IUCN Facilitates First Consultation on The World Bank's Forest Policy TUNIS, 25 February, 2000 (IUCN) - Forest experts, conservation groups, industry representatives and government policy-makers met in Tunis this week from across the Middle East and North Africa to examine the implementation of the World Bank's forest policy and to recommend revisions to that policy. IUCN - The World Conservation Union successfully organized and facilitated the meeting, the first in a series of global consultations on the World Bank's forest policy. The three-day meeting brought together participants from Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia and Yemen. The workshop triggered a dialogue among participants on the importance of addressing forest issues to combat desertification and other aspects of environmental degradation. While forests in the region are not commercially significant, their value is nonetheless very high, particularly for ensuring sustainable livelihoods and ecosystem services such as watershed management, preventing soil erosion and biodiversity conservation. "The World Bank and national governments in the region need to recognize the critical role of forest ecosystems in the Middle East and North Africa for local livelihoods and wellbeing. Because these countries are characterized by low forest cover and are threatened by desertification, forest conservation and forest restoration must be central to the World Bank's forest strategy for the region," said Mohamed Ali Abroughui IUCN Vice-President, and President of ATPNE (l'Association tunisienne pour la protection de la nature et de l'environnement), an IUCN member organization. "The workshop recognized that no single group of actors can adequately address the region's forest issues in isolation. It therefore emphasized the need for participatory and collaborative approaches to forest management and conservation," said Bill Jackson, coordinator of IUCN's Forest Programme. "Governments, non-governmental organizations, civil society and the private sector will have to find innovative ways to work together. The World Bank can be both a partner and an enabler of partnerships." The results of the Tunis workshop will be carried forward to global discussions and built into the World Bank's global forest strategy. The Tunis meeting was organized in collaboration with ATPNE. This was the first in a series of nine regional consultations around the world as part of the World Bank's Forest Policy Implementation Review and Strategy (FPIRS) process. The global consultation process designed for the World Bank by IUCN will include further multi-stakeholder consultations in Brazil, Singapore, Bangladesh, South Africa, Finland, Ecuador, the United States and Switzerland. IUCN has joined in a limited partnership with the World Bank for the life of the FPIRS process. IUCN's role in the process is to provide advice and technical expertise to the World Bank in organizing the global consultation process in order to ensure that the forest policy review and development process is open, transparent, participatory and multi-stakeholder. The goal of the process is to produce an updated Forest Policy for the World Bank which will be presented to the World Bank's Executive Directors in December 2000. The World Bank's 1991 Forest Policy emphasized the World Bank's role in forest conservation and focused on countries with significant moist tropical forests. The World Bank's internal review of the implementation of the policy acknowledged that the policy had a negligible effect on slowing global rates of deforestation and forest degradation. The internal review recommended that the policy should be revised to broaden its focus to include all types of forests in World Bank client countries and to focus on ways to conserve and sustainably use forests for poverty alleviation. IUCN - The World Conservation Union Founded in 1948, The World Conservation
Union brings together States, government agencies and a diverse
range of non-governmental organizations in a unique world partnership,
over 900 members in all, spread across some 138 countries. As
a Union, IUCN seeks to influence, encourage and assist societies
throughout the world to conserve the integrity and diversity
of nature and to ensure that any use of natural resources is
equitable and ecologically sustainable. The World Conservation
Union builds on the strengths of its members, networks and partners
to enhance their capacity and to support global alliances to
safeguard natural resources at local, regional and global levels.
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