Forest - poverty linkages in West and Central Asia

This paper presents the application of the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach (SLA) to forest-poverty linkages and the analysis of the main issues that are raised for the Forestry Outlook study. The LSP Sub-programme on access to natural resources initially intended to begin its work in support of the FOWECA project with a regional desk study. However, with Forest - poverty linkages in West and Central Asia 2 sparse literature available, a decision was made to focus the initial work on Kyrgyzstan given the experience of the Collaborative Forest Management (LSP Working Paper 13). That platform provided an understanding on which to base fieldwork to examine the linkages between poverty and access to forestry resources. Chapter 2 of this paper describes the SLA and outlines a conceptual framework for the analysis of forest-poverty linkages using the SLA. Chapter 3 considers the current situation regarding forest-poverty linkages in the country studies using the SLA as a conceptual framework. Chapter 4 considers key trends affecting forest-poverty linkages and the consequences for policy-making with regard to FOWECA objectives. Chapter 5 concludes with the lessons learnt from using the SLA and an assessment of the effectiveness of the SLA for understanding forest-poverty linkages.