The objective of The pyramid: a diagnostic and planning tool for good forest governance is to offer a framework to stimulate participatory assessment and target-setting in forest governance at country level. Wielded by well-facilitated multi-stakeholder processes, the tool can help fill the ‘forest governance gap’ between assessing and accelerating field level progress in sustainable forest management (SFM), and international policy, assessment and reporting. By filling this gap, stakeholders’ capabilities to deliver national governance that supports local forest governance – and potentially improves international forest governance – can be improved.
The tool is designed for creative, rather than prescriptive use; to stimulate ideas not to lay down the law. A case study using the tool in Brazil has been carried out. The objective was to provide a preliminary assessment of the applicability of the tool to assess the status of forest governance in Brazil, and specifically the national forest programme. The Brazil case study shows that the use of the tool is highly subjective, and its legitimacy depends on who does it, and how. An effective multi-stakeholder process is essential. Furthermore, only if this tool becomes further developed and used by credible teams in a range of countries and contexts will it become possible to ‘calibrate’ its use to compare findings from one place to another.
A summary card of this tool is available to download in four languages in PDF format:
English (52K) | French (54K) | Spanish (53K) | Portuguese (55K)
The complete tool is also available (PDF format):
English (277K, 52pp) | French (321K, 55p) | Spanish (312K, 54pp) | Portuguese (245K, 56pp) | Indonesian (189K, 51pp)
Please cite this tool as:
Mayers, J. Bass, S. and Macqueen, D. 2005. The pyramid: a diagnostic and planning tool for good forest governance. Power tools series. International Institute for Environment and Development, London, UK.
For further information:
- This tool was developed in association with the WWF/World Bank Alliance, www.forest-alliance.org.
