Climate and environment
Ensuring the environment is managed in a way that helps to reduce poverty.
Forestry
Forests are of vital importance both to reducing poverty and tackling climate change.
More than 1.6 billion people depend to some degree on forests for their livelihoods, many of them the world’s poorest people.
Deforestation generates almost a fifth of carbon emissions. It is the third largest source of greenhouse gas emissions – larger than the entire global transport sector. The
Eliasch Review recommended that deforestation should be halved by 2020 and that the global forest sector should be carbon neutral by 2030.
Douglas Alexander, International Development Secretary, said about the Review:
“With more than a billion of the poorest people on our planet dependent on forests to provide them with a livelihood, today’s report highlights the challenges we face in reconciling the short-term interests of individuals with the global challenge of tackling climate change.”
Forests are being lost at a rate of 13 million hectares a year because the environmental benefits they provide are not valued and they are worth more when converted to agriculture. Poor governance and lack of knowledge and institutional capacity are contributory factors.
What DFID is doing
In addition to its country programme work and the support it provides to NGOs and research organisations, DFID is supporting a range of other initiatives to reduce poverty and tackle climate change. These includes the £50 million
Congo Basin Forest Fund, the £24 million
Forest Governance and Trade Programme, a
£15 million contribution to the World Bank’s
Forest Carbon
Partnership Facility and support to the
Rights and Resources Initiative and other collaborative multi-agency programmes.
DFID funded publications and films on forestry:
- Illegal logging: Tackling crime, improving livelihoods
(1,041 kb) - Crime and Persuasion: Tackling illegal logging, improving forest governance (2,280 kb)
- DFID forestry films on the Handcrafted films website
- Research4development - Forestry
- Case Study - DFID Research Challenges Wisdom that Forests Conserve Water
- ICRAF - World Agroforestry Centre
- CIFOR - Centre for International Forestry Research
- Programme on Forests
A logging camp in East Kalimantan, Indonesia. Between 60 to 80% of the country's timber harvest is illegal. Image credit: Chris Stowers/Panos Pictures
More than a billion of the poorest people on our planet depend on forests to provide them with a livelihood.
Douglas Alexander Secretary of State
