A Fair Share: sharing the benefits and costs of community-based forest management

Community-based forest management has attracted significant attention in Asia, in part because of a belief in its potential to improve the welfare of the estimated 450 million impoverished people living in and around forests in Asia. The extent to which this potential is realised, however, depends strongly upon whether communities are able to secure the benefits that community-managed forests generate, and whether these actually reach the poorest at the community level. In addition, communities need to see real benefits in return for their time and energy expended in forest management in order to make a long term commitment to sustainable forest management. This paper reports on recent work by the Regional Community Forestry Training Centre, which analysed Asian experiences in benefit and cost sharing in community-managed forests. RECOFTC facilitated a reflective process in 3 countries of the Mekong, and used the findings from this to stimulate discussion on benefit and cost sharing issues amongst a group of senior policy makers from 14 countries in Asia. The paper highlights institutional and policy constraints that need to be addressed for communities to secure a greater share of benefits from community-managed forests. It also discusses factors that constrain equitable benefit sharing within communities, particularly community level governance arrangements.