February 10, 1999
Roberto Bissio Director Ejecutivo
Instituto del Tercer Mundo (ITeM) Jackson 1136
Montevideo 11200 URUGUAY
Política Forestal
Dear Roberto:
Thank you for your letter of 9
December 1998 regarding the World Bank's Forest
Policy Implementation Review and Strategy (FPIRS) and
for sharing this letter with your colleagues. At the
World Bank, we share your concerns for the state of
the world's forests and are therefore reviewing the
implementation of the 1991 Forest Policy and
developing a strategy for our future work.
I agree that we need to look
carefully at the impact of the 1991 Forest Policy.
The World Bank's Operations Evaluation Department
(OED) is therefore conducting a retrospective
implementation review and is addressing issues both
within the forest sector and in sectors that impact
on forests. If you have not already seen it, you may
be interested in reading the OED Design Paper. If you
send and email to freview@worldbank.org with a
request the paper will be sent to you. Your comments
on this paper are welcomed. (Please note that this
paper is currently being translated into Spanish if
you would prefer a Spanish copy).
The FPIRS process consists of a
review of implementation of the 1991 Forest Policy by
OED, while the team from the Environmentally and
Socially Sustainable Development Network (ESSD)
simultaneously develop a forward-looking strategy.
These two activities are closely linked. Results from
the OED review and country studies will be
continually fed into the strategy development process
and regional consultations so that we are making
maximum use of the results from this work. The
attached chart illustrates the process, the
connection between ESSD and OED activities and the
anticipated timeline for the entire initiative.
Additionally we are conducting a
number of analytical studies to help assess how we
should position ourselves in this complex sector. As
you pointed out issues such as structural adjustment
and plantations need to be considered carefully.
These issues are also being addressed in our
analytical work both through studies commissioned by
the World Bank and though studies being conducted
independently by NGOs. Should you have further
specific inputs in these, or other areas, we would be
very interested in receiving them and will give them
our attention.
The World Bank welcomes your
participation in this process, full details of which
are available on our website:
http://wbln0018.worldbank.org/essd/forestpol-e.nsf/mainView?OpenView
To ensure that we reach a broad
range of stakeholders, participants in the regional
consultation will be drawn from government, civil
society and the private sector. We are now soliciting
input from NGOs on how we can form a self-selection
process that ensures we hear the diversity of
opinions from within the NGO sector. Your feedback on
developing such a process is welcomed. I should also
point out that attendance at the regional
consultations is not the only way to participate in
this process, and all comments and input received
will be taken into account.
I should also like to assure you
that we will be sharing all the key documents with
stakeholders for discussion and feedback. This will
inlclude sharing the documents that will form the key
inputs to the regional consulttions and the draft
strategy document. In both cases the documents will
be produced in a number of languages to improve
outreach. The process will also include sufficient
time for feedback and discussion and we are
developing a mechanism to ensure that we are
responsive to all comments whether or not they are
included in the final strategy.
Once again, thank you for your
input. Please contact the ESSD team working on this
initiative at freview@worldbank.org should you have
any further concerns.
I look forward to a continued
dialogue on the World Bankďs work in forest and
related.
Sincerely,
Ian Johnson Vice President &
Head Environmentally and Socially Sustainable
Development
