A Comparison of Governance Challenges in Forest Restoration in Paraguay’s Privately-Owned Forests and Madagascar’s Co-managed State Forests

Background

This study examined governance approaches to reforestation and forest restoration in Paraguay and Madagascar, contrasting the impacts of forest ownership, policy, regulation and stakeholders, and highlights general challenges regarding governance and reforestation in these countries. This paper is based on interviews with actors in the various countries and literature review. The authors outline a model of three essential factors contributing to effectiveness of forest governance; these include: 1) Processes (laws, policies, rules), 2) Structures (different agencies) and 3) Stakeholders (companies, landowners and governments). In particular, challenges are linked to processes and stakeholder interactions in the two case studies examined: Paraguay and Madagascar. 

Conclusions & Takeaways

The study found that Paraguay’s land is largely privately owned and the government has implemented numerous laws, essentially “over-regulating” the forest industry, which has resulted in negative incentives for forest management, whereas agricultural products are less regulated and in some cases subsidized by the government. This, coupled with a lack of governmental capacity to regulated the forest-related regulations in place has resulted in ineffective  governance for forest restoration and reforestation in Paraguay. In Madagascar, the majority of land is government owned, and traditional land ownership lacks government recognition. Initiatives have been able to utilize land tenure as an incentive for reforestation, in which people and communities are awarded land tenure recognition by conduction forest restoration activities. Despite this success, Madagascar still faces challenges in preventing deforestation due to weak government capacity to enforce forest regulations.