Land, Forest and People: Facing the Challenges in South-East Asia - Rights and Resources Initiative

This is a regional overview of the main legal and regulatory questions concerning ownership or access to and management of land-based natural resources. Using the Listening Learning and Sharing (LLS) method, RECOFTC, the Southeast Asia office of the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) and other RRI partners from the Asia region produced a regional overview of the main legal and regulatory questions concerning ownership or access to and management of land-based natural resources.

There is general consensus among the participants in the LLS process that significant progress over the last 20 years has been made in many countries in the development of legal frameworks that empower forest dependent people to gain greater resource security and play a larger role in national forest development and protection. Yet there is equal consensus that the harsh reality on the ground is that the implementation and even knowledge of these gains by local people remains deeply inadequate. This report provides a country-based overview of the key issues, especially land tenure, forest policy and land-based natural resource management challenges, to recognizing the rights of the peoples whose lifeways and livelihoods depended on forests.