Research Approach
Two approaches will be followed. First, we will review forest-related interventions that have been implemented as part of ongoing projects and assess their actual (and potential) impact on poverty alleviation. Second, we will investigate promising forest-based livelihood opportunities in project areas, with the objective of identifying practical interventions.
The approach guiding this program, our research activities, and the deliverables will provide knowledge support at three levels. The most important level is that of the IFAD lending projects in the target countries. At the second level, we seek to structure processes and outputs to be able to contribute to IFAD’s strategy formulation and policy dialogue agenda with governments and other stakeholders in the selected project countries. Finally, at the international level, the strategic lessons from the research will be drawn out and made available to a more general audience of practitioners. We have used a participatory approach for development of research design and hence the focus has been more on practical aspects of forest-based livelihoods improvement.
The research will use a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. It will be undertaken by building ‘alliances’ through involvement of wide range of stakeholders (e.g. IFAD, IFAD loan projects, and other partners).
The research will be ‘demand-driven’ such that research topics will address specific needs of IFAD and similar projects. To compare results across projects, the country specific research topics are classified into themes.