-- Related Links-- Forests and Forestry Expert on Forests: Gerhard Dieterle

• Forests cover between 25 percent and 30 percent of the earth’s land surface.
  
  
• About 350 million people worldwide depend on forest resources for their livelihood—of those, 50 million (especially indigenous communities) are wholly dependent on forests.
  
  
• Forests are home to at least 80 percent of the world’s remaining terrestrial biodiversity. They help maintain the fertility of the soil, protect watersheds, and reduce the risk of natural disasters such as floods and landslides.
  
  
• Forests contain twice as much carbon as exists in the earth’s atmosphere, and absorb about 15 percent of the planet’s greenhouse gas emissions.
  
  
• Deforestation and forest degradation account for about 20 percent of global carbon emissions.
  
  
• Forests and the forest product industry are a source of economic growth and employment, with US$186 billion worth of global trade in primary wood products. In developing countries, forest based employment accounts for 32 million jobs.

Lending Trends

Sustainable management of forests is critical to the World Bank Group’s mission because of forests’ contribution to the livelihoods of the poor, the potential they offer for economic development, and the essential global environmental services they provide. Since the World Bank Group adopted a more proactive engagement in forests, embodied in the 2002 Forest Strategy, the forest portfolio has grown steadily from just US$53 million in FY 2004 to US$678 million in FY09.

The World Bank Group and Forestry

The World Bank Group’s Forest Strategy takes an integrated approach to the broad objectives of poverty alleviation, sustainable economic development, and environmental conservation. It balances three objectives:

Using forests for poverty alleviation and broadly shared growth.The World Bank Group takes advantage of emerging economic and environmental opportunities to foster sustainable forest management. This includes integrating forests into the design of agriculture, rural development, energy, and natural resource management projects to ensure sustainable economic growth and rural poverty alleviation. The World Bank Group works towards greater inclusion of forest sector issues in Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) and Country Assistance Strategies (CASs), and better alignment of GEF and IFC resources with the International Development Association (IDA)/International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) lending program, to address poverty and livelihood issues.

The World Bank Group promotesgreater recognition of the rights of local and indigenous groups and greater attention to land tenure, ownership, and issues of rights of access to resources. It also provides guidance and tools for mainstreaming poverty issues into development approaches, such as the Forests Sourcebook and the Poverty-Forests Linkages Toolkit. This includes stakeholder participation in the formulation and implementation of policies (including financing the capacity to better participate) and programs to foster community ownership and long-term sustainability of forest resources.

Integrating forests into sustainable economic development. The Bank Group fosters responsible corporate investments through its private sector arm, IFC. It also increases investments in environmentally and socially sustainable plantations (especially in tropical countries), expanding forest certification and overall forest management, including forest management in national energy strategies in those countries where the majority of energy is still sourced through the use of wood-based fuels, and stimulating political processes to strengthen commitment to governance reforms at national and regional levels. All this will have an impact on improving forest governance and reducing illegal logging. World Bank Group work in this area also includes strong application of safeguard policies and requirements.

Protecting vital local and global environmental services and values.Through various partner mechanisms, the World Bank Group helps client countries balance productive uses in all types of forests with protection of ecosystem services, e.g. climate change mitigation. Through its support to various trust funds, such as the BioCarbon Fund, the World Bank Group is exploring opportunities in afforestation/reforestation, reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation, and soil carbon. The World Bank Group is also supporting a large portfolio of analytical work focused on forests, especially with regard to climate change mitigation and adaptation, poverty alleviation, and providing sustainable energy.

Forests and Climate Change

In the context of intensified international discussions on mitigating against climate change, and in line with the World Bank Group’s Strategic Framework on Development and Climate Change adopted in 2008, forests offer a unique resource. To effectively use forests for this purpose, however, it is important to consider forests’ roles in reducing poverty and generating economic growth, in addition to protecting environmental services. Ensuring that forest resources are well-governed is an important element in maximizing forests’ ability to contribute to climate change and development simultaneously.

In this area, the Bank is testing opportunities to mitigate climate change and protect standing forests through the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility using carbon finance.

Within the framework of the Climate Investment Funds and in collaboration with other multilateral development banks, the World Bank Group has worked actively with donors and potential recipients to design a Forest Investment Program (FIP) to support investments needed to make avoided deforestation work and to support efforts in afforestation, reforestation, and restoration of degraded forests. In June 2009, donors pledged US$348 million to the FIP.

World Bank Instruments That Contribute To Sustainable Forest Management

Media Contacts: 
Anne Davis Gillet:
(202) 458-4822
Email: adavis@worldbank.org

Robert Bisset:
(202) 458-5191
Email: rbisset@worldbank.org

Updated September 2009