The Sustainable Development Institute (SDI) and partners will host the six regional forum in Buchanan, Grand Bassa County focusing on forest, land and environmental issues.
The event will take place from June 13-14, 2024 as part of efforts to enhance the knowledge and capacity of community members and other stakeholders.
It is a bi-annual event organized and implemented by the SDI as part of the project “Building legal foundations for sustainable forests and livelihoods.”
In a statement issued by the SDI, the main objective of the forum is to increase knowledge and capacity of participants by sharing expert knowledge and best practices on forest governance including transparency and accountability, roles and responsibilities leading to improvements in community forest governance and explore implications for policy and law reform.
It will also contribute to specific objectives such as: Increasing knowledge about community forest governance and fill information gap to strengthen the core governance structure Community Assembly (CA) and Community Forest Management Body (CFMB) to ensure their roles and responsibilities lead to improved governance of the community forest.
Others include; increasing knowledge on legal foundation and remedies available to communities; including carbon and biodiversity conservation, and exploring options to address emerging challenges regarding community forestry governance including roles of local authorities and engagement with Community Land Development Management Committees (CLDMCs).
The statement further said these regional forums are contributing to increasing participants’ knowledge on community forest and land governance and best practices in order to address identified gaps and improve governance and management of project’s intervening community forests.
The statement further said during the forum, discussions will be held around legal frameworks, dispute resolution, financial management, gender inclusion among others.
The statement said emerging issues will be highlighted for information and knowledge sharing purpose and that this includes current emerging forest governance issues relative to carbon and biodiversity conservation.
“Community representatives will have the opportunity to increase their knowledge on these issues and progress the government is making to address existing policy gaps following its failed attempt to award over a million hectares of forest to UAE’s Blue Carbon for carbon market,” the statement added.
