Miombo woodlands stretch across Southern
Africa in a belt from Angola and the Democratic Republic of
Congo (DRC) in the west to Mozambique in the east. The
miombo region covers an area of around 2.4 million km. In
some areas, miombo has been highly degraded as a result of
human use (southern Malawi and parts of Zimbabwe), while in
others, it remains relatively intact (such as in parts of
northern Mozambique, and in isolated areas of Angola and the

This forest policy note was prepared to
provide input to the ongoing forest sector reform in Kenya
on participation in sustainable forest management. It offers
recommendations on possible priority forest policy actions
within the forthcoming Natural Resource Management (NRM)
Project. The latter focuses enhancing the capacity of
Kenyans to manage the natural resource base and resources
available to poor and vulnerable communities. By outlining

Environmental degradation can inflict
serious damage on poor people because their livelihoods
often depend on natural resource use and their living
conditions may offer little protection from air, water, and
soil pollution. At the same time, poverty-constrained
options may induce the poor to deplete resources and degrade
the environment at rates that are incompatible with
long-term sustainability. In such cases, degraded resources

CIFOR Infobrief no. 77

The World Bank's revised forest
policy came into being in 2002 and covers all types of
forests. It has the following key objectives: (i) harnessing
the potential of forests to reduce poverty in a sustainable
manner; (ii) integrating forests effectively into
sustainable development; and (iii) protecting vital local
and global environmental services and values. The policy
enables the bank to fully engage in forestry throughout the

With deforestation and other land uses accounting for 11 percent of annual global greenhouse gas emissions, the international community agrees on the need to address deforestation as an important component of climate change. Community forests represent a vital opportunity to curbing climate change that has been undervalued. Today communities have legal or official rights to at least 513 million hectares of forests, only about one eighth of the world’s total, comprising 37.7 billion tonnes of carbon.

Meeting Name: Intergovernmental Technical Working Group on Forest Genetic Resources (of the CGRFA) - ITWG-FGR
Meeting symbol/code: CGRFA/WG-FGR-3/14/Inf.2

Meeting Name: Intergovernmental Technical Working Group on Forest Genetic Resources (of the CGRFA) - ITWG-FGR
Meeting symbol/code: CGRFA/WG-FGR-3/14/1 Add.1

Meeting Name: Intergovernmental Technical Working Group on Forest Genetic Resources (of the CGRFA) - ITWG-FGR
Meeting symbol/code: CGRFA/WG-FGR-3/14/1 Add.1

Meeting Name: Intergovernmental Technical Working Group on Forest Genetic Resources (of the CGRFA) - ITWG-FGR
Meeting symbol/code: CGRFA/WG-FGR-3/14/8

Meeting Name: Intergovernmental Technical Working Group on Forest Genetic Resources (of the CGRFA) - ITWG-FGR
Meeting symbol/code: CGRFA/WG-FGR-3/14/4

Meeting Name: Intergovernmental Technical Working Group on Forest Genetic Resources (of the CGRFA) - ITWG-FGR
Meeting symbol/code: CGRFA/WG-FGR-3/14/4