Building on a very successful previous strategic phase, RECOFTC’s new Strategic Plan (2013-2018) has completed its first year with many exciting outcomes. RECOFTC's Annual Report 2013-2014 highlights progress in our four thematic areas: Securing Community Forestry; Enhancing Livelihoods and Markets; People, Forests and Climate Change; and Transforming Forest Conflicts.

This paper presents case studies of two tribal villages - Mendha Lekha and Jamguda - successfully running forest-based bamboo businesses under the community forest rights provisions of Forest Rights Act (2006). We have documented the issues faced by the villagers in claiming community forest rights, issues faced in harvesting and sale of bamboo, and business practices adopted by both the villages.

Las mujeres son importantes usuarias de recursos forestales. Sin embargo, su participación en la gobernanza forestal es limitada, y las razones de esta situación han sido poco estudiadas en México. Este artículo sostiene que la discriminación de género en la tenencia de la tierra, la división genérica del trabajo, la inequitativa distribución de beneficios y la visión estrictamente comercial de planes de manejo contribuyen a la exclusión femenina del manejo forestal comunitario (mfc).

Forests worldwide are home to approximately 1.3 billion people and must cater to the multiple needs of people - from providing local goods and services (access to income, food, clean water, wood energy, construction materials, fertile soils, medicinal and cosmetic products, and recreation) to providing global goods and services (climate change mitigation, biodiversity conservation, hydrological and mineral cycles). It is a tall order because many of these needs compete with one another.

About 32 million ha, half of Myanmar’s land area, is classified as forest area. Most of the 20 million ha of other wooded land is fallow land used by villagers for shifting cultivation. About 20 to 25 million people out of a total population of 60 million are estimated to use forests as one of their sources of livelihoods.

This report assesses the impact of
participation in farmer organizations (FOs) on food security
of rural households in Cambodia. The study is particularly
set out to following: (1) examine FOs’ roles and operation
and challenges for improving household’s food security; (2)
analyze household’s characteristics that determine
participation in FOs; (3) assess the impact of FOs on food
security and livelihood of the rural poor; and (4) provide

Community forestry (CF) has been seen as an optimal method for dealing with the many challenges facing forests in Asia-Pacific region. Many stakeholders, however, are questioning whether CF is proving to be an effective way to improve the livelihoods of the community. This work examines why these doubts persist, putting forward recommendations for addressing barriers to CF development, focusing particularly on commercialization, with the rationale being that after tenure it is the driving force for successful CF.

Research shows that community forestry enterprises (CFE) in community forestry (CF) sites are restricted due to a number of factors: a lack of support by governments, combined with policies that undermine CFE’s viability; misconceptions by governments that communities are unable to manage forests in a sustainable manner;  and regulatory framework that favours private sector and state forest enterprises. These restrictions prevent CF members from developing and commercializing forest products, thereby only allowing them to benefit from their forests through a subsistence approach.

This paper examines whether cooperative
behavior by respondents measured as contributions in a
one-shot public goods game correlates with reported
pro-forest collective action behaviors. All the outcomes
analyzed are costly in terms of time, land, or money. The
study finds significant evidence that more cooperative
individuals (or those who believe their group members will
cooperate) engage in collective action behaviors that

This paper estimate the effects of
collective action in Nepal’s community forests on four
ecological measures of forest quality. Forest user group
collective action is identified through membership in the
Nepal Community Forestry Programme, pending membership in
the program, and existence of a forest user group whose
leaders can identify the year the group was formed. This
last, broad category is important, because many community

This paper informs the national and
international policy discussions related to the adoption of
the United Nations Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and
Forest Degradation Programme. Effective program instruments
must carefully consider incentives, opportunity costs, and
community interactions. A choice experiment survey was
applied to rural Ethiopian communities to understand
respondents’ preferences toward the institutional structure

A significant portion of the world’s
forests that are eligible for Reducing Emission from
Deforestation and Forest Degradation, known as REDD ,
payments are community managed forests. However, there is
little knowledge about preferences of households living in
community managed forests for REDD contracts, or the
opportunity costs of accepting REDD contracts for these
communities. This paper uses a choice experiment survey of