How do Georgians depend on forests? A Forest Landscape
Restoration project in three pilot areas in Georgia reveals that
villages in higher altitude tend to depend more on forest
products. The project was started in January 2012 by IUCN and is
funded by the German International Cooperation, GIZ. In Georgia,
forest land occupies just over three million hectares which is
about 40% of the country’s territory. Forests play an essential
role in the economic and social life of the country. People
depend on their surrounding resources for subsistence aspects of
their daily life – for food, water, fuel, building materials
such as timber for house-building, and so on. Many economic
activities are also based on natural resources. One of the
purposes of the Forest Landscape Restoration project by IUCN is
to define the level and scope of human dependency on forests and
identify and evaluate the factors which influence the
relationship between people and their natural resource base. In
Georgia, the project is implemented t