Social protection and forestry
Social protection is a set of policies and programmes designed to help reduce and prevent poverty and vulnerability, and ensure income security. Most food insecure and poor people with the greatest need for social protection live in rural areas and depend on natural resources – including forests – for their livelihoods. Forests serve as a safety net in times of crisis and increase the resilience of forest communities. However, forest-dependent communities are also vulnerable to ecological degradation and climate change, and are often in remote and disconnected rural areas characterized by low levels of market development and poor access to public goods and social services.
Social protection involves three pillars:
- Social assistance: alleviating chronic or transient poverty through non-contributory programmes, which are publicly provided, for most vulnerable individuals or households with limited other means of adequate support that can be provided in-kind or in cash.
- Social insurance: mitigating risks associated with poor health, old age, pregnancy (and post-natal care), unemployment, work injury and disability. Social insurance is derived from contributory schemes with part funding coming from the state.
- Labour market protection: creating employment and promoting livelihoods through generated economic opportunities, improved quality of employment and protects workers through improved working conditions, as well as training and skills development that target unemployed and underemployed rural workers.
FAO works to:
- expand the coverage of social protection to forest-dependent communities, households and forest workers
- strengthen the coherence between forestry and social protection policies and programmes
- improve the role of rural forest producer organizations in social protection
- promote decent forestry employment opportunities
News@Model.TitleStyle>
Forestry and social protection must be better aligned, says new report
21/11/2023
Social organization key to future crisis response for forest communities – FAO report
16/12/2022
Boosting youth employment in forestry in Uganda
08/04/2021
Publications@Model.TitleStyle>
Events@Model.TitleStyle>
22/ 7
2020
Social protection for forest-dependent communities: Building on the response to the COVID-19 pandemic for more resilient forest livelihoods
Virtual Event, 22/07/2020
Increasing knowledge on the role and opportunities of social protection in the COVID-19 response and to support recovery for forest-dependent communities.
5/ 6
2019
6/6
2019
Expert meeting to discuss the draft guiding framework for strengthening coherence between forestry and social protection for forest-dependent communities
Rome (Italy), 05/06/2019 - 06/06/2019
The objective of the expert meeting is to provide technical comments and inputs to the draft guiding framework for strengthening coherence between forestry and social protection for forest-dependent communities. FAO Forestry Division is developing this guiding framework in cooperation with the UNU-MERIT.
19/ 7
2018
Creating synergies between forestry and social protection
Rome (Italy), 19/07/2018
Since 2016, FAO has worked to expand the coverage of social protection measures to forest-dependent communities and to strengthen coherence between forestry and social protection.