Our decreasing forest landscapes are under huge pressure to deliver local and global needs, from a village’s food and firewood to mitigating climate change. With demand unlikely to fall, the key issue is how we extract what we need. Governments are faced with two contrasting business models: the profit-maximising, often run by distant owners; or locally controlled forestry (LCF), run democratically to sustainably meet various local needs without necessarily maximising profit. Governments are increasingly granting local resource rights to meet development targets and protect forest landscapes to deliver benefits into the future. A compendium of 19 case studies illustrates the viability of this approach and reveals the structures enabling LCF businesses to survive and compete. These findings can now guide the scaling-up of democratic business models through enabling investments by programmes such as the Forest Farm Facility (FFF) and its knowledge network partners in the Forest Connect alliance.
Although forest covers 40 per cent of Nepal, the forestry sector’s potential to generate huge employment opportunities is largely untapped. Private sector involvement and investment could create 1.38 million work days a year.
The Testing REDD+ in the Beira Landscape Corridor of Mozambique initiative closed in December.
The present report on inclusive green growth in Ghana provides an account of the overall policy framework and mechanisms to promote inclusive green growth (IGG) in the country. It documents good practices, success stories and lessons learned in selected sectors of the country’s economy.