Natural resource governance laws and tenure reform are critical avenues through which biodiversity conservation can be made compatible with poverty eradication and the other Millennium Development Goals. People are most likely to become involved in sustainable management when they have clear rights to resources and are confident of future access to these resources. Security of tenure is a critical component in determining how rural people can secure their livelihoods and alleviate poverty. Tenure covers the rights of secure, long-term access to land and resources, their benefits, and the responsibilities related to these rights.
Effective law enforcement has to recognize and protect the rights of local people to a secure livelihood, in addition to effective protection of biodiversity. Importantly, while the value of secure access rights has an effect at the local level, the institutional change which supports them generally comes from policies or laws enacted at a state or national level. Addressing poverty reduction and conservation needs to work both at the local level (facilitating equitable decision-making and distribution of benefits within a community) and at wider policy levels (using policy processes to provide supportive institutional mechanisms).
The landscape perspective requires a decentralised approach to land-use, where decisions are made at as local a level as is practical, often the community level. Devolution of decision-making rarely occurs in practice, however. Genuinely devolved and negotiated decision-making is essential for empowering people to manage resources. This does not mean that there is no role for central authorities in setting standards or broad objectives for natural resource and land management. The problem is how to do this without undermining local decision-making and effectively re-centralising control.
Governance of Natural Resources, Equity and Human Rights
Good governance is increasingly being recognized as being an essential ingredient for achieving long-term forest conservation and sustainable forest management. Forest governance occurs at many levels and involves multiple actors. At the international level, states sign treaties and accords such as the UN Convention on Biological Diversity and the International Tropical Timber Agreement. At the national level, forest management is usually the prerogative of governments though there is increasingly greater participation of NGOs, local communities and the private sector in many countries today. Many changes in forest governance have also occurred at the local level in recent years, with decentralised arrangements, ranging from radical changes to forest ownership to more modest joint management agreements between local communities and the government, becoming central to improved forest governance.
IUCN's work on Governance
South America – Project on Governance and Protected Areas in Andean Countries
South America – Tool for the participation of civil society in the implementation of the strategic plan of the Amazonian Treaty Organisation
Southern Africa - Rights, Responsibilities and Justice: Implementing Improved Transboundary Natural Resources Management in Southern Africa
Central Africa - CEFDHAC Support Project- Capacity building with Sub-regional Networks (Women; Indigenous Peoples; Parliamentarians etc.)
Mesoamerica - Access and Benefit-sharing – prior informed consensus (guidelines for Costa Rica and Gautemala, planned)
Forests - Testing new approaches for improved and more equitable forest governance (EC funding, in collaboration with several regional offices and other programmes)
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Conservation for Poverty Reduction |
