Forests Sourcebook - HCV Resource Network

CHAPTER 1
Forests for Poverty Reduction
The majority of the world’s poor are concentrated in
rural areas and, consequently, depend on natural
resources, over which they exercise little control,
for their livelihoods. It is estimated that 60 million Indigenous
Peoples are totally dependent on forests, 350 million
people are highly forest dependent, and 1.2 billion are
dependent on agroforestry. The scale and significance of
poverty issues on forest lands demand that poverty alleviation
efforts give special attention to forest areas and the people
living in them.
Poor rural families depend heavily on “wild” resources;
in both forest-poor and forest-rich contexts, forest products
are used for fuel, food, medicines, construction materials,
fertilizers, and cash. Reliance on these resources often
increases in times of personal, family, or social hardship,
with these wild resources being especially important for
women, children, and ethnic minorities. In many cases, as
people get richer, they use and sell fewer of the forest products
that are considered inferior goods. However, most people
in Sub-Saharan Africa have not gotten richer, resulting
in growing markets for all forest products as populations
and urbanization increase. A similar situation is found in
the poorer regions of Asia. (See box 1.1.)
Smallholders living in forest margins in diverse parts of
the world earn 10–25 percent of their household incomes
from nontimber forest products, many of which are either
undervalued or omitted completely from conventional economic
income statistics (see Note 1.1, Mainstreaming the
Role of Forests in Poverty Alleviation; Ndoye, Ruiz Pérez,
and Eyebe 1999). Studies of income from indigenous natural
resource management and small-scale local forest enterprises
in a number of countries in Africa, and joint forest
management in Madhya Pradesh state in India, are but a few
of the studies showing the significant impacts of these activities
on the income of poor people (see Monela et al. 2004;
Box 1.1
What Do We Mean by Poverty?
Poverty is a multidimensional concept, the measurement
of which continues to be debated. A
detailed overview of poverty concepts is provided
in the World Bank’s World Development Report on
Attacking Poverty (World Bank 2001). This report
states that poverty is not solely about material deprivation,
but is also related to broader notions of
risk, vulnerability, social inclusion, and opportunities.
Poverty encompasses all forms of deprivation
that prevent a person from achieving his or her
aspirations.
This broader definition of poverty has policy
implications because it underscores the positive
interactions of interventions in a broad set of welfare
dimensions. In practice, it implies that the
nature of the problem must influence selection of
the appropriate welfare measure.
Source: Authors’ compilation from World Bank 2001.
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