AGENDA

Wednesday, 10 June    10.15 - 12.15

Public-private partnerships: What can public and private resources achieve together?

Hosts:  World Bank


Objectives: Investments in forests and landscapes demand constant interaction between the private and public space based on characteristics that all land use investments share. They take a long-term perspective and are tied to a specific geographic location, making them highly dependent on public policies and actions. At the same time, these investments can provide notable local and global benefits, such as biodiversity, carbon sequestration and watershed protection that need to be taken into account by public institutions. Finally, active public–private collaboration can become a key avenue for creating synergies and finding win–win solutions for both private and public actors.

This session brought private and public sector stakeholders together to define possible roles of states and other public institutions in removing obstacles to public and private sector financing. Participants jointly identified solutions to risk and benefit sharing while also looked at the role of non-participant stakeholders, such as forest users, communities and future generations.

The following actions have been identified as key to public–private collaboration for landscapes and were addressed during the session:

  1. Ensuring that public policies and necessary investments create a conducive operating environment to private (both small and large, domestic and foreign) businesses;
  2. Contracting the private sector to make investments and to provide services usually provided by the public sector (traditional PPP-model); and
  3. Joint investments where public risk taking leverages private finance.

This session presented and was built on the work by the World Bank Group and particularly by IFC, PROFOR and BioCarbon Fund. It aimed to identify success stories, highlight analytical research findings and map the way forward.


Background reading: