Abstract
Natural forest regrowth is critical for restoring ecosystem services in degraded landscapes and providing forest resources. Those who control tenure and access rights to these secondary forest areas determine who benefits from economically charged off-farm opportunities such as finance for forest restoration, selling carbon credits, and receiving payment for ecosystem services. We explore multiple dimensions of secondary forest governance in Peru, where the lack of official government statistics of the extent, geography, and ownership, coupled with low state capacity, prevents the development of governance structures that could stimulate their sustainable management. In this paper, we review the challenges to secondary forest governance, and the opportunities to strengthen it, focusing on beneficial outcomes for smallholder farmers. We characterize secondary forest types, extent, and persistence in Peru, followed by a presentation of the social dimensions of their governance. We identify four entry points for government to take action: national mapping of the socio-geography of second growth forest, regularize the property rights of untitled landholders, relax forest regulations, and provide incentives, not sanctions, for secondary forest management. Overall, we recommend folding secondary forest governance into a landscape approach. In Peru, strengthening local forest governance could help to drive benefits of climate change mitigation incentives directly to local forest stewards.
Highlights
Secondary forest—any natural forest regrowth after clearance—is increasingly an important component of natural capital from the global to local levels with estimates of 63 percent of the forest cover in SE Asia [1], 34 percent in the lowland Neotropics in 2008, and 13.3 percent in the Peruvian Amazon [2]
Normative, and regulatory bottlenecks and impediments to the governance and sustainable management of secondary forests have been identified in several countries in Latin America, including an evaluation of legislation in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Honduras [25]; both legal and operational impediments to formalizing secondary forest management in Brazil [19]; and new forest regulations in Peru relevant to farm-forestry systems [4,71]. These analyses show that current policy frameworks and legal mechanisms related to forests in general fall short of effectively supporting sustainable management of secondary forests
The only way a workable system of governance of secondary forest could be developed is to recognize second growth forest as a dynamic component of the broader landscape in a workable co-management system, one that reflects the diversity of both secondary forests and their stakeholders, as well as to the fact that the goods and services provided by these forests tends to change over time [78]
Summary
Secondary forest—any natural forest regrowth after clearance—is increasingly an important component of natural capital from the global to local levels with estimates of 63 percent of the forest cover in SE Asia [1], 34 percent in the lowland Neotropics in 2008, and 13.3 percent in the Peruvian Amazon [2]. For the objective of climate change mitigation, secondary forest stands out, since the sequestration potential of these developing stands is higher than for old-growth forest [13,18]. Under REDD+ and other schemes, this sequestration potential can translate to economic benefits to forest-owners, motivating the expansion of forest regrowth and the sustainable management of existing stands. The increasing recognition of the social and economic values of secondary forest, together with their contribution to conservation and climate change mitigation and adaptation, necessitates their equitable and effective governance [24,25,26]
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