AT A GLANCE: - About 60 million indigenous people are almost wholly dependent on forests and another 350 million people live within or adjacent to dense forests, depending on them to a high degree for subsistence and income.
- Forests are home to at least 80 percent of the world’s remaining terrestrial biodiversity.
- Deforestation accounts for an estimated 20 percent of global carbon emissions.
- Forests help to maintain the fertility of the soil, protect watersheds, and reduce the risk of natural disasters such as floods and landslides.
- 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.
Lending Trends
Sustainable management of forests is critical to the World Bank’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 from US$149 million in FY01 to US$540 million in FY07.
The World Bank Group Forest Strategy
In 2002, the World Bank adopted a new Forest Strategy that takes an integrated approach to the broad objectives of poverty alleviation, sustainable economic development, and environmental conservation. Notable areas of achievement include: - Using forests for poverty alleviation and broadly shared growth: Local community involvement in sustainable forest management is a central element of forest projects. Through forest projects, the Bank has supported (for example) the establishment of forest owner associations in 184 of the 214 regions in Mexico; the creation of employment for over 70,000 forest-dependent poor in Honduras, 100,000 in Lao PDR and 2.75 million in China; and the equitable sharing of benefits in Albania, by facilitating the transfer of management and use rights to 280 communities involving 400,000 people. The poverty focus of Bank financed forest projects and forest components in lending operations that are not formally classified as forest projects (e.g., livelihood, agriculture and rural development projects) has increased, as well as the integration of forest components into broader natural resource and rural development programs (e.g., projects in Gabon, Guatemala, and Albania).
- Leading global efforts to improve forest governance and control illegal logging: Bank activities on forest governance have supported the creation of a more positive political climate for high-level regional discussions and increased transparency and accountability in the sector. The Bank has facilitated the process of three regional Ministerial declarations (East Asia, Africa, and Europe, and North Asia) and is now engaged in supporting follow-up actions. In Latin America, the Bank, in collaboration with regional partners, is also helping to catalyze high-level processes for improved compliance with forest legislation. Forest sector governance and institutional reforms have become a central focus in many client countries, including Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Georgia, Honduras, Indonesia, Madagascar, Romania, Russia, and Tanzania.
- Promoting forest certification and sustainable forest management: The Bank has positively influenced the development of sustainable forest management (SFM) standards and independent certification schemes, including the development of international standards to assess the quality of certification schemes. Certified forest area has expanded significantly in Bolivia, Russia, and Eastern Europe, and prospects for SFM have increased in countries such as Cameroon and Indonesia.
- Facilitating responsible corporate investments: The Bank is working in collaboration with the IFC, the World Bank/WWF Alliance, and the Program on Forests (PROFOR) to assist client country governments in China, India, Kenya, Russia, and South Africa to attract responsible domestic and foreign private sector investments to finance conservation and sustainable management of forest resources. This is achieved through improved investment climates, development of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), and the fostering of company-community partnerships.
- Enabling the conservation of ecosystem services: Global Environment Facility grants (totaling about US$100 million since FY02) have been associated or blended with IDA/IBRD financed capacity building to support the biodiversity/protected areas components of sector-wide programs in Cameroon, Gabon, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and other countries.
- Guiding implementation of the forest strategy: The Bank has produced key products to guide implementation of the forest strategy, including the Forest Certification Assessment Guide (FCAG); the Forest Law Manual; Forest Sourcebook; the Poverty-Forest Linkages Toolkit; and publications on strengthening forest law enforcement and governance.
Looking to the Future
The Bank will continue to emphasize and scale up its efforts to meet the goals set out in the 2002 Forest Strategy: - Addressing poverty and forest governance by promoting greater recognition of the rights of local and indigenous groups and greater attention to land tenure, ownership, and issues of rights of access to resources. This includes stakeholder participation in the formulation and implementation of policies, strategies, and programs to foster community ownership and long-term sustainability of forest resources. It also includes strong application of Bank safeguard policies and requirements. The recently completed Forests Sourcebook provides an important resource in this context.
- Enhancing the role of forests as an engine of economic growth and development. Increase investments in environmentally and socially sustainable plantations (especially in tropical countries), expand forest certification and overall forest management, and encourage responsible private sector investments.
- Further mainstreaming forests in the Bank’s agenda, through greater inclusion of forest sector issues into Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) and Country Assistance Strategies (CASs) and better alignment of GEF and IFC resources with the IDA/IBRD lending program, to address poverty and livelihood issues.
- Assisting countries to integrate the global forest agenda and associated development opportunities into their own national strategies and policies. Take advantage of emerging economic and environmental opportunities to foster sustainable forest management. Integrate forest interdependencies into the design of agriculture, rural development, and natural resource management projects to ensure sustainable economic growth and rural poverty alleviation.
- Fostering new sources of finance for sustainable forest management, forest conservation, and the fight against climate change. This includes piloting and testing the opportunities to mitigate climate change and protect standing forests through carbon finance, via the new Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF), which aims to develop a strong partnership between developing and developed countries, including governments and the private sector, to strengthen incentives for avoided deforestation.
Delivering Results through Strategic Partnerships Through strategic partnerships and programs such as the multi-donor Program on Forests (PROFOR), and the Forest Law Enforcement and Governance (FLEG) initiative, the Bank is leveraging resources, generating cutting edge analytical work, aligning stakeholder interests, enabling innovation, improving outreach, and scaling up impacts. To advance existing forest partnerships and adapt to changing international views of forestry, the World Bank is also seeking to galvanize an innovative approach to coordination within the sector that would link local needs with the global forest agenda. Believing that this will require reinforced collaboration between civil society, the private sector, governments, and donors at both regional and global levels, the World Bank Group developed an initial concept for what it called a Global Forest Partnership (GFP). The World Bank Group has asked an independent group to consult with a broad range of stakeholders on the GFP. Consultations with over 600 stakeholders reveal a consensus that (a) such an approach is justified because current isolated initiatives are not resolving escalating forest problems effectively; (b) stakeholders would welcome such a partnership if it were built around forest-dependent groups, and “defenders of the forest” in other sectors; (c) a new forest partnership would only be successful if it recognized that forests are resources that affect and are affected by other sectors; and (d) the credibility of a GFP would be dependent on a participatory process in the design and implementation of the partnership.
For more information, please see the website:
www.worldbank.org/forests ### Updated March 2008 Media Contacts: Roger Morier: (202) 473-5675, Email: Rmorier@worldbank.org
Anne Davis Gillet: (202) 458-4822, Email: Adavis@worldbank.org |
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