Delivering Impacts for People and Forests in Asia: Annual report October 2013-September 2014

Building on a very successful previous strategic phase, RECOFTC’s new Strategic Plan (2013-2018) has completed its first year with many exciting outcomes. RECOFTC's Annual Report 2013-2014 highlights progress in our four thematic areas: Securing Community Forestry; Enhancing Livelihoods and Markets; People, Forests and Climate Change; and Transforming Forest Conflicts. This year, progress on the ground in Cambodia is one of our many highlight outcomes – a community forestry network supported by RECOFTC has successfully transformed several forest land conflicts; meanwhile, a pilot community enterprise on sustainable bamboo shows much promise for scaling up. In Myanmar, fundamental groundwork has been laid for effective sustainable management of forests, through the establishment of community forestry government units that are recognizing the importance of non-stake stakeholders’ participation in forest development. In Lao PDR, the ASEAN-Swiss Partnership on Social Forestry and Climate Change (ASFCC) helped form a village forestry working group, which aims to serves as an advisory body to the government of Lao PDR.

Regionally, RECOFTC’s Grassroots REDD+ project has not only cascaded climate change awareness down to local communities, but has also cascaded communities’ concerns up to policy dialogues at the national level. Meanwhile, our Grassroots Equity and Enhanced Networks in the Mekong (GREEN Mekong) program has promoted equity by developing capacities of sub-national government officials and local CSOs. We hope you enjoy reading about the very successful first year of our new Strategic Plan in this report.