What is the current role of forests in poverty alleviation, and how can that role be enhanced through better policy formulation and implementation?

The Poverty and Environment Network (PEN) is an ambitious, global project that seeks to address this question through the systematic collection of socio-economic data in a variety of tropical ecosystems, using similar data definitions and methodologies.

Launched by CIFOR in 2004, PEN is the world's first global comparative and quantitative review of the role of tropical forests in poverty alleviation. In January 2008, 45 PEN partners and resource persons descended upon Barcelona to launch the second phase of the project.

PEN by numbers . . .

1 project;
2 phases;
3 continents;
4 quarterly surveys;
5 thematic groups;
26
countries of fieldwork;
38 PEN studies;
364 villages or communities surveyed;
9,100 households surveyed;
40,950 household visits by PEN enumerators;
294,150 questionnaire pages completed;
17,348,734 data cells in the PEN global data base.