Throughout the world, natural resources are being destroyed
at a staggering rate. Whether forests are exploited, grasslands
overgrazed, savannahs set alight, and water bodies drained
– unfavourable policies and structural disincentives
against sustainable natural resources management (SNRM) are
the underlying cause in most cases.
Advisory services for environmental sustainability must be
offered on a number of decision-making levels starting by
creating a global alliance, providing appropriate national
frameworks and enabling communities to care for their own
environments. Many of the major determinants which encourage
(or discourage) people to engage in sustainable resources
management need to be addressed outside the environmental
sector itself: land ownership and resource tenure, collection
and sharing of revenues, taxation, management restrictions,
rules for investment etc. Thus improving the framework for
SNRM has more to do with governance than with trees or wildlife.
If development cooperation is to improve the odds of sustainable
natural resources management, it needs to increasingly address
political, legal/ regulatory and institutional issues. It
needs to deal with a rapidly expanding scope of stakeholders
– from rural communities, to forest owners, the timber
industry, environmental groups and forestry professionals/public
administrators.
With a long-standing experience in providing advisory support
and expertise on forest policy and forest law ECO reacts flexibly
to new and emerging developments and initiatives, such as
Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT), use
of market-based instruments (e.g. certification), innovative
financing strategies etc. Practical implementation of the
international forest regime at the national level and below
is our focal concern. To this end, we promote and support
the initiation and implementation of National Forest Programme
Processes (nfp).
Services include:
• policy and stakeholder analyses
• legal and institutional analyses
• moderation and mediation in consultative fora of various
kinds and on different levels
• capacity building
• training support.
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Good governance
begins with transparent and equitable participation at
the local level |
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Forest policy
meeting, Kazachztan: ECO supports multi-stakeholder consultations
for policy development and improvement of the legal/regulatory
framework |
Your contact:
Dr.
Stefan Mann
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