The overarching framework for corporate social responsibility (CSR) in Pakistan is the UN Global Compact, launched in 2000. The central idea is for private sector organizations to improve their corporate social and environmental behavior along the lines of nine principles—which are reflected in the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). These principles fall under three themes: human rights, labor standards, and the environment. They include respect for human rights, the right to collective bargaining, the elimination of forced labor, child labor, and discrimination in the workplace, and encouraging environmental responsibility, and the development of environmentally friendly technologies.¹

The notion central...

Definitional clarity is key to establishing a frame of analysis for assessing PPPs. Loew and McLindon (n.d.) provide the following definition:

PPP arrangements are basically contracts between a private sector entity and the government that call for the private partner to deliver a desired service and assume the associated risks. In return for agreeing to provide the service, the private partner receives payment (in the form of a fee, tariff or user charge) according to certain standards of service and other criteria as specified in the contract. The government is relieved of the financial and administrative burden of providing the...

This paper focuses on forestry PPPs. The articulated objectives (social and environmental) can be achieved directly through commercial activities (sale of forest products) or, indirectly, through conservation activities. In the first case, the private entity earns profits directly; in the second case, it ensures markets by leveraging goodwill or complying with consumer mandates. Forestry PPPs can embrace a range of activities, namely, biodiversity conservation, plantation management, natural forest management, and wildlife management. In our study, we focus on both conservation and plantation in primary forests, with ancillary implications for biodiversity and wildlife. The challenge is to tailor the definition to...

While PPPs have been introduced with some success in the education, health, and infrastructure sectors in Pakistan, forestry remains a relatively unexplored area. Numerous instances of successful forestry PPPs can be cited in other countries, which provide valuable lessons for Pakistan as it attempts to grapple with environmental and livelihood issues in this increasingly fragile sector. The studies were selected from Ghana, Bolivia, and Ethiopia. In particular, sanctioning resource rights at the outset was a precondition for their success.

Thus, the Oda-Kotomatsu Community Agro-forestry Project (OCAP) was launched in 1997, in the forests of Samreboi in Western Ghana by a...

Three case studies were undertaken, representing the various extant PPPs in the forestry sector. These are:

1. Pakistan Tobacco Company (PTC): Corporate Entity — Farming Communities. This study also highlights a latent partnership between the FD and the PTC.

2. Shell-Pakistan: FD — Corporate Entity. Shell is under contract with the MoE to promote alternate energy uses among communities in Ayubia’s (NWFP) coniferous forests.

3. Attock Refinery Ltd. (ARL) — Corporate Entity. ARL is the private component of a pro-poor PPP, co-funded by the Government of Pakistan (GoP) and the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP). The...

The PTC carries out extensive production, support, purchase, and marketing activities in the NWFP and the Punjab. It has established 14 depots in the two provinces, which serve as tobacco procurement, input distribution, and extension centers. While PTC provides seed directly to farmers, it also facilitates the distribution of inputs such as fertilizer, pesticides, and fungicides. The company announces the purchase price of tobacco at the beginning of the planting season and undertakes to purchase pre-specified amounts from farmers under formal purchase agreements. The price can vary around this benchmark price, depending upon the grades assigned to the lots. The...

PPPs in Pakistan’s forestry sector are very much in the embryonic stage. That they are to be found at all reflects an external CSR impetus, rather than any institutional facilitation. In fact, the institutional lacunae, which, among other things, feature the absence of accountability have allowed private entities to promote an image of social and environmental responsibility which is at variance with the reality on the ground. In other words, PTC, falls short of meeting the SD criteria. The national institutional deficit also allows TNCs to engage in unclear planning and poor articulation of goals. Shell’s endorsement of pilot project...