Around 1 billion people living in poverty depend on forest products for all or part of their livelihoods. Many of them reside in tropical areas with high biodiversity and often severe restrictions on commercial agriculture where commercial forestry offers one of the few viable livelihood options. Although the participation of rural people in forest activities may be limited in terms of relative market-share, the contribution of these activities to people’s income is often high.

Under favorable economic and political conditions, there is potential for rural development and poverty reduction through people’s active involvement in commercial forestry. Engaging rural people in sustainable commercial forestry operations will also permit large scale forest conservation. But no sustainable forest enterprises and forest management can work without effective institutions and enabling political and institutional frameworks.

Here follow the main findings about the the key elements of strategies for promoting enabling political and institutional frameworks  , provided by private forest sector representatives, community-based entrepreneurs, researchers, non-profit providers of technical, business and financial services, funding and donor agencies attending the International conference on small and medium enterprise development for poverty reduction.