To ensure that good forest governance takes root, CARE International in Uganda is implementing a five year Forest Resources Sector Transparency Programme (FOREST) in Uganda in Partnership with Joint Effort to Save the Environment (JESE), Anti-Corruption Coalition Uganda (ACCU), Advocates Coalition for Development and Environment (ACODE), Environment Alert, Panos Eastern Africa (PANOSEA), and Community Development Resource Network (CDRN). At the start of the programme CARE and her partners deemed it necessary to conduct baseline studies to establish benchmarks for measuring programme impacts with the following broad objectives:
i) To assess level of stakeholder awareness and participation in forestry legislation monitoring
ii) To determine the level of accountability, transparency and responsiveness of duty bearers with regard to forest governance issues
iii) To assess the existence and functionality of District/inter-district ENR forums, networks and alliances in their involved in forest governance issues at Sub-national and National levels
iv) To assess the level of media coverage of forest governance issues at district and national levels