Making the Forest Sector Transparent is a four-year programme supporting civil society groups in forest-rich countries to advocate for greater transparency and good governance. An important part of the programme is the production of annual report cards by independent NGO partners to monitor the forest sector in their countries. The number of NGO partners has increased year-on-year, starting in Cameroon, Ghana, Liberia and Peru in 2009, to including Ecuador in 2010 and Guatemala and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in 2011.
The 2011 Report Card consists of 20 key indicators on important provisions of the legal and regulatory framework that applies to the forest sector governance. Depending on the indicator, 'provision' may refer to different components of the framework, for example;
- general legislation (such as Indicator 1: Freedom of Information Law),
- forest-specific law or policy (such as Indicator 2: National Forest Policy),
- procedures included in laws, regulations or other norms (such as Indicator 11: Granting Forestry Permits)
- information that laws, regulations or norms stipulate needs to be produced (such as Indicator 20: Annual Forest Authority Reports)
This website presents the data and analysis on the 2011 indicators, together with country-specific and programme-wide narratives that highlight lessons learnt, thematic findings, and recommendations for improving transparency. The data is presented by country in a series of pages. The opening 'dashboard' page highlights key findings together with a list of the traffic light symbols for all 20 indicators (see for example Cameroon). The 'yes' (green), 'partial' (yellow), and 'no' (red) traffic lights indicate whether provision exists in the legal and regulatory framework for forest governance, and whether information on this provision is publicly available. For those countries where transparency was assessed in previous years, any notable change since the last report card is shown by a thumb symbol ranging from 'significantly improved' (thumb straight up) to 'no change' (horizontal thumb) to 'significantly worsened' (thumb straight down).
By selecting 'view the data', the 20 key indicators are listed with a short commentary (see for example Peru). Each indicator can then be selected to view the full data collected on it (see for example Indicator 2: Forest Policy in Liberia). The full data includes an analysis of whether the provision enables transparent access to information and decision-making, and where available, data on the titles, dates of publication, responsible institutions, and accessible sources are listed.
The 20 key indicators page also provides options to select indicators and compare them by country and by year in a table. However, since each partner has applied the indicators according to their country-specific context and the indicator methodology changed from 2010 and 2009, it is not always appropriate to make a direct comparison between the indicators.
Within the country pages, there are links to the methodology applied and the lessons learnt in 2011. Following the short summary of lessons learnt, there are further links to the more detailed analysis, conclusions and recommendations. Within the overall programme pages, there are links to a description of how the methodology has evolved since 2009 and a comparative overview of the lessons learnt with further analysis, conclusions and recommendations.
In addition, the project partners each produce a country-specific report for 2011 that incorporates additional fieldwork and data gathering that they conduct, and Global Witness publishes a report that builds on the overview. These reports are available from the downloads page when they become available. The updates page also highlights other new items and where possible includes announcements of significant changes that affect forest sector transparency over the course of the year in between the annual report cards.
Go to Programme Lessons Learnt
