97,451 research outputs found
Equity in community forestry: insights from North and South
No full textWho benefits from community forestry - and who gets left out? Soon after it emerged as a significant trend in the global South in the 1980s, practitioners, advocates and scholars began to ask such questions of community forestry. The distributional impacts of its more recent development in industrialised countries have been less examined. More unusual still has been the explicit attempt to exchange experience between North and South. In response, a symposium was organised to bring together participants of two Ford Foundation-funded projects on community forestry in the US, Nepal, Kenya, and Tanzania. Enriched by additional cases from the United Kingdom and Asia, this introductory article and issue report on the symposium's results. These include the finding that, while community forestry can reduce social inequity, it generally does so by generating positive change at community and higher levels, rather than by delivering benefits directly to poor and marginalised households
Participatory forest management: a route to poverty reduction?
No full textThis paper presents the results of a three-year action research project, which investigated the impacts of participatory forest management (PFM) on poverty. Beginning with an analysis of over 30 cases reported in the literature, the project went on to undertake field research in Kenya, Tanzania and Nepal, three countries representing very different stages in and approaches to the implementation of PFM. PFM typically provides a new decision-making forum and may reroute previously direct household benefits to the user group or community level. Regardless of PFM model, the research shows that the key to providing rural people with a sustainable and equitably distributed stream of net benefits is to adopt poverty reduction as a stated objective, allow for both subsistence and commercial use of forest products, design appropriate PFM institutions, introduce transparent and equitable means of benefit-sharing, and provide sufficient support during establishment of PFM initiatives.<br/
Joshua Davis: Author of Spare Parts
Full text linkCitation: K-State First (2016). Joshua Davis: Author of Spare Parts [Flier]. Manhattan, Kansas: K-State First.Flyer advertising Joshua Davis's author talk at Kansas State University
Commercialisation of non-timber forest products: first steps in analysing the factors influencing success
No full textAlthough trade in non-timber forest products (NTFPs) has been widely promoted as an approach to rural development, recent research has indicated that NTFP commercialisation is often not successful. Analysis of the factors influencing success of NTFP commercialisation has been hindered by the lack of an appropriate analytical approach for comparison of case studies. We tested and further developed a methodology recently developed by CIFOR, by examining 16 NTFP case studies in two workshops held in Mexico and Bolivia involving a variety of stakeholders involved in NTFP commercialisation. Workshop participants identified a wide range of measures by which the success of NTFP commercialisation can be defined, which included improvements in social justice, community organisation and local culture, as well as economic status. Participants then considered the factors influencing the processes involved in NTFP commercialisation: production, collection, processing, storage, transport, marketing and sale. In total 45 factors were identified that significantly limit one of the commercialisation processes. Generally product marketing and sale were found to be those processes most constraining overall success. These results illustrate how participatory methods can be of value in analysing the success of NTFP commercialisation, and how a process-based approach can provide an analytical framework for comparison of NTFP case studies
The participatory domestication of West African indigenous fruits
No full textThis study obtained quantitative data on fruit and nut traits from two indigenous fruit trees in West Africa (Irvingia gabonensis and Dacryodes edulis), which have led to the identification of trees meeting ideotypes based on multiple morphological, quality and food property traits desirable in putative cultivars. The same data also indicates changes in population structure that provide pointers to the level of domestication already achieved by subsistence farmers. D. edulis represents 21-57% of all fruit trees in farmers' fields and plays an important part in the economy of rural communities. An investigation of the socio-economic and biophysical constraints to indigenous tree cultivation found that indigenous fruits could play an even greater role in the rural economy of West and Central Africa. The opportunity to build on this through further domestication of these species is considerable, especially as retailers recognise customer preferences for certain D. edulis fruit traits, although at present the wholesale market does not. This project was linked to a larger participatory tree domestication programme within ICRAF's2 wider agroforestry programme with traditionally valuable indigenous trees. Together these projects provided insights into the value of domesticating indigenous fruit trees, which are of strategic importance to poverty alleviation and sustainable development worldwide
Steven Johnson Author Talk Poster
No full textK-State Book NetworkA poster advertising an author talk by Steven Johnson at Kansas State University on September 3, 2014. Steven Johnson's book "The Ghost Map" was the 2014-2015 common book
Trees and farming in the dry zone of southern Honduras I: campesino tree husbandry practices
No full textForest cover in the dry zone of southern Honduras has suffered drastic reduction, largely as a result of the marginalisation of small farmers onto formerly wooded hillsides. In four case study communities, the relations between the area's human population and the remaining tree diversity were investigated through a combination of interviews, focus group meetings and inventories. Inventories on 10 farms in 2 communities found an average of 57.6 standing trees (above 2 m in height) and 9388.3 live stumps and seedlings of tree and shrub species (less than 2 m in height) per hectare in recently cropped fields. Tree management practices were found to include the selective promotion of naturally regenerated trees valued by farmers for their products, the elimination of unwanted trees due to competition with crops for light and space, and pruning to reduce competition. Farmers listed 41 species as being actively protected, although protection was largely concentrated on a subset of 5 (Cordia alliodora, Swietenia humilis, Lysiloma spp., Enterolobium cyclocarpum and Albizia saman, in that order); they also described broadening their species preferences in the face of scarcity of preferred species. The study questions the common perception of dry zone farmers as being responsible for continued elimination of tree diversity, and highlights the potential of the management of natural regeneration for meeting the livelihood needs of small farmers
Socio-economic factors affecting the spatial-temporal dynamics of charcoal extraction in Zomba, Malawi
No full textImproving the benefits to the poor from community forestry in the Churia Region of Nepal
No full textIn spite of the impressive scale of community forestry in Nepal over the last three decades, and its apparent benefits in terms of improved forest condition, there are concerns that the main economic benefits are not equally distributed and that the community forestry process perpetuates or even reinforces social inequity, economic and environmental injustice. This paper presents the findings of a study investigating the livelihood impact of community forestry in eight community forest user groups in the Churia part of the Terai region. Impacts were found to be very variable within and between user groups and not easily explained by any single factor. A general finding, however, was that, community forestry shifts benefit flows from individual households to the community level. This means that promotion of fair representation and active participation by the poorest is needed to ensure that they gain access to the new community-level decision-making fora and the resources managed at this level.<br/
Challenges for tree officers to enhance the provision of regulating ecosystem services from urban forests
Full text linkUrbanisation and a changing climate are leading to more frequent and severe flood, heat and air pollution episodes in Britain's cities. Interest in nature-based solutions to these urban problems is growing, with urban forests potentially able to provide a range of regulating ecosystem services such as stormwater attenuation, heat amelioration and air purification. The extent to which these benefits are realized is largely dependent on urban forest management objectives, the availability of funding, and the understanding of ecosystem service concepts within local governments, the primary delivery agents of urban forests.This study aims to establish the extent to which British local authorities actively manage their urban forests for regulating ecosystem services, and identify which resources local authorities most need in order to enhance provision of ecosystem services by Britain's urban forests.Interviews were carried out with staff responsible for tree management decisions in fifteen major local authorities from across Britain, selected on the basis of their urban nature and high population density. Local authorities have a reactive approach to urban forest management, driven by human health and safety concerns and complaints about tree disservices. There is relatively little focus on ensuring provision of regulating ecosystem services, despite awareness by tree officers of the key role that urban forests can play in alleviating chronic air pollution, flood risk and urban heat anomalies. However, this is expected to become a greater focus in future provided that existing constraints – lack of understanding of ecosystem services amongst key stakeholders, limited political support, funding constraints – can be overcome.Our findings suggest that the adoption of a proactive urban forest strategy, underpinned by quantified and valued urban forest-based ecosystem services provision data, and innovative private sector funding mechanisms, can facilitate a change to a proactive, ecosystem services approach to urban forest management
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