An Uneven Playing Field: Regulatory Barriers to Communities Making a Living from the Timber from Their Forests–Examples from Cambodia, Nepal and Vietnam

Abstract

Community forestry (CF) is widely viewed as the solution to many of the challenges facing forest management and governance in the Asia-Pacific region. However, it is often felt that CF is not delivering on its potential. This paper focuses on one possible limitation: the role of regulations in curbing communities' ability to make a living from their timber resources. The work covers Cambodia, Nepal and Vietnam, using policy analyses, national level experts' workshops, and focus group discussions in two CF sites in each country. The results highlight the fact that there are numerous, often prohibitive, regulations in place. One challenge is the regulations' complexity, often requiring a level of capacity far beyond the ability of community members and local government staff. The paper puts forward various recommendations including simplifying regulations and making them more outcome-based, and facilitating key stakeholders, including government and community based organizations, working together on the design and piloting of forest OPEN ACCESSForests 2015, 6 3434 monitoring based on mutually agreed forest management outcomes. The recommendations reflect the belief that for CF to succeed, communities must be allowed to make a meaningful living from their forests, a result of which would be increased investment in sustainable forest management.

Incentives and Constraints of Community and Smallholder Forestry

“…Another important challenge corresponds to the lack of compliance with the rule of law among many actors who derive profits from forest products, especially timber. Community forestry is linked to forest sector legality in a myriad of ways, as discussed in several of the papers of the special issue (e.g., [9][10][11][12][13][14]). For example, financial viability of community forestry timber production is threatened by illegally produced timber in Brazil [14], but also in many other countries.…”

“…These additional costs undermine the economic viability of these operations, which can drive well-meaning stakeholders to exploit their forests outside of the law [10]. Illegal conversion of forests to alternative land uses also continues to remain a major challenge, reflecting once more a driver leading to inadequate compliance with the law that characterizes the forest sector in many contexts (e.g., [9,[11][12][13]). …”

“…Three papers are from Asia [9,11,15], two from Africa [13,16], two from Central America [12,17], and two from the Amazon basin [10,14].…”

“…The papers include the Gritten et al [9] paper, which analyzes regulations in three Southeast Asian countries, Vietnam, Nepal and Cambodia, and how they constrain communities from benefiting from timber resources, to which they gained access through prior land and forestry reforms. A somewhat similar analysis is undertaken by Pulhin et al [11] who review the barriers created by regulatory and administrative requirements and associated extra-official practices that impact benefits communities receive from timber harvesting in the Philippines.…”

“…Three of the papers [9][10][11] review wider forestry reforms in Western Amazonia, mainland Southeast Asia, and the Philippines, and associated implications for smallholders and communities undertaking forest management. Two of the papers [12,13] review several decades of experiences from community forest management in Quintana Roo and Mozambique, and explore how regulatory, economic, and social factors have shaped community forestry initiatives, and the capacities of communities to adapt to changing regulatory, policy, and market environments.…”