Sustainable Forestry Program
Sustainable Forestry Program
Program Information
The Challenge
More and more consumers worldwide insist on using sustainably harvested timber and responsibly produced wood products. Corporate buyers and public procurement officers are responding to this demand by sourcing products from producers that can provide them with certifications of properly managed forests, and for tighter scrutiny over the legal origin and production methods of wood products in the market place.
Recently, the demand for certified wood products has begun to have an impact on policies aimed at protecting Indonesian forests, some of the most beautiful but least protected tropical hardwood forests in the world. Policy changes are designed to reduce the amount of lumber harvested, and—more importantly—to suppress illegal logging by strengthening law enforcement.
How GFI Addressed the Challenge
Despite the demonstrated political will at the national level and some excellent new public-private partnerships, the campaign for sustainable forestry in Indonesia is still in its early stages, with much work remaining. To strengthen this campaign, in 2005 GFI convened a coalition of multilateral organizations and civil society institutions— including the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation, PENSA, the World Wide Fund for Nature, The Nature Conservancy and the Global Fairness Initiative— to assist the Indonesian government’s national campaign against illegal logging by generating a set of policy recommendations to encourage increased forest certification.
These recommendations are based on a comprehensive study of global best practices in supply-side incentives for sustainable forest practices. The Motivating Sustainability project study investigated winning—and losing—strategies currently being used in tropical and temperate forests throughout the developing world. Local forest experts then applied these findings to the complex and changing social, political and economic realities of the Indonesian forest sector.
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