Archive for April, 2015

Enhancing forest-related development: Community and smallholder forestry in the nexus of markets, policy, and implementation

Traditional landscapes

Traditional landscapes (FAO Photo ref FO-0072)

Forests hold the potential to contribute to sustainable local development in many regions of the world. For this potential to be realized, rural dwellers need to have access to healthy forests, need to be linked to markets, and hold capacities to actively engage in forest product value chains. This requires an enabling legal environment and supportive policies. For the last two decades, considerable efforts and investment have been devoted to improve these enabling conditions in many locations and at different scales. Even so, in many places in the world where a forestry development potential may exist, deforestation and forest degradation, unfavourable legal environments and policies and competition with better endowed or politically well-connected entrepreneurs prevail. Read more…

IUFRO - The International Union of Forest Research Organizations