This publication offers a comprehensive, evidence-based assessment of the status, trends and governance of forests across Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda. Drawing on regional data, national forest inventories, geospatial analyses and policy reviews, the report examines how forests continue to underpin livelihoods, economies, biodiversity and climate resilience – while facing mounting pressure from deforestation, degradation and competing land uses.
The report explores key dimensions shaping the region’s forest landscapes, including forest typologies and ownership regimes; timber production and markets; REDD+ progress and challenges; legal and policy frameworks; community forestry; sustainable woodfuel management; wild meat trade; women’s rights and participation; and forest monitoring, data management and sharing. Across these themes, the report highlights both persistent gaps and emerging opportunities for more inclusive, effective and sustainable forest governance.
Beyond documenting trends, this report serves as a practical resource for decision makers. It identifies technical and policy options to strengthen sustainable forest management, improve institutional coordination, enhance community participation, and align national actions with regional and global commitments under the Paris Agreement, the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Sustainable Development Goals. Produced as a flagship output of the EU-funded East and Southern Africa Forest Observatory (OFESA) project, this volume reflects the collective expertise of researchers, government agencies, civil society organisations and regional institutions. It is intended to inform policy dialogue, guide investment and support collaborative action to safeguard forests as critical ecological, social and economic assets for present and future generations in East and Southern Africa.
Tag: community forestry
Typology of relations between communities and conservation areas: A conceptual framework from a comparative study in the Andean Amazon
Key messages
- Despite the importance of relations between communities and conservation areas in achieving effective and sustained conservation outcomes, there are few approaches for understanding and addressing the diversity of these relations – including conflict – and for building collaborative processes based on evidence and knowledge management.
- To address that gap, this paper presents a typology of relations with two core components: a comparative matrix and a map of driving forces. It was grounded in a comparative study in the Andean Amazon that analysed 16 cases of relations between communities (Indigenous Peoples, local communities and Afro-descendant Peoples) and conservation area managers (and other relevant government agencies).
- The comparative matrix describes four types of relations – conflict, collaboration, coexistence and mutualism – across six dimensions and strategies/responses.
- The map of driving forces represents how each type of relation is shaped by the interaction among strengthened capacities, alignment of interests and quality of engagement.
- These components could provide a basis for participatory diagnostic and planning tools. This, in turn, would enable the different actors in conservation areas to better understand their relations around topics that are important to communities and conservation areas. In this way, they could identify pathways towards more collaborative, inclusive and evidence-based governance.
Comparative analysis of relations between communities and conservation areas in the Andean Amazon: Findings from 16 case studies using a proposed typology of relations
Key messages
- This is the second of two briefs that compare 16 cases in the Andean Amazon to understand relations between conservation authorities and communities. The first brief “Typology of relations between communities and conservation areas: A conceptual framework from a comparative study in the Andean Amazon ” builds the conceptual framework; this brief applies it to identify emerging patterns across the cases.
- The brief examines four types of relations (conflict and tension, coexistence, collaboration and mutualism) across six dimensions: land/resource rights, livelihoods, decision making, communication, institutional capacity and community capacity/cohesion.
- Conflict and tension are most consistently associated with misalignment around land/resource rights and livelihoods, especially where conservation is perceived as restricting access without credible alternatives.
- Coexistence is common across the cases but tends to be shallow and fragile, often persisting in contexts of limited engagement and weak institutional capacity.
- Collaboration emerges where communities have meaningful roles in decision making and where engagement is structured, routine and linked to concrete actions.
- Mutualism is rare and context specific, occurring where conservation reinforces territorial governance, engagement reflects shared authority and capacities on both sides support long-term implementation.
- Unpacking relations by analysing their dimensions provides a way to understand the driving forces behind relations: it can inform the design of context-specific strategies and it can guide the targeting of limited resources for the most effective outcomes.
- A central practical takeaway is to strengthen the three driving forces together: shared interests (rights/livelihoods), better engagement (influence, transparency, problem solving) and sufficient capacity (to follow through). Dialogue without material change can backfire and create ‘participation fatigue’.
Institutional and legal contexts of FSC certification in natural and plantation forestry in Brazil
This study compares Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) requirements as established in the Brazilian forest management certification standards for plantations and natural forestry with Brazilian law. It fi rst identi fi all indicators related to social outcomes (for workers, local communities, and indigenous and traditional peoples) in the two FSC certi fi cation standards for natural forest management, approved in 2001 and 2025, and the two for forestry plantations, approved in 2014 and 2025. These were then compared to the national legal framework of Brazil as of 2025 when the analysis was completed. We did not fi nd any indicators to be antagonistic i.e. none contradict Brazilian law. Most FSC indicators affecting workers and traditional and indigenous peoples are reinforcing, meaning that they set the same requirements as Brazilian law. This reflects the long history of improving labour conditions in the country since the creation of the Brazilian Labour Code (CLT 1943) and the influence of International Labour Organization (ILO) 169 and related international commitments on Brazilian law. In addition, indigenous peoples also have strong protections under Brazilian law. In contrast, the rights of traditional communities in Brazil are generally not legally secure outside territories formally acknowledged by the law, such as quilombos . Finally, other local communities rarely have any type of customary rights secured by Brazilian law, and thus many Indicators affecting local communities are additional “on paper.” The study did not consider monitoring and enforcement. Indicators in the most recent FSC standards establish new considerations, including Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) and the need to adopt culturally appropriate engagement; mitigating and compensating impacts from forestry operations; engaging community members in consultations; educational action; providing opportunities for local economic development; the need for a diverse forestry labour force and inclusive decision-making processes; compliance with anti-corruption policies; and timely resolution of conflicts and disputes.
Tree-based intervention typologies and improvements in refugee displacement regions
Concern about deforestation in contexts of refugee displacement is substantial. Tree-based interventions (TBIs) are efforts to plant trees, conserve trees, and/or facilitate tree regrowth. TBIs are implemented by non-governmental organizations in refugee displacement contexts to address landscape-level deforestation, soil erosion, and biodiversity loss while providing livelihood opportunities to participants. Although humanitarian stakeholders recommend TBIs in refugee-hosting regions, the diversity of TBI models and associated strengths and weaknesses are not well understood. This research focuses on five TBIs implemented in a northwest Uganda refugee settlement that include large-acre woodlot planting, household-level planting of trees yielding short-term products, and conservation site establishment to protect indigenous tree species. Interviews and focus-group discussions with TBI staff revealed that each intervention makes trade-offs in navigating five key challenges associated with TBI implementation in a refugee context: Obtaining access to land, providing short-term livelihood benefits to participants, gaining equitable involvement by gender, achieving environmental conservation goals, and successfully engaging community members. Significant differences were found between the strategies of TBIs implemented at home sites when compared to TBIs implemented at community sites. While TBIs implemented at home sites are intended to provide participants long-term access to tree products with clear user rights and enable women to grow trees alongside ongoing domestic activities, TBIs implemented at community sites can achieve large-scale environmental goals and provide cash-based employment opportunities to participants. An applied integrated landscape approach is recommended to maximize inter-program collaboration and collective benefits across programs, while realizing sustainable TBI impacts within complex socioecological refugee displacement contexts.
Strengthening women’s tenure rights and participation in community forestry
Key messages
- Although women’s rights and participation may be granted by statute, they are not automatically exercised or implemented due to cultural norms, lack of capacities or inadequate budgets.
- In the absence of effective implementation of gender equitable statutes, negotiation and facilitation by trusted intermediaries can begin to strengthen women’s rights and participation, and lower transaction costs of collective action.
- Adaptive Collaborative Management (ACM), which aims to level the playing field, resolve conflict, foster collaboration and negotiation, and build skills and capacities, is a viable way to promote gender equity, even among communities that are strongly patriarchal and characterized by cultural practices that exclude women from tree planting and land ownership.
- Men are important actors for strengthening women’s rights and overall empowerment. Mixed groups of men and women can be viable pathways for women’s empowerment as opposed to women’s only groups.
- ACM facilitation has opened up opportunities to improve local livelihoods and demonstrated gains to sustainable forest and land management, especially on-farm tree planting and the restoration of degraded forests.
Community rights to forests in the tropics: Progress and retreat on tenure reforms
Rights to forests have been contested for hundreds of years, and the vast majority of the world’s forests (approximately 73%) are, by statutory law, public property (RRI, 2014). Who should own or manage forests is repeatedly debated, while deforestation and degradation still characterize the vast majority of tropical forest regions (FAO, 2010). These questions may have increasing importance in the 21st century: forests are central to climate change issues, as both source and sink for carbon emissions, they are susceptible to extreme events and to gradual change, and they are essential for ecosystem services and the resilience of human populations, including some of the poorest on the planet. Though urbanization has led to decreasing pressures on forests in some areas, pressure is likely to rise due to investments in forest lands (see Alforte et al., 2014) and a growing global population.
Recognition and Respect for Tenure Rights
Recognition and respect for tenure rights has long been recognized as an important concern for development, conservation, and natural resource governance. This paper discusses why secure tenure rights for local communities, indigenous peoples and women are central to good natural resource governance and important for livelihoods and human rights, as recognized in multiple international conventions. The paper reviews both challenges and opportunities for securing rights in practice and highlights successful cases of tenure reform. Communities are likely to continue to face resistance and opposition to recognition, and competition for land and natural resources, from more powerful actors, even after rights have been granted. Successfully recognizing and securing tenure requires a strong, evidence-based understanding of these challenges in order to design effective strategies to overcome them. This includes building coalitions and supporting grassroots organizations and social movements; designing a clear roadmap, with communities, for implementation; supporting the enabling conditions for improvements in livelihoods and effective and sustainable resource management; and monitoring progress to adapt to and confront new challenges.
Integrating adaptation into REDD+: potential impacts and social return on investment in Sogod, Southern Leyte, Philippines
REDD+ interventions can help both people and forests adapt to climate change by conserving or enhancing biodiversity and forest ecosystem services. However, additional adaptation measures might be needed, such as the protection of agriculture and livelihoods and the development of fire management strategies. Such measures could support the sustainability of REDD+ interventions and the permanence of carbon stocks by preventing activity displacement and induced deforestation and by limiting or avoiding damage to the ecosystem from extreme weather events. To design community-based adaptation interventions and assess their potential outcomes within the Southern Leyte Province REDD+ project area in the Philippines, representatives from seven upland Barangays (villages) of Sogod Municipality were involved in a bottom-up, stakeholder-focused process. A social return on investment framework was applied. Community members discussed climate and non-climate challenges and the effectiveness of their current coping strategies. Adaptation interventions were then conceived and planned, using future visioning exercises. Two interventions were prioritized: securing land tenure and developing abaca agroforestry (Musa textilis inter-planted with different fruit trees). Challenges and adaptation interventions were also discussed with stakeholders from relevant local- and regionallevel organizations (e.g. provincial and municipal government agencies) during a participatory workshop. Projected future climate scenarios, the sensitivity of key resources and adaptive capacity were also discussed. This resulted in a holistic understanding of the costs, benefits, opportunities and challenges associated with implementing the selected adaptation strategies not only in the target area, but also in the province more broadly. The Southern Leyte Province REDD+ project is implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH and the Philippine Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) in collaboration with local government units and local communities under the Project ‘Climate-relevant Modernization of Forest Policy and Piloting of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) in the Philippines’, funded by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU) under its International Climate Initiative. This study was conducted by CIFOR in collaboration with GIZ with a grant from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).
Integrating adaptation into REDD+: potential impacts and social return on investment in Setulang, Malinau District, Indonesia
REDD+ interventions can help both people and forests adapt to climate change by conserving or enhancing biodiversity and forest ecosystem services. However, additional adaptation measures might be needed, such as the protection of agriculture and livelihoods and the development of fire management strategies. Such measures could support the sustainability of REDD+ interventions and the permanence of carbon stocks by preventing activity displacement and induced deforestation and by limiting or avoiding damage to the ecosystem from extreme weather events. To design community-based adaptation interventions and assess their potential outcomes within the Community Forest (Hutan Desa) REDD+ project area in Setulang Village, Malinau District, Kalimantan,village representatives were involved in a bottom-up, stakeholder-focused process. A social return on investment framework was applied. Community members discussed climate and non-climate challenges and the effectiveness of their current coping strategies. Adaptation interventions were then conceived and planned, using future visioning exercises. Two interventions were prioritized: development of rattan handicraft enterprises and rubber agroforestry. Challenges and adaptation interventions were also discussed with stakeholders from relevant district organizations (e.g. local government agencies) through individual semi-structured interviews. Projected future climate scenarios, the sensitivity of key resources and adaptive capacity were also discussed. This resulted in a holistic understanding of the costs, benefits, opportunities and challenges associated with implementing the selected adaptation strategies not only in the target area, but also in the district more broadly. The Community Forest (Hutan Desa) project in Setulang, Malinau, is facilitated by the FORCLIME programme of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH. This study was conducted by CIFOR in collaboration with the GIZ, with a grant from the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) Germany.