Research in this Division will focus primarily on the following broad areas:
FORESTS AND LIVELIHOODS PROGRAMME
- Land Access, Tenure Rights and ownership: Property rights (land and tree tenure rights, intellectual property rights), and rules that define permissible and non-permissible forms of cooperation and competition (licensing laws, laws of contract and liability, company and cooperative laws, anti-trust laws). Local community use rights and control of forests. Improvement of access to natural resource information by the poor, forest fringe and forest dependent communities.
- Sustainable partnerships and collaborative Forest Management arrangements
- Implementation of existing collaborative resource management schemes
- Incentives and capacity for sustained interest in participation
- Cost/benefit analysis of stakeholder participation
- Stakeholder perceptions and expectations from forest management
- Integration of collaborative principles into management style
- Regulatory and administrative framework for enforcing the principles of collaborative resource management
- Diversification and maximization of rural income from natural resources (including Incentive schemes to maximize local community revenue from natural resource utilization)
- Public and private participation in natural resources management decision-making
- Indigenous Knowledge: in sustainable use and conservation of natural resources
- Equitable distribution of costs and benefits: (Enhanced benefit flows enhanced) and maximise revenue through enhanced efficiency and increased production of value-added products, commercial logging and other forest/wildlife-based commercial and industrial activities;
- Sustainable institutional framework for the effective participation of key stakeholders
- Gender rights in natural resources
FORESTS AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME
Poverty reduction.
- Strengthening of Capacities of Public Sector Agencies and Local communities involved in natural resources management. This will involve the following:
- strengthening of existing effective traditional and local systems, structures and services
- Mechanisms for ensuring effective resource owners and other stakeholders