Throughout Southern Africa there has been a move to decentralize natural resource management (NRM). Decentralization has taken many forms, resulting in different organizational structures for NRM. Fourteen case studies from eight countries can be classed into four types, depending on the key organizations for NRM: (1) district-level organizations; (2) village organizations supported by sectoral departments (e.g. Village Forest Committees); (3) organizations or authorities outside the state hierarchy (e.g.

Most forests in tropical Nepal are secondary, resulting largely from episodes of large-scale timber harvesting in the past along with accumulated small scale extraction of timber and non-timber forest products by local people over centuries. Currently in the forest depleted stage, remaining tropical secondary forests are still very important for fulfilling the subsistence and economic needs of local people, as well as for biodiversity conservation, groundwater recharge, and the protection of lowland agriculture from landslides and floods.

This brief article documents author's reasons for considering the answer to be "yes." She draws first on her extensive ethnographic experience in forest communities in the US and in several forested areas of Indonesia, with examples. Her second source of conviction in this view comes from her involvement in a comparative study of criteria and indicators in Africa, Asia and South America, in which she visited many forested areas around the world.

The international community is committed to eliminating poverty. International development targets to that end include a reduction by half in the number of people who are food insecure and a similar reduction in the proportion of people living in extreme poverty by the year 2015. The Forestry Department of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), with the support of the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID), held an interagency Forum on the Role of Forestry in Poverty Alleviation in September 2001.

It is widely believed that land tenure insecurity under a customary tenure system leads to a socially inefficient resource allocation. This article demonstrates that the practice of granting secure individual ownership to tree planters spurs earlier tree planting, which is inefficient from the private point of view but could be efficient from the viewpoint of the global environment. Regression analysis, based on primary data collected in Sumatra, indicates that an expected increase in tenure security in fact led to early tree planting.

This paper begins by discussing Tanzania's increasing recognition of the need to bring individuals, local groups, and communities into the policy, planning, and management process if woodlands are to remain productive in the coming decades.The article finds that:central control of forests takes management responsibility away from the communities most dependent on them, inevitably resulting in tensionsTanzania has enthusiastically established community-owned and -managed forest reservesthe most successful initiatives involving communities and individuals have been those that moved away from

This manual provides a comprehensive set of criteria and indicators (C&I) for sustainable forest management based on CIFOR’s research. This research was conducted by interdisciplinary teams of experts in large-scale natural forests managed for commercial timber production in Indonesia, Côte d’Ivoire, Brazil and Cameroon, with additional sites in Germany, Austria and USA. The use of the term ‘generic template’ for these C&I is intended to prevent them being confused with an ideal and universally applicable set of C&I.

This research note provides a brief look at the Danau Sentarum National Park (DSNP), West Kalimanta, Indonesia, and its vicinity after the end of the conservation project. It describes the current threats to the park which largely come in the form of boundary confusion, oil palm plantations, mining, logging, boundary disputes, and fisheries decline. It also considers some bright spots such as NGO activities that have followed the conservation project, positive aspects of local logging, and increased community autonomy.

Scenario methods can be used to anticipate the future and expand the creativity of people thinking about complex forest management situations. This manual describes the use of scenarios with multiple stakeholders, with examples drawn from community-based forest management. Four classes of scenario methods are described: visions, projections, pathways and alternative scenarios. Examples of rapid participatory techniques relevant to scenario methods are also summarised.

Multi-Criteria Analysis (MCA) is a decision-making tool developed for complex problems. In a situation where multiple criteria are involved confusion can arise if a logical, well-structured decision-making process is not followed. Another difficulty in decision making is that reaching a general consensus in a multidisciplinary team can be very difficult to achieve. By using MCA the members don't have to agree on the relative importance of the Criteria or the rankings of the alternatives.

Community managed forest systems embody a considerable portion of the wisdom, knowledge, and practical skills and management necessary for the sustainability of forest resources globally. These systems, however, are under threat in many ways, including from the rapid rate of change of their political, socio-economic, and biophysical contexts. Adapting forest management sufficiently quickly and effectively to meet these changes is both urgent and very challenging.