Managing Forest Resources for Sustainable Development : An Evaluation of the World Bank Group's Experience
The World Bank Group’s forest interventions have contributed substantially to beneficial environmental outcomes. However, poverty reduction, for the most part, has not been satisfactorily addressed. Forest projects that promote participatory forest...
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| Format: | Report |
| Language: | English |
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World Bank, Washington, DC
2021
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/196801613769609159/Managing-Forest-Resources-for-Sustainable-Development-An-Evaluation-of-the-World-Bank-Groups-Experience http://hdl.handle.net/10986/35158 |
| Summary: | The World Bank Group’s forest
interventions have contributed substantially to beneficial
environmental outcomes. However, poverty reduction, for the
most part, has not been satisfactorily addressed. Forest
projects that promote participatory forest management have
been the most successful at balancing poverty reduction,
livelihoods and environmental aims (with efforts to link
forest products to market), but this integration is lacking
in other sector interventions. IFC’s downstream investments
are creating jobs, including those in the upstream sector,
helping forest companies produce higher value-added
products, increasing productivity and production capacity,
and fostering outgrower schemes. Despite increased efforts
by IFC to support certification—a proxy indicator for
sustainable forest management— challenges remain in this
area. Regarding downstream investments, IFC’s impact could
be expanded by greater attention to creating demand for
certified supplies. And despite the reorientation of the
strategy— including the operational safeguards that were
put in place and efforts to support policy and institutional
reforms— there have been negligible outcomes in integrating
natural forests into economic development in an
environmentally and socially sustainable way. The World Bank
has been able to adapt the partnership structure and focus
of work within the partnerships to the changing context of
the global forest-related priorities and dialogue. The Bank
has also had a major role in shaping these global
priorities. Broadening the partnership approach toward other
land-based sectors and commodities has been critical given
the increasing importance of extra-sectoral factors as
drivers ofdeforestation and forest degradation. The
evolution of the partnerships towards holistic
landscape-level approaches that combine forest conservation
and sustainable forest management (SFM) with climate
changemitigation and adaptation, improved food security and
climate smart agricultural development are significant
achievements. The Bank’s efforts to integrate broader
governance concerns and issues, including the efforts to
protect and enhance the rights of indigenous
forest-dependent communities, into these approaches are also
recognized as important achievements. In several cases,
World Bank Group cooperation has facilitated effective
outcomes in the forest sector. The World Bank Group has been
most effective when the Bank’s work to help countries lower
barriers to private sector entry have been combined with IFC
and MIGA support to catalyze sustainable investments in the
forest sector. Action on such complementary services was
found in China, Nicaragua, Russia, and Uruguay— but nowhere
else. The monitoring and reporting systems of the World
Bank forest sector operations are inadequate to verify
whether its operations are supporting forest management in
an environmentally and socially sustainable way, in line
with the 2002 Strategy and the Bank Group’s Operational
Policies. Environmental indicators used in forest projects
are mainly process or effort measures (such as the number of
hectares planted, or numbers of hectares under management
plans). Most indicators of poverty alleviation were less
direct than is desirable both for accurately assessing
project outcomes and for comparison across projects. Poverty
reduction indicators like numbers of productive investments
made are imperfect measures of whether programs are reaching
the most vulnerable members of a community. World Bank and
IFC projects often assumed, without verification, that
benefits would accrue to the poor within targeted areas,
rather than to community members with more wealth or power. |
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