Forest Peoples Programme: Comments on "Toward a Revised Forest Strategy for the World Bank Group: draft discussion paper 24 December 2000"

At TAG 1, and in subsequent correspondence, we were assured that the draft strategy and policy would be circulated to TAG members at least three working weeks before the meeting, would be posted on the web and would be open to public commentary. None of these promises has been kept.

Since the draft text was sent out to TAG participants by email at 6.45 pm on Christmas Eve(!), few TAG participants will have had adequate time to read and reflect on the paper, owing to the interruptions of the Christmas and New Year holidays before the second TAG. The text has not been posted on the web and is not being made available by the World Bank for public comment until a later (undefined) stage.

This makes it impossible for TAG members to make well-judged inputs based on discussions with colleagues and other stakeholders.

In addition, the title of the draft text makes its status doubly unclear. Is this a ‘draft’ strategy or is it a just a ‘Draft Discussion Paper’?

Some of the first questions that TAG members will want clarified at the TAG 2 meeting are:

· what options will be provided for additional public inputs before revised texts go to the Board for approval?

Given the extremely preliminary nature of the draft, the lack of time for prepared debate, the absence of any policy document for discussion and the lack of public disclosure, I strongly recommend that after TAG 2:

· both are then widely circulated, including on the web, for public comment and discussion.

· a third TAG meeting is then convened, AFTER public discussion, to assess the inputs and the drafts.

In the topsy-turvy discourse of the World Bank, a ‘strategy’ is a (non-binding) aspirational, general document setting out the broad direction of Bank intentions, while a (‘safeguard’) ‘policy’ is a document setting out binding guidelines for operational staff. [1]

TAG 1 apparently concluded with an agreement that the FPIRS process should end by producing (i) an overall ‘strategy’, (ii) a ‘safeguard policy’ and (iii) an ‘implementation strategy’.

Towards this end, a ‘safeguards and definitions’ focus group was established to help define the content of a ‘safeguard policy’. The inputs made to this group have been (selectively) [2] distributed to the TAG by email but TAG members have not yet seen how Bank staff propose to synthesise these inputs in the form of a draft safeguard policy. [3]

This is despite the fact that the need for a safeguard approach is admitted in the discussion draft, was highlighted by the OED review, was accepted as necessary by Bank staff interviewed by the OED and was strongly emphasised in nearly all the regional consultations.

In the event, the draft discussion paper makes very little reference to a new ‘Forest Policy’ at all. Indeed the safeguard policy is not even identified as an element of the strategy (see for example pages 5 and 18) . Even though Chapter Five explicitly notes that the strategy ‘must provide operational guidance... to be applied to any operation with the potential to significantly impact on the forest environment’ (page 57) such guidance is almost not provided.

Recommendation: Drafting of a revised safeguard policy on forests should be made an urgent priority. The draft policy should then be:

· Revised for final submission to the board and simultaneously posted on the web.

The absence of an implementation strategy is explicable given the lack of a revised policy. Mechanisms to encourage and enforce (‘carrots and sticks’) staff compliance with the policy are hard to elaborate in the absence of such a policy.

At TAG 1 it was noted that major obstacles to policy implementation exist within the World Bank and these are particularly important to address owing to the high transaction costs of work in the forest sector and the challenges and uncertainties of cross-sectoral work. Accordingly, it was agreed that a ‘Staff Incentives Review’ should be carried out and submitted for discussion at TAG 2. It appears that this study has not been carried out. The TAG deserves an explanation for why this study has not (yet?) been done. [4]

Recommendation: The review of internal obstacles to policy implementation is still needed if the new ‘strategy’ and ‘policy’ are not to be as weakly implemented as the last. The study should be carried out, and should provide a basis for drafting an ‘implementation strategy’ that provides clarity to operational staff and managers on how to apply the new policy and what revised incentives there are to encourage and ensure compliance. Both the incentives review and the implementation strategy should then be discussed at the proposed TAG 3 meeting.

The draft discussion paper does represent a significant advance in World Bank thinking about forests. Notably the paper :

· Highlights the needs of the poor and marginalised and thus stresses the importance of issues like rights and equity and not just growth

· Recognises the problems of poor and indigenous due to loss of ownership, access and control of forest resources

· Recognises that maintaining forests is important to prevent the creation of poverty.

· Emphasises the importance of securing livelihoods, reducing vulnerability and improving participation

· Adopts a cross sectoral approach and recognises that the main pressures on forests come from outside the forest sector

· Accepts that the strategy should apply to all forest types (not just tropical forests).

· Recognises that the establsihment of plantations has done nothing to alleviate pressure on natural forests and may have even encouraged conversion

· Seeks to address corruption through public participation, increased transparency, institutional reform and good governance

· Accepts the need for wider engagement of civil society, especially forest-dependent groups, in decision-making

· Recognises need to address internal insitutional issues: transaction costs, lack of positive incentives and high staff turnover

That said there are a number of central elements in the draft paper which remain extremely controversial or misconceived (pagination given below refers to a text printed on A4 paper).

A central element in the discussion paper is the argument that ‘market failures’ are one of the main underlying causes of forest loss in developing countries. The main solution proposed by the draft strategy to these failures is the ‘creation’ of markets for these undervalued environmental services such as the sequestration of ‘greenhouse gases’, stabilisation of microclimates, flood prevention, erosion control and biodiversity conservation (page 15). Chapters 3 and 4 develop the proposal that these markets should be created at both national and global levels.

There are four problems with this proposal. The first is that, as the paper admits, ‘[t]he Bank has very limited experience in atttempting to develop financial mechanisms to pay for environmental services’ (page 39). Most of the handful of examples, summarised in the paper, of efforts to reward forest owners and managers for forest stewardship are really just state subsidies and it is stretching the notion to call such interventions ‘markets’.

The second issue is that the paper does not show how the creation of such ‘markets’ - or subsidy regimes - would help promote poverty alleviation. Indeed without forest tenure reforms it is hard to see how the majority of forest-dependent peoples – whose rights to ownership, use and access to forests are so often denied – could gain a toehold in such ‘markets’.

The third issue is that the paper repeatedly raises the prospect that the creation of a global market in carbon offsets under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change will include forests. Given that this issue was one of the central matters in dispute at the recent conference of parties at The Hague, this is a politically dangerous area for the Bank to wade into. It certainly should not be a central plank in the Bank’s new strategy.

Fourthly, the paper almost entirely overlooks one of the main problems with the ‘creation’ of such ‘markets’ - the lack of sound base-line data and reliable methods of verification. Until tried and tested methods exist to quantify the services being ‘marketed’, the creation of such ‘markets’ is problematic.

Recommendation: Given the great uncertainties that exist, it seems inappropriate to give such a central place to these novel market mechanisms in the Bank’s new strategy. Instead, the Bank should cautiously propose carrying out some experimentation in this area, as a small part of its overall strategy, to see if reliable, verifiable, poverty-alleviating and sustainable market-based options can be developed.

The discussion paper proposes establishing a new fund, initially of US$ 1.6 billion, made up of half a billion from the donor community, half a billion from the private sector and the rest from the Bank itself. Given that the paper has correctly highlighted the fact that ‘the forest sector is notorious as a center of corruption, strongly vested interests – often involving political and business elites – and lack of transparency in allocating resource rights’ (page 44), reliance on the private sector for 30% of a future forest strategy focused on poverty alleviation seems risky.

Recommendation: If funding is to be sought from the private sector, safeguards need to be built in to ensure that these funds come with ‘no strings attached’ and can be used to promote the Bank’s social, institutional reform, environmental and poverty alleviation objectives and not just private sector interests. IFC and MIGA forest interventions must also be conditional on their addressing the Bank’s policy objectives.

The policy paper duly recognises that governments’ denial of customary rights and their failure to recognise common property regimes are significant causes of deforestation and poverty creation (page 16 and 24). The paper is less clear about how the Bank should address this situation. On page 9 there is a confusing discussion about which rights need to be recognised to give forest-dependent people the security they need, with language ranging from ‘forest land-use rights’ to the ‘ownership of market values’. On page 48, the language is encouragingly clearer and includes the assertion that Bank lending to forestry operations should be conditional on the ‘protection of local people’s land tenure rights’. Likewise on p. 59 promoting ‘security of tenure’ is given as an element in the ‘Bank’s focus’ (Section 5.2) in line with UN agreed standards for ‘national forest programmes’ (Box 5.2). However, tn the absence of a draft safeguard policy, it is hard to see how such intentions will be operationalised.

With regard to Indigenous Peoples, the paper is somewhat clearer and emphasis is given to the need to secure the legal recognition of their rights as a condition of World Bank projects (page 23). However, it appears that staff in the World Bank forestry team have misgivings about providing indigenous forest dwellers with land ownership rights. For example in a recent issue of the ITTO newsletter [5] , Bank staff note that:

There is some controversy as to whether titling forested areas to the indigenous people who occupy them is the right approach, especially in cases where the resource is under competitive pressure from other poor people or from commercial loggers; protecting rights of access and usage may be sufficient. Based on the experiences of the World Bank and others it is clear that the undisputed ownership of forest areas by indigenous peoples is not a sufficient condition to guarantee that such areas will be sustainably managed and protected.

The implication of this paragraph, that recognition of indigenous peoples’ property rights is not the ‘right approach’ but that only use and access rights should be recognised, is contrary to the Bank’s current Operational Directive 4.20 on ‘Indigenous Peoples’ (and see page 23). The argument also begs the question: if recognition of property rights is not a sufficient condition to ensure SFM, why would recognition of use and access rights be any more sufficient?

In the discussion paper, the Bank notes that the OD on ‘Indigenous Peoples’ is currently being redrafted, but the authors seem unaware that the March 2000 draft of the new ‘OP 4.10’ no longer includes a borrower obligation to secure indigenous peoples’ land rights. The discussion paper’s reliance on the ‘Indigenous Peoples’ policy to use its ‘policy dialogue, lending and structural adjustment conditionalities’ to further indigenous rights will be considerably weakened if this lowering of standards is accepted by the World Bank’s board.

Recommendation: The strategy and associated safeguard policy must include strong provisions on the need to secure the land tenure of indigenous peoples and other forest-dependent groups as a condition of World Bank Group interventions, including adjustment lending, that affect forests (and see annexes).

The discussion draft correctly notes that the World Bank is not best placed to carry out small-scale innovative pilot projects in community-based forest management, because of the nature of its lending instruments and the high transaction costs of such activities. Instead, the paper suggests that the role of the Bank should be to ‘scale up’ pilot successes through larger projects. The proposal sounds attractive but the examples that the discussion draft then uses to justify the argument suggest that the Bank is underestimating the very real institutional and political obstacles to scaling up. For example, in Box 2.4 and pages 26-27, the Bank implies that its engagement in promoting Joint Forest Management (JFM) in India have been broadly successful. However, independent assessments have been far more critical of the Bank’s JFM projects, for example in Madhya Pradesh, for failing to adhere to Bank safeguard policies and underestimating the degree to which unfair tenure regimes and forestry department intransigence hinder genuine participation. The projects have thus entrenched inequitable institutional relations rather than resolved them (Box 1 next page). Similar problems have been experienced in the Philippines, where World Bank, ADB and USAID-supported projects to promote community forestry, have been strongly criticised for creating donor dependency, a new bureaucratic tier in the DENR and the marginalization of indigenous groups from their lands.

Box 2.5 on page 28 likewise presents the Bank’s Agroforestry projects in Karnataka State in India as ‘highly successful’ when in fact the Karnataka Social Forestry project was very controversial. The project was cricised for planting commercially valuable trees on ‘waste’ lands crucial to the livelihoods of the very poor for grazing, thatch, fuel collection and medicinal herbs. The social forestry programme, based on planting Eucalyptus, ran into furious opposition from local NGOs and community groups, exactly because it took over 'waste' lands and village commons used by the poorest sectors and further increased poverty because the replacement of dry land crops with trees on richer farmers' lands reduced demands for wage- labour. NGO ire also focused on the unsuitability of Eucalyptus itself which was considered to be environmentally ruinous. Some of these claims may have been exaggerated but the real problems were so severe that World Bank pulled out of the project. The main lesson that India learned from the experience, which was repeated all over the sub-continent, was that the preferred Eucalyptus species are indeed environmentally disadvantageous and are better suited to cash-cropping by richer, landed, upper caste farmers than to supplying the subsistence needs of the poor. [6]

Recommendation: A more careful assessment of the challenge of ‘scaling up’ is needed to guide future operations. This should be undertaken as (an early) part of the ‘strategy’. Existing studies suggest that much more project preparation is required to ensure that legal, governance and institutional reforms are in place before ‘scaling up’ can be carried out successfully.

BOX 1: THE MADHYA PRADESH FORESTRY PROJECT, INDIA [7]

This project was undertaken by the Madhya Pradesh Forestry Department (MPFD) as part of a state-wide forest development strategy and a national programme of Joint Forest Management. The official goal was to increase the supply of wood for forest-based industries and of Non-Timber Forest Products and animal products for the rural poor. The Bank-funded component (IDA US$58 m), which targeted 2,541 villages, 1.2 million people - 900,000 of who were tribal, and focused on forest fringe communities, commenced in 1995 and ended in December 1999. It was conceived as the pilot phase of a larger scheme. Management and development components of the pilot project aimed to: (i) strengthen MPFD’s capacity and introduce an “attitudinal” change away from regulation towards participatory forestry (ii) increase forest cover through “assisted natural regeneration” (ANR) (iii) boost productivity in areas with “open canopy” by means of a Village Resource Development Program. Local participation in the MPFP was meant to be assured through new Village-level Forest Protection Committees (VPCs) and Village Forest Committees (VFCs). The project sought to secure biodiversity in 24 protected areas, while providing alternative income for residents through “Ecodevelopment”.

The case study found that despite the project’s stated goals of local participation and social development, many local people were excluded from decision-making and tribal people suffered adverse impacts to their welfare. From the outset, tribal and other rural groups complained that they had only learned of the project once implementation began. Since then, new village committees have failed to facilitate local participation in forest management. In mixed-caste villages, committees are dominated by non-tribal people who do not address the concerns of indigenous families who use the forest for their livelihoods. Consequently, VPCs and VFCs have imposed unworkable resource use regulations that have generated serious intra and inter-village conflicts and exacerbated frictions between local people and the forest and park authorities. With the inception of the MPFP, increasing restrictions were placed on the use of forest resources by forest villagers and forest dwellers who were subjected to harassment, extortion, intimidation and violence by MPFD staff. ANR activities closed off some forest areas and also established plantations on land formerly used for sustainable cultivation or grazing. In protected areas, ecodevelopment programmes have been unable to compensate local people for the loss of their forest-based livelihood. The authors criticise the project for favouring business and state agencies and discriminating against forest dwellers.

Protests to World Bank officials about the adverse impacts of the project resulted in a joint Bank-Indigenous-Forestry Department mission in March 1999. The mission was met by large numbers of forest dwellers who protested that the Bank had failed to comply with its indigenous peoples policy. No baseline studies of indigenous rights and access to forest resources had been prepared prior to implementation and participation was very limited. The project design was based on unsubstantiated assumptions about the negative impacts of indigenous resource use on forests and wildlife, with the result that the project unduly restricted traditional forest-based livelihoods. The project failed to secure customary resource rights and instead accepted the existing national legislation and local regulations that curtail indigenous rights.

Responding to the case study, Bank staff question the extent to which the authors and the organisations they are linked to speak for the tribals as a whole. They insist that the project has brought benefits to forest based villages and has helped initiate a more participatory form of forest management. Localised conflicts between the tribals and the MPFD preceded the project and national laws denying tribal ownership, use and access rights could not be changed through a single pilot project. Reports of forced resettlement and other abuses were not located in the villages targeted by the Bank-funded component. However, the Bank admits: there was inadequate participation in project preparation; baseline data were not collected; and a draft tribal development plan, which sought to address the limited legal rights of the tribals and foreseeable conflicts, was dropped on the grounds that it might have exacerbated conflict between tribal peoples and non-tribals. Such a component should have been included to ensure stronger mechanisms for accountability and supervision as well as a legal covenant strengthening customary rights. Conflict resolution mechanisms should also have been included. The project has also negatively impacted scheduled castes (untouchables) and excluded women from decision-making. The Bank closed the project in December 1999 and decided not to embark on the second phase.

The paper proposes that, in future, Bank support for forestry operations should be guided by a combination of independent certification and a new Operational Directive on Forests (section 3.4). This is a significant step for the Bank and, through the requirement for third party certification, potentially provides a new mechanism for civil society engagement in the forest sector and thus greater accountability.

However, ambiguity remains. The Bank needs to clarify what certification standards it will accept, as some standards are weak on civil society engagement and social criteria. The Bank also needs to think through how it will assess proposed support for forestry operations in terms of their poverty alleviation benefits. Given that even the strongest current certification standards, such as FSC, only ensure that logging and plantation schemes meet ‘do no harm’ standards, Bank operational staff, especially in IFC and MIGA, will need additional guidance to ensure that Bank-supported operations actually have real poverty alleviation benefits.

On the other hand, the discussion paper resurrects the dangerous argument that deforestation can be justified in the name of poverty alleviation (page 31), which apparently contradicts the argument made earlier that forest loss itself creates poverty.

Recommendation: Rather than rehearse contentious generalizations, it would be more useful if the Bank developed clearer guidance for all World Bank Group staff on how decisions on forest land use should be made to ensure respect for local peoples’ rights, genuine long-term poverty alleviation and environmental security.

The discussion paper makes the observation (page 16) that ‘[o]ne of the Bank’s strengths is its ability to operate across sectors’ and it stresses the importance of cross-sectoral country assistance planning and project preparation in future forest related activities (pages 40-44, 58). However, while this ability might seem apparent, the OED review found that the Bank has not made effective use of this ability with respect to forests over the last decade even though it was part of the 1991 ‘strategy’. A far more detailed analysis is needed of the internal obstacles within the Bank to cross-sectoral work (and see also comments by David Kaimowitz and Frances Seymour).

SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT THE WORLD BANK’S NEW FOREST POLICY

INPUT TO THE SAFEGUARDS AND DEFINITIONS FOCUS GROUP
OF THE TECHNICAL ADVISORY GROUP

Currently the World Bank has 10 safeguard policies. These are mandatory policies applied to all Bank operations which are designed to ensure that World Bank interventions do not cause harm to social groups and environments that are often overlooked or marginalised in economic development. The policies define procedures to ensure that Bank operations adhere to international law, respect agreed human rights and conform with accepted international environmental standards. [8] The policies aim to help overcome weaknesses in borrower country policies and institutions, which may currently fail to protect vulnerable social sectors and environments. World Bank staff are obliged to comply with these policies in all projects, including sectoral adjustment loans (SECALs), and they are also encouraged to address these issues in developing Country Assistance Strategies (CAS). Compliance with safeguard policies is not currently mandatory in full structural adjustment loans. [9]

The safeguard policies have evolved over twenty years and have gradually been tightened and rationalised. Retraining of Bank staff is currently underway to explain to them how they are meant to apply these policies. Safeguard policies work best when they are succinct and simple, and make clear to staff and clients (who are often not experts in the issues addressed by the policies) how and when safeguard actions should be applied in the project cycle.

Successive reviews of the implementation of safeguard policies show that safeguards are overlooked or avoided when they:

Although originally conceived as tools to condition World Bank engagement with borrower governments, the safeguard policies have emerged as the principal instruments used by civil society to hold the World Bank itself accountable to project affected persons. The policies thus provide the main yardstick against which civil society claims to the Inspection Panel are measured.

The Bank’s current ‘forestry’ policy OP 4.36 consists of a number of injunctions only some of which imply clear procedures for Bank staff. [10] For the purposes of the FPIRS, the current safeguards have been summarised as follows:

1. No Bank Group financing for commercial logging in primary tropical moist forests

2. Adoption of policies and an institutional framework consistent with sustainability

4. Adoption of comprehensive and environmentally sound conservation and development plans with clear definitions of the roles and rights of key stakeholders, including local people

5. Basing commercial use of forests on adequate social, environmental and economic assessments

6. Making adequate provisions to maintain biodiversity and safeguard the interests of local people, including forest dwellers and indigenous peoples

Although the OED review mentioned OP 4.36, it did not make a comprehensive assessment of the degree of implementation of the safeguard elements, being mainly focused on the implementation of the World Bank’s more general 1991 Forest Policy (now renamed a ‘strategy’). [12] The main findings of the review (considered contentious by many NGOs) were that the first safeguard had a ‘chilling effect’ on forestry lending, while the overall policy made staff ‘risk averse’. The review also found that participation was weak and that the concerns of forest dwellers were poorly addressed, governance issues were generally neglected and institution-building was weak. In general, safeguards were observed at entry but often not adhered to in the implementation phase. [13]

The OEG review of IFC performance found that the safeguards had effectively terminated IFC investment in logging in the tropics but had provided no guidance on how to deal with other forest types. The policy was not taken into account cross-sectorally and social issues were not given prominence. OP 4.36 was only adopted into IFC procedures in 1998. Even after this, very few operational staff had any awareness of the policy requirements. Few of the clients were made aware of the forest policy. The problem was generic: safeguard policies in general were not formally referred to in IFC project documents until January 2000. [14]

During the FPIRS OED and regional workshops, as well as at the June TAG meeting, a number of revised safeguards for the new World Bank forest (not forestry) policy were proposed, including the following:

q extend the proscription on Bank financing of logging to all old growth forests (boreal temperate, tropical dry and tropical wet)

q secure the tenure rights of forest-dwellers as a precondition to Bank operations

q include an outright ban on negative impacts in forests defined as ‘high conservation value forests’ (including all forest types)*

q condition support in non-HCVFs on internationally accepted certification standards*

A number of other proposals were made for strengthening the policy which may or may not have been conceived as potential safeguards:

Only those safeguards that have been asterisked* have, so far, been accepted by the World Bank as needing to be included in a future policy.

The new safeguards proposed by the World Bank at the conclusion of TAG 1 do not encompass or provide substitutes for several of the key safeguards in OP 4.36. Notably:

q adoption of policies and an institutional framework consistent with sustainability

q making adequate provisions to safeguard the interests of local people, including forest dwellers and indigenous peoples

The focus group needs to consider whether these issues, which were in OP 4.36 and the other safeguards proposed during the FPIRS process, should or should not be included in the safeguard package. I believe it is self-evident that the four elements that were in OP 4.36 should be retained and even strengthened in the new safeguard policy.

In the documentation provided to TAG 1, High Conservation Value Forests were defined as:

a) forest areas fundamental to meeting basic needs of local communities (e.g. subsistence, health) and/or critical to local communities’ traditional cultural identity (areas of cultural, economic or religious significance)

b) forest areas that provide basic services (e.g. watershed protection, erosion control) that are crucial and unable to be effectively replaced by other land cover.

c) forest areas containing globally, regionally or nationally significant concentrations of biodiversity and forest areas that are in or contain rare, threatened or endangered ecosystems.’ [15]

At first reading, the HCVF concept is very welcome because it embraces social, ecological and biodiversity considerations. However, actually applying this concept as a safeguard, as opposed to a Good Practice objective, may be very problematic because:

q It is a novel concept which has not yet gained widespread international endorsement

q Workable methodologies, acceptable to all interest groups, for determining which areas are HCVFs have not yet been tried out in the field

As such the concept is unlikely to be workable in the short to medium term, especially if it is to be applied to structural lending as the Bank now intends. Indeed, it is clear that the concept of HCVF has been elaborated principally by those with a forestry project perspective, without due consideration of the difficulties of applying the concept to cross-sectoral and structural Bank operations affecting forests, which is what the safeguard approach requires if it is to be effective. As the TAG issues paper notes:

There are two risks inherent in the early application of the HCVF approach. One is that the concept will be imposed hastily from the top-down without time to really assess which forests have such values. Serious social and environmental damage may then ensue. [18] The other is that, in the absence of clear, agreed national definitions and procedures, and in the face of very high transaction costs, the policy will be considered impossible to apply. This is likely to have a ‘freezing effect’ on borrowers and will make Bank Group staff even more ‘risk averse’ in dealing with forests.

This is one reason why it may be advisable to retain the current safeguard proscribing Bank financing of logging in old growth forests, at least for those countries which have not yet been through broadly inclusive national processes defining HCVFs.

The revised forest policy is intended to promote ‘collaborative, joint and community forest development and conservation’. [21] The policy should thus include safeguards requiring borrowers or clients to develop credible participatory forestry policies.

During TAG 1 a number of advisors urged the inclusion of specific safeguards to secure recognition of indigenous peoples’ (IPs) and other forest dwellers’ customary rights, provide secure land tenure for the rural poor and institute clear property rights regimes. OP 4.36 already requires borrowers to ‘adopt comprehensive and environmentally sound conservation and development plans that clearly define the roles and rights of... local people (including forest dwellers)’ (para 1 d) (ii)), and to ‘set aside adequate compensatory preservation forests to... safeguard the interests of forest dwellers, specifically their rights of access and use of designated forest areas’ (para 1 d) (iv)). During TAG 1, some Bank staff argued that these issues are already addressed through the safeguard policy on IPs. There are a number of problems with this:

q The policy applies only to IPs and not all forest-dependent groups or forest fringe communities

q The IPs policy (OD 4.20) is currently being revised (as OP 4.10) and it is not yet known what it will contain. If reliance is to be placed on OP 4.10, then it must include binding safeguards securing recognition of IPs’ customary rights.

In line with OP 4.36 (para 2.) the revised safeguard policy should include the statement: ‘the Bank does not finance projects that contravene applicable international environmental and human rights agreements.’

TOWARDS A SOCIALLY APPROPRIATE NOTION OF
'HIGH CONSERVATION VALUE FORESTS’

2^ND INPUT TO SAFEGUARDS AND DEFINITIONS FOCUS GROUP
OF THE TECHNICAL ADVISORY GROUP

In the documentation provided to TAG 1, High Conservation Value Forests (HCVF) are defined as:

c) forest areas containing globally, regionally or nationally significant concentrations of biodiversity and forest areas that are in or contain rare, threatened or endangered ecosystems.’ [22]

The draft FSC proposal notes that ‘HCVF could occur in all social settings, not just in relation to indigenous peoples’. According to the FSC advisory panel, the presence of one or more of the following suggest that the forest may be a HCVF for social reasons:

The FSC has also sought to define what is meant by the terms ‘fundamental’ (forest use which contributes as much as 15-20% to community monetary economy or diet and which cannot be easily replaced) and ‘basic need’ (requirements for economic or biophysical survival). The report also notes that knowledge about areas critical to local communities’ traditional cultural identity may be ‘very local to a specific area, sometimes not known to a nearby clan or other family groups. This again stresses the importance of widespread consultation under principles 2, 3 and 9’ (emphasis added).

The importance of there being adequate processes of consultation to define HCVF is stressed by all parties. The FSC definition of HCVF includes a phrase requiring their identification ‘in cooperation with local communities’. At the TAG 1 meeting, the Bank noted with regard to HCVF that:

This is consistent with the FSC’s interim proposals, which find that ‘indicators and verifiers for the identification of social attributes, which are high conservation values are most often evaluated at the local, rather than global or regional level’. FSC also note that ‘languages used for the processes of consultation and assessment should be local and culturally appropriate to the region and peoples’. The FSC enjoins full consultation with all primary stakeholders – conservation NGOs, local communities, indigenous peoples and land owners. The process also calls for the involvement of the same stakeholders in monitoring the application of the safeguards.

It is important to note that the proposed adoption of the concept of HCVF by the FSC is in addition to the safeguards already built into the FSC certification process, notably FSC principles 2 and 3, which state that:

‘Principle 2: Long-term tenure and use rights to the land and forest resources shall be clearly defined, documented and legally established.

Principle 3: The legal and customary rights of indigenous peoples to own, use and manage their lands, territories and resources shall be recognised and respected.’

As evolved by the FSC, the notion of HCVF can potentially be a powerful tool for promoting public participation in land use planning and natural resource management. It gives emphasis to local knowledge, local needs and local values to be assessed through the involvement of local people in local consultations using local languages. As such, it could be useful for promoting socially appropriate forest management at the level of the landscape or forest management unit. However, the concept is less well adapted to macro level decision-making about forests, unless a great deal of local consultation, zoning and mapping has already been done.

Given the amount of work already done on HCVF by the FSC advisory panel, it is unlikely that the TAG’s ad hoc ‘Safeguards and Definitions Focus Group’ can improve on it. The FSC is expected to finalise its own report on the concept in late 2000. It is generally expected that further refinements to the concept should now be done through field trials to see how the concept applies at local and national levels. These field trials are needed not just to establish the validity or otherwise of the draft definitions of HCVF but also to indicate what kinds of consultations are acceptable and necessary to allow the concept to be applied effectively. There may be scope for the World Bank/WWF Alliance to assist with such field trials, which would also help the World Bank gain a clearer understanding of how the concept might be applied to World Bank operations in the future.

It is important to understand that the concept of HCVF is still at the conceptual level and is being developed by the FSC and by forest products trading companies for the use of certifiers assessing forest management at the level of the individual Forest Management Unit (FMU). The concept has not yet been developed adequately through field testing, nor yet applied on a wide enough scale to be readily applied to World Bank operations at the level of guarantees (MIGA), investments (IFC), project loans, grants and credits (IBRD, GEF and IDA) and structural adjustment lending.

· include a clear provision for full and transparent local participation in all exercises aimed at defining HCVF :

In accordance with the precautionary principle, all old growth forests are considered HCVF unless established otherwise, with demonstrable public acceptance, through inclusive and open processes of participation.

PROPOSED ELEMENTS OF A NEW FOREST POLICY

3^rd INPUT TO THE SAFEGUARDS AND DEFINITIONS FOCUS GROUP
OF THE TECHNICAL ADVISORY GROUP

Based on the teleconference held on 9 November 2000, the Focus Group appears to have agreed to propose the inclusion of the following safeguard elements in the new Forest Policy:

q Extend the proscription on Bank financing of logging to all old growth forests (boreal temperate, tropical dry and tropical wet) unless acceptable country-level exercises have been carried out to zone High Conservation Value Forests (HCVF).

q In accordance with the precautionary principle, all old growth forests are considered HCVF unless established otherwise, with demonstrable public acceptance, through inclusive and open processes of participation.

q Condition Bank support for operations in non-HCVFs on internationally accepted certification standards

q Any proposed Bank-funded logging operation would need to be sustainable at the stand level, meaning FSC or equivalent

q Any proposed Bank-funded logging operation should only take place in any particular forest ecosystem if a viable, ecologically representative protected area network exists for that particular ecosystem

q Any proposed Bank-funded logging operation would have to demonstrate clear poverty alleviation benefits and local benefit sharing

q Any proposed Bank-funded logging operation would have to include some form of corporate code of conduct (or performance bond or some other mechanism) to ensure that there were not corrupt practices

q Secure the tenure rights of forest-dwellers as a precondition to Bank operations affecting forests

q Ensure borrower or client adoption of policies and an institutional framework consistent with sustainability

q Ensure borrower or client adoption of a participatory approach to the management of natural forests

q Ensure adequate provisions to safeguard the interests of local people, including forest dwellers and indigenous peoples

q The Bank does not finance projects that contravene applicable international environmental and human rights agreements.

b) forest areas that provide basic services (e.g. watershed protection, erosion control) that are crucial and unable to be effectively replaced by other land cover.

c) forest areas containing globally, regionally or nationally significant concentrations of biodiversity and forest areas that are in or contain rare, threatened or endangered ecosystems.’

The full participation of local peoples is agreed as being necessary. More details are set out in my s