Publications

To Johannesburg and Beyond

Strategic Options to Advance the Conservation of Natural Forests

As global concern for continuing deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries grows in intensity, there is also disenchantment – even weariness – with global agreements and international initiatives to address these issues. While they are broadly appreciated for raising awareness – the energy and effort that go into global institutions has not been matched […]

Strengthening Forest Management in Indonesia through Land Tenure Reform

Issues and Framework for Action

In Indonesia, as in many developing countries, the government is struggling to improve the management of their dwindling forest resources. Despite government efforts, Indonesia still has large tracts of primary and secondary forest ecosystems that are under intense threat from both industry and local people.

At the Supply Edge

Thailand's Forest Policies, Plantation Sector, and Commodity Export Links with China

This study on Thailand’s forestry sector was commissioned by CIFOR and Forest Trends as part of a wider effort to address an information gap regarding Asia’s forestry and plantation forestry industries as well as regarding the emerging trade linkages between East and Southeast Asia. This report on Thailand’s forest sector is one of three studies […]

Navigating the Border

An Analysis of the China-Myanmar Timber Trade

In addition to socio-economic pressures, the combination of insufficient regulation in China and political instability in northern Myanmar has exacted a high ecological price. The uncertain regulatory and contractual environment has oriented the border logging industry toward short-term harvesting and profits, rather than investments in longer-term timber production. Degradation in Myanmar’s border forests will have […]

Strategies for Strengthening Community Property Rights Over Forests

Lessons and Opportunities for Practitioners

Tenure security has recently become a central concern of poverty, forest conservation and human rights advocates alike. Poverty experts now recognize that the world’s poor are disproportionately located in rural areas and strongly dependent upon forest resources for their survival. Recent studies indicate that about 80 percent of the extreme poor, those living on less […]

Developing Markets for the Ecosystem Services of Forests

As human demands increase and natural resources become scarcer, those who bear the costs of degradation – such as downstream water utilities, local governments, private insurers and society as a whole – are exploring opportunities to reduce costs by financing forest conservation. At the same time, some forest owners are seeking compensation for the costs […]

Forest Product Exports from the Russian Far East and Eastern Siberia to China

Status and Trends

Since 2001, China has been a top destination of Russian forest product exports to the Asia-Pacific region. The foreign economic and trade liberalization that began in Russia in the mid-1990s – combined with the high demand for timber imports into China due to the Chinese domestic logging ban starting in 1998 – has stimulated strong […]

Central Plans and Global Exports

Tracking Vietnam's Forestry Commodity Chains and Export Links to China

After suffering forest cover declines of 185,000 ha per year from 1976 until 1990, Vietnam is attempting to stabilize deforestation trends, restructure the forest industry and the land tenure system, and move aggressively into fast-growing plantations. Reforestation of degraded forest land, natural regeneration of logged forest areas and more effective forest protection are key components […]

Making Environmental Markets Work

Lessons from Early Experience with Sulphur, Carbon, Wetlands, and Other Related Markets

Ever since the passage of the 1990 amendments to the US Clean Air act and the creation of a market in sulfur dioxide (SO2), it has become clear that market mechanisms can be effectively used to achieve environmental policies. But markets are neither infallible nor automatic. They have blind spots and they need to be […]

Who Owns the World’s Forests? Forest Tenure and Public Forests in Transition

Since the late 1980s, some governments of major forested countries have begun to reconsider and reform forest ownership policies. These transitions are driven by three primary considerations. First, governments are increasingly aware that official forest tenure systems in many countries discriminate against the rights and claims of indigenous people and other local communities. Although the […]