Summary of progress on social forestry

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5.1 Summary of progress on social forestry

In the three years since the 2010 baseline assessment was published, social forestry programmes have continued to grow in the ASEAN region. The area of land allocated to local people through official community forestry agreements has increased by more than 2 million ha. 71 The most notable expansions have taken place in Cambodia, Philippines, Thailand and Viet Nam. Despite this expansion and with the exception of Viet Nam, social forestry programmes in ASEAN countries are not progressing quickly enough to meet national targets on community forestry and land allocation. A number of factors impede the more rapid expansion of social forestry. These include inadequate legal frameworks, the inherently complex and time-consuming nature of land allocation Soriaga and Mahanty, 2008, overly restrictive rules, complicated and bureaucratic procedures and limited financial resources and capacities at the local level. Additionally, data on the financial and livelihood benefits that social forestry provides to local communities are ambiguous. Limited profitability of social forestry reduces the incentives for local people to engage. As a result, forest tenure rights in much of the region remain insecure, and governments retain a high degree of control over the majority of forest resources RRI, 2012; RECOFTC, 2013. The rules and procedures for allocating land to local people and establishing community forests need to be streamlined and simplified and administrative blockages removed to reduce the time and costs required to establish social forestry sites. Social forestry is proving to be a successful strategy for rehabilitating degraded forest lands and improving forest quality in the region as well as providing livelihood benefits. For example, in Viet Nam, the allocation of forest lands to local people and their engagement in forest management has had a significantly positive role in reforestation, rehabilitation and forest protection. In Myanmar, community forest management has improved forest conditions and also livelihood benefits Springate-Baginski et al., 2011. Social forestry thus offers the opportunity to respond to climate change in the region, contributing to mitigation efforts in the forest sector, particularly in terms of reducing forest degradation and enhancing forest carbon stocks. It may also considerably boost adaptive capacity by contributing to more resilient livelihoods, protecting ecosystem services and expanding social capital at the community level. However, achieving these various objectives and balancing the different needs is not without its challenges, particularly under the harsher climatic conditions of the future.

5.2 Summary of progress on climate change mitigation and adaptation