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.
Tag: governance
Governing the Ephemeral: Secondary Forest in Peru
Key messages
- Secondary forest is an increasingly prevalent component of forest cover across the globe providing wildlife habitat, ecosystem services and valuable goods.
- Secondary forest in Peru mainly occurs on farming landscapes, much of it occuring as agricultural fallows, and comprises up to 45% of total forest cover in some landscapes.
- The absence of information on the extent of secondary forests, their locations, ownership, types, and persistence hampers creating relevant policy, supporting local forest governance, and ultimately improving forest condition and rural livelihoods.
- Draft normative guidelines on secondary forest management are expected to be released for public comment in early 2022, and we encourage active and informed public comment.
- Strengthening local forest governance by smallholders and communities as part of a bundle of rights for their productive mosaic landscapes can be coupled with incentives to increase and maintain forest cover on their landholdings.
- We recommend the recognition of resource rights and implementation of mechanisms that strengthen the legality and legitimacy of forest management on farms.
Gender accelerators: Women and men leading the way on local forest tenure reform. Training Handbook
Gender Toolkit. Forest tenure pathways to gender equality: Steps for achieving accelerated change.
This training handbook accompanies the publication, Forest tenure pathways to gender equality: A practitioner’s guide. The approximately six-hour course describes an approach to building up a core group of women and men leaders who will champion the forest tenure pathway to gender equality. Using this approach requires a good understanding of the conditions under which diverse leadership can flourish and capably create change. This work is aligned with step three of the three-step change pathway for gender equality in the Practitioner’s guide: Realize.
The content of the handbook and its handouts are illustrative and can be tailored to different training requirements. For example, if the course is used for government staff or members of a non-governmental organization, the content and exercises can be adjusted to suit the knowledge background and interests of participants.
Enabling change in forest tenure: Policy and law for gender equality. Training Handbook
Gender Toolkit. Forest tenure pathways to gender equality: Steps for achieving accelerated change.
This training handbook accompanies the publication, Forest tenure pathways to gender equality: A practitioner’s guide. The approximately six-hour course develops a compelling strategic approach and action plan for gender-responsive forest tenure reform. Part of this process involves carrying out a policy and legal gap analysis of forest tenure regulatory frameworks. This work is aligned with step two of the three-step change pathway for gender equality in the Practitioner’s guide: Strategize.
The content of the handbook and its handouts are illustrative and can be tailored to different training requirements. For example, if the course is used for government staff or members of a non-governmental organization, the content and exercises can be adjusted to suit the knowledge background and interests of participants.
Is there responsible gendered governance of forest tenure? Getting a clear picture. Training Handbook
Gender Toolkit. Forest tenure pathways to gender equality: Steps for achieving accelerated change.
This training handbook accompanies the publication, Forest tenure pathways to gender equality: A practitioner’s guide. The approximately six-hour course sets out an approach to carrying out a situational gender analysis which will help course participants understand the gendered status of forest tenure and its governance in their national contexts. This work is aligned with step one of the three-step change pathway for gender equality in the Practitioner’s guide: Analyze.
The content of the handbook and its handouts are illustrative and can be tailored to different training requirements. For example, if the course is used for government staff or members of a non-governmental organization, the content and exercises can be adjusted to suit the knowledge background and interests of participants.
Is the formalization of collective tenure rights in the Peruvian Amazon supporting sustainable Indigenous livelihoods? Findings from comparative research in San Martín and Ucayali regions
Key findings
- The titling of Comunidades Nativas (Native Communities) alone is not enough to ensure Indigenous Peoples’ access to sustainable livelihoods in the Peruvian Amazon.
- Lack of income options, combined with restrictive legal frameworks for resource use under the Comunidad model, led to unsustainable land and resource use.
- In seeking to access cash incomes, Comunidades often entered into exploitative relationships with smallholder migrant farmers and timber companies.
- Regulations for resource use and the Comunidad’s governance framework do not reflect local livelihoods and leadership practices; interviewees highlighted that this created challenges related to livelihoods, conflicts, participation and representation in communal governance.
- A transition from a punitive to an enabling role for government agencies – including investing to develop both the institutional and technical capacities of Comunidades – is essential to support more sustainable livelihoods.
Multi-stakeholder platforms for cross-border biodiversity conservation and landscape governance in East Africa: Perspectives and outlook
This working paper considers the role of multi-stakeholder platforms (MSP) for cross-border biodiversity conservation and landscape governance in East Africa. This paper draws on the MSP literature to assess the challenges and opportunities of using MSPs for managing terrestrial biodiversity resources in transboundary landscapes. Specifically, institutional linkages are investigated alongside success factors for MSP implementation and outcomes through five case examples. We find MSPs to be critical engagement tools in enhancing the fit between institutions and ecosystems that span multiple jurisdictions and sectors. However, we also note several challenges that limit their performance. The analysis suggests the following conditions to support the effectiveness of MSPs: 1) institutional linkages at all levels; 2) skilled facilitation and willingness of stakeholders to share power; 3) strong science-policy linkages; and 4) equitable and sustainable financing mechanisms. While MSPs may help promote species protection in areas devoid of collaborative decision-making processes, there remain research gaps related to the optimal governance structures for, and monitoring and evaluation of MSPs. Addressing these gaps will be fruitful to curb the extinction crisis in the sub-region and beyond.
Introduction to Chapter 5
Mukasa et al. continue in Chapter 5 with the ACM programme that was conducted in Uganda, but these authors focus instead on the process of ACM, the specific attempts the community members undertook with the team’s facilitation and the impacts at that time. The authors have also been able to revisit these sites more recently and provide up-to-date assessments of the longevity of many, though not all, of their efforts. A number of the communities’ concerns have significance for the global restoration efforts now underway – efforts that frequently inadequately attend to the needs, interests and capabilities of local people. The experience of this ACM team should be directly applicable to many such programmes.
Introduction to Chapter 4
Bomuhangi et al. have accomplished something many ACM practitioners and researchers have wanted, but been unable, to do: They have compared forest use and management in eight purposively sampled places around Uganda, looking at three important issues. The first is clarity about the various uses to which these communities put forests. The second is the differentiation by gender in terms of use, management, and benefits. In this regard, the authors show the greater involvement of women in ACM sites, vis a vis where ACM was not conducted. The third is a systematic comparison of a variety of results in ACM vs. non-ACM sites. These include issues like level and quality of participation, perceived abundance of forest resources, harvest of forest products, and use thereof. The authors conclude by recommending the broader use of ACM-like approaches throughout Uganda’s forested areas, in collaboration with government, NGOs, and private landowners.
Introduction to Chapter 3
Here, we move from the very grounded, synthetic Latin American farmer participants’ experience of action research in Chapter 2 to that of researchers collaborating within an agricultural development project designed to use participatory action research (PAR). Mutimukuru-Maravanyika and her co-authors reflexively examine their own experience of carrying out PAR within a complex institutional framework, spanning divergent countries, disciplines, cultures and research organizations.