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The legal and policy framework exist, but presents three major weaknesses in term of organization of access to information: • Not all the guidelines for its implementation were passed by the Government • Most documents only exist in French, not in English • The volume and complexity of the documents makes it difficult to community members • to understand the legal regime of forest, even if they had access to them. Read the report...

Ghana’s forest sector has an elaborate superstructure of constitutional rights, seemingly progressive policies, comprehensive laws, well-developed institutions, and a cadre of well trained professional foresters. The workings of the sector are, however, determined largely by the substructure of exploitative and repressive relations between the corporate timber industry and the state on the one hand and forest-dependant communities and the public on the other. These relations, established under colonial rule, remain intact throughout the natural resource sector 50 years after independence. Read the report...

Executive Order No. 1 (2006) mandated forestry reform to include the formulation of new forest policies, laws, and regulations. The order makes several references to transparency, accountability and public access to information thus laying out a vision for transparent and accountable management of Liberia’s forest. Read the report...

All the forest legal framework is not accessible on the Official Website of the Ministry of Agriculture. For instance, the Law on Forests and Wildlife, approved by Law Nº 27308, cannot be found, nor its Regulation. However, laws of lower level issued since 2008 can be found. Read the report...

All the forest land is under clear legal ownership: they are either State property or property of Municipality, acquired through a devolution process from the State. This legal regime is however contested by communities, who claim ownership on all the forest land and resources in the country. Read the report...

The question of forest tenure and ownership, though not under intense debate currently, is a subject recognized by the government and all stakeholders as important to deal with as quickly as possible. There is an on-going project, among others to document and streamline land ownership and improve documentation, but it does not deal with a fundamental issue of ownership, custodianship, and usufruct rights. So the response to the question "Is most forest land under a clear ownership title?" was answered by most respondents as no, except for one paramount chief who was insistent that the land belongs to the living, dead and unborn and that chiefs are the embodiment of these and therefore have bona fide ownership. Read the report...

There remains considerable confusion over ownership of forest land; a private versus public forest land debate continues. A significant percentage of forest land in Liberia is under titles and could be clearly identified. But the situation with forest land held under customary arrangement is less clear. Read the report...

Lands available for titling are still under a process of physical-legal review clearing the property (Art. 70 and 88 of the Political Constitution of Peru). This includes the lands of Native and Peasant Communities, as well as rural properties occupied by settlers. According to Article 66 of the Political Constitution of Peru and in the Constitutional Law for the Sustainable Use of Natural Resources Use, forest lands cannot be sold. Source The Body for the Formalisation of Informal Property - COFOPRI, which is a decentralised public body within the Housing Sector, is in charge of designing and implement the programme of formalisation of the property at national level. COFOPRI carries out the survey, modernisation, consolidation, conservation and update of the national property registry resulting from this formalisation. The functions of COFOPRI are currently being transferred to Regional Governments; http://www.cofopri.gob.pe/quienes.asp?i=7 Read the report...

Information on logging locations is usually published in a public notice, but not always at the local level. Though resident populations are not consulted as regards the location of logging titles, they may have an influence on its boundaries. Management plans are not made available to communities or citizens. Read the report...

Locations and size of logging areas are usually published in newspapers, but not in the case of administrative allocation. Read the report...

All logging contracts and information on logging volumes are available to the public. Read the report...

No information is given to the public Read the report...

Permits for environmental services do not yet exist in Cameroon. Read the report...

No information is available in the public domain on the availability and allocation of environmental services. Read the report...

The forestry and environmental laws do not specifically address permits related to environmental services. In fact, the terminology ‘environmental services’ is not used anywhere in both laws. Comments in this section relates to general EIA requirements and processes. Read the report...

There is no regulation in this regard. Currently, there are two Law Projects on this issue, awaiting debate in the Congress. Source Ruling in Law Projects N° 2386/2007-CR, which proposes a Law of Promotion and Compensation for Environmental Services, and 3213/2008-PE, which proposes a Law on Environmental Services http://www2.congreso.gob.pe/Sicr/ApoyComisiones/dictamen20062011.nsf/DictamenesFuturo/54A4BF4A6607A87E052575EF00738FC9/$FILE/02386DC16MAY100709.pdf Read the report...

Forest is exposed to threats from non forest activities. In most cases, decisions about the allocation of mining and land concessions are not transparent, in the sense that they are not made public before the final decision. Concerning large infrastructure the information about their planning is often publicly known, but not the detailed plans. All those projects are normally subjected to the preparation of an environmental impact assessment, prior to the beginning of their activities, except for mining operations, where the EIA is due after the exploration phase, before the beginning of exploitation. All those operations are likely to contribute to the destruction of the forest, at least because they are not likely to comply with forest management plans (where applicable), and will lead to clear cutting. Read the report...

The overwhelming response was NO. Indeed such is the non-transparency of the process that even though the same parent ministry is responsible for both forestry and mining, permits are sometimes given for mining prospecting in forest reserves against the better judgment of the Forestry Commission. All the respondents agreed that there are extra-sectoral activities threatening to the forest. Mining, farming, bush/wildfire, sand winning, stone quarry were some of the examples of the extra-sectoral activities mentioned. Read the report...

The Government of Liberia has issued several large-scale mining and monoculture agricultural concessions. Some of these concessions are situated in or close proximity to areas considered significant for biodiversity conservation. The large-scale agricultural concessions will particular intensify conversion of natural forests and deforestation. Read the report...

Decisions about extra-sectoral operations are not transparent. There are extra-sectoral threats to the forest as long as the legal dispositions give priority to the development of extractive activities of other sectors, to the detriment of the adequate management of forest resources. Read the report...

Citizens are encouraged to denounce illegal activities in the forest sector. Information in illegal practices are to be provided to the prosecutor. In the case of activities in the forest sector, information are to be provided to officials in MINFOF. There is no formal procedure for denunciation,, and communities referred to cases where denunciation did not lead to any formal investigation or sanction. Read the report...

The general democratic environment in the country provides useful opportunities to talk about all issues, including forests. Citizens do not usually actively participate in control operations. However, in many places there are community resource management groups that undertake supportive activities such as patrols. Read the report...

There are no opportunities for citizens to discuss law enforcement issues when they arise, nor they are actively participating in control operations. Regulation 108-07 on Chain of Custody provides for Independent Forest Monitoring. Read the report...

Citizens are partially encouraged to assist with law enforcement. The state has issued laws that contribute to the enforcement of the Forests and Wildlife Law, including: the creation of the Forest National Council (CONAFOR), the Law on the Right of Citizens Participation and Monitoring Rights, the Regulations on Transparency, Access to Environmental Public Information and Participation and Consultation in Environmental Issues. However, CONAFOR has not been implemented, nor can citizens exercise their citizenship, i.e. the right to make requests and demand state accountability. Also, there is a constitutional recognition of the rights of citizens to participation, transparency and access to public information. Source Forests and Wildlife Law, approved by Law Nº 27308 (16/07/2000); Law on the Rights to Citizens Participation and Monitoring, approved by Law Nº 26300 (26/09/2001); Regulations on Transparency, Access to Environmental Public Information and Citizen Participation and Consultation in Environmental Issues, approved by Supreme Decree N° 002-2009-MINAM (17/01/2009); http://spij.minjus.gob.pe/hts Read the report...

The Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife publishes some information on a regular basis (information on the activities of the Ministry, statistics, list of pending cases of law violations, etc.). It has no system in place for disseminating information or responding to requests about access to information. Read the report...

The Forestry Commission has elaborated several services in its Service Charter which it provides to its clients. In the Charter the FC identifies publication of materials, and reports as a key communication tool with the public. Performance monitoring on these services however, is not within the capacity of the forest fringe communities and several characteristics of the FC operations point to the non-fulfilment of the tenets of the Service Charter. Notwithstanding a distinguishing feature of the FC in the last 4-5 years has been the consistent publication (albeit delayed) of the half-yearly disbursement and distribution of timber revenue to the statutory stakeholders. Read the report...

The FDA did distribute a set of documents to the CFDCs. The set contained one copy each of the law, policy and regulations. Read the report...

Though the Transparency and Access to Public Information Law obliges the Forest Authority to publish the information related to the sector, as of October 2009 it has not complied with this requirement. Read the report...