Forests Sourcebook - HCV Resource Network

Indicators are helpful in these situations because they assist
in setting standards and thresholds, and enable comparison.
In collecting and working with data, the team must check
for reliability, avoid double counting, and, where possible,
indicate confidence limits or probabilities. Quantitative and
qualitative data both have high value in these analyses and
can complement each other.
Identifying entry points for addressing crosssectoral
impacts. Identifying the links between the policy
reform and potential cross-sector impacts is an important
part of this overall approach. Equally important, however, is
identifying entry points for addressing the potential crosssector
impacts. There are no specific good practices associated
with this. However, policy loans are also the entry point
for mitigating any negative cross-sectoral impacts as well as
enhancing positive impacts. This is partly because some of
the measures for mitigating or enhancing certain impacts
can involve strengthening environmental laws, institutions,
and enforcement mechanisms (see chapter 5, Forest Sector
Governance, and note 5.5, Strengthening Legal Frameworks
in the Forest Sector).
LESSONS LEARNED AND RECOMMENDATIONS
FOR PRACTITIONERS
To date, there has been relatively little field analysis of actual
forest or natural resource outcomes from specific structural
adjustment or other programmatic forms of lending. 5 Literature
and analyses of the relationship between large-scale
economic changes and outcomes for natural resources or
forests specifically do not allow consistent conclusions to be
drawn across the range of country and field situations. Nevertheless,
some key inferences can be drawn with regard to
understanding the relationship between macro policy
reforms and forest outcomes.
Economic and social forces originating outside forests
generally have more impact upon those forests than do
developments within the forest sector itself. Two broad lessons
can be taken from this observation:
■
It is evident that for forests to make their maximum
potential contribution to economic growth and poverty
alleviation, major policies and incentives from outside
the sector that affect forests must be addressed—and
policy lending instruments are appropriate to that task
(see note 6.2, Prospects for Using Policy Lending to
Proactively Enable Forest Sector Reforms).
■
It is also evident that, where forests are determined to be
significant for economic growth and poverty alleviation
at the national level, policy loans and large cross-sectoral
operations that have the potential to impact forests
(either positively or negatively) must take that potential
into account in their design and implementation.
As more policy loans are prepared, an immediate challenge
facing donors, client governments, and other institutions
engaged in operations at the macroeconomic and
larger cross-sectoral levels, will be to mainstream effective
monitoring of forest outcomes into these operations, where
these are identified as being potentially significant with
respect to forests.
Researchers with country or regional experience should
be part of any team examining cross-sectoral impacts to
make a meaningful selection of relevant cross-sectoral
linkages, to carry out consistent document analysis, to
organize expert interviews, and to collect and interpret the
results.
Research methods need to be improved. Equally
important is the need to launch specific case studies at
national, subnational, and local levels to provide more
empirical information on cross-sectoral successes as well
as on drawbacks in a given social, economic, and political
context. Quantitative research is needed as much as qualitative
analysis to provide more information on the
nature, structure, and functioning of different policies
and cross-sector links. Research should also examine the
actors and stakeholders involved, the instruments and
procedures that influence their behavior, and the causal
relationship between forest and other policy domains in
both directions.
Ways to manage cross-sectoral impacts need to be further
examined. This will require understanding how different
agencies actually work together, what agencies have
which resources, and the possibility of contradictory or
overlapping competencies at the policy-setting and implementation
levels.
New approaches in coordination mechanisms, as well
as the likely limitations of coordination, need to be examined.
More research is needed on how coordinating mechanisms,
such as network management and interadministrative
coordination, can be improved to contribute to
reaching national forest policy goals. The current role of
forest administrations and their ability to operate with
success in a given policy and administrative setting needs
to be reconsidered.
234 CHAPTER 6: MAINSTREAMING FORESTS INTO DEVELOPMENT POLICY AND PLANNING