On July 22, 2003 the ADB Board of Directors met to discuss a draft Working Paper on the Forest Policy.
Prior to this meeting Friends of the Earth International held lobbying meetings with several Executive and Alternate Executive Directors, as well as with the ADB Secretary to highlight the numerous inadequacies that civil society had identified in the draft. These include:
- Although the forest policy is a safeguard policy, the Working Paper contains no clear commitments to safeguard standards. Without commitment from the ADB to adhere to clearly stated principles and standards, the Policy make become more of a mission statement than a tool which is both enforceable and directive.
- The paper repeatedly highlights Developing Member Countries' (DMCs) failure to manage their forests and their contribution to continued deforestation; however, it fails to define the base line conditions to which recipient countries must adhere in order to receive ADB loans and assistance.
Friends of the Earth International and World Wildlife Federation also submitted to the ADB a document titled "Model Forest Policy for Financial Institutions" with proposals for what the ADB should adopt as a minimum in its Forest Policy:
The Board, recognizing the shortcomings of the Working Paper, sent it back to Management for improvement and revisions. As a result, the ADB solicited further comments and suggestions until September 14, 2003. The ADB has originally committed to make the revised Working Paper available to the public at the end of September. However, in December 2003 they announced that the new draft would not be available until January 2004.
In February 2006, responding to a query, the ADB said that work on the revised policy has been put on hold because of ADB Management’s pre-occupation with the Internal Reform Agenda and the second Medium-Term Strategy (MTS). This is because both of these initiatives have significant implications for a wide range of ADB operations, including the preparation of various policy and strategy papers on forestry and other matters. Thus a revised Forestry Policy is dependent on the finalization of the second MTS, and the selection of sectors in which ADB would continue to remain active. A final decision on the draft Forest Policy is expected during the second half of 2006.