A brighter future
As we fight to retain our forests, we can no longer afford to ignore the skills and experience of local people as effective forest managers.
Ensuring that they receive fairer rewards and benefits for providing these vital environmental services will also help lift millions of people out of the trap of rural poverty, promising a much brighter future for both people and forests.
RECOFTC welcomes new partnerships. We invite you to make use of our community forestry products and services, as well as our on-site learning and knowledge management facilities.
If you share similar goals, let’s work together to see a better world for people and forests!
To find out about our current donors and partners, please visit our website. Please contact us for more information.
RECOFTC – The Center for People and Forests P.O. Box 1111
Kasetsart Post Office Bangkok 10903 Thailand
Tel: (66-2) 940-5700 Fax: (66-2) 561-4880 Email: info@recoftc.org Website: www.recoftc.org
Get involved
By placing local people at the heart of forest decision-making and management, community forestry can make sustainable forest management a reality. In many countries it has successfully reversed forest destruction, and helped harness the full value of forest benefits.
During the past 30 years, governments in the Asia-Pacific have increased their commitment, in ways such as in passing vital legislation and investing in long-term institutional development. Today, tens of millions of local people already manage more than 25 million hectares of forestland in the Asia-Pacific region.
Community forestry is now widely acknowledged as a powerful solution for many of the challenges facing local people and wider society in: improving rural livelihoods, enhancing community governance and empowerment, transforming forest-related conflict, protecting and enhancing the environment, and helping to fight climate change.
There is an urgent need to scale up the impacts of community forestry in the region – for local, national and global good. Pro-poor forestry policies must be put in place to make this happen, with a focus on securing clear and strong rights, good governance, and fair benefits for all forest-dependent communities. Intensive, ongoing support is essential to ensure that these policies become an on-the-ground reality.
Never before have we been so aware of the value of our forests. Much more than just sources of timber and other forest products, they protect our watersheds, biodiversity, and the air that we breathe, and play a critical role in the global fight against climate change.
Forests are also vital for the 1.7 billion local and indigenous peoples who depend on them for their livelihoods, sometimes for their very survival. Yet decades of unsustainable forest management have left many forest-dependent people victims of growth-driven development strategies in which they’ve had little or no say.
The costs of mismanagement are becoming increasingly clear. In the Asia-Pacific region alone, nearly four million hectares of natural forest – an area roughly the size of Switzerland – are still lost each year. What little remains is often so severely degraded that it has little potential to generate lasting social, economic, and environmental benefits.
Yet history shows that failures in forest protection and biodiversity conservation most often occur where local people’s needs, aspirations, skills, and knowledge are ignored. Where traditional forest rights are threatened, forests stand to lose almost as much as the local people themselves.
Local people are not the only key players in managing forests, but across the Asia-Pacific, their sheer numbers and continuing forest dependence make them one of the most important. Quite simply, local people hold the key to sustainable forest management in this region.
Healthy forests: Local people hold the key
Why community forestry?
Community forestry and poverty reduction
In Nepal, a study in seven districts showed that over a ten-year period, for every $US50 invested in community forestry, one person was lifted out of poverty.
Since the 1990s, the area of forestry under community or household management in our region has grown from a negligible amount to around a quarter of the region’s forests. While not all this growth can be directly attributed to RECOFTC, the organization is widely recognized as being a strong catalyst for making it happen.
During the past two decades, RECOFTC has trained over 10,000 people from more than 20 countries in devolved forest management: from national policy makers, researchers and practitioners, right through to local forest users. Training and other learning events are central to all RECOFTC’s work and are complemented by on-the-ground projects, critical issue analysis, and strategic communication.
RECOFTC’s revitalized mission is now a mission of ‘more’; more communities more
actively engaged in managing more Asia-Pacific forests.
RECOFTC is guided by the principles of clear and strong rights, good governance,
and fair benefits for millions of forest-dependent people.
Clear and strong rights are essential if local people, especially the poorest and most vulnerable, are to actively engage in and benefit from forest management. RECOFTC works on strengthening local people’s rights to access, use, and own forests through tenure, policy, and market reforms.
Good governance is essential for the development and implementation of ‘community friendly’ national forest policies, programs, and regulatory frameworks. RECOFTC promotes the rule of law, transparency, accountability, and the meaningful participation of people in local decision-making processes. Local people must be empowered to make their own choices and have their voices heard.
A fair share of beneits for local people from forestry is essential to help reduce poverty and motivate active participation in forest governance and management. RECOFTC aims to increase and diversify sustainable income generation opportunities from forest management, and to ensure that benefits are shared equitably.
RECOFTC – The Center for People and Forests
Our vision
“RECOFTC has always been with us in the course of forest-based community development and community-based forest development.”
Dr. Nguyen Ba Ngai, Deputy Director General of Vietnam Directorate of Forestry RECOFTC – The Center for People and Forests, is an international
RECOFTC is headquartered in Bangkok, Thailand, and works throughout the Asia-Pacific.
In 2010, RECOFTC established country program offices in Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam. This recognizes the commitment these four countries have made to scale up community forestry. RECOFTC’s enhanced on-the-ground presence will help ensure this commitment is turned into tangible results.
In other countries in the region, RECOFTC has well-established partnerships, particularly in China, India, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, and the Philippines. They are a source of vital lessons that RECOFTC shares widely both within the region and beyond.
RECOFTC’s increased country focus, cutting-edge thematic programs, and close support of grassroots networks are rapidly affirming the organization’s niche as the community forestry knowledge hub for the Asia-Pacific region.
Where we work
RECOFTC has four thematic programs.
Expanding community forestry: Through our frontline country programs, RECOFTC works to secure rights for forest-dependent communities to manage their forests. RECOFTC-supported sites – maintained in close partnership with communities, NGOs, and all levels of government – demonstrate good practices and develop key lessons, which are shared nationally and internationally to accelerate the scaling up of community forestry and its impacts.
People, forests, and climate change: In the Asia-Pacific, local people hold the key to forests fulfilling their potential for climate mitigation and adaptation. Community forestry is also a key means of strengthening local livelihoods, and increasing communities’ resilience to the impacts of climate change. We advocate for pro-poor climate change strategies and policies, working to ensure that all forestry stakeholders, especially those at the grassroots level, are prepared to meet the social, economic and financial challenges that lie ahead.
Transforming forest conlict:Marginalized communities, powerful commercial plantation developers, corruption, unclear land tenure laws – stories of local people involved in conflicts over forest resources regularly fill the pages of the region’s newspapers, vividly exposing the scale of damaging impacts. By better understanding conflict dynamics, this program promotes lasting solutions at both the policy and community levels, helping to mitigate and prevent the destructive impacts of conflict.
Securing local livelihoods: RECOFTC’s innovative livelihoods program seeks to realize the full potential of forest-related resources. By analyzing the opportunities and constraints of local people’s access to market-based forest activities this program proposes solutions that are both pro-poor and socially just. lt helps ensure that local people have the skills and knowledge to engage meaningfully in emerging opportunities, such as Payments for Ecosystem Services, carbon markets, certification schemes, and non-timber enterprises.
Our focus
• Country program ofices
What we can do for you
Impacts
RECOFTC provides innovative solutions for people and forests. We deliver:
• Analysis and action research
• Project design, development, and management • Expert consultancy and evaluation
• Open subscription and custom-designed training programs • Study tours to key demonstration sites in the region
• Support of grassroots networks to increase voice, inluence, and agency
• An online knowledge hub, social networking, and a monthly e-newsletter
• High quality publications and interactive learning tools • Training and meeting facilities
• A Bangkok-based Community Forestry Resource Center
RECOFTC’s publications, including its monthly electronic roundup of the latest regional community forestry news, events, and analyses are freely available from the RECOFTC website, www.recoftc.org. Open to all, the Community Forestry Resource Center in Bangkok houses more than 6,500 publications and other digital resources. Come and visit us when you are in Bangkok!
Wherever possible, RECOFTC delivers capacity building activities and publications in both English and regional languages.
RECOFTC’s work in advocacy and strategic communications influences community forestry at many levels. Here are a few recent highlights.
Increasing access in Cambodia: Working closely with the Forestry Administration, local governments, communities, and NGOs, RECOFTC has helped 60,000 families from 450 forest dependent villages gain rights to sustainably manage nearly 200,000 hectares of forest land. We directly support more than half of the country’s 400 community forestry sites, and a half of those with legal agreements, through training, facilitating partnerships, and more.
Paving the way in Indonesia: RECOFTC has supported communities in South Sulawesi, where we helped to establish one of the first officially recognized Village Forests in the country. This inaugural site in the Bantaeng district has the potential to open the door to the expansion of community forestry across the country.
Improving forest management in Thailand: So far, more than 32 communities and the National Community Forestry Network have gained the necessary skills, knowledge, and motivation to manage their forests through RECOFTC’s training programs. Supported by a stronger government mandate and capacity building activities, 19 sub-district administrative organizations have been able to improve community-based natural resource management policies and increase support to their local communities.
“RECOFTC is acting as a bridge between scientists and local people, and CIFOR is delighted to see its research used so creatively in the field.”
