Community involvement in forest management was (first) introduced in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) in 1989 when the First National Forestry Conference declared the new forest policy direction toward sustainable forest management. In this policy the government officially recognized the importance of local people’s participation in forest management. To ensure the new forest policy’s direction, the Government developed a Tropical Forestry Action Plan (TFAP) in 1990 and officially adopted it one year later. It was the first forest development program that advocated people’s participation in forest management (DOF, 2000). Another important policy instrument that shaped community based natural resource management in the 1990s was the Land Use Planning and Land Allocation Policy, which recognized the rights of local people to use and manage natural resources. It also encouraged local people’s participation in the management planning and protection of the forest.Since then a number of community based forest management (CBFM) models have been developed, tested and applied under different forest and socio-economic conditions in the country. However, whilst various lessons and experiences have been gained from these different models, these experiences have not always been widely documented, exchanged and coordinated.
