Abstract:
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization
(FAO) and Uganda’s Forest Sector Support Department
(FSSD) under the Ministry of Water and Environment
(MWE), implemented the Improving Governance of Forest
Tenure Project between 2014 and 2016, with financial support from the Department for International Development
(DFID), and in collaboration with local NGOs and communities. Informed by the Voluntary Guidelines on the
Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries
and Forests (VGGT),1 the project aimed to formalize and
strengthen tenure security of Ugandan communities and
smallholders, especially to their customary forests, through
a pilot process.2 Under the project, a review of the status
of Uganda’s forests revealed that private forests are experiencing extremely high levels of degradation due to tenure
insecurity and resulting open access situations prevailing
in these forests (MWE, 2016)