Download Report - Independent Evaluation Group - World Bank

Introduction
Box 1.2. The Operations Evaluation Department Review of the 1991 Forest Strategy
and Its Implementation
OED’s review of the Bank’s 1991 Forest Strategy 1 has been undertaken to assess Bank experience
in the forest sector—particularly since 1991—to gauge its policy intentions, implementation, and
impacts. The review also examines whether the Bank’s strategy remains relevant and can embrace
a strategy attuned to the current realities of the forest sector. In addition to briefing the Bank’s
Board of Executive Directors, the review will be used as an input to an ongoing Bank-wide review
of its forest sector activities being lead by the Bank’s Environmentally and Socially Sustainable
Development Network (ESSD).
Brazil was selected for evaluation because it has the largest tropical moist forest in the world and
the future of that forest has been at the heart of the Bank’s 1991 Forest Strategy. The strategy
recommends that Brazil should be among the 20 countries with threatened tropical moist forests
that should receive attention from the Bank.
All of the case studies in this review consist of two parts—the first focusing on the extent and
causes of changes in the forest sector, and the second on how the entire set of Bank instruments
has interacted with the processes of the changing forest cover, and with what impact.
To the extent possible, the performance of the Bank has been assessed based on outcomes and
impacts. Six classes of outcome are considered:
• Improvement in country policies and strategies with direct and indirect impacts on forests
• Institutional development including improvement of the legal framework, a redistribution of
roles between the public and private sectors, and participatory approaches to decisionmaking
• Improvements in technologies
• Capacity building and human capital formation
• Improvement in the incentive structure
• Improved information, monitoring, and evaluation systems.
1. The strategy is summarized in Annex B.
are not efficient in other functions such as the conservation of
biodiversity, cultural diversity, and ethnoecological knowledge
(especially of traditional forest peoples).
• Although plantations are poorer in biodiversity, by relieving
pressure on natural forests, they can help conserve biodiversity.
• Brazil has vast tracts of degraded forest land that are prime candidates
for reforestation.
• The plantation forest sector in Brazil is among the most advanced
in the world in research and technology and has a progressive,
well-established private sector that is ready to address some of the
problems in the natural forests.
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