Forests Sourcebook - HCV Resource Network

Box 5.12
Reforming Forest Law in Postconflict Countries
The World Bank has supported modernization of forest
law frameworks in several postconflict countries,
including Cambodia, the Democratic Republic of
Congo, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.
The task is sensitive because armed factions can,
and do, divert forest income to support conflict. For
example, in Cambodia during the early 1990s, the
Khmer Rouge financed themselves through timber
exports. In Liberia, the sale of timber and diamonds to
fuel war was so notorious that the United Nations General
Assembly placed sanctions on exports until the
government could put appropriate financial controls
in place (see box 5.8 in particular).
The task is challenging because it involves social as
well as legal change. People who have known war and
authoritarianism must embrace new ways to settle
conflicts over resource use.
There are three broad avenues for settling conflicts:
resort to power, as is typified in war; resort to rights, as
is typified in litigation; and resort to interests, as is typified
in voluntary negotiation. In most conflicts, power,
rights, and interests all play some role. But in war-torn
countries, rights and interests have taken a backseat to
power.
Source: Rosenbaum 2006.
Part of the healing process involves reviving the
roles of rights and interests. This means promoting the
rule of law, to allow people to appeal to the government
to defend their rights, and it means promoting
transparent and participatory government, to allow
people to freely and fairly advocate their interests.
In Liberia, for example, the World Bank continues to
be part of the LFI, which is assisting the government in
forest sector reform. LFI supported the government’s
open review and resulting cancellation of existing forest
concessions. Now the LFI is supporting government
efforts to establish a chain-of-custody system for forest
products. The system will track timber from harvest to
export dock, to ensure the government collects all
appropriate revenues. The LFI is also supporting development
of a transparent planning system to allocate
public forests among conservation, commercial, and
community uses. A multistakeholder Forest Reform
Monitoring Committee is vetting all reforms. The legal
work includes drafting an amendment to the national
forest law and regulations to support the chain-of-custody
and land-use allocation systems, a new model forest
concessions contract, and a model contract for community
benefit sharing.
can serve as a checklist of topics for the drafter to consider.
The other reference, from the Development Law Office of
FAO, is a paper listing six basic principles for forest law
assistance projects (Lindsay, Mekouar, and Christy 2002).
Annex 5.3B to this note contains a list from that paper of six
principles for effective forest law. The ideas offered here
largely come from those two sources.
Another important first step is to consider the dynamics
of working with the lawyers and within a legal paradigm
(see box 5.13).
Another challenge is to eliminate unnecessary regulation
and circumscribe the discretion of forest officials. The motive
goes both to improving governance and to reducing constraints
on forest use. Layers of regulation and large amounts of
official discretion create opportunities for waste and corruption.
The ideal level of regulation conserves the resource while
allowing people broad opportunities to enjoy resource benefits.
Limiting power exertions. A further step toward good
governance is to create checks on power exertion. These may
include
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increased transparency, so that the press and public opinion
can have a stronger influence on forest management;
watchdog institutional structures, such as advisory
boards, ombudsmen, or inspectors general;
allowing citizen or community access to the courts to
enforce rules or collect payments due the government;
procedural steps, such as environmental impact assessments,
that require the government to make a reasoned
review of alternatives before taking action; and
substantive standards in the laws to limit agency discretion.
Practical reforms. Finally, the legal adviser routinely
faces the problem of making reforms practical. A system
that is too elaborate risks overtaxing the technical capacity
of a country and tying the forests down in lengthy procedures.
The results may be frequent government shortcutting
of the laws and resulting loss of the rule of law. Alternatively,
the government could try to live by the letter of the law and
end up mired in process, leading people to seek access to the
forest through illegal means (see note 5.5, Addressing Illegal
Logging). Practicality may demand simpler requirements or
174 CHAPTER 5: IMPROVING FOREST GOVERNANCE