Levelling the Playing Field: fair partnership for local development to improve the forest sustainability in Southeast Asia

The project developed approaches and tools to promote good governance by facilitating local stakeholders to take collective decisions and to negotiate with other actors towards fair agreement about renewable resources management of tropical forests or forest lands. It involved capacity building, visioning, institutional strengthening and small-scale business development for local community.

The capacity of local actors to negotiate and make collective decision is important in issues such as REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation). REDD is a global demand that will be faced by local actors soon. If local actors don’t have capacity to negotiate and REDD is not sensitive to the demand of local actors, then local actors will be further marginalized and REDD will go nowhere. LPF policy brief discusses it further.

Centre de coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (CIRAD) and Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) implemented the project in partnership with Gadjah Mada University (Indonesia), University of the Philippines Los Baños and University Putra Malaysia.

This project has been financed with the European Community assistance.

LPF facilitated local community, the state-owned forestry company (Perum Perhutani) and Accor Hotel Group to plant 74,120 sengon and jatropha trees on 43.2 ha in Pemalang, Central Java. Read more the program and the press release.