Forest policy reform to
enhance smallholder
participation in landscape
restoration: The Peruvian case
Peter Cronkleton & Robin Sears
3rd Annual FLARE MEETING
Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden
Sunday October 1, 2017

Objective
Show how Peru’s forest restoration
policy considers smallholder forest
producers
• Describe forest production systems
of smallholders in Peruvian Amazon
• Review reform efforts to include
smallholder systems
• Examine constraints and
opportunities for smallholder forest
landscape restoration

Forest Landscape
Restoration Context
Peru’s COP 20 commitments
• 2020 Restoration targets
- 3.2 million ha restored
- 1.2 million from commercial
plantations
• 2021 Zero net-deforestation
Role of smallholders unclear
• Seen as major driver of
deforestation
• New forestry legislation attempts to
revitalize plantation sector, but focus
on large scale initiatives

Smallholder forest
producers
Adaptive systems
 Forest & trees integrated with
agriculture system
 Low input, low tech, low labor, low
risk
 Multi-use mosaics (temporal and
spatial)

chacra
chacra nueva
platanoplatano
yuca
agrofloresta
chacra
agrofloresta
purma vieja
chacra
platano
quintal
bosque
purma
Smallholder
Mosaic
Landscape

Adaptive systems
 Forest & trees integrated with
agriculture system
 Low input, low tech, low labor, low
risk
 Multi-use mosaics (temporal and
spatial)
Manage forest-farm interface
• Un-conventional (systems and
products)
• Under appreciated, unrecognized
Smallholder forest
producers

Managed regeneration
is part of agricultural
cycle (not segregated
forest for extraction)
Products typically not
monitored by forest
statistics

Example: Bolaina sector
Bolaina (Guazuma crinita): a
fast growing pioneer species
 Mostly sold in domestic
markets for low cost housing
 By volume one of principal
species harvested in Amazon
 Produced by farmers
managing small stands on
fallow land

Smallholder bolaina and
restoration
Most bolaina production is informal
 Previous forestry regulations treated
all timber the same
 Legal compliance difficult or
impossible
• Extremely costly for small stands
• Unconventional products (small diameter
logs, decentralized processing)
• Informal property rights
 Constraints from informality
• Insecurity (bribes, confiscation)
• Weak market position
• Little incentive to invest or expand

Engaging policy reform to address
smallholders
Peru’s 2011 forest law includes mechanisms
to encourage plantations and promote
restoration.
The ‘Plantation Registry’ allows landowners
to register their plantations with:
• Simplified format
• No requirements for management plan
and payment of a fee
The development of technical norms for the
law offered opportunity to address needs of
smallholder producers

Options for smallholder and
pushback from foresters
 CIFOR and ICRAF invited to review
draft regulations.
 Proposed classifying managed fallows
as ‘successional agroforestry
plantations’.
• Text included in 2014 ‘linamientos’
• Removed from 2015 reissue of ‘linamientos’
- Fear that loophole would allow illegal
harvest.
- Debate over forest classification
• 2016 SERFOR issued technical letter
permitting test in Ucayali for 5 pioneer
species.

Sources of resistance to
smallholder participation
• Smallholders are low priority
• Large scales are seen as expedient
• Technophilia and conventional bias
• Regulation bias
• Legal ambiguity
• Insecure property rights
• Overlapping forest definitions
• Rent seeking
• Deregulation = loss of revenue
• Tramitadores

Conclusions

Inclusion of smallholders
offers rapid contribution to
restoration goals
• Existing stands are ‘low
hanging fruit’
• Clear co-benefits (poverty
reduction, security)
Obstacles to inclusion are
largely institutional and
political
Research and monitoring
crucial to adapting policy
reform to address local need

Thank you
cifor.org
blog.cifor.org
ForestsTreesAgroforestry.org