Improving Forest Governance

Improving Forest Governance is a 4-week, UK-based residential course that covers a variety of forest governance issues. The course is conducted in English, French and Spanish with simultaneous interpretation and is taught by experienced tutors from the Centre for International Development and Training, as well as leading international experts and practitioners on forest governance, climate change, REDD+ and multi-stakeholder processes from the UK and abroad. Participants are immersed in training and fields trips and benefit from high quality field trips, including visiting a Chatham House Illegal Logging update meeting.

As the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) draw to a close and a new set of global objectives take form in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the attention given to protecting and sustainably managing forests and landscapes is now greater than ever. The SDGs present a broader set of targets cutting across thematic areas, and the objectives of good forest and landscape governance make it relevant to the majority of the 17 goals.

Large scale agriculture and commercial logging represent the most important drivers of forest loss and degradation worldwide. Timber producing and processing countries also identify weak forest governance and institutions, lack of cross sectoral coordination and illegality due to weak enforcement as important underlying drivers of poor governance. Poverty and insecure tenure and rights undermine attempts to achieve sustainable landscape management and investment in forest related enterprises that could benefit forest dependent peoples. This perpetuates a cycle of corruption, loss of revenue, environmental degradation, deforestation (leading to the release of greenhouse gas emissions) and the endangerment of forest-dependent populations. The benefits that forests can provide to people and the environment are squandered for the sake of short-term, unsustainable, and poorly distributed economic gains.

To counter this, substantial international policy interventions in the form of the Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Action Plan and Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) have been introduced. These frameworks aim to reform the forest and landscape management sectors, and generate a high level of political will, understanding and ownership of deliberative processes. As a number of countries move beyond the Voluntary Partnership Agreement negotiation phases of the FLEGT Action Plan, and pass the readiness phase of REDD+, the challenge increasingly shifts towards implementation. Developing the capabilities of a critical mass of key frontline staff from governments, private sector, media, civil society, indigenous people’s organisations and academia , is critical in order to improve the absorptive capacity and facilitate the translation of these international policy initiatives to achieve desired performance outcomes on the ground i.e. at national and subnational levels.