THE PRINCIPLES

The forest governance framework draws upon six widely recognized principles of good governance:

Accountability: People should face responsibility for their actions. Civil servants should be accountable for how well they carry out their jobs. High officials should be accountable for the quality of their management and policymaking. All people should be accountable for whether they follow laws.

Effectiveness: Forest management programs should make good progress towards their goals, which should include internationally accepted targets like sustainability. Agencies and stakeholders should have the capacity to function well.

Efficiency: Governance should work smoothly, with as little waste as possible. The arms of government should work together, in a coordinated fashion. Conflicts—within the government, between government and citizens, or between forest users—should be handled quickly and with little expense.

Fairness/Equity: Access to the forest should be fair, considering the needs and rights of property owners, businesses, indigenous peoples, forest-dependent communities, young people, women, and others.

Participation: People with an interest in forests (stakeholders) should have ways to be heard and to influence policy and management. People who play a role in forest governance, from legislators to the media, should be active and interested in forest matters.

Transparency: As far as practical, forest governance should be open to public scrutiny. Most government documents and decisions concerning forests should be available to stakeholders. Some private dealings affecting public forests should also be open to view.

These principles do not appear directly in the pillars and components of the framework, but they underlie the framework. They suggest what makes governance good and in that way they guide the division of the pillars into components and subcomponents. To learn more about how these principles figure into the framework, continue on to the page on the framework's pillars.