Meeting Name: Intergovernmental Technical Working Group on Forest Genetic Resources (of the CGRFA) - ITWG-FGR
Meeting symbol/code: CGRFA/WG-FGR-3/14/5

Meeting Name: Intergovernmental Technical Working Group on Forest Genetic Resources (of the CGRFA) - ITWG-FGR
Meeting symbol/code: CGRFA/WG-FGR-3/14/5

This report covers eight ASEAN countries (Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Malaysia (particularly the state of Sabah), Myanmar, Philippines, Thailand and Viet Nam). The report examines the current status of social forestry in climate mitigation and adaptation in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and aims to update the Initial Baseline Assessment on Social Forestry and Climate Change published in 2010.

This annual progress report highlights key achievements and lessons learned of the “Grassroots Capacity Building for REDD+” project in the Asia‐Pacific region in 2013.

Guest commentary by Robert Primmer, Land Tenure and Climate Change Specialist, Evaluation, Research, and Communication (ERC) Project.

Costa Rica's Program of Payments
for Environmental Services (Pago de Servicios Ambientales,
PSA) provides a unique opportunity to evaluate direct
payments as a conservation policy tool. This paper reports
evidence on how much more forest has been conserved in Costa
Rica as a result of PSA contracts with landowners. Such
evidence requires estimating a counterfactual outcome: how
much forest would have been preserved if there had been no

Cities' development matters to
Pakistan. It is central to economic growth, job creation and
quality of life. This is also one of the core themes in the
2011 Government of Pakistan Framework for Economic Growth
(FEG). This paper explores the conditions for
growth-enhancing spatial change in Pakistan s cities.
Cities' development matters to Pakistan. Two strands of
analysis are developed. First, it reviews the performance

The Multi-Donor Trust Fund for
Sustainable Logistics (MDTF-SL) aims at promoting innovative
assistance projects that can break new grounds, test new
ideas, and generate new knowledge for sustainable logistics
that can be replicated in other countries and project. In
November 2013 we were asked to write a position paper that
analyses the state of affairs in Agro-Logistics. It aims to:
(1) review and suggest a conceptual grounding for the

Disasters are increasing worldwide, with
more devastating effects than ever before. While the
absolute number of disasters around the world has almost
doubled since the 1980s, the average number of natural
disasters in Middle East and North Africa (MNA) has almost
tripled over the same period of time. In the MNA, the
interplay of natural disasters, rapid urbanization, water
scarcity, and climate change has emerged as a serious

Since 2006, there has been an explosion
of Payments for Environmental Services (PES) projects in
Brazil, as well as efforts to pass PES laws at federal,
state, and municipal levels. Even in this short period, an
extraordinarily rich range of experiences has developed,
with examples of the application of PES at a variety of
scales, ranging from microwatersheds to entire states; in a
variety of contexts, from remote forest frontier areas to

The major environmental and social
management challenges that we face today, climate change,
loss of biodiversity, the decline of ocean fisheries,
limitations on food security, the scarcity of usable
freshwater resources, displacement of communities with
consequent increases in urban poverty, and inviability of
traditional local livelihoods, are all the result of
cumulative impacts from a large number of activities that

This paper reviews Pakistan's
agriculture performance and analyzes its agriculture and
water policies. It discusses the nature of rural poverty and
emphasizes the reasons why agricultural growth is a critical
component to any pro-poor growth strategy for Pakistan. It
supports these arguments by summarizing key results from
recent empirical analysis where the relative benefits of
agricultural versus non-agricultural led growth are