About Us
FOREST CONNECT is an International Alliance supported and co-managed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). The Alliance is formed to address the lack of connectedness between the small forest enterprises and their associations to markets, service providers and policy processes. Ten countries from Africa, Asia and Latin America, namely Burkina Faso, China, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guatemala, Guyana, Laos, Mali, Mozambique and Nepal are selected as the partners.
Under support of PROFOR and FAO, the alliance’s main goal is developing a toolkit for the facilitation of support for small and medium forest enterprises (SMFEs). The idea behind this toolkit is to spread lessons on best practice in better linking SMFEs (1) to each other, (2) to emerging markets, (3) to service providers and (4) to national forest programme (nfp) processes. This project started in 2007 until 2009.
In Lao PDR, forest is a vital asset in every day life and food security of the rural population. During the last 5 years, the market for commercial NTFPs creating income-generating opportunities for rural people as well as supporting the national economy has received increasing research and development attention.
As a country with rich natural resources, especially NTFP, yet the SMFEs remain uncompetitive and poorly connected, the Lao Government, many local businesses and development organizations will greatly benefit from the work of this alliance.
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