Why Country Forest Notes, Why Now?

The World Bank, in recommitting itself to forests as a key element of sustainable development, documented in its 2016 Forest Action Plan, undertook to prepare a minimum of 10 Country Forest Notes (CFNs) during the Plan term (to 2020).

According to the Forest Action Plan (emphasis added):

"These succinct but comprehensive notes will present the status of forests and provide options to minimize trade-offs by assessing the potential adverse impacts of sector investments on natural forests, but also by highlighting the opportunities for improved land use management, notably through restoration.

The notes will explore options to minimize the tradeoffs of planned World Bank interventions on forests, by providing an innovative and integrated upstream analysis of policies and investments and their potential impacts on forests. In the medium and long term, these inputs will foster a development model that aims to reconcile economic opportunities (and needs) with healthy forest ecosystems. The upstream, evidence-based considerations of various investment options can be used to guide the development of forest-smart projects and programs in a more consistent manner."

This commitment, to “upstream” consideration of forest impacts in the Bank’s project planning, is actually a high bar for the Bank, or any multilateral development bank, since forests have typically accounted for low single-digit percentages of MDB portfolios.  And forests have not been an easy sector for development institutions to work in, given the multiple pressures that come to bear on forests in the development process, and the multiple, often competing values forests offer.  Moreover, forests tend to be under-valued in economic models because many of those values are public goods, by their nature harder to quantify.  

Yet the Bank definitely made the right call in committing to “forest-smart” development.  For starters, from a risk management perspective, the Bank (and its government clients) ignore impacts on forests (and forest peoples) at their peril.  It is not by chance that the Bank developed a stand-alone Forests Safeguard (OP 4.36), since many of the most problematic Bank projects in its earlier days were ones in which forests were destroyed[i] and forest peoples displaced.   Fortunately, OP 4.36 has been mostly effective[ii], and “the World Bank and [others] play important roles in enhancing forest community rights within broader portfolios focused on the problems of deforestation and forest degradation and depressed local livelihoods.”[iii]   

But focusing on forests is much more than a risk avoidance tactic.  Some of the positive reasons for engaging in forests are summarized in the conclusion of “Why Forests, Why Now?[iv]:

"[…]conservation of tropical forests is critical to achieving both climate and development objectives. The science, the economics, and the politics are aligned to support ambitious international cooperation to capitalize on the potential contribution of tropical forests to meeting those objectives. Paying developing countries for their performance in forest conservation is among the most promising approaches to climate change mitigation and development alike. But the big money is missing, and the window of opportunity is closing.

New science shows tropical forests are even more important for climate and development objectives than previously known, but also that they are disappearing more quickly." 

So, conserving forests, especially carbon-dense tropical forests, is a win-win for climate and development goals.  Forests’ multiple values beyond timber—important as it can be, managed sustainably—have only grown in an era of increasing environmental pressure and climate instability. These include protecting watersheds, supporting biodiversity (and the tourism it attracts), purifying the air, enriching the soil, regulating the water cycle, providing multiple non-timber products (foods, fiber, medicines) and recreational, spiritual, and health benefits.[v] 

As evidence of the consensus among the international community that more effort should be made to preserve forests, the Global Environment Facility announced at the Global Climate Action Summit half a billion US dollars in funding to drive improved land use and forest conservation, and nine of the world’s leading philanthropic foundations announced their intent to commit at least $459 million through 2022 to forests, indigenous rights, and lands, to combat climate change.[vi]

Forests’ importance is not news to folks who work on forests, or the people who live in them, but it may be news to Economic & Finance Ministry officials who arrange borrowings from the World Bank and who may find themselves pressured for quick returns.  And this is why Country Forest Notes matter, and matter now.  Country Forest Notes are designed specifically to serve as an input “upstream” in the development process to guide policy-makers and management, in the planning phase, and across sectors within the World Bank.

The destruction of forests in tropical countries where development banks work may happen in part because of illegal logging, and for that better forest governance and is needed.  But in many countries, forest loss is driven as much or more by agriculture, mining, infrastructure projects, and unplanned settlements.  In other words, forest loss and thus negative impacts to forests peoples is a by-product of thoughtless or poorly planned development, where forests are considered an obstacle more than an asset. 

Country Forest Notes, by addressing forests’ values and considering development paths that sustain them (and forest-dependent peoples) and their downstream benefits, can be key in shifting development pathways in a sustainable and inclusive direction.  And beyond fitting upstream into development planning, there are several reasons why CFNs are needed now. 

  • First, forest loss is ongoing, and it is much cheaper and better to save natural forests than to plant new (unnatural) ones.[vii] 
  • Second, pressure from global economic and demographic growth is growing, so maintaining the status quo is not an option.  
  • Third, many of the forest trust funds the Bank operates[viii] (often in collaboration with other MDBs) are in a mature phase—projects are already planned or being implemented—and there are not necessarily other trust funds coming in behind them.  So, the next phase of forest finance needs to be planned now. 
  • Fourth, many countries have set Nationally Determined  Contributions under the UNFCCC which involve forests, but do not necessarily have means to implement them, and have set goals contingent on external financing[ix]
  • Finally, all countries committed in 2015 to the Sustainable Development Goals, and set SDG Target 15.2 to “By 2020, promote the implementation of sustainable management of all types of forests, halt deforestation, restore degraded forests and substantially increase afforestation and reforestation globally.”  CFNs can play a key role in helping countries meet this target, but to achieve it, are needed before 2020.

In the complex contemporary world where evidence is continually accumulating of the need to find global solutions to address global problems, the CFNs are another tool to this end.      

It is with these concerns in mind that the Bank Information Center is promoting greater attention to the Country Forest Notes, and encouraging the Bank to make sure that they fill in a timely manner the important purposes that the Bank itself has articulated.

Notes

[i] See for example “World Bank Policies Destroy Forests: Internal Report Documents Bank Contribution to Deforestation,” by Karinna Horta, Multinational Monitor magazine, June 2000. 

[ii] By the same token, any weakening or rollback of OP 4.36 is a source of concern.  See Bank Information Center, Safeguard-submission-on-biodiversity-forests-and forest-dependent-people, March 3, 2015.

[iii] Cashore, B., Visseren-Hamakers, I.J. et al. 2016, “Can Legality Verification enhance local rights to forest resources? Piloting the policy learning protocol in the Peruvian forest context,” p.29, International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO) and Yale University’s Governance, Environment and Markets (GEM) Initiative. http://www.iufro.org/science/divisions/division-9/90000/90500/90505/publications/.

[iv] Seymour, F. and Busch, J.: Why Forests? Why Now? The Science, Economics, and Politics of Tropical Forests and Climate Change, Center for Global Development, December 2016, p.402.

[v] For more on these, see inter alia https://www.eartheclipse.com/environment/importance-of-forests.html.

[vi] World Wildlife Fund, "Global Climate Action Summit commitments increase bottom-up pressure to raise global climate ambition, http://wwf.panda.org/our_work/climate_and_energy/?334910/wwf-climate-GCAS  (Sept. 16, 2018, San Francisco).  

[vii] For an ecological perspective on this, see George Wuerthner, Forests or trees?, The Wildlife News, July 23, 2018. For a climate perspective, see Jonah Busch: This Earth Day, Don’t Plant a Tree (Save a Forest), Center for Global Development, April 21, 2014.  More broadly, see National Geographic: “Forests are the forgotten climate solution, experts say:”  https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/09/news-forests-climate-summit-sustainability/.

[viii] The Forest Carbon Partnership Facility recently marked its 10th year of operations, has committed all its readiness funds ($382.4 million, including $28.3M for FY2018-21 plus a reserve of $3.9M) and is negotiating commitments of carbon funds ($857M for purchase of emissions reductions to be divided among 13 programs, an average of $66M each).  The $768M Forest Investment Program (FIP) was likewise set up in 2008; its portfolio is in the early stages of implementation, with 18 (accounting for $259M) of 31 FIP projects ($525M in commitments as of 3/31/18) that are MDB-approved  for implementation reporting target results, and 11 having reached at least mid-term.  The BioCarbon Fund Initiative for Sustainable Forest Landscapes (BioCF ISFL, $350M in fund capital) has been operational since November 2013 and has three active country programs, in Colombia, Ethiopia, and Zambia. While these programs together ($2.36B) represent the substantial majority of official development assistance for forests, it is also worth noting that their total is less than the $3.75B the World Bank committed to South Africa’s Eskom power project ($2.38B for the coal-fired Medupi Power Station). Clearly, forests need more.

[ix] See https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/report_ndc_survey_final.pdf.