This is the sixth update from the Forest Governance Learning Group (FGLG), an informal alliance of in-country groups and international partners currently active in eight African and three Asian countries. FGLG aims to connect those marginalised from forest governance to those controlling it, to help both do things better. Since 2003 the organisation has been carrying out focused studies, developing tactics and tools, holding learning events, and working as a group to effect change. This update covers activities over the last year, impacts to date, the state of play in participating countries, and the path ahead. Over the past year FGLG has generated:
- Increasingly effective impact, such as: President in Uganda forced to back down from give-away of forest reserves to agribusiness; high-level action on illegal logging and Chinese investment in Mozambique; rights and governance reform installed back on the agenda in Ghana by shaping the Voluntary Partnership Agreement on legal timber with the EC; and governance frameworks more astutely enabling community forestry in Vietnam
- 10 country teams continue to be active in Niger, Ghana, Cameroon, Uganda, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Indonesia, India and Vietnam – five of them leveraging additional support from other sources to further extend their action – and the independent emergence of a new country team in Burkina Faso.
- A major learning event in India on making small forest enterprises work better for social justice in forestry, involving participants from all the country teams and other international players, with lessons learned, specific tactics used and impacts achieved by the country teams recorded
- Over 50 new policy research tools, press, TV and radio advocacy outputs
- International collaboration to exchange learning and install findings – with 21 international organisations and through participation in nine international forums
- Good prospects for extending effective approaches through emerging international initiatives notably those exploring forest-based climate strategies and a new global forest partnership
Over the coming year FGLG will concentrate on:
- Deepening the effectiveness of the 11 country teams - sharpening focus as much as possible, through targeted guidance, tools, learning events and advocacy, to achieve optimum impact
- Cooperation internationally to install findings and develop initiatives that build on successes – notably in exploration of forest based climate strategies and a new global forest partnership
- Clearly identifying the routes by which necessary follow-up action in-country and internationally can be pursued
- Recording effective lessons learned, impacts achieved and tactics found effective
- An international learning event on the issues of local forestry control for social justice
- Preparing a short film on the theme of forest governance
- Commissioning an independent evaluation of this FGLG initiative.
The website for the FGLG, where news, reports and work plans for the FGLG country teams can be found, is: http://www.iied.org/forestry/research/projects/forest.html
