WWF - Forests for Life Programme resources

Plan de Manejo de la Chunga

2009-11-11

El presente documento "Plan General de Manejo de la Chunga" fue elaborado con el objetivo de fomentar el uso y aprovechamiento ordenado de esta especie no maderable propio de los bosques del Darién.

Investment Screening Guidelines for Financial Investors

2009-10-23

This innovative resource will identify key environmental and social principles and criteria that need to be considered in all investment decisions pertaining to the forest sector, such as timber, pulp and paper, and other sectors whose activities impact forests, including palm oil cultivation and mining.

Please sign up here to receive more information about the tool and a notification when it is released.

New Generations Plantations Project - Synthesis Report 2007 - 2009

2009-10-18

WWF Guide to Conservation Finance

2009-10-06

The Guide to Conservation Finance provides an overview of conservation financing mechanisms that have been implemented throughout the world. The guide informs field practitioners about which of the available financing mechanisms they could apply to achieve their conservation aims. The various mechanisms are illustrated with short case studies that demonstrate both successes and challenges. In addition, the guide provides a list of resources and Web links for further exploration of the conservation finance field.

Protected Areas Benefits Assessment Tool

2009-09-18

The Protected Areas Benefits Assessment Tool (PA-BAT) is designed to fill an important gap in the toolbox of protected area agencies and conservation institutions, by providing a methodology to collate and build information about the overall benefits from protected areas.

As pressures on protected areas continue to develop over time, and demand for land and water, and for management resources, is increasingly stretched, park managers need to have arguments for protection in place and backed by a solid body of data collected over time.

This need is recognized explicitly in the CBD Programme of Work on Protected Areas, for example in paragraph 3.1.2: "Conduct national-level assessments of the contributions of protected areas, considering as appropriate environmental services, to the countrys economy and culture, and to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals at the national level; and integrate the use of economic valuation and natural resource accounting tools into national planning processes in order to identify the hidden and non-hidden economic benefits provided by protected areas and who appropriates these benefits. "

The PA-BAT aims to help collate information on the full range of current and potential benefits of individual protected areas. It is a contributory methodology for the overall Arguments for Protection series, but is also hopefully a stand-alone tool that will be of wider use to the protected areas community.

Although developed primarily for use in protected areas, the tool could have wider application, for example in assessing wider benefits of forest management units, agricultural landscapes or areas set aside for recreation.

The main audience for this report is protected area managers and authorities, but it should also be useful for anyone interested in finding out about the range of benefits that protected areas provide.

Analysis of the FSC and PEFC Systems for Forest Certification Using the FCAG 2008 - Summary of the report by Martin Walter

2009-02-17

New guide for financial institutions: The Palm Oil Financing Handbook

2008-12-20

How can banks and investors reduce their risks in the palm oil sector?
How can financial institutions encourage sustainable palm oil production?
These two questions are the starting point for The Palm Oil Financing Handbook, which aims to help financial institutions create or strengthen their own responsible palm oil finance and investment policies. The handbook offers step-by-step advice on everything from defining the scope of such a policy, to developing appropriate screening criteria and helping client or investee companies comply with the policy. Read more

Download The Palm Oil Financing Handbook here!

Promoting responsible forest trade of Bolivian Lesser-Known Timber Species (LKTS)

2008-11-04

GOOD WOOD AND FOREST CONSERVATION
Many will find it strange that WWF, the global conservation organization, would promote timber and logging -- particularly in tropical forests. But the fact is that WWF does support forest industries in all parts of the world provided that they practice socially and environmentally responsible forest management. While WWF continues work to protect the most ecologically valuable forests in reserves, we see responsible forestry as a key component of sustainable development that can and should go hand in hand with forest conservation.

Responsible forestry and forest certification cannot succeed in the tropics without developing appropriate uses and markets for lesser-known timber species (LKTS). Consumers are accustomed to purchasing a very limited range of timber species, and are generally unaware that thousands of useful wood species exist. Using a broader range of species conforms demand to what natural forests can produce sustainably and can reduce the chances that well-known species will be overexploited.

Palm oil, soy and tropical forests: a strategy for life.

2008-10-09

Between 2000 and 2006, the area harvested for soy and palm oilglobally increased by almost 22 million hectares—an area twice thesize of Cuba. Today this expansion continues unabated, and in manyplaces is occurring at the expense of natural rainforests and thepeople who depend on them to survive.

Why is this happening? A massive demand for soy and palm oil, whichare used in a wide range of everyday products including animal feed,margarine, ice cream, cosmetics, detergents and biofuels, is drivingthese trends. Today, agricultural expansion is actually a much moreserious threat to forests than timber trade.

There are solutions to deal with the environmental problems caused bythese crops. Companies, investors, governments and consumers shouldencourage soy and oil palm cultivation that protects the environmentand people's livelihoods.

Download new WWF brochure to learn more.

WWF Discussion Paper: Policy Approaches and Positive Incentives for REDD

2008-09-11

This discussion paper is intended to provide an overview to potential policy approaches and positive
incentives for REDD in the post-2012 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). In particular, the paper discusses the potential implications or key elements for consideration when determining positive incentives for REDD. This paper is not a statement of WWF’s position and should not be quoted as such, instead it is provided with a view to informing the discussions on this subject.

The paper ends with a summary and key elements for further discussion. WWF welcomes comments on these areas and any other points raised in the discussion paper.

For more information please contact:
Emily Brickell, Climate & Forests Officer at EBrickell@wwf.org.uk
Christine Pendzich, Forest-carbon Network Initiative Lead at Christine.Pendzich@wwfus.org

Tracking progress in protected area management

2008-06-13

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in early 2004 produced a Programme of Work on Protected Areas, in which Parties to the convention are called to assess at least 30 per cent of their parks AND their networks of protected areas, by 2010.

To assist parties in this important endeavour, WWF can offer two management effectiveness tools: The Tracking Tool and WWF’s RAPPAM methodology.

The Tracking Tool aims to be:

Capable of providing a harmonised reporting system for protected area assessment;

Suitable for replication;

Able to supply consistent data to allow tracking of progress over time;

Relatively quick and easy to complete by protected area staff, so as not to be reliant on high levels of funding or other resources;

Capable of providing a “score” if required;

Based around a system that provides four alternative text answers to each question, strengthening the scoring system;

Easily understood by non-specialists; and

Nested within existing reporting systems to avoid duplication of effort.

The Management Effectiveness Tracking Tool is aimed to help reporting progress on management effectiveness and should not replace more thorough methods of assessment for the purposes of adaptive management.

The tracking tool has been developed to provide a quick overview of progress in improving the effectiveness of management in individual protected areas, to be filled in by the protected area manager or other relevant site staff. As such it is clear that there are strict limitations on what it can achieve: it should not for example be regarded as an independent assessment, or as the sole basis for adaptive management.

Because of the great differences between expectations, resources and needs around the world, the tracking tool also has strict limitations in terms of allowing comparison between sites: the scoring system, if applied at all, will be most useful for tracking progress over time in one site or a closely related group of sites.

Lastly, the tracking tool is too limited to allow a detailed evaluation of outcomes and is really aimed at providing a quick overview of the management steps identified in the WCPA Framework up to and including outputs. Although we include some questions relating to outcomes, the limitations of these should be noted. Clearly, however good management is, if biodiversity continues to decline, the protected area objectives are not being met.

Therefore the question on condition assessment has disproportionate importance in the overall tracking tool.

Green carbon guidebook

2008-05-27

Through its Green Carbon Initiative, WWF is deeply involved in the process of developing a credible and comprehensive standard system for forest carbon projects. We are engaged in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiating process
to help ensure a credible and ambitious post-2012
global climate deal. We are discussing the methodological and technical issues with specialists and key carbon market players to ensure that the guidance we provide is relevant to their needs. Finally, we are working closely with the most important existing standard systems that effectively address some of the key components of a comprehensive carbon standard system. While WWF recognizes the value
of these existing systems, we find that no single
existing standard covers all the necessary aspects of a comprehensive standard system for forest carbon from project design to validation, registration and ongoing monitoring.

WWF has therefore adopted a 'meta-standard' approach drawing on best practice guidance provided by these existing standards and methodologies - and working with them to help expand their coverage and sharpen the precision of their 'pass-fail' rules - toward creating a credible and comprehensive methodologies framework for forest carbon that could provide a broadly employed body of consistent guidance. In this way, our Green Carbon Initiative aims to provide a convenient synthesis of all the necessary guidance and procedures to assure offset investors and other stakeholders that forest carbon projects can address the full range of social, environmental and carbon-accounting issues to ensure high standards of environmental and social integrity.

In this guidebook, we set out what an appropriate meta-standard framework (MSF) must encompass in terms of both technical and methodological elements and implementation procedures to guide project developers and investors. We identify those issues for which adequate guidance exists and point to where to fi nd it. We also discuss topics for which further development is encouraged. Finally, we describe how WWF is already testing and helping to contribute to this emerging guidance through two fi eld-based pilot forest carbon projects.

Landscape Outcome Assessment Methodology (LOAM) in Practice

2008-01-08

Conservation and development agencies, including WWF, IUCN and the World Bank, are increasingly focusing their efforts at a landscape level. In doing so, they face many challenges including identifying key values or functions of the landscape as a whole, as well as measuring and monitoring outcomes of their efforts in terms of biodiversity conservation, livelihood improvements and environmental services.

To help address these challenges, WWF developed the LOAM – Landscape Outcome Assessment Methodology. This approach is aimed at enabling those working on landscape scale initiatives to be better able to measure, monitor and communicate the nature and extent to which a landscape is changing over time with respect to a small number of agreed conservation and livelihood outcomes.

LOAM can also help us to understand better how our projects or programmes can have, or are having an impact within the context of the larger landscape. In this way, we can adapt our own activities so that, along with all the other things that influence the future of that landscape, they can help it to develop in a positive way.

This practical guide shows how one can go about implementing the methodology. It is based on hands-on experience gained to date in developing the approach.

Gift of the Himalayas - high value plants and NTFPs

2007-11-29

The Himalayas are a rich repository of flora with a large number of native plants and high value nontimber forest products.The high topographic complexity and related climatic variability of the Sacred Himalayan Landscape has given rise to significant ecological gradients, and thus, high ecosystem diversity over a relatively small area and due attention for conservation of these natural resources.

In Nepal, the Sacred Himalayan Landscape harbors numbers important flora such as oaks (Castanopsis and Quercus), Rhododendron (Rhododendron spp.) and Himalayan Larch (Larix griffithiana), and globally threatened fauna such as snow leopard (Uncia uncia), red panda (Ailurus fulgens) and musk deer (Moschus chrysogaster) and highly important non-timber forest products (NTFPs) and medicinal and aromatic plants (MAPs).

Broadly, NTFP may be classified as edible and non-edible plant and animal products.

The former include edible plants and animals, honey, oils, fish, spices and so on.
Non-edible products include grasses, bamboo, ornamental plants, insect products, oils for cosmetic use, and medicinal products among others.

From the economic viewpoint, NTFP are equally important as wood-based products.

About 150 types of NTFP are significant in international trade. They are also increasingly being acknowledged for their role in sustainable development and conservation of biological diversity.

Up to 80% of the population in developing countries depend on NTFP for subsistence, both economically and for nutrition. It is an important asset especially for people living in Nepal's Sacred Himalayan Landscape contributing significantly in their livelihood. In recent year, the use of many NTFP has gone from subsistence collection to large-scale commercial extraction resulting into over-harvesting and degradation of diversity, quality and availability of many valuable species.

Therefore, there is the need to address the sustainable harvesting issues of NTFPs/MAPs in mountains of Nepal for future generation.

Though conservation agencies are addressing the issue of sustainable production of NTFP, there are a number of challenges to be met, some of which include the disappearing forest cover, inequitable market access of marginalized populations and the monopoly of high - value NTFP by logging and poaching mafia.

This report is a WWF Nepal's initiative to conserve these high value NTFPs of mountains by providing concise information of prioritized species in mountain program areas of the Sacred Himalayan Landscape.

Guide to buying “green” paper

2007-11-28

Brussels, Belgium – From packaging paper to office paper and tissues, the WWF Guide to Buying Paper makes it easy for any organization to understand the most important environmental impacts of paper-making and to source responsibly-produced paper products, thus reducing their environmental footprint.
The new guide — launched today at the European paper industry’s annual Paper Week — includes a scorecard that enables buyers to evaluate the environmental performance of current and future suppliers on recycling, responsible forest management, pollution and climate change.

The guide also provides recommendations on how to work with suppliers towards improvements.

Taking responsibility
Paper has been an integral part of our cultural development and is essential for modern life. But the world´s paper consumption has quadrupled in the last 40 years and is growing further.

This tremendous expansion threatens the last remaining natural forests, and the people and wildlife who depend on them, in many regions around the world. Pulp and paper processing also releases vast amounts of greenhouse gases and a wide range of polluting compounds into the environment.

"Paper buyers and producers need to take responsibility for their activities," said Duncan Pollard, WWF International's Conservation Practice and Policy Director.

"We will now intensify the work with organizations buying large amounts of paper to implement the recommendations outlined in the new guide. It is important that paper buyers influence their suppliers to minimize their environmental impacts on biodiversity loss, climate change and water and air pollution.”

Responsible buying
The need for a buyers' guide to responsible paper purchasing and use emerged from discussions WWF had with a number of major paper buyers: Canon, IKEA, Lafarge, McDonald’s and Unilever. Other buyers have also expressed interest in the new WWF tools.

"We welcome these new WWF initiatives in enhancing the environmental performance of the paper industry," said Bob Latham from the Paper Merchant Robert Horne.

"They help to improve transparency and data access. It is vital that paper producers and suppliers provide sufficient and verifiable information to buyers so that they can make informed choices. The WWF Paper Guide can certainly help here."

Tetra Pak sees the WWF Guide for Buying Paper as an important tool for understanding the environmental performance of the forest and paper industries.

"The guide provides comparable data for buyers and decision-makers," said Lena Dahl, Forest Policy Officer at Tetra Pak International.

"Tetra Pak has been assessing its global paper board suppliers' performance for a number of years, evaluating nearly the same parameters. We are now investigating whether we can take some lessons from the WWF Paper Scorecard and incorporate these into our supplier evaluation."

"The Scorecard captures a selection of important environmental parameters and presents them in a way that is easy to understand," added Björn Lyngfelt, Vice President of Communications at SCA Forest Products.

"We have applied the scoring system on its products and will make the results available to its customers. As for all market instruments, at the end of the day it is the paper customers that will decide the usefulness of the Scorecard.”

WWF will credit transparency and responsibility of paper buyers and producers by offering its new Paper Toolbox as a web-based “meeting place” and resource centrr on environmental issues.

For more information:
Helma Brandlmaier
WWF International
Tel: +43 6768 42728219
E-mail: hb@wwfdcp.org

Margareta Renstrom
WWF International
Tel: + 46 7075 51660
E-mail: margareta.renstrom@wwf.se

Climate Change in Indonesia - Implications for Humans and Nature

2007-11-28

Climate change impacts on Indonesia, people and nature

Food Stores: Using Protected Areas to Secure Crop Genetic Diversity

2007-06-30

A research report by WWF, Equilibrium and the University of Birmingham, UK

Written by Sue Stolton, Nigel Maxted, Brian Ford-Lloyd, Shelagh Kell, and Nigel Dudley

Executive summary (extracts):

Plant genetic resources are a threatened but invaluable resource for present and future generations. Crop genetic diversity – both in cultivated plants (landraces) and the wild plants from which our crops originate (crop wild relatives or CWR) – provide important resources for food security, environmental sustainability and economic stability.

It is thus perhaps surprising, considering this socio-economic importance that the conservation of CWR has not been systematically addressed and the rapid declines in landraces have generated little international conservation concern.

Estimates of the global value associated with the use of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture vary from hundreds of millions to tens of billions of US dollars per year. Whatever the exact economic value, we do know that when agricultural disasters occur, plant genetic resources can provide solutions. For example, the corn blight which halved US yields in the 1970s was alleviated by use of genetic material from a wild relative.

But these vital safeguards are under threat. As more and more land is converted to meet human needs, the natural world is lost … including in some cases our CWR. Landraces are also disappearing at alarming rates as agriculture becomes standardised and small farms are swallowed up in bigger developments. More insidious threats, such as climate change and contamination from genetically modified organisms, may further undermine our agricultural stability.

Protected areas can play a role in in situ conservation strategies of agricultural genetic diversity. Although the links between food security and protected areas have rarely been made explicit, our research demonstrates that protected areas are important in maintaining stability in agricultural systems. Just as botanic gardens in countries with colder climates often stimulate interest in the general public by including specimens of crops to show what a banana, coffee or rice plant looks like, so protected area managers can raise the profile of their protected areas by paying particular attention to native CWR species and advertising their presence to the potential user communities.

Many protected areas also encompass cultivated lands and increasing recognition of the social, environmental and economic value of landraces adds an important dimension to the values of these areas. In particular, this report therefore looks at how protected area managers can find which CWR species are present in the protected area they manage and how they might adapt management practices to facilitate conservation of CWR and landraces.

The report also includes an analysis of the protection status of those ecoregions, as identified by WWF, which are particularly important for the conservation of crop genetic diversity. In total 29 (82 per cent) of the 34 ecoregions that include major centres of crop diversity have protection levels of under 10 per cent, and six areas (18 per cent) have protection levels of one per cent or less. Coupled with evidence of high levels of habitat conversion in many of these areas, it would seem that governments and the international community should be giving far higher priority to crop genetic diversity when deciding the location of protected areas.

New WWF tool helps paper industry rate environmental risk

2007-05-21

Vienna, Austria – WWF today launches a new tool to help paper producers score the environmental quality of their products.

Suitable for all paper grades — from high-quality business paper to packaging paper — the WWF Paper Scorecard is a simple all-in-one tool that covers the main environmental impacts of paper production, including forest management and efficient use of fibres, CO₂emissions from use of fossil fuels that contribute to climate change, and pollution from chlorinated compounds and waste.

The scorecard, unveiled at the international paper industry event Prima 2007, enables responsible paper producers to show how they can minimize negative environmental impacts of the paper products they sell, while at the same time helping paper buyers to select the most environmentally-friendly papers. For paper producers and users willing to improve, the scorecard can be used to further measure environmental performance over time.

“The new scorecard is a self-evaluation tool for the industry and also a test of their transparency," says Margareta Renstrom of WWF.

"Although the ultimate goal is for producers to score well across all parameters, it is not only about coming out on top. It is also about producers being transparent and informing buyers how their paper products are impacting the environment.”

The rating of a given product can be easily communicated to current and potential buyers. To further encourage transparency in the industry and to reward producers who score their paper products, WWF will create a platform on its global website to present the results, but only after these have undergone an independent third-party audit. By doing this, WWF will also be providing a global platform for responsible paper buyers and producers to network and "meet".

"We believe that the WWF Paper Scorecard captures important environmental parameters in a balanced way, even though it does not cover all environmental aspects of pulp and paper processing," says Björn Lyngfelt, Vice President of Communications at SCA Forest Products, after using the tool. "The scorecard can become a useful benchmark for environmental impacts of paper grades.”

"The WWF Paper Scorecard is user-friendly and does not take a lot of time to fill out," adds Per Kjærgaard, Energy and Environmental Manager of the paper manufacturer Dalum Papir A/S, after testing one of their papers with the scorecard. “We believe it provides a good overview for paper buyers on the environmental performance of a paper product.”

The scorecard is the first of several tools WWF is producing in collaboration with a “think tank” of major paper buyers, aimed at creating globally-relevant guidance on paper sourcing. While the scorecard is geared towards paper producers, WWF will later this year publish a practical purchasing guide, helping paper buyers to source responsibly produced paper products. The guide will use the WWF Paper Scorecard to help buyers assess the environmental impact of their paper use.

In the meantime, WWF recommends paper buyers ask their suppliers to score their paper products using the scorecard and share the results.

END NOTES:
• The need for buyers to identify responsible paper fibre sources and for globally relevant guidance on the impacts of pulp and paper processing emerged from a "think tank" in which the major paper buyers Canon, IKEA, Unilever, McDonalds and Lafarge provided advice to WWF. WWF, with years of experience on responsible purchasing strategies of paper and wood products through its Global Forest & Trade Network (GFTN), has developed the Paper Scorecard as a response to this need.

For further information:
Margareta Renstrom, Forest Certification and Trade Manager
WWF International
Tel: +46707551660
E-mail: margareta.renstrom@wwf.se

Evaluación Rápida de la Efectividad de Manejo en las Áreas Silvestres Protegidas de la Ecorregión Valdiviana

2007-05-04

Management Effectiveness Assessment of Protected Areas in Chile's Valdivia Ecoregion using WWF’s RAPPAM Methodology

Publicaciones que sistematizan la experiencia Bosque y VIDA

2007-02-15

Con la finalización de la fase piloto del Proyecto Bosque y VIDA, financiado por la Embajada Real de los Países Bajos, se elaboró una serie de cuatro publicaciones que ofrecen información relevante de los procesos promovidos en relación al uso sostenible del bosque y gestión del territorio a escala municipal, así como lecciones aprendidas que pueden servir de base para futuras experiencias.

Lineamientos estratégicos para el desarrollo del Biocomercio en Pando
En este documento se identifican líneas de productos actuales y potenciales de Biocomercio, priorizando aquellas con mayor potencialidad; como ser productos acuícolas, medicinales, aquellos para la fabricación de cosméticos y artesanías, entre otros.

Estudio de factibilidad de la Acuicultura en Pando
Este estudio contribuye a identificar líneas de acción orientadas a la mejora de la seguridad alimentaria y a la mitigación de la pobreza en el Departamento de Pando, a través de la piscicultura de especies nativas con base en el concepto de Biocomercio.

Versión completa y versión resumida e ilustrada del Plan Municipal de Ordenamiento Territorial de la Mancomunidad Unión Amazónica Filadelfia-Bolpebra (MUAFB)

Estos documentos relatan el uso idóneo de los suelos del territorio comprendido por los municipios Filadelfia y Bolpebra en Pando, hacia un desarrollo sostenible de la región, conservando y aprovechando los recursos naturales de una forma organizada y planificada. La versión completa está dirigida a un público especializado y la versión resumida a los habitantes de la MUAFB.