Forests Sourcebook - HCV Resource Network

OPERATIONAL ASPECTS
Prioritizing those circumstances in which forest sector analytical
work is important requires that countries and lending
situations with significant forest interests be identified.
A potential approach would include
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identifying countries where forests are important (for
economic development, poverty alleviation, ecosystem
services);
identifying and screening the major macro policy
reforms being proposed in each country;
analyzing and developing, in the cases where the impact
of the macro policy reform are directly or indirectly an
issue, mechanisms for handling the cross-sectoral
impacts; and
identifying entry points for addressing the potential
cross-sectoral impact.
This stepwise approach to prioritizing where detailed
analysis may be needed is necessary for two pragmatic reasons.
First, the resources needed to implement field analyses
often will be limited; it is therefore unrealistic to propose a
general application of analytical work to this task in all possible
cases. Second, because uncertainty will inevitably surround
the analytical process itself, at least in the early stages
of application, it will be necessary to learn from and refine
initial approaches along the way.
The actual approach can be applied at a regional or
global level, depending on the need. The approach can also
be applied at the national level and, as discussed in the following
section, will require modifying the method. The
main constraint to application of any approach is availability
of data.
Identifying countries where forests are important. A
preliminary approach to identifying the countries and situations
where forests are important, from an economic and
poverty point of view as well as an environmental one,
requires the development of appropriate indicator. A quantitative
approach for the development of good practice could be
initiated quickly following the approach in a recent study on
policy loans and forest outcomes (World Bank 2005). This
would allow task managers to compile a watch list of countries
for which cross-sectoral impacts on forests from programmatic
activities will need to be further examined in the field.
An index can be developed to identify where forests are
important by characterizing forest significance. The forest
significance index can be created using readily available data
on the following:
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Contribution of forests to the economy (using data on production
of wood fuel and production of roundwood,
both from the FAOSTAT online statistical services, 2004).
This measure picks up an element of forest output
beyond the conventional measure of commercial logging,
that is, the large amount of fuelwood that is used by
local communities and frequently does not enter formal
markets.
Forest-poverty linkage (using data on the annual rate of
change between 1990 and 2001 in the percentage of poor
living on less than a dollar a day, and the percentage of
poverty in 1996. Both of these measures use the Poverty
Calculator (POVCAL) approach developed by the World
Bank. It should be noted that the variable is a weak proxy
for what is of interest here—some estimate of the prevalence
of poor people who live in or near forests and depend
on them greatly—but few alternatives are readily available.
Forest-conservation linkage (using data on percentage of
threatened bird species in 2000, percentage of threatened
mammal species in 2000, and rate of change in forest
cover over the period 1990–2000). These variables provide
some reflection of biodiversity loss, as well as a gross
measure of forest loss. 2
A measure for forest-related governance was included in
the index to assess where the prior conditions raise concerns
about how cross-sectoral impacts are handled. This measure
used data on the Rule of Law (which is a measure from
Kaufmann, Kraay, and Mastruzzi’s [2004] corruption indicators)
and presence of democratic institutions. These are
well-known and documented measures of governance.
Their limitation as a proxy in this context is that they do not
specifically reveal the state of governance in the forest sector
itself, nor do they shed any light on how that is influenced
by broader trends in the economy.
Each of the measures used in the index were weighted
equally. The weighting can vary if the approach is to assist in
examining a specific cross-sectoral impact (for example,
impact of macro policy reform on the contribution of
forests to poverty). 3
More sophisticated vulnerability indicators can be developed
to capture countries’ performance in political and
resource risks, policy and institutional failures (particularly
in the resource sectors), weak regulation and implementation
capacity, and lack of monitoring and enforcement.
There is some merit to considering broadening the coverage
of environmental policy and institutions in the existing
Country Policy and Institutional Assessment index (used
currently for IDA fund allocations). This could serve as a
230 CHAPTER 6: MAINSTREAMING FORESTS INTO DEVELOPMENT POLICY AND PLANNING