Forests for People

Forests for People
Author: Anne M Larson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2012-09-10
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1136543767

Who has rights to forests and forest resources? In recent years governments in the South have transferred at least 200 million hectares of forests to communities living in and around them . This book assesses the experience of what appears to be a new international trend that has substantially increased the share of the world's forests under community administration. Based on research in over 30 communities in selected countries in Asia (India, Nepal, Philippines, Laos, Indonesia), Africa (Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ghana) and Latin America (Bolivia, Brazil, Guatemala, Nicaragua), it examines the process and outcomes of granting new rights, assessing a variety of governance issues in implementation, access to forest products and markets and outcomes for people and forests . Forest tenure reforms have been highly varied, ranging from the titling of indigenous territories to the granting of small land areas for forest regeneration or the right to a share in timber revenues. While in many cases these rights have been significant, new statutory rights do not automatically result in rights in practice, and a variety of institutional weaknesses and policy distortions have limited the impacts of change. Through the comparison of selected cases, the chapters explore the nature of forest reform, the extent and meaning of rights transferred or recognized, and the role of authority and citizens' networks in forest governance. They also assess opportunities and obstacles associated with government regulations and markets for forest products and the effects across the cases on livelihoods, forest condition and equity. Published with CIFOR

Reforming Forest Tenure

Reforming Forest Tenure
Author:
Publisher: Food & Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO)
Total Pages: 116
Release: 2011
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

In recent years, FAO has carried out extensive assessments of the forest tenure situation in the four regions of Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America and Central Asia, including its impact on sustainable forest management and poverty reduction. The experiences and lessons learned from these assessments, complemented by numerous studies carried out by other organizations, provide a rich information base on different tenure systems and on the successes and challenges of tenure reform processes.

Comparative Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Omnibus Legislation

Comparative Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Omnibus Legislation
Author: Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 333
Release: 2021-05-27
Genre: Law
ISBN: 3030727483

This book is the first in the world to provide a cross-national, comparative exploration of omnibus legislation. It contributes to the global debate over omnibus legislation and offers comprehensive, thorough and multifaceted coverage that concerns the fields of legislation and legisprudence, comparative law, political science, public policy and economics. Beyond its relevance for these fields, the book will support practitioners in parliaments, governments and courts, thereby impacting the actual use of omnibus legislation. A new, major and controversial reform is enacted in the middle of the night. It is buried in a massive omnibus bill hundreds of pages in length, which is rammed through the legislative process at breakneck speed. The legislators receive the final version of the bill in the very last minute, and protest that they’ve had no opportunity to read it in detail and know what they’re voting upon. The majority party’s legislative leaders, however, are unimpressed, and the law is eventually passed on the basis of strict party discipline. Though it may sound far-fetched, this scenario is all too familiar in many legislatures around the world. The legislative practice of combining numerous unrelated measures in one long bill, which is often passed via a highly expedited process, has become a matter of intense debate and criticism in many countries.

REDD, Forest Governance and Rural Livelihoods

REDD, Forest Governance and Rural Livelihoods
Author: Oliver Springate-Baginski
Publisher: CIFOR
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2010-01-01
Genre: Forest management
ISBN: 6028693154

Experiences from incentive-based forest management are examined for their effects on the livelihoods of local communities. In the second section, country case studies provide a snapshot of REDD developments to date and identify design features for REDD that would support benefits for forest communities.

The Mekong: A Socio-legal Approach to River Basin Development

The Mekong: A Socio-legal Approach to River Basin Development
Author: Ben Boer
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2015-12-22
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1317657799

An international river basin is an ecological system, an economic thoroughfare, a geographical area, a font of life and livelihoods, a geopolitical network and, often, a cultural icon. It is also a socio-legal phenomenon. This book is the first detailed study of an international river basin from a socio-legal perspective. The Mekong River Basin, which sustains approximately 70 million people across Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam, provides a prime example of the socio-legal complexities of governing a transboundary river and its tributaries. The book applies its socio-legal analysis to bring a fresh approach to understanding conflicts surrounding water governance in the Mekong River Basin. The authors describe the wide range of uses being made of legal doctrine and legal argument in ongoing disputes surrounding hydropower development in the Basin, putting to rest lingering caricatures of a single, ‘ASEAN’ way of navigating conflict. They call into question some of the common assumptions concerning the relationship between law and development. The book also sheds light on important questions concerning the global hybridization or crossover of public and private power and its ramifications for water governance. With current debates and looming conflicts over water governance globally, and over shared rivers in particular, these issues could not be more pressing.

The context of REDD+ in Vietnam

The context of REDD+ in Vietnam
Author: Pham, T.T.
Publisher: CIFOR
Total Pages: 59
Release: 2019-09-23
Genre:
ISBN: 6023871216

Vietnam is acknowledged to be REDD+ pioneer country, having adopted REDD+ in 2009. This paper is an updated version of Vietnam’s REDD+ Country Profile which was first published by CIFOR in 2012. Our findings show that forest cover has increased since 2012, but enhancing, or even maintaining, forest quality remains a challenge. Drivers of deforestation and degradation in Vietnam, including legal and illegal logging, conversion of forest for national development goals and commercial agriculture, weak law enforcement and weak governance, have persisted since 2012 up to 2017. However, with strong political commitment, the government has made significant progress in addressing major drivers, such as the expansion of hydropower plants and rubber plantations.Since 2012, Vietnam has also signed important international treaties and agreements on trade, such as Voluntary Partnership Agreements (VPAs) through the European Union’s (EU) Forest Law Enforcement. These new policies have enhanced the role of the forestry sector within the overall national economy and provided a strong legal framework and incentives for forestuser groups and government agencies to take part in forest protection and development. Nevertheless, new market rules and international trade patterns also pose significant challenges for Vietnam, where the domestic forestry sector is characterized by state-owned companies and a large number of domestic firms that struggle to comply with these new rules.The climate change policies, national REDD+ strategy and REDD+ institutional setting has been refined and revised over time. However, uncertain and complex international requirements on REDD+ and limited funding have weakened the government’s interest in and political commitment to REDD+. REDD+ policies in Vietnam have shown significant progress in terms of its monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) systems, forest reference emission levels (FREL), and performance-based and benefit-sharing mechanisms by taking into account lessons learnt from its national Payment for Forest Environmental Services (PFES) Scheme. Evidence also shows increasing efforts of government and international communities to ground forestry policies in a participatory decision-making processes and the progress on developing safeguarding policies in Vietnam between 2012 and 2017 affirms the government’s interest in pursuing an equitable REDD+ implementation. Policy documents have fully recognized the need to give civil society organizations (CSOs) and ethnic groups political space and include them in decision making. Yet, participation remains token. Government provision for tenure security and carbon rights for local households are still being developed, with little progress since 2012.The effectiveness of REDD+ policies in addressing drivers of deforestation and degradation has not be proven, even though the revised NRAP has recently been approved. However, the fact that drivers of deforestation and degradation are outside of the forestry sector and have a strong link to national economic development goals points to an uneasy pathway for REDD+. The business case for REDD+ in Vietnam has not been proven, due to an uncertain carbon market, increasing requirements from donors and developed countries, and high transaction and implementation costs. Current efforts toward 3Es outcomes of REDD+ could be enhanced by stronger political commitment to addressing the drivers of deforestation from all sectors, broader changes in policy framework that create both incentives and disincentives for avoiding deforestation and degradation, cross-sectoral collaboration, and committed funding from both the government and developed countries.

The Decentralization of Forest Governance

The Decentralization of Forest Governance
Author: Moira Moeliono
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2012-05-31
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 1136554416

'This book provides an excellent overview of more than a decade of transformation in a forest landscape where the interests of local people, extractive industries and globally important biodiversity are in conflict. The studies assembled here teach us that plans and strategies are fine but, in the real world of the forest frontier, conservation must be based upon negotiation, social learning and an ability to muddle through.' Jeffrey Sayer, senior scientific adviser, Forest Conservation Programme IUCN - International Union for of Nature The devolution of control over the world's forests from national or state and provincial level governments to local control is an ongoing global trend that deeply affects all aspects of forest management, conservation of biodiversity, control over resources, wealth distribution and livelihoods. This powerful new book from leading experts provides an in-depth account of how trends towards increased local governance are shifting control over natural resource management from the state to local societies, and the implications of this control for social justice and the environment. The book is based on ten years of work by a team of researchers in Malinau, Indonesian Borneo, one of the world's richest forest areas. The first part of the book sets the larger context of decentralization's impact on power struggles between the state and society. The authors then cover in detail how the devolution process has occurred in Malinau, the policy context, struggles and conflicts and how Malinau has organized itself. The third part of the book looks at the broader issues of property relations, conflict, local governance and political participation associated with decentralization in Malinau. Importantly, it draws out the salient points for other international contexts including the important determination that 'local political alliances', especially among ethnic minorities, are taking on greater prominence and creating new opportunities to influence forest policy in the world's richest forests from the ground up. This is top-level research for academics and professionals working on forestry, natural resource management, policy and resource economics worldwide. Published with CIFOR

Democratizing Forest Governance in India

Democratizing Forest Governance in India
Author: Sharachchandra Madhukar Lele
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2014
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780198099123

The forest discourse in India has shifted decisively from questions of management to questions of governance. The essays in this book highlight and explore how this shift is occurring and what the challenges to democratic forest governance are. It covers questions of local management, wildlife conservation and forest conversion, as well as the changing socio-economic context of forestry in India.

Decentralization of Forest Administration in Indonesia

Decentralization of Forest Administration in Indonesia
Author: Christopher M. Barr
Publisher: CIFOR
Total Pages: 195
Release: 2006-01-01
Genre: Economic development
ISBN: 9792446494

Since the collapse of Soeharto’s New Order regime in May 1998, Indonesia’s national, provincial, and district governments have engaged in an intense struggle over how authority and the power embedded in it, should be shared. How this ongoing struggle over authority in the forestry sector will ultimately play out is of considerable significance due to the important role that Indonesia’s forests play in supporting rural livelihoods, generating economic revenues, and providing environmental services. This book examines the process of forestry sector decentralization that has occurred in post-Soeharto Indonesia, and assesses the implications of more recent efforts by the national government to recentralize administrative authority over forest resources. It aims to describe the dynamics of decentralization in the forestry sector, to document major changes that occurred as district governments assumed a greater role in administering forest resources, and to assess what the ongoing struggle among Indonesia’s national, provincial, and district governments is likely to mean for forest sustainability, economic development at multiple levels, and rural livelihoods. Drawing from primary research conducted by numerous scientists both at CIFOR and its many Indonesian and international partner institutions since 2000, this book sketches the sectoral context for current governmental reforms by tracing forestry development and the changing structure of forest administration from Indonesia’s independence in 1945 to the fall of Soeharto’s New Order regime in 1998. The authors further examine the origins and scope of Indonesia’s decentralization laws in order to describe the legal-regulatory framework within which decentralization has been implemented both at the macro-level and specifically within the forestry sector. This book also analyses the decentralization of Indonesia’s fiscal system and describes the effects of the country’s new fiscal balancing arrangements on revenue flows from the forestry sector, and describes the dynamics of district-level timber regimes following the adoption of Indonesia’s decentralization laws. Finally, this book also examines the real and anticipated effects of decentralization on land tenure and livelihood security for communities living in and around forested areas, and summarizes major findings and options for possible interventions to strengthen the forestry reform efforts currently underway in Indonesia.