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A heated debate has been going on for roughly three decades about who should hold stewardship over Asia's tropical forests. This essay reviews how the debate evolved. Communal forestry advocates like NGOs point out that local groups living in remote corners of countries like Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, and India have been managing forests for centuries. They provide examples of successful precolonial communal management practices, which eventually gave way to commercial interests in the late nineteenth century. Postcolonial governments, backed by international organizations, continued to believe in modernist and exploitative forestry practices until the development discourse began to question the impact of economic growth on natural resources and the environment. By the 1980s, the idea emerged of putting local communities back in charge of tropical forests, both for their own livelihoods and the forests' health. By the 1990s, community forestry coincided with the trend toward decentralization. Unfortunately, the result has often been more exploitation as newly responsible district authorities and village elites seek revenue through timber concessions and oil palm plantations. Despite positive examples—almost 3 million ha under community control in the Philippines—the larger picture is of central authorities reluctant to give up lucrative sources of income. When they do grant local responsibility, it is often over degraded or low quality forests, a burden rather than an asset to local communities. Future agendas must recognize that forests are now of value to a growing number of stakeholders. Local communities may therefore play important roles in restoring forests—if they are compensated—but the complexity of rights and interests suggests that the future lies in co-management. The struggle will shift from who should have control, to how communal stewardship can become feasible and attractive to communities, while meeting the demands of other constituencies.

Forest devolution is meant to provide communities with greater decision-making power over the use and future of tropical forests. However, devolution policies have not always had the intended effect; in some cases they have caused or furthered the disenfranchisement of the poor, the creation of open access conditions, resource conflict and forest degradation. These problems are likely to arise when forest communities are at a disadvantage when interacting with other local players and are unprepared for their new opportunities and responsibilities due to their physical remoteness, cultural isolation, low literacy rates or lack of experience in formal planning and negotiation. This paper discusses how a participatory method to facilitate thinking about the future—called future scenarios—can help change the way forest communities and local governments interact. The paper reviews a growing body of literature on future scenarios and shares first-hand experiences with future scenarios in forest communities in the northern Bolivia Amazon and the central provinces of Vietnam. It finds that under the right conditions, the use of future scenarios allows forest communities to collaborate more effectively with local government, better assume responsibilities when given control over forests under devolution schemes and self-organize to benefit from the opportunities that communal control over forests offer. Future scenarios help communities think about dependency, vulnerabilities and ways to prepare for the future; the methods develop organizational capacity and encourage internal democratic processes and planning. Community leaders become more vocal and assertive in meetings with local government, and marginalized groups within communities, such as women or the poorest segments, make their voices heard. However, the methods are less effective when facilitation skills are not available or where government or other interests are threatened by local constituents, Future scenarios are not without their pitfalls and do not work in all situations, but given the appropriate context they can create "break-through moments" that improve collaboration between communities and local officials.

Forest exploitation has been the main economic driver in the northern Bolivian Amazon. The country enacted changes in legislation and policies affecting natural resource governance. These changes increase the control of the forestry sector by rural communities. Conflicts characterize these changes. The contestation is about forests and forest lands, and actors pursue increased control by assuring property rights. The paper shows that economic and political elites try to obtain control over forests trying to adjust to the legislation that favors communal forestry. The state has an important role in assuring that the promotion of CFM achieves its intended goals but will need to increase facilitating investments to achieve the objectives of legislation and policies. To some extent, local communities are able to find alliances that allow them to mobilize necessary assistance and further their own objectives.

Swidden agriculture in tropical Asia is a diverse practice, making it difficult to draw general conclusions on trends of the development of swidden fallow secondary forests (SFSF). There is, however, sufficient evidence to recognise trends of a gradual intensification often through the incorporation of extensive tree crop production in SFSF, or a direct conversion to intensive tree cash cropping. Factors contributing to the changes include emerging markets for cash crops or timber and pulp wood production, government policies and development projects, fire, and population pressures. In Indonesia and mainland Southeast Asia, there is evidence of change towards tree and cash crop based production systems. In northeastern India, there is improved fallow management to sustain or enhance productivity of the shortened swidden agricultural cycle to support a subsistence economy. In Sri Lanka, biophysical factors inhibit the development of intensive agroforestry systems. Although swidden fallow land use has often been stigmatised as leading to forest decline and a related decline in the environmental functions that forests provide, there is sufficient evidence suggesting that conversion of a SFSF dominated landscape to more intensive tree cropping can have a negative environmental impact. Some general options for the evolution of swidden agriculture under different stages of a land use intensification model are considered.

This is a report on the trade of medicinal plants in Peru, the manufacturing industry that relies on these plants, the research on promotion of their use, and on the legal instruments that govern their use, trade and transformation. In Peru medicinal plants have been used for centuries. However, since 1994 the trade of these plants has boomed. Local collectors gather the fresh material which they trade in markets in the principal cities throughout Peru. They engage in medicinal plant trade as an activity complementary to their agricultural activities. The larger commercial collections have occurred since 1994 to meet the international demand for Uncaria tomentosa and U. guianensis Collection is still the dominant form of procurement of medicinal plants in Peru. It is the initial step of a production chain of activities, including pharmaceutical companies that prepare a number of derivatives traded as food additives nationally and to some extent internationally. These companies are mostly located in Lima and they buy their raw material from intermediaries with whom they have mostly informal agreements. In some cases these agreements are with members of indigenous villages. Such companies have inadequate market information systems that could improve their planning. The USA is the largest buyer of medicinal plants from Peru. These plants are, after processing, sold to other destinations. Peru has so far had little access to international markets because of limited dominance of the required technology and high processing costs. The added value of the export of medicinal plants is therefore quite low. Control of this forest resource is insufficient. It is extracted from non-managed forests from areas of unknown extension. Current legislation does not guarantee the sustainable extraction. The state charges fees when extraction occurs, but has little opportunity to control actual levels and it does not engage in any kind of on the ground control, management, or restoration of natural populations. There is insufficient knowledge for the production of medicines that can meet strict standards imposed by law. Consequently many companies are considering abandoning the manufacture of medicinal plant derivatives. There is a need for adequate research, legal instruments and policy to enable greater benefits to the Peruvian economy and people from this forest resource.

A simplistic explanation of why tropical forests degrade or disappear all together is, because loggers take out too many trees, companies convert forest for plantations, and small farmers slash forest to make agricultural fields. Political ecology is a scientific inter-discipline that tries to identify the political dimension of forest resource appropriation, contestation over forest benefits, and the role of power and discourse in the processes of unsustainable use and resulting forest degradation. This chapter summarizes ten chapters in the volume in which it is published. Several of chapters demonstrate that modern struggles over forests have their roots in colonial periods. Colonial powers used force, but also the argument that deforestation negatively affected the local climate, to expulse forest farmers from timber rich forest lands. Often control of the trade of lucrative forest products like rattan was decided by force. In these struggles, colonial powers used force against local Sultans, local Sultans used force against forest dwellers, and powerful forest dweller groups used force against weaker groups, concludes de Jong in his chapter. In the modern day tropical forest landscape in Asia the actors have change, but many of the processes of contestation remain the same. National rulers, like Suharto in Indonesia, gave away forest concessions to business cronies and the military for the sake of national economic development, but equally often to win political support. Under the recent decentralisation wave, control over forests is now increasingly contested at lower government levels, or even at the village level among forest dwellers with different ethnic affiliations, as Steve Rhee, demonstrates in his chapter. The political ecology of Asia's tropical forest also has a wider international dimension, and it is not only confined to underdeveloped countries. Fred Gale discusses in his chapter the history of the International Timber Organization. ITTO was set up to advance the cause of tropical timber producing countries, in the face of increasing international concern of the affect of unsustainable logging. In order to adequately represent its interests, ITTO developed and disseminated the sustainable logging discourse. John Knight in his chapter demonstrates that modern problems of a forest dependent population that suffers from the impact of contemporary economic development thinking also happen in Japan. Traditional Japanese timber producers grow high value trees that are used in ritually enshrined housing construction. The mass import of foreign, tropical timber not only negatively affects their livelihood. Japanese timber growers loose maintain their traditions and cultural identity that were closely linked to their forestry existence.

A simplistic explanation of why tropical forests degrade or disappear all together is, because loggers take out too many trees, companies convert forest for plantations, and small farmers slash forest to make agricultural fields. Political ecology is a scientific inter-discipline that tries to identify the political dimension of forest resource appropriation, contestation over forest benefits, and the role of power and discourse in the processes of unsustainable use and resulting forest degradation. This chapter summarizes ten chapters in the volume in which it is published. Several of chapters demonstrate that modern struggles over forests have their roots in colonial periods. Colonial powers used force, but also the argument that deforestation negatively affected the local climate, to expulse forest farmers from timber rich forest lands. Often control of the trade of lucrative forest products like rattan was decided by force. In these struggles, colonial powers used force against local Sultans, local Sultans used force against forest dwellers, and powerful forest dweller groups used force against weaker groups.

The last decade has seen profound overhauls of governance in many tropical countries. Countries have adopted new economic policies, very much influenced by free-market thinking, and a reduced regulatory role of the state and its subsidiaries. This coincided with widespread decentralization of government, including natural resource governance. Bolivia is mostly known for its Andean uplands, but substantial parts of its territory are under tropical forest. Especially the economy of the northern part of the country relies for a large part on income from forest products like Brazil nuts and timber. In the middle the 1990s Bolivia enacted a set of new national laws that are affecting forest products based industries. The principal laws are several decentralization laws, a new land reform law, and a new forestry law. The new regulatory framework has resulted in a progressively larger ownership of forest land and forests by rural communities. The impact that this has on people's livelihoods is still not entirely clear. In northern Bolivia, there is evidence that old unresolved conflicts over natural resources are erupting again. There is also evidence that some of the feudal dependency relations that existed until before the program of legal reform, are adapting themselves to the new legal framework, but not disappearing. In some places with more access to social infrastructure, a new type of forest tycoons replace the rubber and Brazil nut barons from earlier days. The local communities, new owners of forests, still have inadequate skills, knowledge and leverage that frees them from the patronage of these new rulers of the north. Political patronage by people seeking votes for public office dominates village level politics in many locations and hinders the true democratization of rural Bolivia. Despite these initial shortcomings the natural resource governance decentralization has recognizable positive outcomes. The expected positive impact, however, will need more time than initially expected.

Datos recientes muestran que la destrucción de los bosques primarios ha estado acompañada por la expansión de los bosques secundarios. Los estudios también muestran que los bosques secundarios son capaces de proporcionar algunos de los servicios económicos y ecológicos de los bosques primarios. Esto ha conducido a una nueva estrategia para aumentar el valor de los bosques secundarios para agricultores y ganaderos, con el objetivo de inducirlos a conservar estos bosques indefinidamente, o al menos a retardar su reconversión a otros usos. El objetivo de este artículo es de contribuir a una estrategia coherente para realizar el potencial de los bosques secundarios. Nuestra hipótesis es de que existen áreas importantes bajo bosque secundario en terrenos de pequeños y grandes productores y que a través de intervenciones tecnológicas y de política se puede incrementar significativamente el área y el valor económico y ecológico de bosques secundarios y, por consiguiente, el periodo por el cual estos son conservados. También formulamos la hipótesis de que los bosques secundarios son altamente variables en sus características ecológicas y en términos de objetivos y recursos de sus propietarios. Por tanto, es probable que las intervenciones requeridas sean altamente variables. Un análisis de la dinámica de los bosques secundarios puede ayudar a dirigir las intervenciones a aquellas áreas con la más alta probabilidad de impacto. El análisis de los aspectos socioeconómicos de la dinámica de bosques secundarios se basa en el cambio progresivo en el tiempo de algunas características de áreas de frontera agrícola. Hacemos la distinción entre dos trayectorias diferentes: aquella seguida por colonos y la de comunidades indígenas. Una tercera categoría de circunstancias accidentales, tales como conflictos militares y litigio, también pueden conducir a la creación de bosques secundarios. Las opciones de manejo para bosques secundarios se clasifican de acuerdo a sus requerimientos de recursos (capital, tierra, mano de obra y capacidad gerencial) y el transcurso de tiempo para obtener un producto, resultando cuatro grupos: barbechos mejorados de ciclo corto, barbechos enriquecidos de ciclo medio, bosques de producción de ciclo medio a largo, y bosques de conservación. Las características de cada categoría de productores y sus bosques secundarios son contrastados con las características de las opciones de manejo donde la probabilidad de adopción es la más alta. Luego se identifican las categorías generales de intervenciones de política apropiadas para cada categoría de productor, siendo: políticas relacionadas al mercadeo de productos del bosque secundario, reformas de la legislación y políticas que permiten a los productores capturar el valor de los servicios ambientales que suministran los bosques secundarios. Concluimos enfatizando la importancia de un marco conceptual dinámico para el desarrollo de una estrategia para bosques secundarios, que permite prevenir la degradación del recurso, en oposición a revertir esta después de que ocurra. El marco conceptual que se presenta también permite el análisis de bosques secundarios como una parte integral del sistema de producción del agricultor. Finalmente, se enfatiza que la contribución principal de este ejercicio es el marco conceptual. Los resultados son meramente indicativos y necesitan ser verificados con datos empíricos.

Forest devolution and government decentralization have increased community control over forests. Remoteness, low literacy, and lack of formal planning experience often leave forest communities unprepared for their new responsibilities. Forest communities need to develop skills that allow them to establish goals and make decisions transparently and democratically and to negotiate effectively with other local actors if they are to become more proactive participants in local governance processes. In Bolivia and Vietnam we tested four adaptations of scenario-based methods to assist forest communities to develop these skills. This article reflects on the strengths, limitations, and new applications of these methods. The methods encourage participation by members who have little experience with structured planning, including the most marginalized: women, elderly, and illiterate participants. The methods are useful as planning tools, for generating records of decisionmaking processes, and for preparing for negotiations between communities and local governments

This paper look at forest products (FP) procurement and trade in Indonesia in a historical perspective, and critically investigate the nature of the actions of the players involved in these economic activities. It identifies the different actions of the various participants that can be qualified as rent-seeking, and proposes a classification of these actions in different categories. Using these different types of rent seeking allows the identification of changes in strategies used by different actors in order to increase their benefits from FP trade. Different actors had a different set of opportunities to use some actions within this set of rent-seeking actions, depending on the special circumstance of time and place in which each of the actors operates. There are some general trends in rent seeking related to FP trade. Those who had the power to do so used coersion to benefit from FP trade throughout the history of this trade in Indonesia. Collusion between traders, government officials made use of inappropriate implementation of the rule of law from central government, timber and oil palm companies claim forest territories because there is no consent on property rights have been a constant practices throughout history and are still being used today but maybe less so or more difficult during the reformasi era.

Uncaria tomentosa and U. guianensis appear to hold a potential to become an important export commodity and a source of income for small farmers in the tropical forest belt of the country. Both species have been important in traditional healing in many South American countries. They contain about sixty substances that are being tested widely for possible medical treatments. Uncaria tomentosa has been traded from Peru since 1994 until it reached a peak export of 726 t in 1996. Despite the general discourse on the potential of species, such as these Uncaria spp., the many stakeholders with some interest in these species do not co-ordinate their activities sufficiently to enhance sustained income for the country and the rural poor. At the national level, there has been pressure on the government to implement legislation to prohibit the sales of the raw material of these species, in order to capture larger shares of benefits for the national economy. Initially false conservation arguments were used to stop collection from the wild, as there is sufficient evidence to argue that at current harvesting levels there is no threat to the two species. Regional government agencies have promoted the production of the two species without having a clear picture of future market development, allowing the possibility that much of the future production cannot be sold. Both actions may possibly negatively affect the benefits that accrue to local collectors or producers

Uncaria tomentosa and U. guíanensis have been important in traditional healing in many South American countries. These species contain some sixty active substances which are widely tested for possible medical treatments. U. tomentosa has been traded from Peru until it reached a peak export of 726 tonnes in 1996. Government agencies and private companies have dedicated considerable efforts in trying to enhance production and sales of these species. At the national level, there has been pressure put on the government to allow legislation to prohibit the sales of the raw material of these species to capture larger shares of benefits for the national economy. Initially false conservation arguments were used as there is sufficient evidence to argue that at current harvesting levels there is no threat to the two species. Regional government agencies have promoted the production of the two species without having a clear picture of future demand, allowing the possibility that much of the future production will not have any demand. Both actions may possibly negatively affect the benefits that accrue to local collectors or producers.

The Center for International Forestry Research has developed and adapted various participatory tools for use with forest communities and other natural resource dependent groups. The tools have diverse applications: stakeholder identification, decision making, planning, conflict management, information collection, landscape assessment and other uses. The Guide to Participatory Tools for Forest Communities is intended for environment and development practitioners, researchers and local government officials. It provides information on various tools to help readers grasp basic capabilities, identify the most appropriate tool for their needs and find resources for additional information. Much like a map, this guide sends readers in the right direction when selecting participatory tools.

This Spanish language book provides an overview of Bolivia's Amazonian department of Pando, its geography and the conditions faced by rural residents and local government. The book's six chapters provide detailed analysis of regional poverty and the government agencies and civil society actors responsible for poverty alleviation. Key topics include how Bolivia conceptualizes poverty, how data on poverty in the country are collected and reported, and how this information results in specific poverty reduction activities. The first three chapters provide a comprehensive overview of Bolivia's policies and legislation related to poverty reduction. Central to these are the Poverty Reduction Strategy and the National Dialogue Law that define the mechanisms that guide actions at the local level. The first three chapters form the introduction to a detailed analysis of poverty in the Amazon region of northern Bolivia, a region that relies largely on forestry production, and where CIFOR has been conducting social research since the mid 1990s. The book provides an excellent introduction to readers interested in poverty at the forest margins in Bolivia.