THE STATE OF THE WORLD’S FORESTS 2022
BOX 30 ENABLING POLICIES FOR SMALLHOLDER FORESTRY IN CHINA AND VIET NAM portion of domestic demand for wood; China produced 40 percent of wood-based panels and 27 percent of paper and paperboard globally in 2019.483 Although the government emphasized timber production, the reforms also enabled communities to collectively scale up their commercialization of non-wood forest products.484 In Viet Nam, where smallholders own around 1.97 million ha of forest plantations and contribute 60 percent of the industrial wood supply, smallholder tree farmers have been supported by favourable policies on land allocations, land tenure, tree ownership, foreign investment, regulations and trade, as well as by favourable stumpage prices, low-interest credit and the private sector provision of seedlings and technical support.485 As a result, they are contributing to rural development, employment generation and the strengthening of rural livelihoods.486,487
Prompted by severe forest degradation, China initiated forest tenure reforms in the 1980s by devolving forest tenure rights to communities and then allowing communities to allocate forests to individual households. More than 180 million ha of collective forestland was transferred to households for a 70-year period.481 Full rights were granted to wood and non-wood products for subsistence use and sale and, over time, all taxes were eliminated, including on wood sales. The government set up service centres to facilitate the transfer and registration of forestlands, conduct forest asset appraisals, provide market information and microcredit, issue logging permits, broker trade, and provide technical support and extension services and skills training.482 These reforms led to an increase in forest cover, and smallholder forests are now meeting a significant
More than 8.5 million social cooperation organizations exist worldwide, representing important social capital. They provide platforms for cooperation and innovation
signing of a community forestry decree in 2014 and now manage 2.05 million ha of forest. In the United Republic of Tanzania, 45.7 percent of forestland is owned by communities, 20 percent under community management arrangements; about 9.8 percent of the rural population is participating in community-based forest management and 8.4 percent is involved in joint forest management. In Indonesia, policy reforms are underway to expand social forestry to support community rights in forests from less than 1 percent (1.1 million ha) to over 10 percent (12.7 million ha) of the country’s forest resource.490 Forestry-based social organizations are also common in many industrialized countries: for example, nearly half of Sweden’s 240 000 forest owners are members of a forest owner association, managing a total of 6.21 million ha.
Social cooperation organizations are created to address, for example, land management, water, pastures, integrated pest management, supporting services and innovation platforms. Their number has increased worldwide from 500 000 in 2003 to 8.5 million in 2018 (in 55 countries). 488 Three main types of social cooperation organization exist that are involved in forest management. One comprises groups such as community forest management committees, community forest user groups formed to protect user rights, and producer associations and cooperatives built to provide business and financial services to members. Boosted by forest policy reforms in the early 1990s, such groups have become important in many countries. About 30 000 forest user groups have been formed in Mexico.489 In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 109 community forest management committees have become functional since the
A second type of cooperation organization is associated with social movements. In Colombia, Nicaragua and Peru, for example, such organizations have already helped advance legal reforms to strengthen rights and remove regulatory barriers. 491 Increasingly, federations of community forestry and forest and farm producer organizations, such as those in the | 89 |
