Year of publication 2002

These guidelines provide a powerful introduction to the issues confronting the policy-makers, forest practitioners, extension workers and others who want to restore and manage degraded or secondary forests. They stress that the policy, legal and social conditions in and outside the forest must be analyzed and addressed before restoration, management and rehabilitation activities are decided on. They point out that many people have a stake in the forest and any restoration, management or rehabilitation efforts must be made with their full participation. Land tenure issues must be resolved, and transparent mechanisms for sorting out conflicts over property and access rights must be established. Silvicultural techniques that can be understood and implemented by owners of small areas of forest need to be developed. These guidelines synthesize a vast quantity of information, not only from the literature but also from many tropical forest stakeholders. They have been prepared to highlight the increasing importance of the current and potential roles of degraded and secondary forests in tropical landscapes. They provide a set of principles and recommended actions to promote and encourage the management, restoration, rehabilitation and sustainable utilization of degraded and secondary forests as a component of sustainable social and economic development. They fill a gap between two existing ITTO policy documents: the ITTO Guidelines for the Sustainable Management of Natural Tropical Forests, and the ITTO Guidelines for the Establishment and Sustainable Management of Planted Tropical Forests.