Influenced by international trends, as well as in response to population, climate, resource and development needs, the standards, norms, mechanisms and incentives in natural resources law at the national level have evolved in recent years. Natural resources laws are influenced by developments in the international arena, either through international treaties that are binding or through ‘soft law’ instruments that are not legally binding but nevertheless have widespread adherence among governments, or that provide principles that guide and shape national legislation.

In 2019, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) published a framework to provide important insights into the successes and shortcomings of community-based forestry at the country level. A framework to assess the extent and effectiveness of community-based forestry also helps national governments determine and track the extent and effectiveness of the wide array of CBF initiatives.

The Brazilian Amazon has 49.8 million hectares (Mha) of public forestlands not allocated by the federal or state governments to a specific tenure status: the so called undesignated public forests (UPF). Historically, these public forests have been vulnerable to land grabbers and land speculation. Here, we highlighted the imminent threat in UPF by quantifying their accumulated deforestation, all of which is illegal, for the period 1997–2018 and the potential illegal occupation.

In recent history, Indonesian forest policies have been dominated by deforestation in the name of economic progress. Many actors have expressed concerns about this trend and have tried to reverse it in favour of a more sustainable pathway. From 2004–2017, non-governmental environmental organisations fought for the case of the coastal Tripa peat swamp rainforest in the province of Aceh, Sumatra. Unique in Indonesian history, they managed halting and reversing the deforestation of an area.

Forests cover about 40 % of the European Union (EU), providing a wide spectrum of invaluable ecosystem services to more than half a billion people. In order to protect and harness this crucial asset, EU policies are advancing multifunctional management. This study lays a basis for such an effort by mapping the supply of key forest ecosystem services (FES) across the entire EU: wood, water supply, erosion control, pollination, habitat protection, soil formation, climate regulation and recreation.

The standard System of National Accounts (SNA) omits the costs of the environmental inputs from nature and the environmental fixed asset degradation from the national/sub-national natural working landscapes. The United Nations Statistic Division (UNSD) is currently drafting the standardization of the Experimental Ecosystem Accounting (EEA), as part of the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA).

Le Cameroun s’est engagé dans un processus de réforme juridique dans les principaux secteurs des ressources naturelles (forêts, mines, terres). Exprimant la position d’un groupe d’organisations et de citoyens intéressés par la gestion de la terre au Cameroun, ce document s’appuie sur les leçons apprises de quarante-cinq années de gestion foncière, depuis la dernière grande réforme de 1974, et sur les développements nouveaux dans ce domaine. Il est inspiré des propositions formulées par la société civile à l’attention de l’administration foncière, et de textes internationaux.

The report, “Forests, Trees and the Eradication of Poverty: Potential and Limitations,” shows that forests and trees support human well-being and are critical to end poverty. It finds that forest-poverty dynamics are affected by a range of social, economic, political, and environmental context factors, such as rural outmigration, gender norms, remittance flows, and elite capture. The report’s key messages are highlighted below. Forests and trees can help the poor face global changes such as climate change. Benefits from forests and trees to human well-being are unevenly distributed.

Promoting the provision of legitimate land tenure rights using Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests (VGGT) in the Context of National Food Security for conflict-displaced communities, including small‐scale rural farmers, pastoralists, and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in the Greater Darfur region of the Sudan