Download Report - Independent Evaluation Group - World Bank

Introduction
been reluctant to engage donors as partners in this complex and sensitive
area. Only recently has the general populace become conscious of the
implications of reconciling the management of Brazil’s rich heritage with
other priorities. The government, too, has perhaps become more proactive
in the enforcement of laws and receptive to outside initiatives, albeit
of a limited scope. The World Bank may have also become risk averse,
and by being consistent with its strategy may have avoided active engagement
in the forest sector and missed opportunities to help Brazil manage
its huge forest resources more effectively for fear of being criticized. But
the government’s reluctance to be engaged, which may itself have been
prompted by the Bank’s strategy, makes it difficult to identify the more
overwhelming factor. From this larger perspective, the ban on Bank financing
of logging was irrelevant, given the extent of illegal logging, but
the Brazilian authors of this study consider it to have constrained useful
involvement by the Bank, the International Finance Corporation (IFC),
and the Global Environment Facility (GEF).
The protection of Brazil’s Amazon forests beyond the short term requires
three fundamental conditions: an increase in the value of standing
forest; an increase in the costs associated with unsustainable logging
practices; and an increase in the incentives for and profitability of
sustainable (or improved) forest management. That is, it must become
profitable to keep trees and other forest products in the forest and to
improve management practices, and the predatory exploitation of timber
must become unprofitable. In evaluating measures that might address
these challenges, it is useful to distinguish between the processes
taking place at and beyond the forest-agriculture frontier. At the frontier,
agriculture, logging, and road building create a mutually reinforcing
system of forest conversion. Beyond the frontier, deeper in the forest,
illegal logging of higher-value tree species threatens protected areas
and the livelihoods of indigenous communities and extractivists.
At the frontier, the value of standing forest can be increased in part
through restricting access to it. This can be addressed through reforming
road-building strategies to avoid extensive road networks that open
forests to new economic pursuits and by improving environmental assessment
and mitigation procedures associated with road building. The
value of standing forest also can be increased through promotion of nontimber
forest products and agroforestry systems among smallholders,
though neither activity on its own will likely have a large impact on forest
conservation under current circumstances. Transfer schemes that essentially
pay people to keep their land in trees is another important av-
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