Partnerships: World Bank

Introducing the World Bank/WWF Alliance for Forest Conservation and Sustainable Use

In April 1998, the World Bank and WWF entered into an agreement to form an alliance. Known as the World Bank/WWF Alliance for Forest Conservation & Sustainable Use, the partnership was conceived out of a shared recognition of the scale, complexity and urgency of the crisis threatening forests worldwide.

Combining the strength of two leaders
The World Bank is the largest provider of development assistance in the world. It has access to policy dialogue, convening power, analytical capacity and financing operations.

WWF is the world’s largest and most experienced independent conservation organization. It has strong field presence, private sector partnerships, public trust and forest conservation expertise.

By combining the strengths of the two partner organizations, the Alliance is uniquely positioned to affect changes in forest policy and practices, help to safeguard biodiversity and alleviate poverty. The Alliance enables the two partners to collectively achieve greater results than either can on its own.

The Alliance works to achieve three targets in a broad range of forest types by 2005:

• 50 million hectares of new forest protected areas created;
• 50 million hectares of existing but highly threatened forest protected areas secured under effective management;
• 200 million hectares of production forests under independently certified sustainable management.

To help meet these targets, the Alliance works with non-governmental organizations, development institutions, the private sector and governments.

The Alliance in action
The Alliance's mission of catalyzing conservation results through dynamic partnerships is perhaps best illustrated by the Amazon Region Protected Area (ARPA) programme in Brazil. A 10-year programme, ARPA brings together the Government of Brazil, the Brazilian Biodiversity Fund, the German Development Bank (KfW), the Global Environment Facility (GEF), and of course WWF and the World Bank.

Announced at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in South Africa in 2002, it is the largest tropical forest conservation initiative in history. ARPA aims to secure 12% of the Brazilian Amazon - an area comparable to that of Spain - in well-managed protected areas and reserves, and build a $220 million trust fund to finance the effective management of the protected areas in perpetuity.

Elsewhere, the Alliance aims to make a difference in a wide range of forests in 22 countries—from Russia, where the Alliance has supported various certification activities, laying the groundwork for certification schemes to flourish - to the Lao People's Democratic Republic, where the Alliance is helping villagers sustain the largest natural forest in Asia under active community management.

The Alliance as a tools provider
The Alliance invests resources in developing a suite of diagnostic and training tools that aim to build understanding and strengthen capacity for forest conservation practitioners and policy makers. Learning & Capacity Building tools target two principal areas across the Alliance's regional programmes: promoting the effective management of protected areas and promoting sustainable forest management (SFM).

For example, through their collaboration, WWF and the World Bank have developed the Management Effectiveness Tracking tool to provide a quick and simple assessment of effectiveness in individual protected areas. Ultimately the tool will help to identify targeted interventions to improve protected area management and the outcomes of conservation-development investments.

WWF has already used the tool to assess all its projects in protected areas, and the World Bank has used the tool as the basis for a similar methodology on marine protected areas.

Delivering results
The Alliance is on track to deliver strong results against its three targets. The Alliance is likely to exceed its target of creating 50 million hectares of new protected areas, given existing commitments. Over 40 million hectares of existing forest protected areas have already been assessed to determine how effectively these areas are being managed using the WWF World Bank tracking tool.

While the certification target has met with slow progress due to the complexity of laying the groundwork to make certification possible in various situations, progress is expected to accelerate with promises of dramatic expansion in several countries including Brazil and Russia.

The Alliance has also added value to individual World Bank and WWF initiatives, including playing a role in the development the Bank's revised Forest Strategy and Operational Policy, and with actions furthering forest investments in Brazil, China, the Congo Basin, Russia, Southeast Asia and South Asia.

After decades of ongoing loss and degradation of both forests and the livelihoods of people dependent upon them, the Alliance has shown that tangible progress is possible and that far more can be achieved by working together than working alone.