The many competing social, economic, and environmental demands placed on forests give complexity to the forests sector.  The Bank’s Forests Strategy is built on three equally important and interlinked pillars that are some of the most important topics for the forest sector today: harnessing the potential of forests to reduce poverty, integrating forests into sustainable economic development and protecting local and global forest values.  One pressing issue closely related to these themes is how to address the destruction of forests, the loss of livelihood opportunities, and the undermining of economic development opportunities that result from poor forest sector governance and associated illegal logging and corruption. The loss and depletion of forests is also a major issue for climate change: deforestation and forest degradation is responsible for about 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions.  Finally, ensuring that economic development is carried out in a sustainable manner is essential to the Bank's mission to fight poverty without comprimising economic, environmental and social sustainability. The Bank’s suite of safeguard policies, including the forests operational policy (OP 4.36), ensures that Bank operations with potential impact on forests take forest outcomes into consideration. OP 4.36 is proactive in both identifying and protecting critical forest conservation areas and in supporting improved forest management in production forests outside these areas, with strong certification requirements.   |
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