The development of people-oriented sustainable forest management is a key element of the work of the United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF). Currently the UNFF is developing a “Non-legally Binding Instrument on all Types of Forests” (NLBI) which could have implications for the development of international and national laws and regulations with important ramifications for forest-dependent communities (FDCs) and Indigenous Peoples (IPs).
International human rights law, mediated as it is through national laws and regulations, poses important challenges when applied to practical situations rather than the rhetorical flourishes of treaty signatures and ratification. There is a tension in international law between human rights law, trade law, and the principle of state sovereignty over natural resources. For FDCs, practical livelihood decisions are based on issues of effective information, participation, clear land tenure, nondiscrimination, good forest governance and, if all else fails, access to justice. A failure in these basic human rights can prejudice these individuals’ and communities’ very survival, thus breaching a range of civil, political, economic, and social rights articulated in a number of UN treaties, regional conventions, and the International Labour Organization.
This paper will present a summary of important substantive and procedural human rights that are of direct relevance to the management of forests and trade in forest products at the international, regional, and national levels. It will review whether these international human rights norms, which are often mediated through effective land tenure and property rights, have been incorporated into the proposed NLBI. People-oriented sustainable forest management would, it will be argued, be one that fosters clear land rights for FDCs and IPs. This approach would enable them to fulfil their subsistence rights, and through the development and implementation of effective national legal and policy frameworks, ensure that the state protects those rights by including mechanisms to ensure that FDCs and IPs are not deprived of their rights by the state and nonstate actors.
