IIED’s Forest Team engagement with Mozambique began in January 2002, with a two year policy support process to the multi-donor ProAgri programme based at the then Direcção Nacional de Florestas e Fauna Bravia (DNFFB) – later to become the Direcção Nacional de Terras e Florestas (DNTF) – the national directorate of land and forests. At that time, the main legal frameworks had only just come into being, with the 1997 Land Law, the 1999 Forestry and Wildlife Law and the 2002 forest regulations.

The Country Environmental Analysis (CEA) for Timor-Leste identifies environmental priorities through a systematic review of environmental issues in natural resources management and environmental health in the context of the country's economic development and environmental institutions. Lack of data has been the main limitation in presenting a more rigorous analysis. Nevertheless, the report builds on the best available secondary data, presents new data on the country's wealth composition, and derives new results on the costs of water and air pollution.

Since President Soeharto stepped down, decentralization has offered a better governance system for this nation of more than 220 million people of varied ethnic groups spread over more than 15,000 islands. Despite its potential, implementation of decentralization has been riddled with unexpected problems. Decentralization turned out to have created problems, ranging from conflicts among people who refused regional fragmentation, conflicts between newly-created districts and the original, larger district from which they were created, and between local and central government.