Strong and Secure Rights

To strengthen rural livelihoods and ensure healthier forests in Asia and the Pacific, local communities and indigenous people must have strong and clear rights to own and use forests.

Some 450 million people in the Asia-Pacific region rely on forests for their livelihoods. Although many forest-dependent communities have depended on forests for generations, restrictions on owning or using forestland have driven millions to poverty and encouraged widespread illegal logging and forest loss.

Dominant models of forestry, such as industrial exploitation and conservation of protected areas, have often weakened local people's rights to forests. The push for short-term economic gains through poorly planned industrial forestry has not only destroyed many pristine forest areas, it has also cut off crucial livelihood opportunities for local people.

Protection forestry poses similar problems. For example, conserving land by setting aside national parks has caused thousands of unjust evictions of people who lived and worked on the land for decades, and those who remain often face crippling restrictions on how to live and work.

However, the region is waking up to both the important role local people play in the future of forests and the importance of forests to their livelihoods. Recently, a number of countries have enacted or are exploring forest tenure reforms that increase recognition of local people's rights to forests. Today, a quarter of the region's forests are managed by local people under various community forestry arrangements, and there are more opportunities to increase and improve those reforms.

In addition to solidifying more legal rights, challenges ahead lie in ensuring that those rights are less ambiguous and more enforceable. Legal gains must translate into tangible benefits. Too often, forest users experience the bundles of rights merely as bundles of responsibilities, and as a result, they cannot generate much-needed income. The poverty-reduction effects of such reforms are often negligible.

Our Work on Rights

Because strong and secure rights, good governance, and fair benefits are the basis of sustainable forest management, these three underlying principles crosscut all of our work. Each of our projects incorporates these goals. Our work helps local people to:

• Establish their rights: Without the basic supporting laws, policies, and regulations in place, community forestry cannot happen. Through policy engagement, analysis, and advocacy, RECOFTC pushes for forest tenure reforms that give local people legal and institutional recognition and protection. Through field projects, RECOFTC practically supports local communities through the process of formalizing community forests.

• Exercise their rights: Once community forestry is in place, the next step is to translate laws into meaningful benefits for both people and forests. Even with official rights, local people face restrictions such as onerous red tape, access only to severely degraded forests, and restrictive regulations (e.g., timber harvesting bans). RECOFTC helps identify and overcome the constraints and increase opportunities for local people to improve their livelihoods through in-country community forestry pilot programs, engagement in national forest programs and policy dialogues, and analysis of relevant issues.

• Defend their rights: Laws and policies evolve, and even constitutions change, especially in politically unstable countries — sometimes to the detriment of local people. Regulations can hinder or destroy community forestry just as easily as they can advance the cause. RECOFTC supports local, national, and regional community forestry networks so they can have a stronger voice in national-level decision making.

RECOFTC is a founding member and Asia-Pacific facilitator of the Rights and Resources Initiative, a global coalition pushing for pro-poor forest tenure reforms.
More on the Rights and Resources Initiative