozinga
Fern-UK

Patrick Anderson
Greenpeace International

Rachel Kyte
IUCN, Brussels Office

Marlou Heinen
WWF, European Policy Office

Simon Counsell
Rainforest Foundation, UK

Gemma Boetekees
Friends of the Earth, Netherlands

Hasjrul Junaid
SKEPHI support office in Europe

Tom Roche
Irish Woodworkers for Africa

Jutta Kill
Urgewald, Germany

Goran Eklof
Swedish Society for Nature Conservation

Jose Puigpelat
ACTEC, Belgium

Georgina Green
Friends of the Earth - England, Wales and Northern Ireland

Reinhard Behrend
Rettet den Regenwald, Germany

cc Cabinet of Commissioner Marin

Cabinet of Commissioner Pinheiro

DG IB:
Mr Santiago Gomez Reino
Mr Pierre Defraigne
Mr Dieter Oldekop
Mr Alban de Villepin
Mr Vijay Bhardwaj
Mr Fernando Cardesa Garcia
Mr Andy Roby
Mr Joost Van de Velde

DG VIII:
Mr Friedrich Hamburger
Mr Amos Tincani
Ms Marjukka Mahonen

DG XI:
Mr Christoph Bail

20 Av des Celtes, 1040 Brussels, Belgium
Phone: 32 2 742 24 36 Fax: 32 2 736 80 54
fern@arcadis.be