"Ninety percent of the world's 1.2 billion people living in extreme poverty obtain at least part of their livelihood from forests. Forests in developing countries support up to 90 percent of the world's terrestrial biodiversity. However, mismanagement and misuse of forests result in wasted expenditures, loss of livelihood, and damage to the environment. Sustaining Forests: A Developmental Strategy charts a path for the World Bank's proactive engagement in the forest sector to help attain the goal of lasting poverty reduction without jeopardizing the environmental values essential to sustainable development." "The World Bank's Forests Strategy is built on three guiding pillars: harnessing the potential of forests to reduce poverty, integrating forests into sustainable economic development, and protecting the vital local and global environmental services and values provided by forests. The strategy emphasizes government and local ownership of forest policies and interventions, development of appropriate institutions to ensure good governance, and the mainstreaming of forest concerns into national development planning. The strategy also aims to support ecologically, socially, and economically sound management of production forests by ensuring good management practices through the use of safeguard procedures and independent monitoring and certification." "This book is accompanied by a CD containing background materials on how the strategy was developed, including the stakeholder consultative process, as well as information on forests' role in poverty reduction, economic development, and the provision of environmental services that helped to shape the strategy. World Bank safeguard policies relevant to forests and a short video highlighting the strategy's objectives are also included on the CD."--BOOK JACKET.