Forests Sourcebook - HCV Resource Network

Box 1.21
Opportunities to Advance Community Tenure Security:A Summary
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Support anticorruption and justice reform activities
at national levels, through local and national legal
groups.
Nurture local organizations to help them act more
effectively as advocates, while helping them to
develop legal and mapping tools to better stake their
claims.
Support workshops on tenure where ideas are
exchanged, and where lessons learned from the field
can be translated into ministerial priorities.
Strengthen emerging leaders and organizations who
represent communities or indigenous peoples by
fostering learning and opportunities to discuss their
issues directly with the government.
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Build successful field models, recognizing these
require time and patience. Avoid promoting pilot
models that represent the lowest common denominator
acceptable to government and undermine
efforts at more meaningful reform.
Mobilize civil society through effective activist and
grassroots organizations with the capacity and will
to champion a cause.
Create linkages between local leaders at the global
level, helping to sharpen their advocacy strategies.
Support federations and associations in communities
that are attempting to exercise their tenure
rights, and support NGOs to build informed grassroots
organizations.
Source: Ellsworth and White 2004.
The following topics should be considered in PRSPs and
in project identification and design:
Overall land tenure, zoning, and land use arrangements
have an impact on sound forest management and forest
access for the poor. Particular attention should be paid to
overlapping areas for private land adjudication and public
or communal forests in frontier regions, and overlapping
rights to Indigenous Peoples’ lands and territories for
above-soil and subsoil resources. Patterns of ownership
should be mapped before project implementation, and
instruments for resolving conflicts extra-legally or legally
should be considered.
Tenure and policy frameworks create incentives or disincentives
for forestry management, and control forest and
forest market access for low-income producers. To minimize
the harmful consequences of these frameworks on the
forest-dependent poor, interventions should avoid regulatory
frameworks that inadvertently place high burdens on
the poor; tax and tariff polices that distort market participation;
environmental regulations that low-income producers
cannot afford to comply with, and therefore become
“criminals” by ignoring; and barriers to low-income producers
from outside the sector, such as small business regulations
and lack of access to technical training or financial
support. Existing and proposed protected-area regimes can
support local rights and livelihoods by zoning for comanagement
and protecting local residents from incursions
by outsiders or extractive activities. They can hamper rights
if overly restrictive or if they cause overlapping claims.
Industrial and infrastructure subsidies, and indirect subsidies,
to processing industries, plantations, and transport
create an unequal playing field for small and medium enterprises
that do not qualify for such subsidies. Tax and tariff
policies that affect domestic industry, imports, and exports
can also be key drivers of distortions. These and other market
and trade trends should be analyzed, with special consideration
for the overlap of informal markets and trade and
conflicted forest resources claims, as well as the impacts of
commercial-scale plantations on land ownership patterns.
Ecosystem service payments or market schemes can offer
opportunities to secure tenure for low-income producers as a
reward for sustainable resource management. However, payment
schemes must be carefully reviewed to ensure that existing
local tenure and resource use rights are not threatened.
There are multiple mechanisms to monitor progress and
influence the pace and quality of implementation of tenure
reforms. These range from participatory monitoring to
independent outside review, and should assist in adjusting
processes (through changes either in projects or in project
designs) to changing conditions over time.
With devolution of responsibility to communities and
low-income producers, dependency on outside professionals
must be reduced and local institutions and capacity for
forest management must be strengthened.
54 CHAPTER 1: FORESTS FOR POVERTY REDUCTION