ASEAN Guiding Principles for Effective Social Forestry Legal Frameworks

The ASEAN Working Group on Social Forestry, with support from RECOFTC and ClientEarth, has developed guiding principles for effective social forestry legal frameworks to help strengthen national social forestry laws, policies/rules and regulations and their implementation in ASEAN Member States.

The guiding principles can serve as a baseline to assess their social forestry models against national strategies and action plans. They can help strengthen legal frameworks on various aspects of social forestry, such as sustainable forest governance, improved community livelihoods or providing better access to local communities, Indigenous Peoples and ethnic minorities to social forestry at the national level.

The guiding principles are intended for ASEAN policy-makers and government authorities involved in developing and implementing social forestry legal frameworks, those engaged with local communities, Indigenous Peoples and ethnic minorities in establishing social forestry areas, and those supporting them to implement and monitor social forestry activities. This includes local, national and international NGOs as well as donors, academic institutions and others supporting the development and implementation of social forestry legal frameworks and processes. Civil society and community-based organizations may also refer to the principles for advocacy purposes.

Watch the recording of the launch event: