CHALLENGE

Many issues plague the forest sector in Peru -- from ill-conceived forest policy, to limited institutional capacity to prevent and control illegal logging, as well as a lack of transparency and corruption, limited cooperation between stakeholders from producer and consumer countries, and limited indigenous/local community and civil society participation.

As a result of the social unrest related to forest legislation in 2009, the country is revising its forest policy. Civil society could play a particularly critical role in ensuring public administration transparency and accountability.

APPROACH

Building on a previous FLEG program implemented by IUCN/TRAFFIC/VERIFOR ( the Forest Governance and Transparency in the Amazon Region project in Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru), PROFOR supported efforts to promote national forest stakeholder networks and boost their participation in policy dialogue and good governance in Peru. 

RESULTS

This activity, completed in August 2010, resulted in:

• dialogue and advocacy work strengthening the participation of local and national forest stakeholders in CONAFOR (National Consultative Council for Forest Policy) as mandated by the forestry law.
• support for forest policy development and legislative changes through participatory development of a national forest policy proposal and amendments of the forestry law and its regulations.
• two training workshops for 40 OSINFOR supervisors aimed at improving capacity for the verification of the legality of forest products based on approved forest management plans, annual operation plans and forest permits and logging authorizations. Workshops also included training in the enforcement of the CITES convention.

Traffic South America is continuing this work with funding from the European Union.