Mobile phones, tablets, and access to the Internet have become ubiquitous in recent decades, and development practitioners have recognized the importance of using technology in achieving development outcomes in various fields, including in the forest sector. There have been many interesting initiatives in the forest sector promoting the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs). However, these have generally not led to notable scaling up, and pilot projects have remained small-scale activities.

With the goal of deepening its understanding of how best to use ICTs for forest governance, the World Bank supported two pilot projects with funding from the government of Korea through its Trust Fund for ICT for Development. These pilot projects, implemented in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic and Moldova, aimed to develop new tools, and also to cultivate insights into the best approaches for introducing new technologies while facilitating organizational change. This report covers lessons from experiences in the case study countries as well as a guide to ICT tools and there potential applications within the forest sector.