2011: Forests - World Future Council

Future Policy Award 2011:

Forests

Celebrating Innovative Policy Solutions for the protection of forests

Deforestation, climate change, ecosystem destruction, food and water crises and financial turmoil are problems that call for courageous regulatory intervention. In the International Year of Forests, the Future Policy Award 2011 celebrated successful policies that protect, enhance and sustainably utilize forests for people, and thus contribute to a better world. The winners were presented at a formal ceremony with ministers, decision-makers, media and donors on 21 September 2011 at the Central Park Zoo in New York.

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The Winners

Gold Award: Rwanda’s National Forest Policy, initiated in 2004

Despite continuing population and land pressures, Rwanda is one of only three countries in Central and Western Africa to achieve a major reversal in the trend of declining forest cover. A National Forest Policy, with the ambition of making forestry one of the bedrocks of the economy and ensure a national ecological balance with sustainable benefits for all segments of society, was implemented in 2004 and updated in 2010.

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Silver Award: Gambia’s Community Forest Policy, initiated in 1995

This policy aims to achieve forest management that is both sustainable and socially equitable by recognising the rights of local communities to access forest lands and benefit from managing their own resources. In this way, the rural population played a key role in local development and poverty reduction while decreasing forest degradation through public involvement in fire prevention and forest protection.

Silver Award: United States’ Lacey Act with its amendment of 2008

The United States has become the first country in the world to place an outright, criminally enforceable ban on the import of illegally harvested timber, addressing this issue both nationally and internationally from the demand side.

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Honourable Mentions