There is a vast and unrecognized opportunity for community forestry to strengthen national resilience to climate change through diversifying rural livelihoods, increasing food security, leveraging social capital and knowledge, advancing disaster risk reduction and regulating microclimates. However maximizing the role for community forestry in climate change is an area where clear guidance and recommendations are lacking. 

This comprehensive report is a review of the ‘Strengthening Sustainable Forest Management and Bioenergy Markets to Promote Environmental Sustainability and to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Cambodia’ (SFM) project, summarizing the technical reports prepared by the individuals and organizations involved. The Community-Based Production Forestry (CBPF) Keo Seima project was conducted over several years and made possible by the invaluable contributions of many individuals of various organizations.

Agricultural tractors with attached winches, grapple tongues and log trailers with cranes are the key machines for small-scale forestry work in developed countries. In the near future, a similar role is also foreseen in small-scale community forestry work in Asia and the Pacific.

ASSESSING THE OPPORTUNITIES FOR SCALING UP COMMUNITY FORESTRY AND COMMUNITY

FORESTRY ENTERPRISES IN MYANMAR

This report was prepared by a World Bank team led by Martin Fodor and Stephen Ling. The team was composed of Aye Marlar Win, Aung Kyaw Naing, David Gritten, Kyaw Htun, Lesya Verheijen, Lwin Lwin Aung, Martin Greijmans, Nina Doetinchem, Robert Oberndorf, Ronnakorn Triraganon, Thiri Aung, and Werner Kornexl. 

The introduction and safe use of chainsaws is arguably the biggest improvement in small-scale forestry harvesting. Felling timber with chainsaws can be accomplished over a relatively short period of time while requiring only a small investment – that is, if laws allow the use of this type of machinery and if service providers for training, maintenance and supply of spare parts, as well as additional support, is in place.

In Vietnam, forests have been under state stewardship for a long time. Degradation of forest resources under state management together with the high costs of forest protection has led to increased involvement of local people in forest management. Since the early 1990s, the Government of Vietnam (GOV) has been promoting the allocation of forest rights to local people as the foundation for development of community forest management (CFM). The initiative, known as Forest Land Allocation (FLA), has been undertaken in various parts of the country, with mixed results.

At RECOFTC, we take a long-term, landscape-based and inclusive approach to supporting local communities to secure their land and resource rights, stop deforestation, find alternative livelihoods and foster gender equity. 

This publication is focused on oil palm expansion and land tenure in several Southeast Asian palm oil producing countries (the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia) and cross-compares their experiences with the facts and myths, stories and lessons learned from other palm oil producing countries, more specifically, Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea.

Community forestry supports local level climate change adaptation by enhancing resilience in multiple ways: supporting livelihoods and income, increasing food security, leveraging social capital and knowledge, reducing disaster risks and regulating microclimates. However, adaptation planning has, by and large, not included community forestry as a viable climate change adaptation tool.

This guidebook - accompained by a series of factsheets - on appropriate harvesting and transport technologies highlights the available options to local communities that can help them realize their greater share in the primary stages of timber and bamboo-based value chains. Scroll down to download the factsheets.

Local communities and state forest actors, such as Protection Forest Management Boards (PFMBs), State Forest Companies (SFCs), play equally important roles in forest resource management. Yet local communities have limited legal rights. This is one reason that leads to a lack of forest ownership for local communities. In order to support local communities to effectively engage in sustainable forest management and livelihood development, a fuller set of rights should be legally given to them.

This brief outlines the lessons learned from developing CF-MPs and business plans for 30 community forestry sites in Cambodia, trial of three Alternative CF Modalities (ACFMs): Community Conservation Forestry, Community-based Production Forestry and Partnership Forestry; and implementation of four Commune Land Use Plans (CLUPs). The project ‘Strengthening Sustainable Forest Management and Bioenergy Markets to Promote Environmental Sustainability and to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Cambodia’ was implemented from April 2012 to February 2015, funded by UNDP-GEF.