ASEAN Guiding Principles for Effective Social Forestry Legal Frameworks

The ASEAN Guiding Principles for Effective Social Forestry Legal Frameworks offer a regional baseline for Member States to design laws that empower local communities to manage forests. The guide emphasizes secure tenure, simplified allocation processes, and inclusive governance to improve livelihoods and support climate goals like carbon storage and biodiversity conservation. It details existing social forestry models across ASEAN countries and proposes ten principles covering tenure rights, market access, benefit sharing, and conflict resolution.

• Social forestry in the ASEAN region has expanded significantly, with nearly 14 million hectares managed by local people as of the reporting period, representing a doubling of area since 2010.
• Several ASEAN countries—Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, and Viet Nam—have set national targets to transfer over 30 million hectares of forest to local communities, though progress remains lagging.
• The document identifies critical challenges to social forestry in ASEAN Member States, including insecure tenure rights, inadequate legislative frameworks, poor governance, and insufficient financial resources.
• The guiding principles argue that formal recognition of community and customary tenure rights is essential for reducing deforestation, lowering greenhouse gas emissions, and protecting biodiversity.
• The guide proposes ten specific principles for legal frameworks, including the simplification of forest area allocation, the creation of flexible community management plans, and the establishment of equitable benefit-sharing mechanisms to prevent 'elite capture'.
• The document highlights the need for legal frameworks to ensure the inclusion of marginalised groups, specifically women, Indigenous Peoples, ethnic minorities, and youth, in decision-making and leadership roles.

APA

ClientEarth (n.d.). ASEAN Guiding Principles for Effective Social Forestry Legal Frameworks. https://www.clientearth.org/media/m2dnz0zf/asean-guiding-principles-for-effective-social-forestry-legal-frameworks-feb-2023.pdf

Chicago

ClientEarth. ASEAN Guiding Principles for Effective Social Forestry Legal Frameworks. n.d. https://www.clientearth.org/media/m2dnz0zf/asean-guiding-principles-for-effective-social-forestry-legal-frameworks-feb-2023.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=ClientEarth |title=ASEAN Guiding Principles for Effective Social Forestry Legal Frameworks |url=https://www.clientearth.org/media/m2dnz0zf/asean-guiding-principles-for-effective-social-forestry-legal-frameworks-feb-2023.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{clientearthndasean, author = {{ClientEarth}}, title = {{ASEAN Guiding Principles for Effective Social Forestry Legal Frameworks}}, institution = {ClientEarth}, url = {https://www.clientearth.org/media/m2dnz0zf/asean-guiding-principles-for-effective-social-forestry-legal-frameworks-feb-2023.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }