Livelihood

More than a billion of the world’s poor depend on forests for some part of their livelihoods and food security and around 60 million indigenous people depend almost entirely on forests for their survival. Tropical forests are one of the world’s richest sources of natural capital, providing raw materials such as timber and wild food as well as non-timber forest products (NTFPs) including rubber, oils and fibres that are economically important both locally and nationally in many tropical forest countries. Forest activities such as sustainable forest management (SFM) and eco-tourism also provide significant employment opportunities for rural populations.