Advancing small-scale forestry under FLEGT and REDD in Ghana

Reem Hajjar

Forest Policy and Economics, 2015, vol. 58, issue C, 12-20

Abstract: In Ghana, small and medium-scale forest enterprises (SMFEs) provide income and livelihoods for three million people and supply a growing domestic timber demand. However, most SMFEs operate in the informal sector, and thus have become a target for current forest sector reforms stemming from Ghana's involvement in two international mechanisms: FLEGT and REDD. This paper examines how SMFEs are being incorporated into FLEGT and REDD plans, and asks whether reforms under these mechanisms will serve to advance SMFEs in the country while tackling illegal and unsustainable forest activities. The analysis shows that FLEGT-related reforms will target governance issues downstream in the domestic lumber supply chain, without tackling a root cause of illegalities and challenges within the SMFE sector: tree tenure. In contrast, REDD planning includes a strong focus on the illusive tenure issue, but to date has placed little emphasis on SMFE promotion. The paper concludes that reforms associated with both mechanisms may work complementarily to advance a legal and sustainable SMFE sector, but only if local communities are incentivized to manage forest and tree resources through clarification of land and tree tenure. Reasons for why tenure reform has been such a sticking point are discussed.

Keywords: Small and medium-scale forest enterprises; Forest governance; Tenure; Policy window; International and domestic forest policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1389934114001695
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:forpol:v:58:y:2015:i:c:p:12-20

DOI: 10.1016/j.forpol.2014.09.014

Access Statistics for this article

Forest Policy and Economics is currently edited by M. Krott

More articles in Forest Policy and Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().