Expert statements indicate that annually
approximately 20 billion dollars will be needed to prevent
90 percent deforestation in tropical countries. Development
practitioners are eager to see the benefits from REDD plus
initiatives shared with local partners. Equally important to
understanding how local partners might benefit are questions
such as, who should derive benefits from REDD plus
initiatives, and how to ensure these initiatives reach the

For more than four centuries Japan has
been developing forested green belts to mitigate coastal
hazards such as sandstorms, salty winds, high tides, and
tsunamis. Although Japan's green belts were severely
damaged by the March 11 tsunami, they did reduce the impact
of waves, and protected houses by capturing floating debris.
Local governments are planning to reconstruct the green
belts as a countermeasure against tsunamis. While local

As donors pledge growing support for
protecting and managing forests to address climate change,
the question of how to pay tropical countries to reduce
their emissions from deforestation and forest degradation
assumes greater urgency. Depending on the detailed
implementation of REDD plus at a national and international
level, forest nations may be able to secure funding from a
range of sources, including donors and multilateral funds (a

To ensure sustainable and optimal use of
its common property natural resources, Mexico will need to
strengthen its focus on enhancing stewardship in three key
sectors-forests, water, and energy resources. The key
objectives include the following: 1) identifying options
that would contribute to Mexico's climate agenda and
build social resilience through forest management; 2)
ensuring economically efficient and environmentally and

The European neighborhood and
partnership instrument east countries forest law enforcement
and second governance program will support the participating
countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova,
Russian Federation and Ukraine) in strengthening forest
governance through improving implementation of relevant
international processes, enhancing their forest policy,
legislation and institutional capacity, and developing,

The objective of this Country
Environmental Analysis (CEA) is to highlight the underlying
challenges and opportunities for Indonesia's
environment and management of its natural resources in order
to guide the World Bank support to Indonesian institutions
for more sustainable development. Rather, the CEA sets the
broader context (chapter one) and economic costs of
environmental degradation (chapter two) in order to identify

This report evaluates the requirements
for an assessment of climate change impacts on agriculture
to guide policy makers on investment priorities and phasing.
Because agriculture is vital for national food security and
is a strong contributor to Brazil's GDP growth, there
is growing concern that Brazilian agriculture is
increasingly vulnerable to climate variability and change.
To meet national development, food security, climate

A pattern of forest area loss followed
by a period of reforestation is representative of the forest
transition process. Forest transition has been observed in
many countries and is a feature of the development process.
China reached its inflection point earlier and faster than
most other countries that have gone through the transition.
The report describes the success of reforms to forest
resource tenure in collective forest areas. These reforms,

The objective of the Functional Review
of the Environment, Water and Forestry sector (FR-EWF) is to
help the Government of Romania (GoR) develop an action plan
for implementation over the short- and medium-term to
strengthen the effectiveness and efficiency of the sector
administration, and provide input to the Government National
Reform Program (NRP 2011- 2013) and beyond, especially in
relation to those functions that support Romania's

Biomass is the most important source of
energy in Rwanda, especially for domestic cooking. Today
approximately 86 percent of primary energy comes from
biomass, mainly in the form of wood that is either used
directly as a fuel (57 percent), or converted into charcoal
(23 percent) together with smaller amounts of crop residues,
and peat (6 percent). In the past, the production of
charcoal in Rwanda was one of the factors that contributed

In 1994, the Government of Cameroon
introduced an array of forest policy reforms, both
regulatory and market-based, to support a more organized,
transparent, and sustainable system for accessing and using
forest resources. This report describes how these reforms
played out in the rainforests of Cameroon. The intention is
to provide a brief account of a complex process and identify
what worked, what did not, and what can be improved. The

This policy note was prepared in
response to a request from the Government of Southern Sudan
(GoSS) for World Bank assistance in developing legislative
and institutional policies and strategies that will take
advantage of the potential of the region's forest
resources to contribute to poverty alleviation, food
security, sustainable agriculture, economic growth, and to
protection of forest-related environmental services such as