Berau district has been one of East Kalimantan’s largest sources of timber since the mid-1980s. Until the fall of the Suharto regime in 1998, most of the district’s formal timber production was conducted by large-scale HPH concession holders, and the vast majority of the fiscal revenues generated flowed to the national government. Over the last several years, considerable volumes of logs have also been harvested illegally both by timber concessionaires and by small-scale manual loggers.

The purpose of this lecture note is to summarise different research results about the impact of macro-level factors and “extra-sectoral” policies on tropical forest cover. Specifically, we are interested in the forest margins - i.e. the spatial transition zone between tropical forests and converted land uses. What are the policy factors that accelerate frontier expansion, and which ones tend to slow it down? The main objectives are: a. To learn how different changes related to trade and macroeconomic policies affect the loss of frontier forests, i.e.

The paper describes underlying causes of conflicts between local people in Bulungan Research Forest (BRF), Indonesia with coal-mining and logging companies. Results show that conflict between local people and mining companies was triggered by the fact that mining operation caused water and air pollution and soil degradation. Another cause for such a conflict was the compensatory facilities (e.g. clean water, electricity, compensation fee, etc.) provided by the companies to local people were often delayed or unsatisfactory.

The diversity of C&I sets is often a cause for uncertainty and confusion, and probably one of the reasons for the still unsatisfactory acceptance of C&I as a support for implementation of sustainable forest management so far. In order to halt this erosion of confidence in C&I the presented paper evaluated the diversity of five C&I sets (CIFOR, ACM, FSC, ITTO and Tarapoto) relevant for the Brazilian Amazon by analyzing frequencies of C&I in relation to parameters about content and quality.

Gabon’s oil wealth coincides with the fact that it is one of the most forested countries in Africa; about four-fifths of its land area is covered by forests. But this is not really a coincidence. The central hypothesis of this report is that oil rents have enabled a series of pro-urban, anti-rural policies that, together with the low demographic pressure, have been key in protecting forests from degradation and deforestation. In particular, forest conversion to cropland has been contained. Most probably, oil has helped expand forest cover in absolute terms.

Poverty, property rights and distributional implications of community-based resource management have become major topics of discussion and debate in recent years. This study tries to examine the contribution of community forestry to household-level income with particular emphasis on group heterogeneity and equity in benefit distribution. The assessment of household level benefits suggests that poorer households are currently benefiting less in absolute terms from community forestry than less poor households.

This case study illustrates the use of the MA&D methodology to identify products and to develop viable tree, forest and home garden product enterprises at community level in Viet Nam without degrading the forest resource base and the environment. It provides examples of the methods and tools used by the facilitating team.

Meeting Name: Committee on Forestry (COFO) (16th Session)
Meeting symbol/code: COFO 2003/6

Situación de los Bosques del Mundo 2003 ofrece información sobre los acontecimientos y esferas que son de interés actual en lo que se refiere a los recursos forestales; la ordenación, conservación y desarrollo sostenible de los bosques; el marco institucional; y el diálogo internacional sobre política forestal.