November 2015: The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO), the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO), the Brazilian Forest Service, the CGIAR Consortium’s Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and the Centre de Coopération International en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (CIRAD) have launched an initiative to improve forest concession policies and practices, particularly for tropical production forests.

The initiative, titled ‘Making forest concessions work to sustain forests, economies and livelihoods,’ aims to positively influence political dialogue at the international and regional levels on the role of forest concessions, and to provide practical guidance to countries in the design, implementation and evaluation of forest concession systems that better respond to their economic, social, institutional and environmental goals. The initiative is relevant for a number of ongoing processes, including for its potential to contribute to strategies and action plans to reduce deforestation and forest degradation, and provides an opportunity to increase the attractiveness of sustainable forest management (SFM), vis-à-vis other competitive land uses, for private investments. [FAO Press Release]