Honduras Country Case Study - Rights and Resources Initiative

Honduras Country Case Study

August 2006

Anne Larson


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Acknowledgements Thanks go to Augusta Molnar for her comments on an earlier draft and Mario Vallejo for considerable informational support.


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Table of Contents Acknowledgements ......................................................................................... 2

Introduction ................................................................................................. 4

Status of forest ownership and tenure in the country ................................................ 6Official distribution of forest tenure ............................................................................... 6Differences between FRA data, the data included in “Who Owns,” and the data we find in our current search, and why .............................................................................................. 9Gendered effects of tenure status .................................................................................. 9Key elements of the policy and regulatory framework regulating indigenous and other local community tenure rights and forest regulation................................................................... 9Motives, extent, level and scale of national decentralization ................................................10Scale of forest sector decentralization or devolution with respect to forestry............................10Initiatives recently completed, underway or proposed to reform tenure ..................................11

Impacts of tenure reform ................................................................................ 12

Forests and poverty ....................................................................................... 14Existing data or inferential information regarding poverty and forests .....................................16Key government initiatives or programs to reduce poverty in forest areas ................................17Key community or local civil society proposals and/or initiatives to reduce poverty (or more broadly enhance well-being) ..................................................................................................19RRI Partner initiatives ................................................................................................20

Impacts of policy reforms and projects ................................................................ 20

Key threats to local rights and livelihoods............................................................. 21

Key opportunities to advance RRI Tenure and Poverty Goals ....................................... 22

Bibliography ..............................................................Error! Bookmark not defined.

In 2005, founding members of the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) coalition agreed to undertake a scoping program to assess and understand the realities, challenges and opportunities in tropical forest countries around the world. The program, called the RRI Listening, Learning and Sharing Launch (LLSL), was designed as a series of consultations and conversations that could serve as an “ear to the ground” to understand the concerns and goals of community organizations, civil society organizations, and governments. The goal was to bring these voices and experiences to help shape the global and regional priorities for RRI. LLSL was organized around the three key regions in which RRI is engaged – Africa, Asia and Latin America. In a series of scoping studies and participatory consultations, RRI Partners identified key trends, issues and opportunities in policy, tenure and livelihoods in forest areas. The dialogues, workshops, background papers and synthesis reports prepared as part of the LLSL inform RRI strategy and planning in each region and created new and stronger links between RRI Partners and local civil society organizations. A selection of the synthesis reports and background papers are publicly available on the RRI website at www.rightsandresources.org. This report was completed as a part of the Listening, Learning and Sharing Launch program. The ideas and information presented here are those of the authors and are not necessarily shared by Rights and Resources Initiative or the Partners in the RRI coalition.


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Introduction Honduras is the second largest country in Central America with 112,000 km2 and a population of 7 million (World Bank 2006a). It is bounded on the north and east by the Caribbean Sea, on the south by Nicaragua, on the southwest by the Pacific Ocean and El Salvador and on the west by Guatemala. The highest point above sea level is 2,849 m, but most of the country’s mountains are much lower. Honduras is characterized by a hilly geography: 60% of the land area is an upland plateau with broad, fertile plains, deep valleys and low mountain ranges. In the plains, the northwest is agricultural, mainly for banana production; the central coastal plain is largely undeveloped grasslands, swamplands and palm and pine forests; the northeast plain is part of the Mosquitia, which extends south through Nicaragua, and is the least developed area of the country, largely covered in tropical rainforests, grasslands and pine and palm forests (FAO n.d.). According to FAO (2006), forest area is 4.6 million hectares or 41.5% of the land area. A little more than half of this is broad-leaf forest, and most of the rest is pine forest of diverse species.1 It is estimated that forest resources are being lost at a rate greater than 800 km2 (80,000 hectares) per year (1.4%) (World Bank 2004a). Plantations covered only 30,000 hectares in 2005, slightly less than in 1990 (FAO 2006), though a new reforestation program is just getting under way. Honduras is often referred to as a “forestry country,” because such a large portion of its soils – partly because of its steep, hilly geography – is considered to have a “forest vocation.” Compared to other Central American countries, the Honduran forest sector contributes more to the national economy in terms of percent of GDP and jobs. Total GDP is 7.4 billion (World Bank n.d.); forestry contributed 2.7% of GDP in 2000 (Lebedys 2004). The majority of Honduras’ land is owned by the state, both central and municipal governments. From the 1970s until 1992, all forests were the property of the central government, even if they were on municipal or private land, though this changed with the implementation of the Agricultural Modernization Law. Titling programs have begun on a pilot basis; few lands have been titled to indigenous communities in spite of agreements to do so. A complex and contradictory legal framework on land and forest tenure presents obstacles to titling forested land: for example, forest lands by law cannot be titled, though in practice some forests are on private lands, and land tenure frameworks outside of forestry may permit such titling.


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Map 1 - Honduras Forest Cover

Illegal logging is rampant in Honduras and has been brought to national attention by an important series of events. An environmental movement began in Olancho, the most heavily logged department, to oppose logging. Over the past several years this movement, led by a priest who is now a nationalized Honduran, has organized marches on the capital, winning support throughout the country and gaining international attention as well. The Washington, DC-based Center for International Policy conducted an undercover investigation of illegal logging and published the results – implicating one of the candidates – shortly before the last presidential elections. The other candidate won and has made some important efforts to address the issue. Recently, at the insistence of the Olancho movement, now known as the Olancho Environmental Movement (MAO), the government declared a moratorium on logging in the Olancho municipality of Salama, where conflicts between loggers and environmentalists are severe (Vallejo, pers. comm.).


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Honduras is one of the poorest countries in Latin America, with low GDP per capita and a low human development index (World Bank 2006b, UNDP 2006). Depending on the source, poverty is estimated at about 66%, with 75% to 82% rural poor. Extensive rural poverty, insecure land tenure and the country’s perceived natural vocation for forestry have put this combination of concerns directly on the policy agenda. Various projects have worked on these issues, but so far the government has not made much progress.

Status of forest ownership and tenure in the country

Official distribution of forest tenure Only about 30% of an estimated 2.6 million land parcels are registered in the property registry (World Bank 2004), making it difficult to have accurate data on distribution. Land reform and land titling have been major policy objectives in Honduras for the last several decades, and the country is characterized by highly skewed land distribution. Nevertheless, past attempts to transfer underutilized private and public land to minifundistas (households with less than 1 ha of land) and the landless has not changed this distribution significantly. About 70 percent of landowners hold 10 percent of land in farms, while a little over 1 percent of farmers hold as much as 25 percent. In addition, most land under 5 ha is not titled. Larger holdings are much more likely to have title. An IFPRI study showed that only 25 percent of all parcels in hillside areas (which represents a substantial portion of Honduras) have secure tenure (Jansen et al. 2003). The fact that the majority of Honduras’ land area is classified as public lands complicates the land access and tenure security situation (Jansen et al. 2005a, World Bank 2004b). With regard to forests specifically, though the data is inexact, one estimate reports that 36% are on national lands, 28% are on ejidos (in Honduras legally municipal lands), and 36% are private (Vallejo 2003). Another presents only 25% as private and 75% as “state” (FAO 2006). More than 80% of Honduras’ total land area is legally classified as “forest land,” and the majority of this is public land, both national and municipal. About 42% of the country’s forest lands have been deforested, and much of the rest is degraded. The 1992 Law for the Modernization and Development of the Agricultural Sector (Decree 31-92) reversed a 1970s law that nationalized all forest resources and placed them under the control of the national forestry institute (COHDEFOR). The 1992 law returned the ownership of the forest to the land owner. Forests on private lands became the property of private individuals and on municipal ejidos became the property of municipal governments. Nevertheless, forestry law maintains that state forest lands, which include those “of forest vocation,” cannot be titled. This generates important contradictions with many rural peoples including indigenous communities, many of whom have been demanding titles to their historic territories for years, as well as with other laws. For example, the Property Law passed in 2004 suggests that it is possible to title forested lands, as does the Law for the Protection of Coffee. The Agrarian Reform Law also originally permitted titling of forest land, but this was later rescinded through a reform (Vallejo, pers comm. May 17, 2006). This problem of overlapping and contradictory agrarian and forest regimes represents just one example of the multi-faceted complexity of forest tenure in Honduras. Several indigenous communities or territories overlap with protected areas and with each other. Communities demand rights to the forests they live in and near on state lands, which can be and still are given in concession to logging companies. Other community groups demand rights to forests they were granted temporarily by concession but to which they have no legal or historical claim. State forests have both long-time residents, more recent colonists and those who have moved in through organized land invasions by farmer and rancher


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associations. Numerous people have obtained títulos supletorios, which can be granted by a local judge without any formal historical review of the site claimed, whereas others hold titles dating back from the Spanish Crown. As in many other Latin American countries, multiple policy frameworks and institutions are involved in the definition and implementation of land tenure policy (see Table 1). It is not surprising that there are a substantial number of overlapping claims. Table 1 - The multiple institutions and laws addressing land tenure in Honduras

Institution Laws applying to land (including reglamentos and reforms)

Secretaría de Gobernación y Justicia Ley General de la Administración Pública Ley de Catastro Nacional Ley de Municipalidades

Secretaría de Obras Públicas, Transporte y Vivienda

Ley General de la Administración Pública Ley del Fondo Vial Ley de promoción y desarrollo de obras públicas

Secretaría de Recursos Naturales y Ambiente

Ley General del Ambiente y su reglamentos Ley General de Minería Ley de Hidrocarburos

Secretaría de Agricultura y Ganadería Ley para la Modernización Agrícola, sus reformas y reglamentos Ley del Fondo de Tierras, etc.

Secretaría de Turismo Ley de creación de Secretaría de Turismo y el IHT Ley para la Declaratoria de Zonas de Turismo Ley de Zonas Libres Turísticas (ZOLT) Ley para la Adquisición de Bienes Urbanos en Áreas que delimita el Artículo 107 Constitucional

Municipalidades Ley de Municipalidades Ley Forestal Leyes de creación de áreas protegidas

Instituto Nacional Agrario Ley de Reforma Agraria Ley de creación del INA Ley de expropiación Forzosa

COHDEFOR Ley Forestal Ley de creación de COHDEFOR Ley para la Modernización Agrícola Leyes de creación de áreas protegidas

Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia

Ley Orgánica del IHAH Ley para la Protección del Patrimonio Cultural de la Nación

Registro de la Propiedad Ley del Registro de la Propiedad Código Civil Decreto Ley número 38 de 1973 Decreto 27-90 Ley de la Carrera Judicial

Source: Excerpted from a World Bank report (Gonzalez 2003)


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Land titled to indigenous communities and ethnic groups totaled about 200,000 hectares between 1998 and 2001, but the area titled was less than demanded, leaving out large areas and defining communal lands only as those being used for agriculture and ranching (uso agropecuario) (Grunberg 2003). Titling to indigenous people and ethnic groups has been largely limited to the central and western regions and to smaller indigenous populations. In particular there are various conflicts, concerns and interests in the Mosquitia (the eastern lowlands) that have interfered with titling there. These include interests in natural resources, particularly petroleum, fears of initiatives interpreted as “seperationist” and the belief by important government sectors that classifying high biodiversity areas as protected areas, with state forestry institute (COHDEFOR) titles, rather than indigenous lands would better control land invasions and forest clearing (Molnar, pers. comm.). Hence, the government has titled lands that indigenous people consider theirs to COHDEFOR; for example in the Tawahka Asangni Biosphere Reserve, of 230,000 hectares, only 5,100 were titled to the Tawahka people, with the rest titled to COHDEFOR. Though the government signed accords with the Miskito people promising the legalization of their lands in 1999, it has failed to comply with them to date. Instead, the Miskito population has a legal agreement (signed in 1995 for 40 years) for use rights to 68,000 hectares (Grunberg 2003).

Protected areas, by law, are under the exclusive rights of the State and considered inalienable Public Forest patrimony. This obviously limits the rights of indigenous peoples who live within them and raises the problem of working out both titling and “co-management” agreements in a way that can best include local interests, given these limitations. About 80% of the Mosquitia corresponds to protected areas (Grunberg 2003). Aside from privately titled areas, rights to national and municipal forests are acquired by concession, the length of which depends on the growth cycle of timber, or other resources, to be extracted. There were 261 agroforestry or community forestry groups in Honduras, tied to the Social Forestry System, with about 8,500 associates as of 2002. It is estimated that 40,000 people benefit directly from these activities. Of the 261 groups, 169 were selling timber commercially in a total area of about 182,000 hectares, according to 2004 data (Vallejo 2006). The principle other product extracted by agroforesters for commercial sale is pine resin. About 80 agroforestry groups, mainly resin cooperatives, are affiliated with the Honduran Federation of Agroforestry Cooperatives (FEHCAFOR). Concessions by law can be cancelled at any time, though apparently this clause has never been applied. Some groups have, however, had difficulty renewing 10-year concessions. This has occurred on both private and municipal lands. After the 1992 law, private landholders often resented the presence of social forestry groups which were resinating forests that they could now manage as they chose. And many municipalities also took back control of municipal forest lands and ended small-scale concessions there. Some groups then tried to get alternative concessions on state forest lands, but FEHCAFOR was a weak association; in other cases groups were unwilling to establish new concession activities on lands that they had no previous experience in managing, or were unable to do so for various reasons, such as the lack of capital for management plans (Molnar, pers. comm.). Communities cannot currently prevent municipal or central government from granting concessions to forests they live in or depend on, but they have informally instituted a kind of tax charged to the logging company, through protest and threats when the company arrives. This has become so commonplace that, to avoid conflict, some loggers have suggested it ought to be legalized and formalized as a payment to neighboring communities. This does not resolve the conflict however. The draft forestry law – though this may still be subject to extensive further negotiation – would give concessions, if desired, to communities living in or near forests, would title the agricultural lands within them over time, and would give concessions to companies in areas away from communities and where these do not have a stake in forest management. In some cases, such as under the PAAR project, COHDEFOR has been more careful to ensure the recognition of local interests by including them in the development of management plans associated with state concessions, prior to their auction. An additional concern, however, is that those making land claims are not always existing resident communities but outside farmer or rancher associations that have organized land movements (Molnar, pers. comm.)


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Differences between FRA data, the data included in “Who Owns,” and the data we find in our current search, and why Honduras is not included in the White and Martin (2002) study. The FAO data appears to be an official estimate as of 2000. The other data presented were from another government estimate in 1999 but may be more accurate. Local sources suggest that the FAO data underestimates private forests (Vallejo, pers comm. May 17, 2006); it also ignores the ejidal classification. Though municipalities are part of the state (and their forests are apparently included in this classification by FAO), ejidal lands are historically owned by the locality, not recently allocated by the central government; municipal rights to the forests on those lands were granted by the 1992 law. Many forests are also subject to contested claims, including private forests. In some cases wealthy “owners” have made claims that may be illegal; in others, settlers have had long term residence in forests, dating prior to the 1992 law (Molnar, pers. comm.).

Gendered effects of tenure status

Given the limited data on tenure in general, there is no specific data available with regard to women’s ownership of forest. Nevertheless, one recent study discusses legal issues with regard to titling to women or to couples. In Honduras, “couples can choose whether they pool the assets acquired during marriage or whether they are kept separate, however, the default regime is separate property. Since property acquired is generally titled in the name of the household head, men are often the legal owners and may dispose of property without consent of his spouse.” For example, “the Law for Modernization and Development of the Agrarian Sector states in Article 97 that ‘…the property title for land will be issued in the name of the couple, if they request it’ (our emphasis). In this way, the state took away with one hand what it had granted with the other. Although Honduran law recognizes marital property rights of female household heads (married or consensual), the Law for Modernization put the burden and responsibility on women to demand this right at the moment when household land was being titled.” A rapid appraisal at one site in Honduras (Valle de Guayape), however, demonstrates the positive effect of rural development programs promoting gender equity. Of 208 titles granted in 1993-95, the National Agrarian Institute issued only 13% in the name of women and none to couples. In the same location, however, between 1999 and 2000, “due to the intervention of an agrarian development project that promoted gender equity and joint titling,” 35% were titled to couples and 21% to individual women. During the same 1999-2000 period nationally only 25% of titles were granted to women, but the combined joint and individual titles in the area where the project was working represent 56%. With regard to inheritance, “intestate inheritance laws favor spouses when she/he does not have sufficient assets for their subsistence” (Lastarria-Cornhiel et al. 2003). A study of gender in poor hillside areas found that female headed households had 30% lower income than male-headed households, earn a much higher proportion of income from livestock (23% as compared to 8%), rent a much larger portion of their farm area (27% compared to 18%), and are much less likely to diversify their agricultural production beyond basic grains. Very few grow permanent crops (Jansen et al. 2005a, World Bank 2004b).

Key elements of the policy and regulatory framework regulating indigenous and other local community tenure rights and forest regulation

Community forestry organizations are not subject to the same rules for bidding for public forests but they are in turn set a logging limit of 1000 m3 per organization per year in pine forests and 200 m3 in broad-leaf forests; the remainder of the annually permitted cut (CAP) in their logging area is then auctioned to


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a logging company (del Gatto, n.d.). They do, however, have to complete a complex management plan, and the same plan is used whether the product is timber or resin. In addition, the government requires an additional plan – a social diagnostic – for communities in national lands that it does not require from the private sector. Though the development plan is supposed to be the responsibility of the landowner, including COHDEFOR in the case of national lands, community foresters must develop and pay for the management plan. This is one of the biggest issues facing community foresters. They must also pay municipal and state taxes prior to extraction. Though at times they are able to obtain funds from credit and savings cooperatives or banks, most often they must turn to a logger for credit, with whom they have little negotiating capacity. An even greater problem is the very slow approval process for the forest management plan, which affects their ability to make marketing agreements, since it is never clear when the logging will actually take place or if the timber will be available when buyers need it. In addition, these organizations previously negotiated all concessions directly with COHDEFOR but now must negotiate directly with municipal governments if the forest is on ejido lands. Municipal governments, however, clearly favor the private sector for concessions mainly due to the economic advantages; they do not see ejidos as a social good but simply as private municipal property. As a result, few have contracted with community groups for concessions. The new Forestry Law, introduced to Congress in 2005 but currently stalled, could change much of this situation. In addition to the points mentioned earlier, it has been proposed that the law recognize community foresters’ investment in the management plan, thus eliminating their dependence on the logging company or intermediary. By recognizing the pre-existing rights of people currently living in forests, it could protect them from concessions given to loggers rather than the community. Unfortunately, there is little optimism that the new law will be passed any time soon.

Another problem occurs with marketing. Virtually all forest products, timber, resin and others, are controlled by oligarchies that fix prices. Limited market options are exacerbated by the failure of COHDEFOR to approve community permits in a timely manner, and by the 1000 cubic meter limit (Molnar, pers. comm.).

Motives, extent, level and scale of national decentralization By law government transfers to municipal governments were mandated at 5% of the national budget since 1990, but this was not enforced until 2004; until this time local governments received only about 1% of the budget. The government’s justification was that funds channeled through the social fund (FHIS) comprised “municipal transfers” as well. Honduran governments have some local taxation rights but generally raise little local revenue. Social fund management has been decentralized to municipalities but only on a pilot basis, and there is little move to decentralize sectors such as health and education that are commonly moving this direction in other countries. With regard to political decentralization, citizens directly elect municipal authorities and municipal candidates are presented on a separate ballot from other elections, though only recently, and all elections take place on the same date. Recently, as of 2004, candidates who are not members of political parties can run for local office.

Scale of forest sector decentralization or devolution with respect to forestry Decentralization in the forestry sector was originally undertaken in the interest of privatization, aimed at resolving rampant problems of illegal logging, land invasions and other informal arrangements affecting the forestry sector. It began with the transfer of state forestry enterprises to the private sector under very favorable conditions. The 1992 Law of Agricultural Modernization (LMA) returned private tenure


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rights over forests to landowners, reversing the situation in which all forest management was controlled by the state and the owner was paid a small sum for its lease. The LMA was intended primarily to establish ownership, then title what should be legally private, including settlements of some 200,000 people who had moved into forests with no formal rights. The remainder would be managed as protected areas, indigenous reserves or national forest. Nevertheless, much of this was never actually implemented (Molnar, pers. comm.). Management plans are required for all forest exploitation and must be approved by COHDEFOR, but landowners can now make decisions regarding the choice to or not to exploit their forest. Local governments now make forestry-related decisions regarding municipal lands as landowners. Central governments still make all decisions regarding central government lands in spite of provisions for municipal governments to participate in these decisions in their jurisdictions. That is, the law that provides for shared decision-making has been interpreted in practice such that Municipal Governments make decisions on ejidos and Central Government makes decisions on national lands. The new forestry law would continue this division of authority, though it would also pave the way to legally recognize community management, where optimal or on-going, and land ownership of farmers living on state forest lands.

Initiatives recently completed, underway or proposed to reform tenure

Government initiatives There has been an important initiative underway to reform the forestry law for several years. The new law, as currently drafted, would give titling rights to people or groups who effectively protect a forest for a period of five years – up to 25 hectares per person or 500 hectares per group (Vallejo, pers comm. May 17, 2006). The new law would abolish COHDEFOR and form a new institution, in an attempt to improve the institutional framework. In 2005 COHDEFOR was being run by an intervening council, due to problems with corruption and general lack of effectiveness (Vallejo 2006). In addition, the government as well as donors fully recognize the problems arising from land tenure in public forest lands and has embarked on land regularization programs that would recognize traditional rights and use of public lands. The PAAR (Rural Areas Administration Program) was intended to implement the activities that would permit the LMA to be an effective legal instrument. One key PAAR pilot program is being expanded with World Bank funding. Working particularly in the department of Comayagua on land administration on a pilot basis, the PAAR established an incentive program for sustainable use and conservation of national forests. It recognizes three groups for benefits: (i) those that have lived in the forests for generations (generally indigenous groups); (ii) more recent settlers (colonists); and (iii) groups that do not reside in the forests but that use forest resources such as firewood (mainly landless rural poor). “The approach is based on the recognition and formalization of traditional rights, allowing the continuation of the established activities upon which livelihood depends. Limitations to these rights include that no additional forest may be cleared nor mature trees be felled without obtaining the appropriate permit. Additional measures include employment of populations residing in the forests to carry out forest management activities in public lands, planning and technical assistance to communities for sustainable management of their natural resources.” The Comayagua project led to the establishment of a methodology for delimitation and demarcation of forest lands, which led to the identification of national, municipal, private and communal forest lands and to the establishment of the borders of public Forest Management Units (FMUs). This also included methodologies to define the areas of influence and traditional uses of communities living in the forest and to formalize access and use within the FMUs. The PAAR also carried out a pilot project for indigenous peoples and tenure resolution in the Tolupan lands in Yoro, intending to apply the resulting methodology


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to other indigenous territories. Specifically, working with the Tolupanes and other settlers who were not Tolupan but lived in the area, the project resolved issues stemming from inter-tribal disagreement over community boundaries, occupation of tribal lands by non-indigenous colonists (some with agrarian reform titles), overlapping titles with municipalities and exploitation of the Tolupanes forest resources by outsiders. Official recognition of the limits of tribal lands by local authorities was obtained, communal titles for some 27,000 hectares were provided to the nine tribes (comprising about 10,600 persons), and community forest management activities (with both indigenous and non-indigenous) were initiated (World Bank 2004a). This pilot project aimed to provide a basis for addressing land tenure issues of many indigenous peoples in other parts of the country. At the same time, a land study carried out under the GEF Biodiversity project identified communal land rights of Garifuna and Miskito populations in eastern Honduras (Molnar, pers. comm.). Titling initiatives have raised important issues about the organization of tenure relations and how lands should be divided or shared. This includes whether titles should be collective or individual, and also whether there are advantages to having a collective title even if lands within the demarcated area are divided and used individually. The 2001 Poverty Reduction Strategy also renewed the government’s commitment to improving security of land access for small farmers and indigenous peoples by expanding mass titling programs, completing the national cadastre, modernizing the property registry and implementing land access programs (Baranyi et al 2004).

Local civil society movements or initiatives Indigenous organizations have been very important for the advances of the past 15-20 years, such as the signing of ILO 169 and the titling that has taken place in their favor, as well as certain accords and projects. However, in some key cases they have not been able to get the government to comply. Also, in recent years, the leadership of the umbrella organization imploded due to “fragmentation of interests and leadership ruptures.” A new organization was formed with central government, World Bank and IDB support (Grunberg 2003). There are several organizations fighting for agrarian reform, and these have drawn international attention in part due to their persecution. For example, eleven leaders from the Bajo Aguan region were arrested in August 2005. In August 2006, a meeting between organizations and the World Bank was programmed, with the support of international NGOs.

RRI Partner initiatives None known, but there are numerous funders, including USAID/USFS, EU, DFID.

Other The World Bank and other donors such as IDB have been supporting various projects aimed at land titling and the development of a national cadastre.

Impacts of tenure reform The PAAR project, mentioned above, has been highlighted as an important success both in terms of tenure and forestry. In particular, the titling process for the indigenous lands of the Tolupanes was judged in a Bank review as a best-case example of participatory demarcation (World Bank 2004a).


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On the other hand, another important indigenous/ethnic lands titling project, supported by the World Bank, which has been taking place in the Garifuna communities of the north coast, received a critical inspection panel report in early 2006. The report begins with complaints by a Garifuna organization: “The Requesters claim that the Bank did not take the rights and interests of the Garifuna people into consideration in the design, appraisal and implementation of the PATH Project and violated its own policies and procedures.” It states that the Garifuna people “fear that the land titling and procedures provided under the Project will ultimately cause the demise of collective property in favor of individual property, which is contrary to the land tenure system they prefer, and could give their land, which they consider as their functional habitat, to people outside the Garifuna communities. They fear that the new titling program under the Bank-financed project will cause a ‘severe damage to the Garifuna people and a serious violation of their rights’ because these arrangements do not reflect the special legal situation of the Garifuna people or their preferred land tenure options” (World Bank 2006). Other sources report that the conflict arose due to the failure to include Garifuna lands and territories in the PATH project after the initial analysis. Though the return of forest rights to the landowner brought important positive changes for forestry, the greater autonomy of municipal governments in this area has increased the insecurity of many community foresters who previously held, or still hold, concessions or use rights to those lands (Larson et al. 2006). FEHCAFOR reports that some municipal governments have refused to allow community foresters to continue working on ejidos, mainly because they believe logging companies can provide more income more quickly to the municipal coffers, though concessions have also been used as political favors as well. (Nevertheless, this is a complex issue. Community foresters do not necessarily have any particular pre-existing claim on these lands, rather many were assigned to them under 1970s legislation that took forest rights from the landowner and gave it to someone else. This contrasts with other groups such as indigenous groups or other communities that have historic claims to the land and a long-term social relationship with the forest.) In Lepaterique, municipal control has gradually shifted local access to timber resources in important ways. In 1992, community-based logging enterprises were established on municipal lands with the support of a Finnish project – a project that significantly increased local incomes. Over time, however, the municipal government changed the rules of the game, establishing an advance payment of 50% of the value of the timber to be logged. Small loggers, who do not have legal title and thus have difficulty accessing bank loans, are unable to pay this fee. By early 2004, nine individual contractors had taken over the majority of the logging in what was previously undertaken by 12-15 community microenterprises (Nygren 2005). A few other municipalities still grant concessions to agroforestry groups, but probably none with the extensive project support that was previously available in Lepaterique. Another tenure change that has occurred is the gradual (de facto) privatization of common forest areas, as wealthier residents gradually claim and fence off pieces of the communal forest. This often occurs with a parallel loss of indigenous identity. Tucker (1999) describes this process in a Lenca community of La Campa. She notes that deforestation of common property forests only occurs when a parcel has been claimed for private use, though both private and common forests are equally degraded. These claims have exacerbated pressure on common forests as the population is growing. Other residents respect the claimed areas but “see private forests as a threat to common property and to their own well-being.” As the government has begun to implement land titling projects, it is unclear how they will classify these privately claimed, formerly common property areas. The specific dynamics of Lenca communities are only generalizable to other indigenous or formerly indigenous areas, where self-identification shifts away from “indigenous.” Nevertheless, the example provides an important argument for the protection of community tenure where it exists and highlights an important difference between indigenous groups and non-indigenous with regard to communal versus private tenure.


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Forests and poverty There are several different ways to measure poverty, and many rural populations have their own understanding of what this means. Unfortunately, these perspectives are not taken into account in the data that is readily available. Hence they will not be discussed further here, but should be addressed in case studies and before designing further policy initiatives under the RRI. Poverty data from Honduras is highly varied as it is not based on an official analysis of nationally representative household expenditure surveys as it is in other countries (see Maps 2, 3 and 4). Official estimates show 66% poverty nationally, with 49% in extreme poverty, and 75% in rural areas, with 61% in extreme poverty (World Bank 2001a, b). Other estimates put rural poverty at 82% based on ECLAC data for 1999, with about 75% of rural households in extreme poverty. Poverty in Honduras is highly correlated with living in a rural area: most of the poor are located in rural areas and most of the rural population is poor. Nationally, 59% of all poor households and 65% of the extremely poor live in rural areas (Jansen et al 2005b). Honduras’ health infrastructure remains insufficient, as evidenced by relatively high rates of child malnutrition (17 percent), high child mortality (32 per 1000 births), and relatively low life expectancy at birth (66 years). These indicators are probably worse in rural than in urban areas, but separate data does not exist (Jansen et al. 2005a, World Bank 2004b). According to the World Bank (2001a, b), poverty is associated with forest clearing for agriculture and is seen as the primary cause of deforestation; inequity in access to land and income is also seen as a primary cause of poverty. Forest degradation, however, is substantially the result of illegal logging operations financed by the private sector (Molnar, pers. comm.); poverty plays a role in people’s willingness to sell their trees. Map 2 - Poverty in Honduras

Source: CIAT (2001)


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Map 3 - Poverty in Honduras (2)

Source: WRI (2006) Map 4 - Poverty in Honduras (3): Human Development Index

Source: IICA/ CORECA-CAC/ SICA (n.d.) Note: colors in legend should be shifted upward to correspond with text


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Existing data or inferential information regarding poverty and forests

Because of the general unreliability of poverty estimates in Honduras, as well as the different ways in which poverty is measured, the spatial representation of poverty is not always consistent. Nevertheless, according to a World Bank study, the population in forest land is overwhelmingly poor, though in the Honduras case “forest lands” refers to those not only with forest but also with a vocation for forestry. Two regions, Central and Eastern, contain almost 45,000 km2 of forests, representing 80% of the country’s existing forests as well as 60% of Honduras’ deforested lands. In addition, the study concluded that “[f]or families living in rural areas, absence of or limited security and access to basic resources [land and forests] are identified as the principal determinants of social inequality and poverty” (World Bank 2004b). The highest poverty rates and densities (Jansen et al. 2005a, World Bank 2004b) correspond to the most deforested areas of the country, specifically the western and southern regions (World Bank 2004a). As for forested areas, the East is identified as having very high poverty rates (deep poverty) though low poverty densities because of the low population density (the department of Gracias a Dios has the lowest in the country with 4 people per km2). The north-central region is also identified as among the highest poverty rates. A different spatial study presents the central interior mountains and valleys as having both high densities and rates of poverty (Alwang et al 2004). Eastern areas are also highly or very highly vulnerable to food insecurity, as are central hillside areas (Jansen et al. 2005a, World Bank 2004b). Nevertheless, given the many different ways in which poverty is measured, the Human Development Index (HDI), which gives less weight to income, actually shows Gracias a Dios, commonly classified as among the poorest departments (see World Bank 2004b), as among the better off departments in the country. Its HDI places it at 4th out of 18 departments (World Bank 2001a,b, see also World Bank 2003). This region is home to most of Honduras’ broad-leaf forest, has little road access and is dominated by protected areas. It is also home to the Miskito as well as other indigenous populations. One study of 32 key forested municipalities found that over 50% of the population is poor in all the municipalities, that in 22 municipalities, on average 65% of their population is below the poverty line, and that of this population, 72% are living in conditions of extreme poverty. Of all the poor in the project area, in 25 municipalities an average of 80% of the population is in conditions of extreme poverty, while in the remaining 7 municipalities the percentage of extreme poor is between 63% and 67% (World Bank 2004a).

The same World Bank report states that from 250,000 to 350,000 people are estimated to live in “forest lands,” or 33% to 50% of the total population. The estimated rate of poverty in these areas is 93% (World Bank 2004a).

Much of the country’s forest land (as classified by government) has been deforested for agriculture and ranching. Even within areas established as Forest Management Units, about 20% of the land is often in pasture (World Bank 2004a). Remaining forest areas vary between the Central and Eastern forests, with pine dominating most of the country outside of the East and broadleaf forest dominating the East. Important forest products include timber and resin, as well as firewood. Some indigenous communities also have logging operations, though most use forest resources only for subsistence. In some indigenous communities, women produce and sell flowers, collect wild fruits and make crafts for domestic use. Though there is not data for the rural population as a whole, a study of 32 forested and poor municipalities found an important sector of small landholders who worked primarily as wage laborers and a large sector of slightly larger smallholders who migrated seasonally for wage labor (World Bank 2004a). Combined rural household surveys showed that less than 15% of all households rely on their own farms as their only source of income, and only 33% rely on farming combined with transfers. About half the households derive their income from their own farming combined with off-farm work, with most of them receiving transfer payments as well (World Bank 2004b, Jansen et al 2005a). (These two surveys do not


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include, however the departments of Olancho or Gracias a Dios, which are the most forested in the country.) Most off-farm work is also agricultural in nature. Non-agricultural rural income in Honduras accounts for only 22 percent of total rural income, compared to 60 percent in Costa Rica, 42 percent in Nicaragua, and 38 percent in El Salvador (Reardon, Berdegue, and Escobar 2001 cited in World Bank 2004b). Different indigenous communities have different traditions and income-generating activities. Tolupanes for example are primarily agricultural, and produce mainly corn and beans. There is smaller scale production of tobacco, coffee, fruits and vegetables. Cattle and pigs are increasingly common. More than 80% are estimated to work as field laborers. The Pech population’s primary livelihood activities are based on slash and burn agriculture, hunting and fishing. They also raise domestic livestock, extract resin, pan for gold and produce crafts. In these areas, small groups, normally extended families, are involved in forestry, but these are not community-level operations. Poverty in the east is clearly correlated with infrastructure problems but this is not the case in all poor areas. Curiously some of the areas with the highest density poverty have decent infrastructure and market access. Nevertheless, investment and development in the country has followed a T-shaped corridor along the fertile north coast and from San Pedro Sula (the industrial center) down the center to the capital. These are the industrial and agricultural centers of the country, and investment, particularly in infrastructure, has been highly skewed to these areas. In other words, other areas have been largely neglected (World Bank 2004a, Jansen et al 2005a). Hence, structural problems and public investment policies have clearly contributed to poverty in forest areas. The eastern and more forested half of the country has very low road densities while the western half has much higher densities. Also, the vast majority of secondary roads are not paved and many are not passable during the rainy season (Jansen et al. 2005a). This situation results in important problems for the transport and transformation of rural products, which results in their value being appropriated outside forested areas. In addition, tenure issues and conflicts over lands in more remote areas are seen as central to poverty, including conflicts over use rights in protected areas. In general there has been little productive support to community foresters.

Key government initiatives or programs to reduce poverty in forest areas

The most important poverty-related government initiative is the Poverty Reduction Strategy, developed with important grassroots input in 2001. The government gives “high priority … to promoting the rational and sustainable use of forest resources as a means of contributing in a positive way to economic growth, employment generation and reduction of poverty, especially in rural areas” (World Bank 2004a). The Poverty Reduction Strategy aims at: (i) accelerating equitable and sustainable growth; (ii) reducing rural poverty (iii) reducing urban poverty; (iv) enhancing investment in human capital; (v) strengthening social protection for vulnerable groups; and (vi) ensuring sustainability through governance/institutional reforms and enhanced environmental sustainability. The strategy to reduce rural poverty includes improving land access, promoting sustainable development including forestry schemes and improving rural infrastructure (World Bank 2004b). For households in marginal areas (primarily forest lands), which constitute the majority of smallholders, the government’s focus is on diversification of the local economy, household food security and community forestry, agroforestry and agricultural options. Critical needs for achieving sustainable improvements in smallholder livelihoods include enhancing tenure and resource access security; access to land, resources and services; and gender equity. The PRS emphasizes accelerating equitable and sustainable economic growth, and the forest sector is one of four identified as having high productive potential. At the same time, “for the reduction of poverty


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in rural areas the PRS stresses the need to: i) improve equity and security in access to land on behalf of organized and independent small farmers and indigenous people, thus allowing income improvement and food security for rural families; ii) promote sustainable development in high-priority areas, under mechanisms that guarantee participation of local governments and communities; iii) improve the competitiveness of the rural economy, in order to increase production and improve the efficiency and competitiveness of small rural producers, facilitating access to infrastructure and to support services in markets, technology and financing; and iv) improve social conditions in rural areas, strengthen social infrastructure and increase coverage of poverty-reduction programs in rural areas that are most depressed and have the greatest incidence of poverty. The strategy also recognizes the importance to long-term poverty reduction of maintaining environmental quality and mitigating disasters, as the poor are more vulnerable to their consequences” (World Bank 2004a).

Some have criticized the PRS on the basis that it is grounded in neoliberal structural adjustment policies and privatization (World Bank 2001a,b). Honduras also recently approved CAFTA, which raises concerns in the rural sector generally. Forestry in Honduras is considered a subsector of agriculture. “Policy goals for the forest sector that most directly support the PRS include: (i) enhancing access to land and resources through the regularization of the traditional rights of populations in and near public forest lands; (ii) increasing employment and income of rural poor through participation in public and private forestry activities; (iii) strengthening of community participation, especially in the process of regularization of rights in forest lands and through programs promoting and developing productive activities; (iv) sustainable forest management, including a renewed focus on forest fire prevention and control, technical assistance and credit programs for primary-forest activities and their links to secondary-forest activities and development of “green seals” for forest management; (v) development of local capacity of municipal governments and communities to manage and conserve forest resources; and (vi) establishment of a Protected Areas Fund ….” (World Bank 2004a). Important institutional changes that support the goals of these projects have been made or are in process, as is the development of specific support programs. A new land use planning law was approved by Congress in October 2003, a new property rights law in 2004, and a new forestry law has been introduced in Congress but has not been approved. Institutional reforms include the intervention of the COHDEFOR, mentioned earlier. Under the previous government administration, the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock (SAG) was working on a restructuring proposal that would support national programs for agriculture, forestry and rural development. Several programs were aimed at the development of agriculture, forestry and gender equity among poor smallholders: the National Agriculture and Food Program (PRONAGRO), the Community Forestry Program, and the Ministry of Agriculture’s National Sustainable Rural Development Program (PRONADERS) (World Bank 2004a). These were tied to the programs of the political party in power at that time, however, and it is unclear what has happened to this proposal under the current administration. In an alliance among COHDEFOR, the Secretary of Government and the 35 municipalities with the highest incidence of forest fires, resources are being decentralized to contract fire brigades. In the municipality of Teupasenti, however, at the initiative of more than 30 environmental committees, instead of paying the brigades, the funds go toward community projects. The catalyst for this is widespread concern over the water supply (Vallejo 2006). Illegal logging is indirectly related to poverty issues, but it is a central concern of many rural communities. A high level Commission to audit the implementation of forest management plans has been formed in the Department of Olancho, a center of illegal logging. The Commission is headed by the Minister of SAG and includes representatives of the Attorney General’s environmental enforcement unit, the Catholic Church, the police and local environmental organizations (World Bank 2004a). A moratorium on logging was recently declared in the most conflictive municipality, Salamá.


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A World Bank analysis of poverty reduction policies in forested areas is critical, arguing that “most GOH efforts…have shown little result. Among the principal reasons for this have been: (i) the uncertain and conflictive nature of land tenure in public forest lands; (ii) low priority given to the systematic provision of support for production systems, such as infrastructure, technical assistance, irrigation, training and access to markets, and credit; (iii) an overly rigid, top-down command and control forest regulatory framework that encourages illegal behavior; (iv) undue discretionality and lack of transparency in the management of public forest lands; (v) a diffuse and confusing legal framework antithetical to encouraging private investment; and (vi) public policies which have implicitly directed institutional attention toward generating income from timber extraction rather than toward forest and environmental management and forest-based poverty alleviation programs” (World Bank 2004a).

Key community or local civil society proposals and/or initiatives to reduce poverty (or more broadly enhance well-being)

• The most important civil society forest-related movement currently is the Olancho Environmental Movement (MAO) led by the priest Father Tamayo, and aimed at banning logging and promoting conservation in Honduras, but rooted in the main forested and timber production region of Olancho. While its goal is not directly to reduce poverty, it is clearly aimed at improving well-being, by stopping the uncontrolled over-logging of Olancho’s forests. Though the movement does not advocate promoting community access to forests, some community foresters support the movement and believe that this would or should be its medium term goal. This movement originated with the Catholic Church in direct opposition to state policies supporting logging and the proliferation of both legal and illegal logging in the department.

• The Pact for Conservation is an initiative of local government and civil society in the

municipalities of Catacamas and Dulce Nombre de Culmí, where three of the country’s most important protected areas come together in the Honduran portion of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor. More than 40 organization and institutions formed the Pact to look for viable solutions to the destruction of the reserves caused by illegal logging, subsistence agriculture and extensive ranching. Particularly notable is the inclusion of sectors often ignored, such as illegal sawyers and colonists (Vallejo 2006). The Pact appears to have a primary emphasis on conservation rather than poverty.

• The Network for Management of the Broadleaf Forests of Honduras (REMBLAH) “is comprised of

organizations of forest producers and transformers, technical assistance enterprises, academic and research institutions, professional foresters unions, environmentalist foundations and NGOs, development projects, public institutions and other actors involved in natural resource management.” It aims to establish relations of cooperation among its members, with a primary emphasis on the design and promotion of policies and strategies for the sustainable development of communities and the resources and services offered by the broadleaf forest (REMBLAH, n.d.).

• FEHCAFOR was formed in 1974 and became a legal organization in 1990. It has about 80

members, primarily cooperatives working on resin extraction, though some log and others are inactive. Its mission is to improve community forest access to improve livelihoods in a way that is both profitable and ecologically sustainable. It has historically maintained and promoted a rather clientelistic relationship with COHDEFOR, from whom many its members obtain concessions to pursue their productive activities.

• The indigenous umbrella organization CONPAH fell apart when donor funded stopped, a couple

years after Hurricane Mitch, and the organization could no longer hold its membership together due to lack of funds for meetings and dissemination. It has continued but only with a few garifona, lenca y miskito members, but then divided as it failed to actively include the multiple viewpoints of its membership. In parallel, various federations were being questioned by their


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bases as being ideologues, self-serving and unrepresentative. At the same time, the Honduran Social Fund began providing important direct support to indigenous organizations, hence diverting them in that direction. A new organization, the National Indigenous Council (CNI) was formed with donor support after the decline of CONPAH (Grunberg 2003, Molnar, pers. comm.).

RRI Partner initiatives

• IUCN is one of the primary forces behind the development of the Central American Forestry Strategy, which emphasizes, among other things, the relationship between forests and poverty. This initiative appears to be in its initial phases, however, in terms of country implementation.

• CIFOR recently undertook a scoping initiative aimed at understanding the current state of

forestry decentralization with a particular emphasis on the needs and demands of forest-dependent groups. It included interviews with representatives of grassroots forestry organizations with field visits to numerous sites in the departments of Francisco Morazán and Comayagua, as well as to several municipalities in the departments of Lempira, El Paraíso and Olancho. This study was used to develop a country report that includes a list of recommendations for future research and action in support of these groups.

• ACICAFOC is overseeing a multi-million dollar project with indigenous communities in Central

America “to protect and manage their natural and cultural resources, as well as to recover and promote cultural values and traditional practices for sustainable land use” (CCAD 2005).

Impacts of policy reforms and projects

• The following represents an evaluation of the PAAR-FPPL project (from Siegel et al. 2004). The project is more integral than solely addressing forestry but appears to have had important positive livelihoods effects, if not direct income benefits. “Objectives of the Fund for Producers in Mountain Slopes (FPPL) component of the PAAR project are to: improve the transfer of technology to improve agricultural, livestock, and forestry practices for farmers located in hillside areas; reduce deforestation, soil erosion, and depletion of soil fertility in hillside areas; improve the incomes and welfare of poor farmers and residents in hillside areas; and establish a financial mechanism whereby hillside farmers can access technical assistance and training over the long-term.”

“Workshop participants included beneficiaries (men and women) from six community groups from the provinces of Yoro and Olancho. Before participating in the project, beneficiary farmers derived most of their income from on-farm production, notably maize and beans, and growing coffee, and from off-farm wage labor on coffee plantations. Participants now tend to devote more time to on-farm activities and less to off-farm wage labor activities. Project beneficiaries have made the following progress: increased productivity of traditional subsistence crops (maize, beans) and coffee; increased surplus production to sell in markets and for household consumption; and adoption of new crops with higher returns such as vegetables, fruits and forestry in fallow lands and through improved crop rotations. These changes in livelihood strategies are directly linked with project activities including technical assistance and capacity building; improved community organization; distribution of high yielding seed varieties and improved plant materials; distribution of agricultural inputs; and improved practices of soil conservation.”

Regarding impacts on household well-being, “beneficiaries consider that the increase in farm production has improved their food security. Nevertheless, their monetary income seems to have varied little, although the sources of income have changed. That is, although they have more


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surplus production, prices for agricultural products have fallen, whereas they are working less off the farm. Before the project, they derived about half their income from farm production; after the project, this proportion increased to 90 percent. Farmers believe the new agricultural practices they have adopted have increased their productivity, helped protect their soils and water sources, and have also improved the natural environment. In general, farmers feel the project helped develop a more positive attitude toward entrepreneurship and that now they are headed for improved well-being and quality of life. Thus they feel their asset bases and livelihood options have improved and are more optimistic about the future, but are concerned with the policy and institutional context (such as trade reforms) and increased exposure to market risks.”

• Lepaterique (from Nygren 2005). Though one aspect of logging in the Lepaterique was

mentioned earlier with regard to some of the recent adverse effects that were caused by land tenure reform, Lepaterique in general, and specifically the Finnish project funded there since the early 1990s, has stood out as one of the most important and successful forestry projects in the Central American region. The Finnish project aimed to “integrate forest activities into the peasant economy in an economically and environmentally sustainable way,” linking the goals of poverty alleviation and conservation through “decentralized forest governance and development of communal logging businesses.”

Livelihood activities in Lepaterique are diverse, including basic agricultural activities, mixed gardening, resin tapping, firewood and charcoal production, coffee, small scale ranching and logging. Women produce pine-needle handicrafts for sale in Tegucigalpa. A resin cooperative formed in 1974 is responsible for producing 30% of the pine resin produced in the country, and 12-15 logging microenterprises were formed with the support of the Finnish project in 1992. “By 1997, the income of those households participating in logging had doubled, and the proportion of income they received from forest activities had increase to 50-60% of their total income.” The salary of a logger was twice the salary of a farmworker. Interviewees all reported that logging improved their economic situation considerably.

In addition to the problems with the municipal government and the shift in control of logging activities mentioned earlier, there are also other important tensions in the municipality. The most important of these is probably the conflict of interests between the resin tappers and loggers over forest use. In general, forest management is threatened by conflicting interests, a lack of institutional accountability and corruption, oligopolic market structures, and the economic and political power of logging contractors.

• One of the main problems with policy initiatives is that they are rarely implemented in practice.

The institutional framework was established for land administration reform but has not been implemented in many places. The slow implementation of titling means forests remain in conflict, and the forest industry responds with illegal logging – because it is cheaper and because they may not have legal access to wood – in order to assure their wood supply in a situation of constantly changing policies (Molnar, pers. comm.). Though the government is currently supporting community forestry initiatives, the institution in charge of implementation (COHDEFOR) is not likely to take such initiatives seriously.

Key threats to local rights and livelihoods

• One of the most important ongoing threats to local rights and livelihoods is the failure to seriously address land tenure conflicts and insecurity, and ongoing questions of capacity and corruption at the government level, both central and municipal. For example, one World Bank project states issues regarding weak management, corruption, and the implementation and enforcement of land tenure laws and policies particularly in national forest lands as a “substantial” risk to the project (World Bank 2004a).


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• Another is the depth of illegality and profound violence in the forestry sector, including death threats and other physical intimidation aimed at silencing illegal logging opponents. This includes recognizing that the sector is tied to drug trafficking and money laundering (see CIP/EIA 2005). This level of violence has also been seen around land tenure disputes specifically and has even led to several assassinations. For example, three young people have been murdered so far in 2006 in the Garifuna community of San Juan Tela.

• The government recently signed the Central American Free Trade Agreement. Its effects directly

on the forestry sector are not expected to be substantial, though there is some concern by exporters about drying facilities and requirements, which they do not currently meet. It is unclear how this will affect smaller-scale loggers. Based on experience in Mexico, however, CAFTA is likely to increase insecurity in at least some rural areas, which may in turn increase migration pressures and pressures on forest resources.

• Honduras is a very poor country with a limited national budget and substantial dependence on

donors. This means policies constantly shift with the winds of funding priorities, and numerous projects are supported simply because they bring in cash. Pilot projects often never get beyond the pilot stage due to donor dependence and lack of follow-up funds and capacity. Qualified Hondurans often leave the country for better paying jobs or work as consultants, thus failing to build institutional capacity (Molnar, pers. comm.).

• The 1992 land law in large part has not been implemented even 14 years later. The new forestry

law has been under debate for several years and has still not been passed into law. Even if it were to pass, which in the near future is looking unlikely, it could still result in the over-regulation of communities and forest management plans. Illegal logging is not likely to stop without important changes in the incentive structure, given the general lack of capacity to control logging on the ground (Molnar, pers. comm., Vallejo, pers. comm.).

Key opportunities to advance RRI Tenure and Poverty Goals

• Clear opportunities lie in the overall policy framework which overtly recognizes links between tenure, forests and poverty and is, at least in discourse, aimed at improving forest access and secure access to poor rural sectors, as well as providing some of the assistance needed to improve market access, etc. for community forestry groups. The passage of the forestry law and the development of a new institutional framework for forestry present important opportunities. Support for local forest management, which should be substantially improved under the new law, could generate a new set of incentives that would help diminish illegal logging. With or without the new law, the current government has declared its commitment to support community management.

• The controversy generated by the recent CIP/EIA report (2005) on illegal logging, the effect this

had nationally, including on the presidential election, and some of the first actions demonstrating a commitment by the new president to address these issues also present an important opportunity.

• Another important opportunity relates to the overall mobilization around policies and issues

related to forests. This ranges from the negotiation of the new forestry law to movements such as the Olancho Environmental Movement but also other networks and NGOs working on these kinds of issues.


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References Alwang, J., D. Woodall-Gainey, P. Siegel and H.G.P. Jansen (2004) Spatial Analysis of Rural Economic Growth in Honduras. Appendix 4 to World Bank 2004b. Baranyi, S., C.D. Deere and M. Morales (2004) Scoping Study on Land Policy Research in Latin America. International Development Research Center. CCAD (2005) CCAD y ACICAFOC planifican trabajo conjunto en marco de proyecto regional, Noticias. http://www.ccad.ws/noticias/2005/1/acicafoc.htm (accessed August 9, 2006). CIAT (2001) Nivel de Pobreza por Aldeas. Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical, Costa Rica. May 30 2006. http://gisweb.ciat.cgiar.org/vulnerabilidad/datos/mapa8.htm CIP/EIA (2005) The Illegal logging Crisis in Honduras: How US and EU imports of illegal Honduran wood increase poverty, fuel corruption and devastate forests and communities. Washington, DC: CIP. del Gatto, F. (n.d.) Barreras a la Legalidad en el Sector Forestal de Honduras. REMBLAH-COSPE. FAO (2006) Global Forest Resources Assessment 2005. Rome. FEHCAFOR (2005) interview with Andres Solorzano and Rosalia Espinal. González, M.L. (2003) Proyecto de Administración de Tierras (PATH) Evaluación Social y Económica Participativa. The World Bank. August. Grunberg, G. (2003) Control y Gestión Ambiental de los Territorios Indígenas en Centroamérica. WANI (October-December) No. 35: 6-42. IICA/ CORECA-CAC/ SICA (n.d.) Mapas de pobreza y vulnerabilidad en centroamerica y mexico. 30 May 2006 www.coreca.org/seguridad/mapas Jansen, H.G.P., P.B. Siegel and F. Pichón (2005a) Identifying the Drivers of Sustainable Rural Growth and Poverty Reduction in Honduras. DSGD Discussion paper No. 19. Washington, DC: IFPRI. Jansen, H.G.P., A. Rodríguez, A. Damon, and J. Pender (2003) Determinantes de estrategias comunitarias para ganarse la vida y el uso de prácticas de producción agrícola conservacionistas en las zonas de ladera en Honduras. EPTD Discussion Paper No. 104, Washington, D.C.: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). Jansen, H.G.P., P. Siegel, J. Alwang and F. Pichon (2005b) Geography, Livelihoods and Well-being in Rural Honduras: An Empirical Analysis using an Asset-base Approach. Paper for the Conference on Poverty, Inequality, and Policy in Latin America, University of Goettingen, Germany, July 14-16. Larson, A., P. Pacheco, F. Toni and M. Vallejo (2006) Understanding the Livelihood Effects of Decentralization for Latin America’s Forest Dependent Poor. Paper presented at the Seminario Internacional sobre Territorios Rurales en Movimiento, Santiago, Chile, 23 to 26 April. Lastarria-Cornhiel, S., S. Agurto, J. Brown, and S.E. Rosales (2003) Joint Titling in Nicaragua, Indonesia, and Honduras: Rapid Appraisal Synthesis. Land Tenure Center: Wisconsin.


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Lebedys, A. (2004) Trends and Current Status of the Contribution of the Forestry Sector to National Economies. Rome: FAO. White, A. and A. Martin (2002) Who Owns the World’s Forests? Forest Tenure and Public Forests in Transition. Washington, DC: Forest Trends/ Center for International Environmental Law. Nygren, A. (2005) Community-Based Forest Management within the Context of Institutional Decentralization in Honduras. World Development 33(4): 639-55. Remblah, n.d. http://www.aci-erp.hn/html/orgs/remblah/html/perfil_institucional.htm Paul Siegel, P., R. Arias, J. Caballero Ceruti and B. Bustamante (2004) Summary Report: Honduras Project Stocktaking Exercises. Appendix 7 to World Bank 2004b. Tucker, C. (1999) Private Versus Common Property Forests: Forest Conditions and Tenure in a Honduran Community. Human Ecology 27(2): 201-28. UNDP (2006) Human Development Report 2005. http://hdr.undp.org/statistics/data/ Vallejo, M. (2006) interviews 22 May, 17 May. Vallejo, M. (2006) Descentralización de la gestión forestal en Honduras: mirando hacia el futuro. La Paz: CIFOR/IDRC. Vallejo, M. and L. Ferroukhi (2005) Bosques y Municipios de honduras: alternativa para el desarrollo. Tegucigalpa: SEDAL. Vallejo, M. (2003) Municipal forest management: a new alternative for Honduras. In Ferroukhi, L. (ed.) Municipal Forest Management in Latin America. Bogor: CIFOR/IDRC. White, A. and A. Martin (2002) World Bank (2001a) The Republic of Honduras Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper and Joint IDA-IMF Staff Assessment. September 17. The World Bank. World Bank (2001b) Honduras Poverty Diagnostic 2000, June. The World Bank. World Bank (2003) Plan de Desarrollo Indígena (administración de tierras). World Bank (2004a) Project Appraisal Document on a Proposed Credit to the Republic of Honduras for a Forests and Rural Productivity Project. Report No. 27943-HN. The World Bank. World Bank (2004b) Drivers of Sustainable Rural Growth and Poverty Reduction in Central America. Report No. 31192-HN (In Two Volumes) Honduras Case Study. Washington, DC: The World Bank. World Bank (2004) Honduras Land Administration Program PID. Report No. AB457. The World Bank. World Bank (2006a) http://devdata.worldbank.org/data-query/ World Bank (2006b) World Development Report 2006. Washington, DC: The World Bank. World Bank (2006) Land Admin project Inspection panel report and recommendation, Report No. 35470, March 14. The World Bank. WRI (2006) Honduras poverty map. 30 May 2006 http://earthtrends.wri.org/povlinks/map/m_52.php


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1 COHDEFOR statistics from 2001 reported 2.9 million hectares of broad-leaf forest, 2.5 million of pine forests and 0.6 million in mixed forest (cited in Vallejo and Ferroukhi 2005).

Honduras Country Case Study - Rights and Resources Initiative

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