This handbook provides a comprehensive overview and cutting-edge assessment of community forestry.
Containing contributions from academics, practitioners, and professionals, the Routledge Handbook of Community Forestry presents a truly global overview with case studies drawn from across Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. The Handbook begins with an overview of the chapters and a discussion of the concept of community forestry and the key issues. Topics as wide-ranging as Indigenous forestry, conservation and ecosystem management, relationships with industrial forestry, trade and supply systems, land tenure and land grabbing, and climate change are addressed. The Handbook also focuses on governance, looking at the range of approaches employed, including multi-level governance and rights-based approaches, and the principal actors involved from local communities and Indigenous Peoples to governments and national and international non-governmental organisations. The Handbook reveals the importance of the historical context to community forestry and the effects of power and politics. Importantly, the Handbook not only focuses on successful examples of community forestry, but also addresses failures in order to highlight the key challenges we are still facing and potential solutions.
The Routledge Handbook of Community Forestry is essential reading for academics, professionals, and practitioners interested in forestry, natural resource management, conservation, and sustainable development.
Tag: community forestry
Achieving political rights, enhancing forest livelihoods: Latin American Indigenous and Afrodescendant women’s views
This chapter discusses sociocultural and political processes constraining Indigenous and Afrodescendant women’s community forestry engagement, and how this influences their decision-making and benefit-sharing participation. Based on multi-stakeholder platform discussions by Latin American Indigenous and Afrodescendant women, it focuses on systemic and structural constraints on their visibility and effectiveness as peer political rightsholders. It presents the factors required to advocate for secure women’s rights in collective tenure systems and community forestry initiatives. These highlight the need to broaden the definition of community forestry to ensure women’s recognition as legitimate stakeholders, and their role in ethno-territorial livelihood strategies and knowledges.
Environmental and socio-economic impacts of community forestry and individual small-scale logging in Cameroon
Community forests (CF) and individual small-scale logging (SML) have been promoted in the Cameroonian forest legal framework with several objectives: involving people in forest management, transferring some management rights, and improving local living conditions supported by natural resources. This chapter briefly presents the history of both CF and SML and their stated objectives. Through a brief assessment of the existing literature and available recent data, it compares the respective contribution of CF and SML to the principles of sustainable forest management. Findings indicate that both CF and SML have positive socio-economic impacts, though these are generally short-lived. Long-term impacts are mixed, with economic returns sustained by degradation of the resource base and largely captured downstream. From an environmental point of view, the complexity of the regulatory framework to establish CFs, their location in a ‘non-permanent forest domain’, and the lack of extension services supporting the local populations in implementation, in parallel with the rapidly increasing demand for wood on the domestic market, indicate that CFs also fail on many criteria of sustainable forest management.
Improved Coffee Management by Farmers in State Forest Plantations in Indonesia: An Experimental Platform
The Indonesian state forest managers have accepted farmer-managed coffee agroforestry in their estates as part of their social forestry program. Access by local farming communities to state-owned plantation forestry supports public motivation to maintain forest cover. However, balancing the expectations and needs of forest managers with those of the local farming communities is not easy. Coffee yields in Indonesia are lower than those of neighboring countries, suggesting that there is scope for improvement. Here we describe an experimental research platform developed through an international collaboration between the Universitas Brawijaya (UB), the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (UKCEH), and smallholder coffee farmers to explore options for improving pine-coffee agroforestry systems within existing regulations. Located in a former state-owned pine production forest on the slopes of the stratovolcano, Mount Arjuna, in the Malang Regency of East Java, the research platform has seven instrumented research plots (40 × 60 m2), where agronomic practices can be trialed. The aim of the platform is to support the development of sustainable agronomic practices to improve the profitability of coffee agroforestry and thus the livelihood of low-income rural communities. Current trials are focused on improving coffee yields and include pine canopy trimming, fertilizers, and coffee pruning trials, with links to the development of socio-economic and environmental models. Whilst it is too early to assess the full impacts on yields, a survey of farmers demonstrated a positive attitude to canopy pruning, although with some concern over labor cost. The initial ecosystem modelling has highlighted the benefits of coffee agroforestry in balancing environmental and economic benefits. Here we provide a detailed description of the site, the current trials, and the modelling work, with the hope of highlighting opportunities for future collaboration and innovation.
A review of the participation of smallholder farmers in land-based carbon payment schemes
Carbon credit certification standards stipulate local community participation in the project cycle, but evidence and guidelines for effective smallholder participation are not harmonised and vary across standards. Projects that strengthen social capital can stimulate participation among the marginalized, reduce transaction costs, and promote equity and smallholder agency. The main incentives for farmers participation in carbon payments schmes are non-monetary, these include: improved yields, access to financial advisory services and credit, investments in local infrastructure and the development of income-generating activities.
Community forestry in Cameroon: opportunity or constraint for REDD+?
This study aims to identify opportunities and constraints of community forestry in the context of forest decentralization in Cameroon and what can be capitalized on for sound REDD+ design and implementation. A qualitative approach to data collection was used through content analysis of 1994 forestry law, reports and publications related to decentralized forest management, community forestry and REDD+ in Cameroon. Principles that govern community forest and REDD+ were highlighted and opportunities and constraints of community forestry for REDD+ projects were discussed. Community forestry was developed principally to protect forests in order to support the subsistence and income-generating extractive activities of forest-dependent communities. Community forestry governance arrangements were not designed with the objective of achieving verifiable emissions reductions or carbon stock values. Hence, existing community forestry institutions may not address all the specific demands of REDD+ programs. However, existing community institutions and practices can be strengthened or modified to align better with climate change mitigation goals and to achieve REDD+ objectives in community forestry sites. On the other hand, REDD+ was developed principally to mitigate climate change by reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation principally within developing countries where the livelihoods of forest-dependent people are a central component of all forest management policies. However, despite fundamental differences between community forestry and REDD+, there is substantial synergy between their objectives, and the dual forest conservation and livelihood development focus of both programs means that policies that strengthen and support existing community forestry institutions and sites will advance REDD+ objectives. As such, REDD+ will likely to be more successful if it builds on lessons learned from community forestry. This paper demonstrates how REDD+ is more likely to succeed if it builds on the lessons learned from community forestry over the past 20-plus years in Cameroon. It also discusses how REDD+ can benefit from community forestry and how some of the many challenges related to community forestry can be directly addressed by the REDD+ mechanism. Further, this paper also argues how the congruence between community forestry and REDD+ can effectively facilitate the direct use of community forestry as a tool to achieve REDD+ goals.
Community participation in forest and water management planning in Kenya: challenges and opportunities
Forest and water are linked resources that are important to community livelihoods in East Africa. Sectoral reforms in Kenya have decentralized forest and water management functions to local communities through forest and water Acts. It has been argued that problems are more likely to be understood as interconnected, and thus managed more holistically, at the local level. Through case studies on the processes of developing forest and water management plans in two Kenyan ecosystems, we explore the challenges and opportunities for resource management planning at the local level. The questions we addressed are: How is the content of the plans determined? How is gender integrated ? What are the barriers to implementation? How can content and implementation be improved to support joint forest and water management? Despite their close links, water and forest governance is separate, as sectoral approaches nationally trickle down locally. We argue that the process of developing the plans should take an integrated landscape approach. A practical way forward is to improve current processes, by ensuring local participation and generating local ownership through improved facilitation and engagement of community members, including women. This includes the integration of community participants from both spheres into both forest and water management planning.
Examining support for the rights of Indigenous Peoples in the context of REDD+ in Peru
Key messages
- Safeguard interpretation processes depend on national interpretations of relevant laws and recognized rights, including adherence to international agreements on the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IPLCs) and different political and economic priorities.
- Given this specificity, this flyer presents the results of a review of legal documents and interviews with specialists in Peru to understand the level of support for indigenous rights in law and policy in the context of REDD+.
- Although legal recognition of Indigenous Peoples in Peru is grounded in various international legal norms, the Constitution and different special laws, in some institutions and in some contexts there is still disregard for the rights of indigenous communities.
- Indigenous Peoples’ land and resource rights are legally recognized to a partial extent, which fosters insecurity in a context of strong pressure over indigenous collective lands.
- Peru’s recently launched Safeguards Information System (Módulo de Información de Salvaguardas) needs a strategy or roadmap to integrate the contributions and feedback of Indigenous Peoples if it is to build and monitor a fair and transparent benefit sharing system.
Community forestry in Cameroon: Insights on state institutional deficits
Community forestry (CF) was set-up in Cameroon about 20 years ago to enable better environmental, economic, and social benefits for communities. Since then, 430 community forests have been attributed, covering an area of almost 1.7M ha. However, less than a quarter (10%) are in active management or enterprise. Weak institutions have been widely cited as a leading cause of poor performance in the community forestry process. This paper examines the current state of institutional deficits in Cameroon and identifies pathways for overcoming the deficits. Our analysis is based on a rigorous review of documented experiences so far. Results obtained revealed that emerging deficits revolve around form and functions. Legal; power, authority and rights; and size and biophysical potential deficits were grouped under the realm of form while resources; capacity; and governance deficits were grouped under the realm of functions. Proposed solutions to these deficits point to the need to recognize and manage inter-dependencies between challenges and corresponding potential solutions. Hence a system or integrated approach is needed to tackle the problems identified. © 2021 The Authors
FTA Highlight No.14 – Governing forests, trees and agroforestry for delivering on the SDGs
This publication presents the results of FTA’s work across the humid tropics in the area of enhancing the good governance of forests, trees and agroforestry, typically as part of landscapes that deliver on sustainable development goals. Work on the interface of the science and policy arenas focused on enabling good governance in landscapes through five principles: legitimacy and voice, strategic direction, performance, accountability and fairness. This publication presents and discusses the main achievements in terms of contributions to research, innovation and actual impact on good governance at the landscape, subnational, national and supra-national levels. A decade of FTA involvement has contributed substantively to the development of national agroforestry policies in a number of countries, including India (the world’s first-ever national agroforestry policy)1 and Nepal. Maldives, Gambia, Kenya and Rwanda have also embarked on national strategies with FTA support. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has also adopted agroforestry guidelines. In Peru agroforestry concession schemes were introduced to formalize agriculture and timber production on forest lands as a means of reducing deforestation and forest degradation, and the country also adopted a comprehensive definition of agroforestry in its National Agricultural Policy. FTA also supported the development of national bioenergy strategies in Viet Nam and Kenya. The FTA program has also significantly influenced thinking on payment for ecosystem services, coinvestment in ecosystem service stewardship, incentives, community forestry and certification of forests and tree commodities worldwide. Green growth planning approaches have also been integrated into subnational-level planning in Indonesia and Viet Nam. Adoption of multistakeholder forum methodologies in forest landscape planning at subnational levels in Peru, as well as community forestry approaches in Cameroon and Indonesia, also show FTA’s contributions to methodological approaches. These results contribute to improved enabling institutional, political and socioeconomic environments for more effective and efficient natural resource management, and hence positively affect livelihoods in multiple countries across the humid tropics.