The Research Program [ Web View ]
The research program aims to develop lessons and specific recommendations for development practitioners, including IFAD and its partners, about investments and other interventions in alternative strategies for income-generation and empowerment of the forest-dependent poor.
The rationale of the program is the striking knowledge gap between the anticipated role of forest products and services in reducing poverty and the almost complete neglect of forests in economic development and poverty-reduction strategies. Forests have both potentials and limitations in regard to poverty reduction. To reduce poverty among forest communities, it is imperative to go beyond current technical interventions to extract higher income from timber and NTFPs. Broader strategies are necessary including those addressing development of forest product market and enterprises, power relations, security of tenure and policies affecting forest communities’ capacity to negotiate for real benefits and work with organizations that support their aims. A guided and informed understanding of the linkages between forest-based income-generation and local social organization and coalitions would help guide pro-poor forest investments.
The program will focus on IFAD three loan project locations:
-
Nepal (Hill Leasehold Forestry and Forage Development Project or LHF), and
-
China (West Guangxi Poverty Alleviation Project - WGPAP)
In all three locations, forests are important to local livelihoods and poverty alleviation strategies can be built around those forests. In fact forest-based interventions have already been planned or implemented in these places.