TFD Background Paper.qxp

This paper aims to provide a summary review of the evidence on commercial forestry’s ability to reduce poverty. It also tries to identify the key risks associated with greater participation of poor groups in commercial forestry and to identify factors, both internal and external to the forest sector, proven to enable commercial forestry to be pro-poor. It has been prepared for a “scoping” dialogue of the same title to be run by The Forests Dialogue (TFD) in Richards Bay, South Africa on 19-21 June 2006, prior to a full dialogue on forests and poverty reduction in development for early 2007.