Today Amanda Bradley from development NGO Pact uses the example of the Oddar Meanchey province in Cambodia to explain the role communities play in climate mitigation.

“When trees are lost it makes the earth warmer and there are more disasters like big storms, so that creates problems for everyone”, explains Din Heng, the elected Community Forestry leader for the remote Dung Beng village in Cambodia.

For years, he and other community members have...

Thousands of hectares of virgin forests have been destroyed in the mountainous areas of the central region and Central Highlands to give place for cassava fields.

Cassava starch processing plants have been set up in many places since investors believe that the plants can bring fat profit. The mushroomed plants have prompted local residents to destroy the forests to have the land for growing cassava to provide to the starch processing plants. As a result, thousands of hectares of...

The Forestry Ministry released on Thursday its latest “Indicative Moratorium Map” of 65,282,006 hectares of natural forests and peatland — where no clearing activities can take place — as guidelines for local administrations when issuing forestry licenses.

Unlike the controversial first revision in November, the latest revision showed a net loss of only 92,245 hectares in the total area of protected forest and peatland. 

The changes include a loss of...

Objective of this decree is to adopt the minutes of the National Forest Conference on Forest management, Forest Inspection and Forest business held during 25th-26th January, 2012 in Vientiane, Lao PDR. Minutes of the conference include directing and improving forest management, forest Inspection and forest business measure in effectively that aims to focus on how to accomplish to increase forest cover stated in the Forest strategy 2020.

Please...

Over the past century, the management of forest resources in Uganda has vacillated from a centralised to a decentralised approach. With the Forest Act in 1993, the country began a new round of governance reforms that devolved ownership and management of central forest reserves to local governments. Four years later, the Local Government Act transferred management functions over forest reserves to the districts and sub-counties. By 2000, however, the deforestation rate – already the highest...

Value chains for forest products provide full and part-time work for women in many developing countries. Jobs are poorly paid but offer flexible working arrangements. Women have a low profile in these value chains because their input is either informal or is perceived to have little worth. The invisibility of women in forest product value chains means that policy makers often overlook women’s needs. Policy and practice rarely directly support women and may, in some cases, even criminalise...

The CEP and CAW are continuing their discussions as they attempt to merge unions into one new national union.

The Proposal Committee, made up of 8 representatives from each union, met last week in Toronto and reached a consensus on on a plan that establishes a “robust regional presence” and outlines how the new union could be run.

The Proposal Committee has brought forward a number of important ideas on the set up of the new union that would...

Various tropical countries have demonstrated that the effective decentralization of forest management rights and responsibilities, when combined with long-term support of local communities, can lead to better management of forest resources. REDD+ can foster decentralization of forest management rights and responsibilities. (REDD+ refers to all activities covered by the mechanism for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, plus the conservation of forest carbon stocks,...

Progress at the Bonn UNFCCC Climate Conference has been frustratingly slow. One of the key goals for the conference was to lay the foundations for scaling up the finance needed for REDD+, and to secure short term additional finance commitments to support this transition in advance of COP18 in Doha.

However, as the conference draws to a close, Parties are still struggling to agree on whether sources of private finance (e.g. market based approaches) can, or should, be used...