When I started working on forest governance issues, back in the late 1990s, you could talk about governance and corruption issues only in hushed tones. Since then, through a series of global efforts, we have progressed to a point where the state of forest governance can be openly debated at public conferences. Lack of good governance is now seen as a core development issue. More recently we have begun to measure the quality of forest governance by blending factual and perception-based information, gathered through multi-stakeholder consultations.

 

To assist in practical measurement, PROFOR has recently produced a publication, “Assessing and Monitoring Forest Governance: A user’s guide to a diagnostic tool” (Download PDF). This forest governance measurement approach has already been tested in Burkina Faso, Uganda and Russia, where it proved to be a flexible and relatively inexpensive method to trigger candid discussions and build momentum for reform.