Forests for People

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Building on the positive outputs and impacts of the current port-

folio of projects, the Bank’s pipeline interventions are focusing

on sustainable forest management at national and regional levels.

These include the proposed regional interventions in the Upper

Guinea Forest Ecosystem in West Africa as well as national actions

to consolidate the development of forest management capacities.

In addition, the Bank has begun to generate knowledge through

economic and sectoral work in order to strategically reposition

the sector as an engine of economic growth in the RMCs where

this could be achieved. In this regard, the Bank has undertaken a

comprehensive study of the Liberian forestry sector with a view to

identifying investment opportunities in a post-conflict setting.

The Bank carried out a forestry project in the Liberian forestry sector

from 1978 until the late 1980s, when the country was devastated by

war until 2003. The project supported institutional capacity-building,

plantation development, training and forest assessment studies.

Case study evidence from different parts of the world has shown

that where forests are accessible and there is an authority capable of

exercising control over them, it is possible for forests to be used to

finance conflicts.

In a post-conflict scenario, before forest manage-

ment improves and institutions are strengthened, forests may suffer

further from overexploitation. In Liberia’s case, there

have been efforts to establish effective cross-sectoral coor-

dination mechanisms for forest management through the

Liberia Forest Initiative, which was started in 2004 by

USAID and was shortly thereafter supported by a variety

of other donor agencies. The first phase of the LFI has

ended and consultations among partners on the best way

forward are ongoing.

Forestry and climate change issues

Communities in forest-adjacent areas in Africa tend

to have high levels of forest dependency but lack the

capacity to adapt to climate change due to poverty. The

impacts of climate change are likely to be higher for

the continent compared to other parts of the world as

it is exacerbated by key drivers of deforestation such as

clearing of land for small-scale agriculture. Weak insti-

tutions, lack of adequate data for planning and poor

policy frameworks present additional challenges.

Climate change interventions are a key priority in the

Bank’s forestry portfolio through its participation in the

A private pine plantation in Uganda

Image: SAWLOG. Uganda 2007