All forest land uses can be characterised in economic terms, although until recently there was no satisfactory way to compare the market and non-market benefits of alternative forest land use options.

This report contains an overview of the Mining, Minerals and Sustainable Development (MMSD) project’s analysis and engagement on the relationship between indigenous peoples and the mining and minerals sector.

This paper has two principal aims: first, to unravel some of the arguments mobilized in the controversial privatization debate, and second, to review the scale and nature of private sector provision of water and sanitation in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Despite being vigorously promoted in the policy arenaand having been implemented in several countries in the South in the 1990s, privatisation has achieved neither the scale nor benefits anticipated.

Biodiversity is managed and valued locally but also provides value globally, attracting many interest groups. Formal biodiversity assessments have tended to emphasise global values. But this focus is being replaced by awareness that pluralist, adaptive management of biological resources needs biodiversity assessments able to express and communicate multiple values of biodiversity. This review looks at some of the assessment tools on offer, and some examples of actual practice, to identify how biodiversity assessments do - and how they could - integrate the different values that people attach to biological variety and variability.

Agenda 21 called on all countries to develop and implement sustainable development strategies – a need focused on again by the preparatory process for the World Summit on Sustainable Development. For such strategies to be effective in every country, there needs to be a real commitment by government, the private sector, and civil society to work together in a true partnership, in transparent ways which enable genuine stakeholder participation, and to co-ordinate necessary mechanisms and processes to enable continuous learning and improvement.The Resource Book provides flexible, non-prescriptive guidance on how to develop, assess, and implement national development strategies.

This is one of six Indian sub-studies produced to support the Instruments for Sustainable Private Sector Forestry project conducted by IIED, and forms part of the book  'The New Foresters: The role of private enterprise in the Indian forestry sector', order code 9063IIED. Alternatively you can purchase the set of six Indian sub-studies for only US$60, order code 9190XIIED.