Neotropical forests sustain a wealth of biodiversity, provide a wide range of ecosystem services and products, and support the livelihoods of millions of people. But is forest management a viable conservation strategy in the tropics? Supporters of sustainable forest management have promoted it as a solution to problems of both biodiversity protection and economic stagnation. Detractors insist that any conservation strategy short of fully protected status is a waste of resources and that forest management actually hastens deforestation. By focusing on a set of critical issues and case studies, this book explores the territory between these positions, highlighting the major factors that contribute to or detract from the chances of achieving forest conservation through sustainable management.

Who has rights to forests and forest resources? In recent years governments in the South have transferred at least 200 million hectares of forests to communities living in and around them. This book assesses the experience of what appears to be a new international trend that has substantially increased the share of the world's forests under community administration. Based on research in over 30 communities in selected countries in Asia (India, Nepal, Philippines, Laos, Indonesia), Africa (Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ghana) and Latin America (Bolivia, Brazil, Guatemala, Nicaragua), it examines the process and outcomes of granting new rights, assessing a variety of governance issues in implementation, access to forest products and markets and outcomes for people and forests. Forest tenure reforms have been highly varied, ranging from the titling of indigenous territories to the granting of small land areas for forest regeneration or the right to a share in timber revenues. While in many cases these rights have been significant, new statutory rights do not automatically result in rights in practice, and a variety of institutional weaknesses and policy distortions have limited the impacts of change. Through the comparison of selected cases, the chapters explore the nature of forest reform, the extent and meaning of rights transferred or recognized, and the role of authority and citizens' networks in forest governance. They also assess opportunities and obstacles associated with government regulations and markets for forest products and the effects across the cases on livelihoods, forest condition and equity. Published with CIFOR.

"This report assesses demand for a mechanism that brings together forest certification and fair trade in the timber market. Timber buyers from 21 countries were surveyed as part of this study - with more detailed value chain analysis in 4 country case studies. The report concludes that there is indeed both demand and practical options to do more for community forest producers. A historic opportunity exists to bring together forest certification and fair trade in the interests both of communities and the forests on which they depend."--Résumé de l'éditeur.

This book draws together contributions from forest economists in the Research Triangle of North Carolina, with co-authors from institutions around the world. It represents our common belief that rigorous empirical analysis in an economic framework can inform forest policy. We intend the book as a guide to the empirical methods that we have found most useful for addressing both traditional and modem areas of concern in forest policy, including timber production and markets, multiple use forestry, and valuation of non-market benefits. 'The book editors and most chapter authors are affiliated with three institutions in the Research Triangle: the Southern Research Station of the USDA Forest Service (K. Abt, Butry, Holmes, Mercer, Moulton, Prestemon, Wear), the Department of Forestry at North Carolina State University (R. Abt, Ahn, Cubbage, Sills), and the Environmental and Natural Resource Economics Program of Research Triangle Institute (Murray, Pattanayak). Two other Triangle institutions are also represented among the book authors: Duke University (Kramer) and the Forestland Group (Zinkhan). In addition to our primary affiliations, many of us are adjunct faculty and/or graduates of Triangle universities. Many of our co-authors also graduated from or were previously affiliated with Triangle institutions. Thus, the selection of topics, methods, and case studies reflects the work of this particular network of economists, and to some degree, our location in the southeastern United States. However, our work and the chapters encompass other regions of the United States and the world, including Latin America and Asia.

Forests are under tremendous pressure from human uses of all kinds, and one of the most significant threats to their sustainability comes from commercial interests. This book presents a comprehensive examination of the interactions between the forest products sector and the sustainability of forests. It captures the most current sustainability concerns within the forestry sector and various sustainability-oriented initiatives to address these. Experts from around the world analyze interconnected topics including market mechanisms, regulatory mechanisms, voluntary actions, and governance, and outline their effectiveness, potential, and limitations. By presenting a novel overview of the burgeoning field of business sustainability within the forestry sector, this book paves a way forward in understanding what is working, what is not working, and what could potentially work to ensure sustainable business practices within the forestry sector,

Recent developments in international policy on Reduced Emissions from Deforestation in Developing countries (REDD) open the way for crediting of carbon saved by rural communities through management of the forests in their vicinity. Since the annual changes in forest carbon stock under this kind of management are relatively small and often under the canopy, they cannot easily be assessed using remote sensing, so ground-level data collection is likely to be essential over large areas of forests. The potential role of communities in measuring, monitoring and reporting carbon stock changes in their forests has been explicitly mentioned in UNFCCC documentation on methodology for REDD+, the extended form of REDD that includes forest enhancement, sustainable forest management and forest conservation. This book presents practical methods by which communities can do it. These methods were developed and tested with communities in villages in Africa and Asia under a six-year research programme. The reliability of the data gathered by the community is shown to be equivalent to that of professional forest inventories while the costs are much lower. Involvement of local communities in collection of this data may be the most cost-effective solution for national REDD+ programmes. Moreover, it could provide the basis for a transparent system for distribution of the financial rewards from REDD+ and the carbon market. The book first presents the policy context, concepts, methods and general results, which include estimates of typical carbon savings resulting from community management in different types of tropical forests. It also looks at the governance issues that may be involved and a variety of ways in which incentive schemes might be designed to encourage communities to participate. The second half of the book is devoted to case studies from the countries involved in the research. These provide both ideas and practical experience to enable agencies to engage with local communities to monitor carbon stock changes.