Forests - a tool to combat poverty

Forests play an important role to people throughout the tropics. They contribute products in support of everyday life, such as wood for cooking and house construction. They provide a resource that people can fall back upon in times of hardship, for instance when a family member falls sick forests can provide medicinal plants as well as products such as bamboo shoots and game meat that can be sold for cash that can cover medical expenses.

While there are many examples of such uses, the economic importance of forest products to local livelihoods remains largely invisible. In consequence, forest products and their benefits to local livelihoods are often ignored in national and international policies aimed at rural livelihood improvement.

Forests – also an exit route from poverty?

While there is emerging general international agreement among researchers that forests are important in terms of preventing poverty, there is less agreement on the role of forests as a means to reduce poverty.

Should non-governmental organisations, national governments and international development agencies invest in forest related activities when attempting to find ways for rural people out of poverty? Or should they rather invest in other sectors such as education or health?

The evidence is mixed – it seems that in some places there are products that provide some households with an exit route from poverty. But it is not clear what factors facilitate such exit routes.

Joining forces in a global network

To help address such issues, through the collection of high quality data throughout the tropics, Forest and Landscape Denmark is an active and prominent partner in the Poverty Environment Network (PEN) - a global research network focusing on the relationships between poverty and forests.

The network was launched in 2004 and has now collected comparable household data in some 10,000 households in 25 countries. The first findings will be presented at the conference Counting on the environment – the contribution of forests to rural livelihoods in London on 15 June 2011.

Passing on method experiences 

The huge research effort in PEN generated a large number of methodological experiences of value to researchers and students that will be implementing similar studies in the future. These experiences were therefore collected and presented in the recently published book "Measuring livelihoods and environmental dependence – methods for research and fieldwork".