Forests
Forests are ecosystems that provide assets and resources (for timber and non-timber products), shelter flora and fauna, or sustain livelihoods and create wealth for human beings. As their richness leads to competing interests, forest ecosystems are under high pressure.
The IUCN Environmental Law Programme (ELP), through its Commission on Environmental Law as well as the Environmental Law Centre, aims to contribute to the further development and implementation of forest policies (at the national, regional and international level) by recommending appropriate legal concepts and instruments.
National Forest Governance
For many years, the Environmental Law Centre (ELC) has assisted different countries at the national and community level with training on forest legislation as well as its implementation. The ELC, in conjunction with IUCN’s Regional Environmental Law Programme for Asia, is presently working on the IUCN Forest Governance Project: Strengthening Voices for Better Choices. This project aims to promote the development of improved forest governance arrangements that facilitate sustainable and equitable forest conservation and management in six key tropical countries on three continents. In a first step, policy, legal, institutional and economic obstacles to improved forest governance (including illegal logging) will be identified. The legal component will also document customary law that may govern individual and community activities in certain forests, and regulate local access to and use of forest products at selected sites. This analysis will then be used to test innovative approaches to overcoming the identified obstacles, enhance the capacity of key stakeholders to implement governance reforms and disseminate the lessons learned at national, regional and global levels.
Regional Forest Governance
At the regional level, the ELC has implemented a project through which it fostered the development of a Forestry Protocol for the Southern African Development Community (SADC). This Draft Protocol was completed in a final expert workshop and later adopted by the SADC Council.
International Forest Governance
Furthermore, the ELP has contributed to the assessment of the international forest regime, which was requested by many forestry actors. Beyond the legal instruments, institutions and mandates at the global level, the ELP also explored their actual performance, meaning the effectiveness, impact and synergies of individual legal instruments and global institutions.
Lately, the ELP has also been instrumental in assessing the legal aspects in the implementation of forest-related Clean Development Mechanism projects under the Kyoto Protocol. Lessons learned from case studies in Argentina, Chile, Ghana and the Philippines raise unique and complex legal issues, and guide countries intending to host CDM project activities in designing an operational framework that promotes the implementation of environmentally and socially sound project activities in the afforestation and reforestation sectors. This has enabled the ELC and selected CEL members to deliver legal expertise on small-scale afforestation and reforestation projects under the CDM, and to draft different discussion papers on the issue (e.g., on the integrated management of carbon sequestration, the environment and sustainable livelihoods; or on institutions, policies and regulatory frameworks for defining economically viable, environmentally sound and socially equitable afforestation and reforestation projects under the CDM).
Publications
Legal Aspects in the Implementation of CDM Forestry Projects, EPLP No. 59 (2005)
Assessing the International Forest Regime, EPLP No. 37 (1999)
The International Forest Regime – Legal and Policy Issues, IUCN and WWF (1995)
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