The Millennium Development Goals agreed to by 189 nations at the United Nations Millennium Summit in 2000 call for the eradication of extreme poverty by 2015, while simultaneously ensuring environmental sustainability. As millions of rural poor people live in and around forests, it is becoming increasingly pertinent that thought be given to the role that forestry might play in contributing to the goal of poverty reduction. In addition to improving our understanding of the linkages between economic well-being and forest use, new strategies and approaches are needed to identify and leverage opportunities for the poor to benefit more from forests. There is a burgeoning interest in the potential role of forestry and forests in poverty reduction. This paper contributes to the growing body of literature and echoes earlier findings that acknowledge the potential for pro-poor forestry, but similarly cautions that its contributions are case-specific, rarely major, and countered with a host of potential pitfalls. In most forests, timber is currently the resource of greatest commercial value. At the global level in 2000, the (formal) forestry sector employed 12.9 million people, generated US$354 billion in value added and exported products with a total value of US$144 billion. Employment in the informal sector was “guesstimated” at 30 million. The World Bank estimates that almost 70 million people live in remote areas of closed tropical forests, with another 735 million people living in or near tropical forests.
