Forest Governance Learning Group - Update April 2007

This Update describes activities by the Forest Governance Learning Group (FGLG) over the last year, its impacts to date, the state of play in participating countries, and the path ahead.

Over the last year the FGLG has produced: ~• 10 country teams in place and active in Niger, Ghana, Cameroon, Uganda, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Indonesia, India and Vietnam ~• A major learning event on making the law work better for social justice in forestry, involving all the country teams and other international players, in which we recorded lessons learned identified new tactics ~• 19 new policy research outputs and tools ~• 15 new press articles and advocacy outputs ~• International outreach activities including cooperation with 14 international organisations and participation in 12 international forums ~• Increased engagement of decision makers on key issues and such as through advocacy work to fight alienation of forest reserve areas to agribusiness in Uganda, and high-level debate on destructive logging in Mozambique ~• Impact such as shaping the Voluntary Partnership Agreement on legal timber between EC and Ghana, developing influential small forestry enterprise development strategy in South Africa, and re-orienting the debate about charcoal production in Malawi away from ineffective and regressive policing towards sustainable livelihoods.