Poverty Reduction and Forests: Tenure, Market, and Policy Reforms

RECOFTC and RRI co-organized the International Conference on Poverty Reduction and Forests: Tenure, Market, and Policy Reforms, which was held 3-7 September 2007 in Bangkok.

A great deal of discussion in recent years has focused on the role of conservation, and more specifically, sustainable forest management, in contributing to poverty reduction. A number of conferences and workshops have picked up on this theme including the International Conference on Poverty Reduction and Forests: Tenure, Market and Policy Reforms. The importance of policies that support rights to forest resources and reforms to markets has been recognized as essential to enabling more effective contributions from forests to poverty reduction. Recognition of the need for such policy reforms led to the establishment of the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), a coalition of organizations working together to encourage greater global action on forest policy and market reforms, with the aim of increasing household and community ownership, control, and benefits from forests. RECOFTC and other RRI partners proposed this Conference because we recognize the need for exploring real experiences in connecting forest policy reforms and poverty reduction, both by giving positive examples and examining the constraints. The Conference provided a valuable opportunity to share the experiences from practitioners throughout the world, with cases from Asia and the Pacific, Africa, and Latin America. These proceedings contain selected papers from the Conference and convey much of the richness of the discussions in Bangkok. On behalf of RECOFTC and the RRI partners, we would like to congratulate the authors on their thoughtful contributions. We are sure that these proceedings will contribute to further discussion, policy reform, and other necessary action to ensure sustainable forest management reaches its potential to contribute to poverty reduction.