This paper discusses the relative importance of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) for rural households in Cameroon, Nigeria and Ghana. It aims to compare and contrast the significance of NTFPs for income generation in rainforest areas, both within and across these countries to draw out regional patterns in a wider ecological, social and political context. In doing so, we bring the added value of highlighting the different roles which NTFPs currently play, or might likely begin to play out, in wider landscapes. The contribution NTFPs make to rural livelihoods depends largely on the availability of forest resources and access to markets, as well as socio-economic variables including wealth, gender and migration status. The findings indicate that remote communities and poorer households rely more on NTFP-based income compared to more accessible communities and wealthier households. NTFPs are relatively unimportant as an income source for households in more accessible rural areas, where farm-related income dominates. These findings support the theory that NTFPs are an important component to rural livelihoods and make significant and timely income contributions to poor households. Furthermore, in times of economic and climatic uncertainty, NTFPs and the forest and agricultural landscapes within which they are found, make a significant contribution to the resilience of rural forest dwellers' livelihoods.

The development and operationalization of timber tracing and legality verification systems are an important objective of FLEGT (Forest Law Enforcement Governance and Trade) Voluntary Partnership Agreements (VPAs). These systems are developed at the national level in order to ensure that all relevant timber circulating in the country meets the legality requirements agreed upon in the VPA. To date, no country that has signed a VPA has fully implemented these VPA systems. Using a qualitative methodological approach, this paper explores the perceived barriers to VPA implementation according to Cameroon's private forestry sector. The paper applies an analytical framework for forest rule compliance in order to better understand the institutional and individual constraints facing VPA implementation. The study identifies the following barriers to VPA implementation in Cameroon: corruption, informal nature of domestic sector, non-sensitive timber demand, technicalities of VPA/LAS, high cost of legality and lack of awareness on the part of the private sector.

Forest degradation and deforestation is high on the international forest agenda, and in countries with a strong timber industry and dwindling forest resource such as Ghana, this poses severe threats to the sustainability of the industry as well as of the resource itself. To curb this, forest plantations are being established to supplement the rapidly declining timber resource base to meet the country's demand for timber. Concerns have been raised about the future timber productions from the plantations and natural forests due to poor management and widespread illegal logging. This study assesses the trends of the growing stock in the main production systems and recent development that has led to the current state of the forest resources in the high forest zone of Ghana. Analysis of national forest inventories data and timber harvesting records in Ghana highlights the trend of the growing stock in timber production areas and the increasing gap between timber demand and supply, which drives illegal logging. Current plantation establishment efforts are not sufficient to bridge the gap between demand and supply of timber, partly due to low establishment rates and lack of appropriate management of newly established plantations. Secure tenure and rights to on-farm trees appears to be a key condition to stimulate large scale planting of forest trees by farmers and other investors. Reform in the management practices is required to align timber harvesting levels to sustainable timber production in Ghanaian forests.

Deforestation of tropical forest is serious problem around the world. In this study, we aimed to reveal peoples' potential preferences for sustainable forest management such as REDD scheme, focusing on a comparison of the attitudes of people in Malaysia to those of people in Japan, through choice experiment survey of the hypothetical choice behavior of consumer purchasing certified wood product. Choice experiment is one of stated preference methods. The results suggest that both the Malaysian and Japanese people are willing to pay a premium for certified wood product made from materials produced under the sustainable forest management as the REDD aimed at reducing CO₂ emissions and preserving biodiversity. The two peoples shared a common concern about the environmental problem of deforestation, which could contribute to global warming and the destruction of biodiversity. Thus this study indicated the importance of REDD and its certification programme for future development of REDD .

China's state-owned industrial forests, mostly in its Northeast region, are an important source of timber and environmental services in the country. In this paper, we use a break-even price approach to project the long-term timber supply from the state-owned forests in Heilongjiang, the largest timber producing province in the region. Our results show that, at given prices and costs, future sustainable timber production could double the 2006 level and reach the historical high in a full rotation of 40–60 years. This indicates that the region is positioned towards a forest recovery after many decades of over-harvest and decline in mature forest stocks.

Drawing upon the resource-based view of the firm and a strategic view of stakeholder management, a survey of the global forest industry was conducted to measure the scale of corporate social performance. The impacts of social performance and its individual stakeholder-related components on financial performance and the perceived company performance (consisting of market share, turnover, sales, profitability, and corporate image) were examined. The results suggest that a four-dimensional stakeholder orientation of corporate social responsibility exists in the current practices. The aggregation of CSP (measured by stakeholder-related components) had a significant positive correlation with both the accounting-based financial performance and perceived company performance. Furthermore, results indicate that social strategies with an explicit orientation towards employees and philanthropy may represent a direction in value creation.

Community based natural resource management (CBNRM) is predominantly viewed as a practice undertaken by a local community. Despite prolific research on CBNRM, little is known on how multi-scale regimes evolve to influence and shape local level resource management practices in specific contexts. In this paper, I demonstrate that Nepal's community forestry initiatives have evolved into regimes of governance beyond the local level. I also argue that the regime view of CBNRM helps to understand how different actors including donors, various government units, and particular groups of civil society from local to national levels engage in the politics of resource governance. Finally, I conclude that such multi-scalar politics shaping natural resource governance are crucial in explaining the livelihoods and conservation outcomes. The regime view can also offer new insights into public policy for more effective, equitable and sustainable management of resources.

This paper analyses the experiences and effectiveness of timber task forces to combat illegal logging. The paper is based on an analysis of 30 semi-structured interviews with members of timber task forces and other relevant stakeholders in Ghana. The paper finds that task forces have generally not proven effective in Ghana. The task forces are influenced by corruption; interference by powerful actors; fear of violence; and logistical and resource-related challenges. The paper suggests that effectively addressing illegal logging in Ghana will require a more normative approach that involves policy reforms addressing fundamental issues such as rights to trees and benefits from them. Without such reforms, timber task forces as well as other types of “hard” law enforcement become illusive.

Enforcement of the law is the most widely practiced strategy to prevent illegal logging in tropical developing countries, though the efficacy of such practice has often been questioned. We examined the effectiveness of forest law enforcement and different forms of economic incentives to curb the activities of illegal loggers. Thirty households, both with and without economic incentives, were interviewed in 2007 and 2009 in two protected areas of Bangladesh, namely the Lawachara National Park and the Satchari National Park. The enforcement of customary forest law appears to have very little ability to tackle illegal logging, whereas different alternative income-generating options designed to influence the livelihoods of illegal loggers are revealed to be very useful because such initiatives were found to have considerably reduced both the number of illegal loggers and the frequencies and amount of timber harvested illegally in both sites. Interestingly, illegal loggers responded most positively when they found themselves much closer to forests with clearly defined rights and responsibilities. Securing development of local forest users with tenure rights and greater access to alternative income-generating options, market regulation, and institutional and regulatory reform are critical to control illegal logging and to guarantee the sustainability of declining forest resources.