Southern Africa

There is growing recognition that centralized forest regimes, which exclude local knowledge and customary practices, have not achieved sustainable forest management. Most countries of Eastern and Southern Africa are reviewing and revising policies and laws and restructuring their agencies to accommodate emerging forest management imperatives.

The regions of Eastern and Southern Africa, embracing the countries of Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia(land), Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, Angola, Lesotho, Swaziland and South Africa display a great richness and diversity of cultures and peoples, geographical features and biodiversity. This complexity has created great diversity in resource use and management by rural people.

A critical component in ensuring effective environmental governance is the existence of a vigilant civil society which can activate relevant statutory agencies to enforce environmental policy and legislation. Lawyers are in a special position to provide leadership in this domain, although the lack of formal training in environmental law and policy advocacy in this region has highlighted the need to provide some.

Part I looks at community issues and Part II looks at the broad framework of policy and legislation intended to advance farmers' and breeders' rights at both national and international level. The summary provides recommendations, as well as action plans and strategies for the implementation of the international instruments.