Rethinking Forest Partnerships and Benefit Sharing : Insights on Factors and Context that Make Collaborative Arrangements Work for Communities and Landowners

Forest-sector collaborative arrangements
come in many forms. The local partner may be a community, an
association, or a set of individual landholders. The outside
partner may be a private organization or a government. The
interest of the local partner may be production of income
from the forest, security of access to land, increased labor
or small business opportunities, protection of traditionally
valued resources, or other values. The interest of the
outside partner may be similarly varied, from securing
access to forest products, to obtaining the cooperation of
the local community in the partner's resource use, to
securing a source of labor, to alleviation of rural poverty,
to production of environmental services and management of
risks. Establishing arrangements that effectively deliver
sustainable forest management and benefit local communities
is a challenge because of the range of participants,
objectives, and scales of partnerships and benefit-sharing
arrangements. This study uses an evidence-based approach to
provide insights into developing and maintaining
collaborative arrangements in the forest sector. It aims to
inform discussions and approaches to forest partnership and
benefit-sharing arrangements. It also offers guidance on how
to implement key factors that influence contract-based
forest partnerships and benefit-sharing arrangements.