Contribution of Forestry to Poverty Alleviation - APFNet

In India, the 2006 Forest Rights Act (FRA) recognizes the rights of scheduled tribes and
other traditional forest-dwelling communities over forest land including management
rights. Based on the initial years of FRA implementation, the opportunity for strengthening
the economic and social security of these forest-dwelling groups is likely to have the
most impacts where the groups have access to information about the law and are wellorganised,
where the bureaucracy is supportive and allows the FRA process to take its
course based on the specific contexts of the communities, where civil society groups
are assisting in building the capacities of communities, and where powerful castes and
classes within the communities do not block the access of less powerful groups to the
benefits of FRA (Kothari, Pathak and Bose 2011).
In Papua New Guinea, while 98% of the forests and 97% of the lands are recognized
by law to be owned by the people, government-led processes of allocating forests for
industrial timber concessions have largely divested the customary landowners of their
rights to their forests.
Lack of Tenure Security and Unclear Rights
Owing to policy conflicts and legal uncertainties, tenure security is fragile in many cases and resource
rights are unclear or limited. Most tenure systems maintain state ownership over forestlands while
providing management or access rights or benefit-sharing arrangements. Though community forestry
allows some re-distribution of forest lands and resources among local communities, including the
poor, use rights are often restricted to NWFPs. Forest tenure systems afford varying degrees of
security—or insecurity—to local communities. Community forestry in Cambodia has been supported
mainly by national and international nongovernment organizations (NGOs). Communities’ access
to forest resources is limited in terms of coverage, duration and forest quality and, while economic
land concessions are valid for 99 years, community forest management rights are good for only 15
years without guarantee of compensation for the communities if the state reclaims the lands for other
uses. In India, JFM provides management and use rights to forest resources without clear provisions
regarding long-term use of forest land. In both cases, lack of sufficient rights at the local level restricts
the development of effective partnerships with local communities.
Allocation of Degraded Forest Without Adequate Capacity Building or
Investment
The primary objective of community forestry programmes initiated in the 1970s and 1980s was
improving degraded forest areas, and not necessarily alleviating poverty in and around forests. As such,
it was mostly degraded forests that were designated for local communities, in a trend that Banerjee
referred to as providing “little trees for little people” (Warner 2007). Even with the subsequent inclusion
of poverty alleviation as an objective, however, this has largely remained the pattern in many areas. The
allocation of degraded forests has meant little or no immediate economic benefits for communities and
necessitated much effort to achieve an economic return. Although timber rights have occasionally been
transferred, timber revenue in many areas has been minimal given the small number of harvestable
trees and lack of investment in forest development.
Lack of capital investment and support at the local level for community forest management, productive
enterprises and value addition and marketing is in many cases preventing communities from improving
their productivity and efficiency, engaging in commercial development of forest products and generating
adequate and equitable economic benefits. In the Philippines, despite the national government’s adoption
of community-based forest management (CBFM) as the strategy for forest management and the issuance
of an executive order mandating the DENR to allocate sufficient funds for CBFM implementation
pending the enactment of a new forestry law, the DENR has not been channeling adequate funds for
the regular budget line item for CBFM (CBFM Strategic Plan 2008-2017).
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