Climate Change, Environment and Forests

The very factors that make forestry such a challenging sector also mean that it offers valuable ways of understanding governance, governance failures, and assessing the impacts of public policies on the poor and the environment.

We aim to increase understanding of the livelihood values of forests, and to identify opportunities for the rural poor to obtain greater benefits from the commercial use of forest products.

We are interested in the potential of the land use sector to benefit from carbon finance, through tree planting and bioenergy, and in how emerging proposals such as payments for avoided deforestation might impact on the poor.

Our programme aims to understand the physical impacts on the poor of climate change; how to factor it into aid portfolios and international financing mechanisms, and the linkages between mitigation policies and adaptation.