Routledge Forests for People: Community Rights and Forest Tenure Reform (The Earthscan Forest Library)

Who has rights to forests and forest resources? In recent years governments in the South have transferred at least 200 million hectares of forests to communities living in and around them. This book assesses the experience of what appears to be a new international trend that has substantially increased the share of the world's forests under community administration. Based on research in over 30 communities in selected countries in Asia (India, Nepal, Philippines, Laos, Indonesia), Africa (Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ghana) and Latin America (Bolivia, Brazil, Guatemala, Nicaragua), it examines the process and outcomes of granting new rights, assessing a variety of governance issues in implementation, access to forest products and markets and outcomes for people and forests.  Forest tenure reforms have been highly varied, ranging from the titling of indigenous territories to the granting of small land areas for forest regeneration or the right to a share in timber revenues. While in many cases these rights have been significant, new statutory rights do not automatically result in rights in practice, and a variety of institutional weaknesses and policy distortions have limited the impacts of change. Through the comparison of selected cases, the chapters explore the nature of forest reform, the extent and meaning of rights transferred or recognized, and the role of authority and citizens' networks in forest governance. They also assess opportunities and obstacles associated with government regulations and markets for forest products and the effects across the cases on livelihoods, forest condition and equity.  Published with CIFOR. Review 'An important, ambitious and timely contribution to scholarship on local forest management. Forests for People presents a rich analysis of the opportunities and obstacles that communities face when their rights to manage forests are formally recognized. Most striking is the effort at synthesis across a number of key themes, drawing on the experience of scholars from around the globe who participated in the cases study research. I highly recommend it to any policymaker, practitioner or researcher interested in communities and forests.' Elinor Ostrom, Indiana University, joint winner of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, 2009 'This volume does a superb job of synthesizing the lessons learned. Rather than presenting a series of country case studies as is often the case in comparative volumes spanning three continents, the chapters are organized according to cross-cutting themes. Each chapter draws upon the findings for a range of countries, sometimes in all three regions, and includes an extensive literature review.' Carmen Diana Deere, Professor of Food and Resource Economics and Latin American Studies, University of Florida, USA 'Tenure and access will be amongst the biggest challenges if the large investments soon to be made in forests for climate change mitigation and adaptation are to be effective and equitable. This new book provides a unique synthesis of current thinking on forest tenure issues and will be essential reading for those involved in forest policy reforms.' Jeffrey Sayer, IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) 'This is an outstanding contribution to research and action on community forestry. In a period when a new global forest regime seems upon us, it presents a cogent, evidence-backed argument in favor of tenure and rights to forest-dependent communities.' Arun Agrawal, University of Michigan, USA Forests for People provides 'considerable insight into the diversity of customary rights, the many ways in which governments manipulate title to land and resources, the politics of empowerment, etc.' David Walton, Bulletin of the British Ecological Society ''Forests for People' is a choice and solidly recommended pick for anyone intrigued by the forest debate.' Wisconsin Bookwatch, Midwestern Book Review, July 2010. 'essential reading for those