Poverty Environment Network (PEN): assessing the role of tropical forests in poverty alleviation
When: Monday 19 October at 18:30-20:30
Where: Blue Pavillion, room Pehuén
We know that forests and other natural resources are crucial to the livelihoods of millions of poor people worldwide. But just how important are forests for poverty alleviation? Can they help lift people out of poverty, or are they mainly useful as gap-fillers and safety nets preventing extreme hardship? How do different forest management regimes and policies affect the benefits to the poor?
Answers to such questions are essential to design effective policies and projects to alleviate poverty, and thereby contribute to meeting the Millennium Development Goal of 50 % poverty reduction by 2015.
Yet we have surprisingly little systematic knowledge to answer them adequately. The Poverty Environment Network (PEN), launched in September 2004, aims to fill the gap in knowledge through systematic collection of uniform socio-economic data in a variety of tropical forest ecosystems. PEN research will serve as the basis for the first global comparative and quantitative analysis of the role of tropical forests in poverty alleviation. The core of PEN is the tropics-wide collection of uniform socio-economic and environmental data at household and village levels by 38 PEN partners generating a global database with 9000+ households and 364 villages from more 26 countries.
The side event is the first international meeting presenting advanced outcomes from the PEN research. The event will feature an overview of the PEN project, presentation of results from six PEN studies in Latin America, Africa and Asia, and discussion on the role of forests in poverty alleviation.
Detailed information on PEN is available on its homepage: http://www.cifor.cgiar.org/pen/_ref/home/index.htm.