- Announcement - Towards a rights-based agenda in international
forestry? Berkeley,
USA, 30-31 May 2009 The
University of East Anglia (UK) and the University of California at Berkeley
(USA) will jointly hold an international workshop ‘Towards a rights-based
agenda in international forestry?’ at Berkeley (University Hall #150) on May
30-31, 2009. The workshop will bring together leading activists and
researchers in international forestry to discuss together how the
rights-based agenda might contribute to inclusive futures for people and
sustainable forest management. Background Rights
have moved to the center of debate in international forestry. National and
international advocacy groups call for the transfer of statutory tenure
rights from states to local people, and many forest dwellers have received
titles and other certificates to forest in recent years. Moreover, efforts
have been made to bolster local people’s economic rights with regards to
forests by coupling legal transfers with measures that enhance people’s
access to complementary resources and markets (e.g., forest certification).
At the same time, people and organizations lobbying on their behalf have
demanded the expansion of political rights by way of decentralization, legal
empowerment and governance reform. Some rights activists, finally, have
promoted a broader interpretation of forest rights, calling attention to
conceptions of human rights. The
rights-based agenda has made major in-roads in key forest policies. For
example, devolution programs have come under scrutiny, as many devolved
responsibilities in forest management to local people but retained key rights
with the state. Protected areas have encountered criticism for excluding
local people and taking advantage of their marginalized political positions.
Recent initiatives to credit Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest
Degradation under future climate change agreements have provoked stern
responses by indigenous rights activists demanding the recognition of forest
people’s rights to forest including the carbon stored in them. These are just
some illustrations for the growing pervasiveness of the rights-based agenda;
further examples can easily be identified with regards to decentralization,
forest law and governance reform, payments for environmental services, and
tree plantations. At the
same time, empirical research has produced important insights into the
potentials of and challenges to the rights-based agenda. For example,
devolution programs may have transferred tenure rights to local people in a
relatively egalitarian manner, but local people may have turned out to be in
different positions to take advantage of them. Decentralization may have
strengthened local decision-making over forests but may also have empowered unaccountable
customary leaders over elected local governments. Again, these are just a few
examples for a wider set of issues related to livelihoods, equity,
governance, politics, and sustainability unearthed in empirical research. The workshop This workshop
brings together analytically-minded activists and activist scholars to
interrogate the rights-based agenda in international forestry. They discuss
how the rights-based agenda might contribute to inclusive futures for people
and sustainable forest management. The workshop will include
presentations by:
The presentations will address
one or more of the following questions: - What are the critical emerging issues in the rights-based agenda in international forestry? - What implications does the
rights-based agenda bear on key forest policies? - What
are the main challenges encountered by the rights-based agenda at the
international, national, and local levels? To view
the tentative program please click here. To view
the paper abstracts click here. The
presenters will be joined by several discussants from UC Berkeley, including
Cari Coe, Louise Fortmann, Nancy Peluso and Jeff Romm. Planned publications The workshop is aimed at
producing two publications: first, an edited book that discusses key issues
in the rights-based agenda, develops its implications for key forest
policies, and derives lessons from actual experiences with rights-based
approaches; and second, a multi-authored paper on various rights-based
approaches and key issues in the rights-based agenda for submission to an
international journal. Contact and further information Thomas Sikor, University of East Anglia, UK, T.Sikor@uea.ac.uk Johannes Stahl, University of California at Berkeley, USA,
JStahl@nature.berkeley.edu |