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ABOUT MANAGING CONFLICT IN
ASIAN FOREST COMMUNITIES

 

 In most Asian countries, forests are important resources that contribute to economic development, government revenues, and the livelihoods of forest communities. Because forest resources are valuable and relatively easy to harvest, they are often the center of disputes ranging from community use rights all the way to armed conflict between countries. In some countries, illegal timber harvesting has been used to fund these conflicts or illicit activities. Forest conflict is often asymmetrical, with powerful commercial interests or the military seizing resources traditionally owned and managed at the community level. Forest-related conflicts often intensify in the aftermath of war and political upheaval when forest use rights become uncertain or unenforceable. Such activity has a wide range of effects in these areas:
  • Ecological: Timber is harvested with little regard for long-term consequences including loss of forest cover, destruction of habitats, reduction in biodiversity, and soil erosion.
  • Social: Conflicts and forest destruction can destroy indigenous communities and livelihoods by degrading the forest or by preventing access to traditional users.
  • Economic: Timber that is disputed or sold to finance conflict is diverted from established marketing channels, lowering government revenues and unfairly competing with timber originating from sustainably managed forests.
  • Political: The absence of clear property rights creates a vacuum that can be exploited by the powerful against the poor.

In order to reduce these conflicts and implement sound forest management, USAID awarded the Managing Conflict in Asian Forest Communities task order to ARD in September 2003.

Under this task order, ARD assembled a team of specialists with skills in tropical forestry, community forest management, forest governance, and conflict resolution to work with staff of the ANE Bureau and USAID missions in several Asian countries to:

  • Identify categories of community level forest conflict,
  • Develop approaches to monitoring and managing these conflicts, and
  • Recommend how these approaches can be built into USAID country programming or the activities of partner organizations.

ARD’s approach to this task order is built on knowledge gained during the implementation of the recently completed Conflict Timber task order that analyzed forest conflict in Asia and Africa in a broader political and economic context. In the Asian Forest Communities task order, ARD is taking an innovative approach to analyzing forest conflict by integrating a variety of disciplinary and stakeholder perspectives to provide a more comprehensive view of the causes and potential solutions to these conflicts.
This website was funded under USAID Contract Number OUT-LAG-I-800-99-00013-00, Task Order 11, Biodiversity and Sustainable Forestry Indefinite Quantity Contract.