About

The Poverty and Environment Network (PEN) was launched in September 2004 by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) with the aim of collecting uniform socio-economic and environmental data at household and village levels in rural areas of developing countries.

The data presented here, produced by CIFOR, were collected by 33 PEN partners (mainly PhD students) and comprise 8,301 households in 334 villages located in 24 countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

The primary objectives of PEN are: 1) To undertake a comprehensive global-comparative analysis of the role of forests and environmental income in preventing and reducing rural poverty, built on a centrally coordinated pan-tropical data bank with high-quality primary household and village data collected though PEN; 2) to elaborate recommendations for tangible forest-poverty interventions, and feed them into national and global policy processes; and 3) to enhance the ability of project partners in using best-practice methods for conducting income-accounting rural household surveys, and to suggest improved research methods for future studies of environmental incomes and rural livelihoods.

To view CIFOR’s PEN website, click here.