Land tenure governance approaches that tackle policy incoherence, secure rights, improve livelihoods, and maintain forests: Replicable and scalable lessons from a grassroot experience in Honduras
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Insecure forest tenure can hamper even the most exemplary community forestry management initiatives. This paper describes and reflects on the case study of the Villa Santa Agroforestry Cooperative, a community organization located in eastern Honduras. Due to policy incoherence, the public forest area concessioned to them since the 1970's was later subjected to land privatization-individual titling schemes based on Agrarian Reform policies. This disrupted and fragmented the former collective tenure regime under which the Cooperative had well managed the forest. In 2012, the concession was almost revoked due to this situation threatening the livelihoods of hundreds of families that depended on it. Despite the challenging context, the institutional leadership and commitment shown by a renewed forest administration and the Cooperative reverted this decision. In 2013, both entities initiated an ample Forest-Land Regularization Process that included the cadaster of all public and private plots and their right holders. Wide open consultations were held with stakeholders, including private land-owners who negotiated mechanisms to work with the Cooperative. As a result, a Public-Private Forest Management Plan was approved; an innovative scheme that remains to this day the only of its kind in Honduras. These processes enabled the Cooperative to attract investments from government, private sector and donors, including agroforestry schemes to restore degraded areas and diversify incomes. Also, transactional costs of traditional activities like pine resination have lowered, and thus continue to sustain communities' livelihoods in the midst of the COVID19 crisis. Further research is still needed to evaluate the scale of the impact and sustainability of the initiatives, but the initial outcomes show the need to escalate its lessons and good practices to a renewed nation-wide community forestry policy that can better contribute to the SDG's livelihood and conservation objectives.
Keywords: Forest tenure; Secure land rights; Collective land rights; Community-based forestry; Honduras
ID: 3485859