Balancing Acts: Community-Based Forest Management and National Law in Asia and the Pacific (WRI, 1995, 204 pages): (introduction...)

Balancing Acts: Community-Based Forest Management and National Law in Asia and the Pacific (WRI, 1995, 204 pages)

		*(introduction...)*
		Foreword
		Acknowledgments
		Preface
		Introduction: Forests and People
		I. Deforestation and the Prospects for Community-Based Management
		II. Historical Overview: Colonial Patterns of Forest Management
		III. Contemporary Overview: The Legacies of State Ownership
		IV. Community-Based Forest Management. Emerging Responses
		V. Recognizing Private Community-Based Rights
		VI. Promoting Sustainable Forest Management Through Community-Based Tenure
		VII. Conclusion
		About the Authors
		Appendix A. Sample Forest Protection Lease
		Appendix B. Sample Forest Community Lease
		Notes
		Bibliography

(introduction...)

Owen J. Lynch Kirk Talbott

in collaboration with

Marshall S. Berdan, editor
Jonathan Lindsay and Chhatrapati Singh (India Case Study)
Chip Barber (Indonesia Case Study)
Shantam Khadka (Nepal Case Study)
Alan Marat (Papua New Guinea Case Study)
Janis Alcorn (Thailand Case Study)
Antoinette Royo-Fay (Philippines Case Study)
Lalanath de Silva and G.L. Anandalal
Nanayakkara (Sri Lanka Case Study)

World Resources Institute

September 1995

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lynch, Owen J. (Owen James)

Balancing acts: community-based forest management and national law in Asia and the Pacific / Owen J. Lynch and Kirk Talbott with Marshall S. Berdan.

cm.

Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 1-56973-033-4 (alk. paper)
1. Forestry law and legislation - Asia. 2. Forestry law and legislation - Pacific Area. I. Talbott, Kirk, 1955-II. Berdan, Marshall S. III. Title.

KNC768.L96

1995

346.504'675 - dc20

[345.064675]	95-34925
	CIP

Kathleen Courrier
Publications Director
Brooks Belford
Marketing Manager
Hyacinth Billings
Production Manager
Lomangino Studio
Cover Design
Chip Fay
Cover Photos

Each World Resources Institute Report represents a timely, scholarly treatment of a subject of public concern. WRI takes responsibility for choosing the study topics and guaranteeing its authors and researchers freedom of inquiry. It also solicits and responds to the guidance of advisory panels and expert reviewers. Unless otherwise stated, however, all the interpretation and findings set forth in WRI publications are those of the authors.

... I have once taken as an example a law relating to land tenure and the livelihood of people in remote areas to whom we cannot apply the law because, through the authorities' fault due to their inability to reach them, the people have no means of knowing the law. The fault rests with the law-enforcing side rather than with the one upon which the law is to be enforced. This is quite a substantive point too. Ways must, therefore, be found to implement the law according to the dictates of nature. There is a particular legal matter which I have come across - a rather special one, but all the same, I should like to relate it, because it has given rise to complications. It also has to do with land tenure and people in remote areas. In forests designated and delineated by the authorities as reserved or restricted, there were people there already at the time of the delineation. It seems rather odd for us to enforce the reserved forest law on the people in the forest which became reserved only subsequently by the mere drawing of lines on pieces of paper. The problem arises inasmuch as, with the delineation done, these people became violators of the law. From the viewpoint of law, it is a violation, because the law was duly enacted; but according to natural law, the violator of the law is the one who drew the lines, because the people who had been in the forests previously possessed the human rights, meaning that the authorities had encroached upon individuals and not individuals transgressing the law of the land.

H.M. Bhumibol Adulyadej
King of Thailand

Excerpted from a royal statement delivered on June 27,1973.
Reprinted with royal permission.