Abstract
The introduction of participatory forestry management (PFM) in Kenya has led to the formation of community forest associations (CFAs). Data collected from 12 forests over a decade indicate that most associations are confederating to manage shared forests through the Forests Act of 2005. Emerging findings indicate that associations are responsible for diverse management activities in forest protection, monitoring, and management, yet access to decision-making, revenue streams, and overall resource control rights are vested in the Kenya Forestry Service. Still, this is an improvement as CFAs perform most governance functions autonomously, including the crafting of resource harvesting rules, the choice of leadership, and conflict resolution. In order to balance community incentives with the burdens and responsibilities they bear, rights to revenue streams generated from forest resources must be shared with communities to ensure continued commitment to the PFM process. Furthermore, the viability of CFAs is threatened by power struggles, leadership wrangles, and the splintering of groups. Negotiation support to moderate conflicting interests, and strengthen internal conflict resolution and governance is necessary.
Highlights
Forest Tenure Reform: New Resource Rights for Forest-based Communities?Anne M
What is new here is the recognition that a variety of policy shifts and changing conceptions have come together to constitute what we understand as forest tenure reform (Taylor et al 2007; Pacheco et al 2009), comparable to the widespread agrarian reforms of the mid-twentieth century and with important implications
The research examined a broad range of ways in which formal rights to forests were recognised or new rights were granted to communities. They include the titling of large territories, as in indigenous lands in Nicaragua and Bolivia, or smaller areas in the Philippines; titling to individuals with a common area for forests, as in colonist communities in Brazil; titling of agro-extractive communities in Northern Bolivia; the granting of community forests in perpetuity in Nepal; the establishment of an agro-extractive reserve (RESEX) in Brazil4; community forest concessions in Guatemala and Burkina
Summary
In Asia, Africa and Latin America, an important shift in forest tenure has occurred since 1985, with at least 200 million ha of forest recognised or legally transferred to local communities and indigenous people (White and Martin 2002). They are in part based, at least in theory, on the belief that communities can be good forest stewards; in practice, this position does not always appear to guide the decisions of those responsible for implementation Understanding this emerging dynamic as a forest tenure reform calls for the systematic and comparative analysis of the associated processes and outcomes of these changes, amidst other global transitions, and of the need to develop frameworks and approaches that can facilitate such comparisons. This special section represents the results of a preliminary inquiry.
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