SDG: Goals InformationDetail

Through its projects, ITTO is helping countries improve socioeconomic outcomes in tropical forests, where hundreds of millions of indigenous peoples and local communities live, often in extreme poverty. In its policy and field work, ITTO:

• Supports efforts to develop economic opportunities for women, young people and other vulnerable groups.
• Encourages community forestry, the development of locally based forest enterprises, local food security, and equitable benefit sharing.
• Helps build capacity in rural communities to manage forests sustainably and add value to forest products, thereby increasing local employment and improving local livelihoods.
• Promotes the economically viable restoration of degraded landscapes and the sustainable production of wood and wood-based energy.
• Enables forest owners and local communities to earn export income from sustainably produced wood and non-wood products.

ITTO works closely with all stakeholders to develop sustainable supply chains, which, among other things, help ensure that forest communities and locally based enterprises capture more of the value of tropical timber production. Social safeguards and gender guidelines are in place to ensure the inclusion of women and vulnerable groups.