2002-2012: A DECADE OF ACHIEVEMENTS

Lessons from 10 years of NFPs in practice

The NFP Facilty, since 2002, has supported the stakeholders involvement in the forest policy process. In particular, the NFP Facility has delivered grants to the civil society for their participation in the formulation process through studies, providing a solid local level input for policy decision makers at national level. In addition, the civil society and the Forest Agencies have been involved in the implementation of concrete activities of the nfp.

The remaining challenge

Smallholders, communities and indigenous peoples who live close to forests understand what sustainable forest management requires – and how to deliver that in practice. Yet their distance from decision-making centres, markets and investment programmes, and their lack of organised representation in these, leaves their crucial contribution marginalised. This is exacerbated by the difficulty and expense of engaging with disjointed government programmes across sectors (eg agriculture, forestry, energy, water) and agendas (good governance, poverty reduction, climate change adaptation and mitigation etc).

A proposed next phase of the Facility

The second phase of the NFP Facility ends in mid 2012. Based on the lessons learnt in more than 80 countries, the experience gained by the NFP Facility shows that two complementary fronts need to be further strengthened in the countries for achieving sustainable forest landscape management.

1. Facilitating strong and equitable partnerships amongst smallholders, communities and indigenous peoples, enabling them to make their voices heard in policy making process at local, regional, national and global levels on forest landscape issues. These partnerships will have improved access to financing and investments for forest landscapes.
2. Supporting national and sub-national governments to establish multi-sectoral platforms (through dialogues, information and capacity building) to better-coordinate the various ministries, private sector and civil society stakeholders involved in, or affected by, policies and activities on forest landscapes.

This more focused support at community level- compared with the previous 10 years of broad NFP implementation - will fill a much felt gap at national, regional and international level and will complement many forestry related initiatives, like FLEGT and REDD+.

Building partnerships

The Growing Forest Partnerships has garnered three years of pioneering experience in creating partnerships between forest rights holder groups in five NFP Facility countries. The transitional process leading to a third phase in which the NFP Facility will build on its cooperation with the GFP partner organisations (FAO, IUCN, IIED and WB), will combine the initiatives’ strengths.