CHALLENGE
In India, states share the rights and responsibilities with communities for managing forests through joint forest management arrangements. Although preliminary findings indicated that this process, together with associated project investments, was having a significant impact on poverty, there was no systematic and rigorous assessment of the poverty-forests nexus in 2003.

APPROACH
PROFOR worked to improve the capacity of state governments to measure forestry program impacts on poverty reduction in a systematic way by supporting the development of a monitoring methodology. This work was carried out in Jharkhand state (where the Bank was preparing a lending project to improve forest livelihoods), with CIFOR leading the work in partnership with national experts, Jharkhand-based NGOs and research institutions.

RESULTS
A comprehensive literature review was completed and tools designed for use by communities. Training sessions for applying the tools were held in 2006 with Forest Department staff. PROFOR subsequently developed a more comprehensive tool: the Poverty-Forests Linkages toolkit.