governance for sustainable development

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.

Good governance begins with transparent and equitable participation at the local level
Forest policy meeting, Kazachztan: ECO supports multi-stakeholder consultations for policy development and improvement of the legal/regulatory framework

 

Your contact:
Dr. Stefan Mann

 
ECO Strat: Strategies for land use planning      
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