Forestry Financing Mechanisms in the Asia-Pacific Region
The FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, Bangkok organized an Expert Consultation on "Assessing Innovative Forestry Financing Mechanisms in the Asia-Pacific Region" on 16 –17 December 2010 in Bangkok, Thailand with the main objective of sharing information and experiences on financing sustainable forest management (SFM) in the region and to explore potential opportunities to expand this activity in the region.
Downloads the documents of the Meeting:
Welcome Remarks List of participants
Country case: China Country case: Indonesia Country case: Malaysia Country case: Philippines
Key messages and Strategy
The main outcome of the Expert Meeting is a project proposal on advancing support to financing SFM in the region. This emerged from various FAO technical inputs, close collaboration with other development partners, and strong regional ownership.
In addition to assisting countries develop comprehensive national forest financing strategies, this initiative identified the following activities to be taken up at the regional level.
a. Develop a forest investment strategy guide for the region to spread information on forest investments opportunities for potential investors (comparison of important parameters -e.g. tax incentives and barriers, land ownership/lease and transferability rules, funds repatriation rules) across countries.
b. Organize a forest investor-government meet in the region to promote better communication/ dialogue between interested countries and forest investors.
c. Explore the possibility of establishing a one-stop forest investment information centre on a pilot basis (e.g. in Philippines).
d. Undertake studies to examine the factors contributing to the expansion/success of forest cooperatives in China and farm woodlots in Thailand, Nepal, and Philippines.
e. Develop a tri-partite forest investment model (government-private-community) that is amenable to private forest investments on government forestlands that are under local community management.
f. Inventory successful cases of PES mechanisms (e.g., Vietnam) in the region, and identify elements for scaling up/expansion elsewhere.