Forests Sourcebook - HCV Resource Network

Box 6.3
Positive Impact of Agrarian Reform on
Community Forestry in Mexico
and instruments concentrated too narrowly on the forestry
sector (Humphreys 1996).
Community Forest Enterprises (CFE) in Mexico
are widely known to be a product of institutional
arrangements that decentralized forest management
to ejidos (agrarian reform communities) and
indigenous communities and enabled these
groups to improve economic well-being through
sustainable commercial use of forests. Recent work
suggests that the transfer of natural assets to communities
through an agrarian reform process laid
the territorial and governance foundation for the
establishment of a large community forest sector
(Bray et al. 2005). It is argued that in Mexico the
agrarian reform laws have been crucial in creating
a larger number of CFEs than did specific forest
legislation. Agrarian reform distributed forest
lands to communities and provided a template for
community governance that could later serve as an
institutional platform for the development of
CFEs (Bray et al. 2005).
Source: Authors’ compilation.
incentives, persuasion, and procedures than on regulation.
Timber labeling, for example, aims to influence the behavior
of timber customers by making the external costs of
products more transparent (see note 3.2, Forest Certification
Systems). Another trend is to seek the voluntary agreement
of forest owners for the establishment of nature protection
zones by compensating them contractually for
income losses. As measures become more effective because
they are implemented by stakeholders that understand and
agree on them, procedural and persuasive instruments are
more widely used. Regional planning, Local Agenda 21 3 ,and
other participatory and coordination mechanisms are
important policy steering instruments in this context.
National forest programs (NFPs), promoted as planning
instruments at the national and subnational levels to reach
the goal of sustainable forest development, use a holistic
approach that is much different from previous sector planning
procedures. Within NFPs, intersectoral approaches are
seen as a necessary core element (UN-CSD 1997). This
reflects lessons learned from previous policy and planning
instruments, in particular the Tropical Forestry Action Plan
(TFAP). Experience with the preparation and implementation
of the TFAP at the country level showed that many
actions failed to halt deforestation because the objectives
Need for additional data. Data on the degree and nature
of forest dependency of large numbers of people (many of
whom will be among the poorest in a given country) are
limited, imprecise, and often unclear in their implications
for national policy. Moreover, the physical impacts on
forests that most impinge upon the livelihoods of people
living in or near them are not particularly well-identified by
the broad and presently available parameters such as
changes in forest cover and forest trade and market data.
As a result, the poverty implications of impacts upon
forests are likely to be undervalued in broad national programs
and objectives. Perverse incentives and misallocation
of resources leading to forest removal or changes in the status
of use and ownership of forests will be a risk factor from
the poverty-alleviation viewpoint, and could be exacerbated
by broader policy measures in a development policy loan
designed without the necessary knowledge in this area.
Monitoring cross-sectoral impacts. The temporal
dimension and indirect nature of cross-sectoral impacts
underscores the importance of effective systems for monitoring
forest cover and changes in forests’ contribution to
forest-dependent households and the national economy.
Macro policy reforms can change access to and use of forest
resources, affecting their economic contribution and
the quality and quantity of forests. A cost-effective monitoring
system may have to combine spatial monitoring of
the biophysical resource with periodic reviews of statistical
information.
FUTURE PRIORITIES AND SCALING-UP
ACTIVITIES
Developing good practice for identifying cross-sectoral
impacts will revolve primarily around two subjects: (i) recognizing
that many situations involving macroeconomic
reform are not win-win and that there is a need to analyze
tradeoffs and engage in a process that involves all stakeholders
in determining the appropriate balance between conflicting
objectives; and (ii) determining what might be done
to improve knowledge about interactions between specific
types of macroeconomic and cross-sectoral activities.
Important to both is the need to further strengthen collaboration
among sectors and between forest sector specialists
and macroeconomists, both within countries and in development
institutions.
208 CHAPTER 6: MAINSTREAMING FORESTS INTO DEVELOPMENT POLICY AND PLANNING