ASEAN Guiding Principles for Effective Social Forestry Legal Frameworks

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Working Group on Social Forestry (AWG-SF) has developed regional-level guiding principles for effective social forestry legal frameworks with the support of ClientEarth and RECOFTC. The guide will help strengthen national social forestry laws, policies/rules and regulations and their implementation in ASEAN Member States.

The guide will provide ASEAN Member States with a framework to guide the development and assessment of legal frameworks on social forestry. It will further support these countries’ ambitions to increase social forestry, in line with their climate, sustainable development and biodiversity-related targets.

The guiding principles are intended for use by ASEAN member states’ policymakers and government authorities involved in the development of social forestry legal frameworks, especially those engaged with local communities, Indigenous Peoples and ethnic minorities in establishing social forestry areas and supporting them to implement and monitor social forestry activities. These includes local, national and international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that support the development and implementation of social forestry legal frameworks, as well as donors, academic institutions and others that support those processes. Civil society and community-based organisations can also use these guiding principles for advocacy purposes.