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I N C LU S I V E G R E E N G R O W T H: T H E PAT H WAY TO S U S TA I N A B L E D E V E LO PM E N T
for the rural unemployed; for this reason, policy makers resist altering the status quo. Success stories suggest that policy interventions that directly address the job loss associated with defining property rights can make green growth politically feasible (box 5.1). In addition, moving up the value chain can help create jobs that are more productive. However, such “industrial” policies may not reflect the country’s comparative advantage and would need to be justifi ed on a case-by-case basis (Hausmann and others 2008).
Natural (including managed) forests Natural forests (including natural forests that are actively managed) provide a range of extractable commodities (from timber to wood fuel to various nontimber forest products) and a range of ecosystem services (from regulation of soil, water, and the climate to sequestration of carbon and provision of habitats). In Africa alone, forests account for 65 percent of the total primary energy supply. Nontimber forest products (fruit, nuts, medicinal plants, and game) are an important source of rural livelihoods. Global demand for industrial wood was about 1.8 billion cubic meters in 2010, and
BOX 5.1
it is projected to rise to 2.6 billion cubic meters by 2030, with most of the increase coming from Asia and Eastern Europe (FAO 2011). 5 How will this growing demand be met given that natural forests are often not well managed? The global rate of deforestation remains high, especially in tropical regions, with deforestation averaging about 1 percent a year in Latin America and Africa over the 1990–2010 period. The encouraging news is that the rate of deforestation has been declining since 2000 (FAO 2011), with impressive declines in some key countries such as Brazil. Moreover, some areas—such as temperate and boreal zones and some emerging economies—have witnessed increases in forest area through both natural forest recovery and reforestation. Indeed, more than 80 percent of traded timber is produced in temperate countries. A problem for the world’s forests— 80 percent of which are publicly owned—is poorly defined property rights. In many developing countries, forests are often treated as de facto open access areas. Significant progress has been made in recent years toward devolving full or partial forest management to local communities to deal with the problems associated with open access
Job creation and revenue generation from off-shore capture fisheries in Namibia
Soon af ter gaining independence from South Africa in 1990, the new Namibian government declared an extended economic zone, established a coherent fi sheries policy, and enacted comprehensive fi sheries legislation based on long-term fi shing rights (rights-based management) and payments for these rights. At the same time, it focused on the “Namibianization” of the processing sector. Before independence, all fish were exported (or transshipped at sea) whole and frozen for later processing into value-added products abroad. By investing in local processing capacity, Namibia created many jobs and increased the industry’s
value added (although it also created considerable processing overcapacity). With an average catch of 500,000–800,000 tons a year (in 2003 the total catch was about 636,000 tons), the fisheries sector’s contribution to gross domestic product rose from about 4 percent at independence to 10.1 percent in 1998. About 95 percent of Namibia’s total fish production is exported, yielding about $375 million in foreign exchange in 2005. About 14,000 people were employed in the fisheries sector in Namibia in 2003, about half of them in onshore processing. Source: http://www.fao.org/fishery/countrysector/FI-CP_NA/en.