This document outlines 5 key challenges for sustainable forest governance: 1) Using forests to mitigate climate change through carbon storage and sustainable management. 2) Linking local forest management to global issues through improved knowledge sharing. 3) Implementing REDD+ and resolving conflicts over forest tenure rights. 4) Promoting gender equity in forest governance and management. 5) Engaging various forest user groups in governance arrangements to accommodate multiple forest uses.

1. Five Key Challenges for
Sustainable Forest Governance
Han van Dijk
Wageningen University
CIAT Meeting, World Forest Day
March 21, 2013

2. Five key challenges to promote
sustainable management of forests
 Climate change mitigation through forests
 Knowledge base
 REDD+ and forest tenure reform
 Gender equity
 Multiple uses of forest

3. 1. Mitigation of climate change through
forests and trees
• Importance of forests for carbon storage
Renewable resource
Managed in a sustainable way
• Wood versus fossil fuels
• How to build more productive forests in terms of
production and carbon storage?
• Local actors and global outcomes

4. Mangrove area in Mekong Delta, Vietnam

5. Shrimp cultivation in a mangrove forest or mangroves
in a shrimp pond … Vietnam

6. 2. Knowledge base
• How to link the outcomes of local actions to
these global problems
• Remote sensing technologies that can be
downscaled
• And local case-studies that can be up-scaled
• Enormous methodological challenges

7. 3. REDD+ and forest tenure reform
• Who is going to benefit?
• Who can claim rights?
• Two opposite tendencies: recentralization and
devolution of rights
• Fundamental conflicts between forest-dependent
populations and the ‘state’
• If the ‘state’ is not present

8. Forest land in Rajasthan, India

9. Farmland in Uganda: Mount Elgon

10. 4. Gender equity
• Forestry is a sector dominated by males
• A lot of attention has been given over the
years to gender issues
• Yet:
– Crucial issues in forest tenure reform: may lead to
marginalization
– NTFPs: how to make it an integral part of
sustainable forest management

11. Tribal women in India

12. Tubu pastoralists in Central Chad in a forest area

13. 5. Multiple uses of forest
• Multiple use is a reality all over the globe
• It is often about marginal groups (women,
pastoralists, hunters-gatherers)
• Better engage than antagonize
• Needs to be introduced in governance
arrangements for forests