Topic 5.2: Forest Governance and Rights

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Content

Topic Introduction

As with forest ecosystem services, forest governance is such an important area that it has been given its own course within this program. The objective here is to provide a brief overview of some of the major issues facing forest governance, but to gain a full understanding, you should complete the course on “International dialogue on forestry issues”.

The areas covered in this topic reflect Criterion 7 of the Montreal Process, and how it is interpreted in Australia. This criterion, the "Legal, institutional and economic framework for forest conservation and sustainable management", covers the basic conditions necessary to practice sustainable forest management, and also cover some institutional aspects such as the capability to monitor and report progress towards sustainability and capacity to conduct research to support continuous improvement of forestry practices. 

As in the first topic in this module, we will use Australia as a case study. The extent to which this criterion is assessed varies markedly between jurisdictions: in Canada’s national set of criteria and indicators, the issue is not addressed, and there are only six criteria, equating approximately to the first six Montreal Process criteria. An interesting question for the Canadian Council of Forest Ministers would be why they thought this criterion was unnecessary. Some of the indicators associated with this criterion could be considered politically embarrassing, but the same goes for many of the other indicators used in the Montreal Process. As you will see, Australia's capacity to conduct and apply research and development has declined precipitously, and their five-yearly reports have been making this very clear. Such transparency is important, as it enables decision makers to see exactly what is happening, enabling decisions to be based on evidence.

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