FAO's State of the World's Forests 2014 Report Published

FAO has just published 'State of the World's Forests 2014'. The report – available here, along with various other briefs - looks a the potential that the world’s forests, trees on farms, and agroforestry systems have in supporting the livelihoods of rural people by providing employment, energy, nutritious foods and a wide range of other goods and ecosystem services. There has been a lack of clear evidence of this, which the report seeks to address by systematically gathering and analyzing available data on forests’ contributions to people’s livelihoods, food, health, shelter, and energy needs.

New Report on Indigenous Peoples’ Rights, Forests and Climate Policies in Guyana

The Forest Peoples Programme (FPP) and the Amerindian Peoples Association (APA) have published a new special report entitled ‘Indigenous Peoples’ Rights, Forests And Climate Policies In Guyana: A Special Report'. The report, edited by Kate Dooley and Tom Griffiths, highlights the vital need for good land tenure governance in the development of sustainable forest and climate initiatives.

One for the key findings, based on detailed fieldwork, is  that insecure land rights and gaps in national legal frameworks as they relate to indigenous peoples’ rights are a major obstacle to the effective and efficient implementation of national land use and climate policies in Guyana.

The authors call  for timely reforms and strengthening of national laws and policies to ensure proper protections for customary land rights and adherence to the core standard of free, prior and informed consent (FPIC).

The report also underlines the pressing need for robust measures by bilateral and multilateral international agencies to ensure compliance with their own safeguard policies in ongoing forest governance, livelihood, infrastructure, energy and climate programmes.

CIFOR Guide for Research on Forest Tenure Rights

A new guide by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), entitled "Tenure Rights and Access to Forests: A Training Manual for Research", attempts to help students, researchers and practitioners understand and tackle forest tenure issues. It addresses the following questions in particular: what is forest tenure and why does it matter; what determines tenure security and how does it affect people and forests; how do we ensure equitable distribution of benefits; and how do we manage competing interests in forests?

In an article on the training manual for the CIFOR blog, Anne Larson, CIFOR scientist and author of the manual, says, “Researchers have been grappling with complex forest tenure issues for 30-40 years now, yet these are still not widely understood and incorporated adequately into a broad range of forestry research.” According to Peter Holmgren, director general of CIFOR, “Understanding forest tenure is fundamental as international and large-scale investments compete with local stakeholders’ interests in forest land and forest services. This is particularly important in the dynamic interface between forests and agriculture, where decisions determine the fate of livelihoods and forest resources.”

The training manual is available for download in English.

FAO Journal on UN Guidelines on Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s Land Tenure Journal’s latest edition examines the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security. The Guidelines, which were recently endorsed by the Committee on World Food Security, are still widely unknown and the four articles in the peer-reviewed, open-access journal seek to explain their contents, their development and the strategies for implementing them. 

The journal articles can be downloaded here. Find other related news via the Traditional Knowledge Bulletin here.

Video Repository on Forest Commodification

Forests are facing immense challenges from the increased commodification of their resources. Some incoming policies may worsen these challenges dramatically. To highlight the lived experiences of communities affected by forest commodification, the Global Forest Coalition has launched a repository of videos gathered from a variety of organisations and contexts. The repository has been launched as government representatives gather for the 18th Conference of Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to highlight the results of commodification and the dangers of policies that ignore or intensify commodification processes. The repository organises the videos into three key thematic areas: exporting commodities; carbon: schemes, scams & cowboys; and rights and resistance.

The repository can be accessed here.