Impact Stories

What Do Forests Have to Do with Disaster Risk Management? Q&A with Annegien Tijssen

Oct 20 2016 - 2:40pm

PROFOR spoke with Disaster Risk Management Specialist Annegien Tijssen about her work incorporating knowledge on forests towards minimizing the impacts of natural disasters. Why is Disaster Risk Management (DRM) important when it comes to sustainable development? We know from previous experiences that natural disasters can wipe out a huge part of countries’ development gains. It makes sense to invest not only in the development of economies, but to also be prepared to prevent or reduce the impact of future disasters, to make communities more resilient. How can forests help...

Recuperar a terra pode ser lucrativo: esta fazenda de São Paulo mostra como

Jun 30 2016 - 1:47pm

Submitted by Gregor Wolf, Program Leader, and Werner Kornexl, Senior Natural Resource Management Specialist A pecuária e a agricultura têm sido os impulsores principais do desmatamento e da degradação da terra no Brasil, utilizando práticas de uso da terra às custas do meio ambiente, causando escassez de água, perda da biodiversidade e persistência da pobreza. Não há dúvida de que a restauração da terra e das florestas para reparar os ecossistemas é urgentemente necessária no Brasil. Isso é sobretudo evidente no estado de São...

Informing, Connecting and Shaping Forest Action,

Apr 13 2016 - 4:52pm

Submitted by Laura Ivers, Senior Communications Officer for PROFOR PROFOR is generating knowledge and tools that are informing, connecting, and shaping forest sector investments and policies. In 2015, PROFOR produced 117 knowledge products, supported more than 95 engagement processes with 11,138 direct participants, influenced 30 WBG operations, and informed two national policy reforms. PROFOR’s 2015 Annual Report provides an overview of these achievements. For example, PROFOR’s timely analytical and diagnostic work informed forest sector engagement in several countries around...

Many challenges, many rewards: Working together to strengthen Mexico’s forest sector

May 1 2015 - 1:21pm

This blog post was submitted by Carole Megevand, Sr. Natural Resources Management Specialist and Forest Lead for the World Bank Group In few cases do arguments for simultaneously improving economic, social and environmental outcomes merge as clearly as in Mexico’s forest sector. At 64.8 million hectares, forests cover a third of Mexico’s land, contributing to its status as one of only 17 megadiverse countries in the world. Moreover, some 80% of forests are owned by communities, meaning that forests are crucial to the lives and livelihoods of millions of people. But sustainably...

Mexico Tackles the Complexities of Benefit Sharing in REDD+ with a PROFOR Tool

Apr 7 2015 - 3:39pm

This blog posting was submitted by Selene Castillo, Natural Resources Analyst at the World Bank. In late March, stakeholders gathered in Mexico City for the culminating event of a PROFOR-led activity – Developing a Road Map for Benefit Sharing using the Options Assessment Framework. The overarching goal of this work is to assist REDD+ stakeholders in identifying appropriate benefit sharing mechanisms and provide guidance on next steps, all through the application of a PROFOR tool – the Options Assessment Framework (OAF). Based on its standing as a REDD+ country and the demand...

Can growing demand for forest products create jobs, build resilience and fight poverty?

Apr 1 2015 - 9:52am

By Diji Chandrasekharan Behr, PROFOR Manager and Senior Natural Resource Economist at the World Bank Group. Logging and extracting timber from forests have gotten a bad reputation, and in many cases rightly so. Most of us have heard stories of logging operations that have evicted forest dependent households or restricted their access to forests that are vital for their well-being. There are also the cases of unsustainable timber extraction destroying habitat for primates and large mammals. Yet, we all have wood products in our house --- from the smallest items such as toothpicks to...

Growing Carbon Money: Community Forestry and REDD+

Jun 20 2014 - 12:00am

This blog posting was submitted by Gernot Brodnig, Senior Social Development Specialist at the World Bank. Dolakha is a heavily forested district in northern Nepal, close to the border with Tibet. Community forestry has been implemented there since the early 1980s, and more recently its Charnawati watershed became home for a REDD+ pilot project, the Forest Carbon Trust Fund (FCTF). A couple of years ago, some 58 Community Forestry User Groups (CFUGs) and their members earned their first revenues – almost US$50,000 – from “carbon forestry.” This was the...

Our Hands on Approach to Talking Green Growth with African Countries

Apr 17 2014 - 3:36pm

The GGKP Workshop in Kinshasa (April 2-3) was well attended with over a 100 participants, largely from Africa, representing various stakeholders (government, private sector, NGOs, academe, and so on). There was a lot of energy among the participants. The plenary presentations were thought-provoking and the ensuing discussions were lively. It was clear that the audience was highly engaged and all had an insatiable appetite for good-practices and was looking for practical, ready-to-run-with, examples. The parallel sessions at the workshop tried to fill the demand for practical tools and...

Marketing for Markets

Apr 10 2014 - 5:02pm

This blog posting was submitted by Selene Castillo, Natural Resources Analyst at the World Bank. Forest carbon markets – and broadly, markets for ecosystem services – are still in nascent stages. As in all markets, information is fundamental to establish the market and attract buyers and sellers. PROFOR has been supporting Forest Trends’ Ecosystem Marketplace initiative to generate this critical information on environmental markets. Ecosystem Marketplace’s publicly available information sources include annual reports on carbon, watershed payments and biodiversity,...

Biochar Systems in Senegal: A new agriculture-based model for climate success?

Nov 17 2013 - 1:03pm

This blog posting was submitted by Sebastian Scholz, Senior Environmental Economist at the World Bank. Biochar Systems for Smallholders in Developing Countries, a study we’ll be publishing in early 2014, explores how biochar systems can be used in developing countries to address the challenges associated with food insecurity and climate change. One case study that I found particularly interesting in the forthcoming book was a biochar system in Senegal that has been active since 2008. This system proved to be very profitable and substantially improved food production capabilities while...

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