Tropenbos International
Tropenbos International (TBI) is a non-governmental organization (NGO) based in the Netherlands. It was established in 1986 in response to the concern about the disappearance and degradation of tropical rain forests worldwide. Part of its supposed mission was to mobilize the research capacity and knowledge of Dutch universities and it focused initially on the establishment of research programmes in a number of tropical forest countries. Now TBI run programmes in the Congo Basin (mainly Cameroon), Colombia, Ghana, Indonesia, Viet Nam and Suriname.
By 2007 the organization operated in Colombia, Ghana, Indonesia, Suriname and Vietnam with so called "country programmes" and also in Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire and Guyana.
TBI projects are financed by the European Commission, Dutch government ministries, World Wildlife Fund etc., and include such themes as: environmental information, waste water treatment, water supply and purification, air pollution control, waste management, recycling soil preservation, noise protection, power generation, energy efficiency. For example, the annual budget for Vietnam projects is about 350,000 USD.
TBI's goal, by its own declaration, is to make sound and adequate information available to forest actors in the partner countries for use in formulating appropriate policies and managing tropical forest lands for conservation and sustainable development.
TBI's efforts are aimed to obtain five results:
- The information and knowledge needed for better decisions on forests is available (through research).
- National human capacity is sufficient to generate knowledge and to use it (through capacity building).
- National forest sector organizations are able to identify, manage and deploy relevant information (through institutional development).
- National information exchange mechanisms are operational (through multi-stakeholder dialogues and communication).
- National and international forest agendas are linked and support forest-based sustainable development and poverty reduction.
Tropenbos International hosts the Coordinating Unit of the European Tropical Forest Research Network (ETFRN).