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MANILA, PHILIPPINES (3 November 2003) - Most of the Mekong region's 80 million poor live in rural areas, often in or near forests, with some of the poorest belonging to ethnic minorities in remote upland areas. For these people, forests function as both safety nets and an essential source of daily income and food.

For example, many rural communities in the Lao People's Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) derive virtually all their food except rice from the forests and nonwood products provide, on average, more than half of the cash income for families living near forests.

These communities are highly vulnerable to, and threatened by, deforestation, which has been accelerating from an average of about 0.7% annually in the early 1980s to almost 2% in the late 1990s. More than 1.1 million hectares of forestland has been lost annually.

"If the environmental challenges facing upland development are not faced and managed, the poverty reduction efforts in these areas will not be sustained and the already vulnerable upland communities, particularly ethnic minorities and women, will be pushed deeper into poverty," says Javed Hussain Mir, an ADB Senior Natural Resource Specialist.

"To give poverty reduction strategies their full impact, particularly in the forest and natural resources sectors, the potential of the Mekong upland forests must be harnessed to reduce poverty."

To help achieve this, ADB has approved a technical assistance grant of US$800,000, from the Poverty Reduction Cooperation Fund, financed by the Government of the United Kingdom, to improve the poverty reduction potential of community and industrial forestry in three Mekong countries,

Focusing on Cambodia, Lao PDR, and Viet Nam, especially provinces that have a high incidence of poverty, the TA will identify strategies to increase the food and livelihood security of smallholder farm families and communities living in or near remote and inaccessible forests.

It will also assess the potential of community forestry to reduce poverty in the upland communities of the three countries, and chart the impact of changes in the forest industry and the forest product trade in the Mekong.

"Industrial forestry, which involves large-scale forest resource management and processing, has good potential to create jobs and income, provided it is done in a responsible manner," says Mr. Mir.

Interest in community forestry approaches, which require the participation of communities and key stakeholders in all aspects of forest planning and management, has been increasing in recent years.

Community and industrial forestry has been developed in accessible areas, primarily to meet the need for revenue and wood.

Some forms of community forestry would involve the use and sale of nonwood forest products for subsistence or the preservation of essential local environmental services. Other forms would need to focus on commercial timber and harvesting of nonwood forest products.

But institutionalizing such approaches has proven difficult, because of problems related to tenure and access, sharing of costs and benefits of jointly managed resources, and agreement on the roles and responsibilities of government agencies and communities.

The TA's participatory multi-stakeholder evaluation of community and industrial forestry initiatives aims to enhance their poverty reduction impact. Equally important will be involving policymakers more in the industrial policy reform agenda to promote sustainable forest resource management to reduce poverty among upland communities.

ADB's TA will be implemented over next 15 months. A report will be prepared in collaboration with participating communities, line agencies and key policymakers and project implementers. The proposed action plans for improving the performance and impact of forestry on poverty reduction will be presented and validated at a national multi-stakeholder workshop in each country.

The total cost of the TA is about $1 million, of which the Center for International Forestry Research, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN Regional Office for Asia, and participating communities will contribute $200,000 equivalent.

Read the full TA report.