As UN climate negotiators met in Bangkok last month, the organisation World Growth launched a new campaign to highlight the economic benefits of oil palm. The pro-market nongovernmental organisation issued a series of press releases extolling the benefits of sustainable oil palm development, calling it a ‘path out of poverty’ for developing nations and poor people. Furthermore it decried ‘political intervention by environmental groups’ who sought to challenge investment in oil palm, calling their actions ‘morally indefensible’.  more

Dr Ostrom has crossed paths with many CIFOR scientists and collaborated with us over the years to better analyse decentralisation, property rights and how all of us who depend on forests can better govern them. ‘What is missing from the policy analyst’s toolkit … is an adequately specified theory of collective action whereby a group of principals can organise themselves voluntarily to retain the residuals of their own efforts’, wrote Dr Ostrom in Governing the Commons (1990). She published an occasional paper with CIFOR, Self governance and forest resources, in 1999, which looked at effective decentralised forest governance.  more

It includes Mount Everest, known locally as Sagarmatha, the world’s highest mountain. Indigenous Sherpa communities have long exploited Khumbu grasslands and forests for subsistence farming and herding. In 1976, however, the central government declared the area around Mount Everest a national park. Sherpa objections were ignored. No community leaders were consulted. The national park curtailed the rights of local people to use its resources as they wished. But it was successful in conserving the local forest. Firewood collection was reduced by 75 percent over a 15-year period.  more

The government of Cameroon has approved a national management plan for Prunus africana, a threatened, internationally protected medicinal tree. Its bark is used in drugs that treat prostate disorders, which afflict many men over the age of 50. ‘Prunus africana is an important export product for Cameroon,’ said Verina Ingram, a CIFOR scientist based in Yaoundé. ‘By adopting this plan, the government has taken an important first step towards bringing back international trade in the bark.’  more

A range of useful products are provided by sustainably managed forests. In Bolivia’s northern Amazon, for instance, industrial logging concessionaires selectively harvest timber while local people collect Brazil nuts on the same terrain. The nuts are a prime source of income for many rural people. The Brazil nut trees are often the stoutest in the forest: They can reach two metres in diameter and 40 metres in height. These giants can drop vast quantities of nuts. At least 45,000 tonnes of nuts are collected each year from the Amazon basin during the brief 3-month harvest.  more

For the 100 or so residents of the Vietnamese village of Khe Tran, the forest was central to their livelihoods. Under the canopy they practiced shifting cultivation, hunted small game, cut timber and grazed livestock. They also collected non-timber forest products (NTFPs) for food and handicrafts. These NTFPs sometimes included the rusty metal leftovers from the war, such as shrapnel and the occasional unexploded bomb or landmine.  more