November 2012: As part of the 2012 International Year of Cooperatives, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) has produced an issues brief on opportunities for forest user producer groups and cooperatives. By connecting the two groups, it notes, forest producers can gain negotiating power without having to create new institutions and governance rules. The publication highlights that due to access to markets and a number of other factors forest producers often have weak negotiating power. To combat this challenge, FAO recommends supporting existing agricultural producer organizations to include forestry groups in a way that builds cohesion and local credibility.

The brief highlights opportunities to bring these groups into broader mechanisms to finance forest protection, through climate change mitigation and environmental service markets. The report also includes examples from successful efforts to integrate forest users into agricultural producer organizations. [Publication: Time to connect forest and agricultural producer organizations]