FAO’s mandate has always been very close to that of poverty reduction since it concerns a key dimension of it, i.e. food security. As far as FAO’s Forestry Department is concerned, work on poverty has recently received some extra boosting in different guises, i.e.
These different elements are briefly presented hereafter.
In September 2001 the Forestry Department of FAO held a Forum on “The role of Forestry in Poverty Alleviation", with DFID support. The discussions held during this Forum resulted in a Policy Brief (http://www.fao.org/forestry/fon/fonp/cfu/brochure/brochure.stm) containing an “Agenda for Action” which highlights 4 points of action for international agencies to take into account in terms of increasing forestry contribution to poverty alleviation. These points are presented in Table 2. They have been recently reiterated and complemented by those proposed in a recent document on poverty-environment linkages jointly produced by DFID, EC, UNDP and the World Bank (DFID et al, 2002); and the later are thus also presented in Table 2.
Table 2: Two examples of recent proposals of agendas for action to improve poverty-environment/forestry outcomes
|
Agenda for Action from the FAO/DFID Tuscany Forum |
Agenda for Action proposed in the joint DFID/EC/UNDP/WB document on poverty-environment linkages |
|
A. Strengthening Rights, Capabilities and Governance Support the poor’s own decision-making power Strengthen forest rights of the poor and the means to claim them Recognize links between forestry and local governance
B. Reducing Vulnerability Make safety nets not poverty traps Support tree planting outside forests Cut the regulatory burden on the poor and make regulation affordable
C. Capturing Emerging Opportunities Remove the barriers to market entry Base land use decisions on true value of forests Ensure that markets for environmental services benefit the poor Support associations and financing for local forest businesses
D. Working in Partnership Simplify policies and support participatory processes Promote multisectoral learning and action Enhance interagency collaboration Make NGOs and the private sector partners in poverty reduction
Source: FAO/DFID 2001 |
A. Improve Governance Integrate poverty-environment issues into national development frameworks Strengthen decentralization for environmental management Empower civil society, in particular poor and marginalized groups Address gender dimensions of poverty-environment issues Strengthen anti-corruption efforts to protect the environment and the poor Reduce environment-related conflict Improve poverty-environment monitoring and assessment.
B. Enhance the assets of the poor Strengthen resource rights of the poor Enhance capacity of the poor to manage the environment Expand access to environmentally-sound and locally appropriate technology Reduce the environmental vulnerability of the poor.
C. Improve the quality of growth Integrate poverty-environment issues into economic policy reforms Increase the use of environmental valuation Encourage appropriate private sector involvement in pro-poor environmental management Implement pro-poor environmental fiscal reform.
D. Reform International and industrial country policies Reform international and industrial country trade policies Make foreign direct investment more pro-poor and pro-environment Enhance the contribution of multilateral environmental agreements to poverty reduction Encourage sustainable consumption and production Enhance the effectiveness of development cooperation and debt relief. Source: DFID,EC,UNDP ad WB, 2002 |
These points for action cut across all the facets of the forest sector and similarly across the FAO Forestry Department. They highlight issues that require interdisciplinary planning and action, and functional partnerships amongst those providing support. A proposal in that sense is discussed in Section 5.2.
Since September 2001, FAO has made some tangible progress in its thrust to contributing to the implementation of the agenda for action that resulted from the Tuscany Forum. This has occurred in different ways, including strategic, institutional, information-communication and programmatic aspects. These are summarised in Table 3.
Table 3: Major FAO actions to implement the forestry-poverty agenda for action since the Tuscany Forum (September 2001)
|
Aspects of FAO’s progress |
Specific Actions |
|
Strategic
|
A Strategy for developing a poverty focus in the work of the Forestry Department developed and being implemented |
|
Institutional |
Inter-Divisional Task Force on Poverty set up in March 2002
Several new programme entities (PEs) relevant to poverty to be created in the context of FAO’s Medium-Term 2004-2009:
|
|
Information-Communication |
Policy Brief translated in 5 languages and widely disseminated (about 4,000 copies so far)
Presentation and distribution of the Policy Brief at FAO Conference (November 2001) and the World Food Summit + 5 (June 2002)
Forest, poverty alleviation and food security a main theme for State of Forests (SOFO ) and Committee on Forests (COFO) 2003 Participation to the International Workshop on “Forestry and Poverty Reduction – How can development, research and training agencies help?”, Edinburgh, June 2002 |
|
Programmatic |
Strengthening of FAO’s support to national forest programmes through the national forest programme Facility More emphasis on negotiation and partnership approaches
|
Some of the actions mentioned in Table 3 are briefly presented below.
(i) New programme entities relevant to poverty
FAO’s medium term plan for the period 2004-2009 envisages several two new programme entities relevant to poverty within the Forestry Department, i.e. on “Forest Policies and Governance”, “Forests, Poverty Alleviation and Food Security”, “Forests and Water” and “Planted forest and Trees outside Forests”. In addition the current entity on Forest Participation” will become “Forest Participation and Sustainable Livelihoods”. These changes are important from an institutionalisation point of view. Indeed, the existence of programme entities implies a commitment by FAO to allocate funds from Member States contribution to FAO’s Regular Programme as well as other resources to the activities included in these entities.
(ii) The Poverty Strategy of the Forestry Department
An Inter-Divisional Taskforce on Poverty (ITP) is operational within the Forestry Department since March 2002. Following the wide dissemination of the Policy Brief, it is envisaged that FAO member states will increasingly be looking for assistance from the Forestry Department in the development of forestry programmes with a poverty focus. In order to meet the expectations of member states and donor partners, it has become clear a stronger focus on poverty is needed in the Forestry Department. A strategy to that end has been drawn and is being implemented. There are four steps to be implemented between September 2002 and March 2003:
1. Internal stock-taking exercise
2. Plan overall framework for FO work in support of poverty alleviation
3. Identify activities for a programme entity on Forests, Poverty Alleviation and Food Security
4. Draft project concept notes for possible extra-budgetary funding.
(iii) The National Forest Programme Facility (NFPF)
The need to maintain a broad base of support across civil society is fundamental to the success of national forest programmes, and flexibility is required for these programmes to encompass and address new issues and opportunities.
In order to facilitate broad involvement by civil society and in order to bring the latest forest information to bear on the forest policy dialogue, the National Forest Programme Facility (in short the “Facility”) was created by a group of concerned countries alongside of FAO.
The Facility focuses especially on knowledge sharing and capacity building in the forestry sector and assists to upgrade the role of information and knowledge to ensure the informed participation of a broad range of stakeholders in the national forestry debate. The Facility also seeks to effectively link forest policy and planning with the broader national objectives, strategies and programmes particularly to those related to poverty alleviation.
The Facility concentrates on improving enabling conditions towards sustainable forest management through capacity building and knowledge sharing rather than through project funding. Critical to the success of the programme will be the development of partnerships among governments with civil society, institutions, private sectors, forest dependent people, and donors and NGOs.
The Facility operates with a two-pronged strategy:
Direct country-level support to assist countries in building up the capacity of governmental and civil society actors involved in an NFP process in order to enable them to successfully manage and develop such processes. The expected key outputs of the direct country-level support are improvements in:
Information services: The Facility will develop and maintain a forest information platform to facilitate the exchange of information and knowledge relevant to NFP processes. These services are provided by the Facility to strengthen the overall momentum for effective implementation of NFPs by sharing experiences and knowledge world-wide. The platform will rely on knowledge networks and communities of practice to link and provide access to experiences in other countries and to the global body of forest related knowledge.
(iv) Forest extension though equitable partnerships and markets
The theme of FAO’s work in forest extension is to promote problem solving, participatory and multi-stakeholder approaches to enhance the contribution of trees and forests to sustainable land use, and food security (FAO, 2002). It uses approaches that tackle issues of social justice, using principles of dialogue, mutual respect and learning among stakeholders, balanced with parameters of ecological sustainability.
The extension programme is elaborating and implementing five main partnership models based on principles of social, economic equity (FAO, 2002):
The activities described above are developed in the context of and in close collaboration with national forest programmes
(v) A proposal for a post-2002 Partnership Programme on "forestry
for sustainable livelihoods" (FSL)
The basic concept of this partnership programme proposal is that enabling
policies and equitable governance are important to operationalise the interface
between SFM and sustainable livelihood approaches; this itself being a crucial
factor to enhance the contribution of forestry to poverty reduction. In this
proposal, multi-stakeholder, adaptive policy processes and supportive institutional
capacities - based on negotiated roles - are deemed two key factors to achieve
this. The Forestry for Livelihoods (FSL) programme would address this challenge
through a learning process that would involve FAO and partners in four key
areas:
The emphasis on learning is based on lessons from past experience regarding national forest processes, i.e. that implementation involves processes of continuous improvement for understanding and coping with change. FSL would act in synergy with the ongoing support to national forest programmes, including the National Forest Programme Facility (NFPF).
Figure 4 attempts to illustrate how these different components of the FSL
programme relate to each other, and Annex 1 presents its goal, purposes, outputs
and preliminary ideas on sets of activities to be included in the programme.
The FSL partnership Programme is likely to make a difference for different reasons, i.e.
It will benefit FAO’s comparative advantages, including:
For these reasons, it is proposed that FAO coordinates the programme;
