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DO FORESTS CONTRIBUTE TO ACHIEVING THE MDGS?
Some arguments from German Development Cooperation
By Wibke Thies and Evy von Pfeil
In September 2000 the member states of the United Nations unanimously adopted the Millennium Declaration to define the priorities for international cooperation in the twenty-first Century. Peace and security, development, poverty reduction and environment, as well as democracy and good governance head the list of tasks set out in the Declaration. To tackle these challenges eight Millennium Development Goals were formulated, each with a set of indicators, with the overarching common goal of winning the fight against extreme human poverty.
MDGs target more than economic poverty
The first thing that comes to many people’s minds when asked to define poverty is a lack of money. However, for most people living in developing countries poverty means much more than this. To these people, poverty may represent any number of factors including a lack of access to infrastructure, natural resources, education and health services. Poverty can also imply an exclusion from participation in political, social and economic decisions, and a disregard of human dignity and human rights. The MDGs take these different facets of poverty into account. While MDG 1 targets the reduction of economic poverty and hunger, goals 2-7 focus on other dimensions of poverty, namely, education, health, equality and environmental sustainability.
Forests can help achieve the MDGs and fight all aspects of poverty. They are vital for human existence, providing goods (timber and non-timber products) and services. They serve, for example, as protection against flooding and as water reservoirs, they maintain and contribute to biodiversity, and provide carbon storage. Harnessing forests’ full potential not only helps generate commercial opportunities and employment for the poor but can also indirectly help to achieve gender equality, access to education and improved health.
How German Development Cooperation (GTZ) helps
German development policy is part of the global community’s approach to achieving the Millennium Development Goals. The MDGs serve here as orientation and a measuring rod. The German Action Programme 2015 describes the German approach to implementing the Millennium Declaration and achieving the MDGs. With the overarching task of poverty reduction, the German government follows the three principles of coherence, partnership and outcome orientation. This means that poverty reduction is considered an integral part of all German policies including financing, foreign affairs and security. German policy initiatives refer to the MDGs as a benchmark for measuring the government’s contribution to achieving sustainable development. To meet its forest sector commitments, the German government provides €125 million each year to more than 50 forest projects in over 30 countries worldwide.
Achieving the MDGs by 2015 will be a difficult task. The biggest challenge lies in convincing decision makers and macroeconomists of the important link between forests, their sustainable management and poverty reduction. Only if current national strategies for sustainable development take this link into account can the full potential of forests be tapped and forest loss reversed. However, there is no doubt that efforts to achieve the MDGs must be complemented by local level field action.
Helping developing countries to achieve the MDGs requires support at all levels – at the international level to give national needs a voice; at the national level to raise the profile of forests in policy making; and at the local level to protect and manage forests sustainably so that they can be used to help lift people out of poverty. German Development Cooperation supports initiatives across all of these levels and facilitates the transfer of knowledge between them. This way Germany helps to communicate community interests and achievements to political decision makers and feeds back the experiences of local projects to international policy fora such as the United Nations Forum on Forests.
The following paragraphs reveal evidence from community projects supported by German Development Cooperation that forests are helping to achieve the MDGs.
Forests contribute to eradicating hunger and income poverty (MDG 1)
The World Bank estimates that roughly a quarter of the world’s poor depend on forests for their livelihoods. But the role of forests goes beyond meeting basic needs in times of hunger and crisis. By using them sustainably, forests provide opportunities for additional income, and thus poverty reduction. In Zimbabwe , for example, by collecting and selling Baobab seeds to a processing company, local producers doubled the income they previously earned from growing cotton. In Malawi , households tripled their per capita income from 3,000 kwacha (US$22) to 9,000 kwacha (US$67) by shifting to sustainable forestry activities, including guinea fowl rearing, baobab fruit juice production and beekeeping. In Namibia , income-generating forestry activities have also made a significant contribution to improving livelihoods and have allowed some community members to earn an average N$780 (US$132) per year more than before. This additional income has mainly been used to supplement the staple millet food with other food items, to improve homes and to buy school materials for children.
Forests help achieve primary education (MDG 2)
Parents can use the additional income from forest products to pay for their children’s education. For example, in eastern Nepal, communities were granted the right to use small forest areas. Following a management plan, they begun using these areas sustainably and in the last ten years have generated and invested an additional income of US$327,000 in local development projects: Initiatives have included building schools, creating literacy programmes for women and the poor and providing grants for needy pupils.
Forests promote gender equality and empower women (MDG 3)
In many developing countries, women’s household responsibilities include gathering forest products for fuel and fencing, as well as food for the family and fodder for livestock. However, in areas where there are no forests nearby, these tasks become very time consuming and limit women’s opportunities to engage in other community activities. To address this problem in the Tanzanian village of Shinyanga, native trees were planted close to the village, reducing the time spent collecting fuel wood by 80%. As a result, women had more time for other activities including education and meeting social responsibilities.
Including women in forest management processes is also an obvious way to help empower them. In eastern Nepal women have been allowed to participate as members in community forest user groups. Today they account for one quarter of the group’s board members and are actively involved in decision making. Many women from these user groups have now been elected to leading posts in village and district development committees.
Forests improve health, reduce child mortality and combat diseases (MDGs 4, 5 and 6)
Bush meat and many other non-timber forest products are an important part of the diet of many people in developing countries. For example, forest-dwelling wild animals account for 75% of the meat consumed in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Liberia . A steady and nutrient rich food supply can benefit new mothers in particular, allowing them to breast-feed for a longer period, which in turn increases their babies’ chances of survival.
Natural products are the only source of medicine for 75-90% of people living in developing countries, since modern drugs are expensive and not easily accessible in rural areas. The immense biodiversity of tropical forests and the traditional medicinal knowledge of forest-living people offers a huge potential for finding cures to diseases like malaria and HIV/AIDS and reversing the devastating effect of these diseases on the social development and economies of countries throughout the world. Only by managing these resources sustainably will communities be able to tap them in the future also.
Forests ensure environmental sustainability (MDG 7)
Forests can serve to ensure global environmental sustainability. As well as maintaining the balance of our global climate, forests throughout the world are the source of 70% of all biodiversity. Protecting forests will conserve these biological resources for future generations. In eastern Nepal where forest user groups have protected and sustainably managed 44,000 hectares of forest, illegal logging of community forests has dropped dramatically. After only five years forest quality had improved significantly, compared to state owned forests that were not managed by communities. Almost 50% of the community forests increased in forest cover while in the other half there was little or no change in canopy cover indicating a degree of stability in forest condition. The areas which experienced the greatest gains in forest cover were those that were the most degraded at the beginning of the project. This shows that community forestry can be very successful in re-greening degraded areas. Community forests can even have a ‘fence’ effect, by halting the degradation of national forests beyond their boundaries. As an important by-product, plant and animal biodiversity in community forests has also risen.
Forests contribute to building a global partnership for development (MDG 8)
Germany is one of the 30 partners of the Congo Basin Forest Partnership (CBFP) which was established in 2002 during the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development. The CBFP supports the six African countries of the Congo Basin to establish cross-border protected areas, harmonise forest policies and develop new approaches for sustainable forest use. This way the CBFP helps to maintain the world’s second largest rainforest.
A partnership of 39 countries, including Germany , supports the African Forest Law Enforcement and Governance (AFLEG) process to combat illegal logging. It encourages the establishment of control systems and policy reform in partner countries, supports administrative and civil society capacity building for law enforcement and discourages corruption.
Forest partnerships between developing and developed countries are now being established all over the world. These initiatives will help to achieve the eighth MDG by building a framework for joint action towards the sustainable use and management of the world’s forests.
Further information:
Dr. Wibke Thies & Evy von Pfeil
Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) GmbH
Postfach 5180D-65726
Eschborn
Germany
E-mail: wibke.thies@gtz.de
E-mail: evy.pfeil@gtz.de
Website: http://www.gtz.de/forest-policy
Commissioned by the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ)