The rapid loss of tropical forests, particularly in the developing world, has been a global concern since the late 1980s and has prompted a variety of international initiatives to save the forests. The World Bank responded to the global concern and to criticism by nongovernmental organizations by formulating a conservation-oriented forest strategy in 1991. Managing A Global Resource is an outgrowth of the independent evaluation of the implementation of that strategy conducted by the World Bank's Operations Evaluation Department ten years later.