3 July 2012: The July edition of the Newsletter of the World Bank’s Program on Forests’ (PROFOR) highlights a new publication titled “Assessing and Monitoring Forest Governance: A user’s guide to a diagnostic tool,” which outlines 130 questions that help to guide countries seeking to identify priority areas for change in forest governance.

The Newsletter also highlights that PROFOR will address benefit sharing at a Knowledge Cafe during the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Jeju, Korea, and during the World Forestry Week in Rome, Italy. PROFOR will also participate in the Lviv Forum on Forests in a Green Economy (11-14 September 2012, Lviv, Ukraine), which will discuss forest risks and opportunities in Eastern Europe and Northern and Central Asia.

Also outlined are PROFOR’s ongoing activities, including the development of: a study that aims to improve the basis on which policies are developed in African countries to promote widespread adoption of tree-based land management approaches; low cost tools for forest control and supervision to verify timber legality; a study on accounting for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from forest fires in Bulgaria; and an initial feasibility study to determine whether a methodology to systematically assess administrative and regulatory requirements for investment in the forest sector makes practical sense, and whether this tool could help public authorities prioritize reforms. [Publication: PROFOR Newsletter, July 2012] [Publication: Assessing and Monitoring Forest Governance: A User’s Guide to a Diagnostic Tool]