Toolkit for enabling laws on community forestry

The document is a guide for creating enabling legal frameworks for community forestry, emphasizing iterative and participatory reform processes. It provides a comprehensive set of questionnaires across ten thematic areas—including land tenure, allocation, governance, and market access—to ensure that laws protect the rights of local communities and indigenous peoples while promoting sustainable forest management.

• The toolkit argues that for community forestry laws to be effective, the reform process must be iterative and participatory, involving a wide range of stakeholders including communities, local administrations, NGOs, and the private sector.
• Legal frameworks should recognize various forms of tenure, including customary land tenure rights, and specify the bundle of rights communities can exercise, such as access, use, withdrawal, management, exclusion, and alienation rights.
• To protect indigenous peoples and neighbouring communities, the toolkit recommends that laws provide for Free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) or compensation as a condition for community forest allocation.
• The guide emphasizes that legislation should ensure the inclusion of vulnerable groups—such as women, indigenous people, the poor, and minorities—through mechanisms like quotas, regular meetings, or positive action measures.
• Effective community forestry laws should facilitate market access by allowing communities to sell products and services without requiring complex new legal entities, and by providing favorable tax regimes and access to capital.

APA

Faure, N., Venisnik, T., & Ichou, B. (2019). Toolkit for enabling laws on community forestry. ClientEarth. https://www.clientearth.org/media/2vpbjm5v/toolkit-for-enabling-legal-frameworks-on-community-forestry-ce-en1-1.pdf

Chicago

Faure, Nathalie, Tanja Venisnik, and Benjamin Ichou. Toolkit for enabling laws on community forestry. ClientEarth, 2019. https://www.clientearth.org/media/2vpbjm5v/toolkit-for-enabling-legal-frameworks-on-community-forestry-ce-en1-1.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Faure |first1=Nathalie |last2=Venisnik |first2=Tanja |last3=Ichou |first3=Benjamin |title=Toolkit for enabling laws on community forestry |publisher=ClientEarth |date=September 2019 |url=https://www.clientearth.org/media/2vpbjm5v/toolkit-for-enabling-legal-frameworks-on-community-forestry-ce-en1-1.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{faure2019toolkit, author = {Faure, Nathalie and Venisnik, Tanja and Ichou, Benjamin}, title = {{Toolkit for enabling laws on community forestry}}, institution = {ClientEarth}, year = {2019}, month = sep, url = {https://www.clientearth.org/media/2vpbjm5v/toolkit-for-enabling-legal-frameworks-on-community-forestry-ce-en1-1.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }