CIFOR is committed to strengthening the capabilities of governments, developing country scientists, civil-society organisations and local communities by conducting collaborative research, and by providing high-quality, unbiased information. The ultimate aim is to help these various constituencies develop and promote their own solutions to the forestry problems they and their countries face.

In 2004, CIFOR and the International Foundation for Science established the Poverty and Environment Network (PEN), which uses PhD students to gather information, in return for which students receive guidance from CIFOR scientists. By 2006, 24 PEN partners were gathering household and village data on a wide range of topics. Eventually, this will yield the largest database of its kind – one which will shed new light on the complex relationship between forests and poverty.

A partnership between CIFOR and a Bolivian NGO, Fundación Natura Bolivia, was one of the first four winners of a new award for exemplary partnerships between centres belonging to the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and civil-society organisations. The partnership yielded tangible benefits for both parties. While CIFOR acted as a sort of research department for Fundación Natura, the latter’s field initiatives, involving payments for environmental services, enabled CIFOR to test specific research hypotheses.

During recent years, CIFOR’s Information Services Group has sought a wider audience for CIFOR’s research findings by using the international and national media. During 2006, over 500 stories appeared in newspapers and on the internet, radio and television, about CIFOR’s research or quoting CIFOR scientists. CIFOR has also become increasingly adept at using film to get its messages across to a wide audience. Three of its films, described in the following pages, have not only caught the attention of policy-makers and advocacy groups, they have also been widely viewed and appreciated in remote forest communities where literacy levels are low. Two of the films have been shown on television.