JAKARTA—Throughout Southeast Asia, new laws introduced to support social forestry and a large-scale transfer of control over forests to nearby residents have had a profound impact.
Transformative activities supported since 2011 by Asean-Swiss Partnership on Social Forestry and Climate Change helped lay the foundations for political, and institutional, change through technical support and activities in Asean member-states.
The partnership was established to support Asean member-states, and facilitate regional-level coordination and knowledge-sharing on social forestry, in addition to people-oriented forestry, as a means to address climate change and achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
It also ensured the participation of citizens, in particular forest-dependent communities and indigenous peoples, engaging them with the goal of helping to preserve the region’s extraordinarily biodiverse forests and improve livelihoods.
The partnership provided policy advice, trained thousands of people, shared knowledge across the region, and supported the development of community enterprises and institutions at different levels.
Partners included the Center for International Forestry Research, Non-Timber Forest Products- Exchange Programme, the Center for People and Forests, Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture, and World Agroforestry.
“The partnership collaborated with governments and stakeholders to establish social forestry working groups, integrate social forestry curricula into the region’s universities, conduct training programs, action research and field demonstrations of sustainable forest management practices,” said Doris Capistrano, senior advisor to the partnership.
“[It] also supported the development of certification schemes for local producers, festivals and markets for non-timber forest products,” Capistrano added. This work brought together people in governments, civil-society organizations, the private sector and communities, often for the first time, to hear each other’s opinions and understand the evidence presented by organizations involved in the partnership.
“This, in turn, has led to widespread improvements in policies and practices across the region,” she said.
Capistrano was speaking at the closing event of the partnership, held at the Asean Secretariat Building in Jakarta on February 25 and 26.
Outcomes assisted by the partnership, and related national and international processes include:
• Indonesia has issued new regulations on social forestry and customary forest tenure;
• Myanmar and Thailand have passed new laws that provide more rights to local communities;
• Vietnam revised its national forestry law to include farming in forests and forest farming, also known as agroforestry; and
• Other countries, including Cambodia, are in the process of reviewing their own laws to ensure that communities are more engaged with deciding on the use of the land they have managed for generations.
It also facilitated the publication of the Asean Guidelines for Agroforestry Development and the Asean Guidelines for Sustainable Investment, the world’s first set of principles to guide practices throughout the entire region.
It published a white paper on agroforestry for assisting governments’ planning; a set of Asean agroforestry policy briefs, dealing with specific types of agricultural systems that integrate trees into farms or allow better management of forests, including: a large amount of training on agroforestry, sustainable forest restoration, non-timber forest products; and manuals and curricula for agroforestry policy-makers and practitioners.
A “forest harvest” collective mark and participatory guarantee system were introduced as alternative forms of certification that allow communities to engage new markets.
It created national festivals and marketing tools for forest foods, fashions and non-timber products.
At the same time, it analyzed opportunities for Asean member-states to benefit from the implementation of international programs, such as reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.
The political and institutional changes facilitated by the partnership have placed an additional 6 million hectares of forests in the hands of local communities, from 6.67 million hectares in 2011 to the current 13.8 million hectares.
If Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam reach the targets they have set, the total forest area managed by local communities will exceed 20 million hectares by 2030.
The benefits of such an increase extend far beyond meeting basic community needs. Social forestry has contributed to reducing levels of deforestation and illegal activities while increasing people’s resilience to climate change and improving livelihoods. Social forestry has reduced the cost for Asean member-states of achieving targets for climate-change mitigation and adaptation and the SDG.
But there are still challenges at the political and institutional level that need to be addressed, including implementing new laws and ensuring that land tenure is secure for communities across Asean.
Tenure, the conditions under which people can occupy or use land and forests, is still unclear in many countries. Tenure arrangements affect the expansion and effective implementation of social forestry.
However, the expansion of social forestry seen in the last nine years is creating opportunities for tenure reform. By addressing these issues, countries can create a supporting environment that enables communities to participate fully.
It will bring benefits for local livelihoods that also contribute to national development goals and, in turn, support global action on the climate emergency.