Forest Landscapes Initiative

Our strategy is to harness the power of information and communication technologies (e.g., satellites) to strengthen the incentives and capacity for sustainable forest management.

We partner with in-country organizations in four forest-rich regions of the world: Central Africa, Southeast Asia, Russia, and South America. We also monitor tree cover change and intact forest landscapes at the global level.

State of the World’s Forests (Click map to view larger size)

Our activities:

• Monitor and map forests—support national efforts to create, review and make public geo-spatial forest information and produce map-based tools for decision making.
• Provide training and technical assistance to governments, corporations, and non-governmental organizations in the production and use of maps and information.
• Build bridges among business, government, and civil society institutions to share information and promote collaborative problem solving.
• Support sustainable procurement of forest products—provide purchasers with reliable, impartial, and easy-to-understand advice.
• Support emerging forest/climate policies and incentives (e.g. REDD)—develop methods for measuring and monitoring changes in forest cover and associated greenhouse gas emissions.
• Assess forestry revenue distribution—examine how revenue from forest exploitation is distributed, so that forest-dependent communities receive their fair share.
• Work at both ends of the forest products supply chain— The Forest Legality Alliance supports the Lacey Act amendment in the US, and similar legislation in the EU, by helping forest product producers and importers more effectively identify and avoid illegally sourced wood products.
• Pilot test transformational investment strategies—Project POTICO (Palm Oil, Timber, and Carbon Offsets) is designed to divert new oil palm plantations onto degraded lands in Indonesia to curb deforestation.

Also check out our Interactive Maps and Data Explorer.