Policies

Climate change mitigation through afforestation/reforestation: A global analysis of hydrologic impacts with four case studies

Background

While much attention is being given internationally to the opportunities for carbon sequestration to mitigate climate change, little attention is being paid to the environmental tradeoffs that are associated with these types of schemes. This study examines the implicit hydrologic dimensions of international efforts to mitigate climate change, specifically potential impacts of the Clean Development Mechanism-Afforestation/Reforestation (CDM-AR) provisions of the Kyoto Protocol (KP) on global, regional and local water cycles.

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Social and Ecological Synergy: Local Rulemaking, Forest Livelihoods, and Biodiversity Conservation

Background

Decentralized forest management with local community involvement is often viewed as a way to incentivize sustainable forest use through enhanced local knowledge, shared accountability, and perceived legitimacy. However, the effectiveness of decentralized management towards these goals is unclear both theoretically and in practice. There are few systematic multicountry empirical analyses that identify important factors and their complex relationships with social and ecological outcomes.

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Can Legality Verification Rescue Global Forest Governance? Analyzing the Potential of Public and Private Policy Intersection to Ameliorate Forest Challenges in Southeast Asia

background

This review paper looks at the emergence of legality verification of forest timber products and its usefulness in addressing forest degradation. Legality verification, in the context of timber imports as discussed in this paper, is the process of supply chain tracking to ensure that all timber is legally harvested.

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Explaining Success on the Commons: Community Forest Governance in the Indian Himalaya

background

This study describes how a range of causal influences shape forest conditions in diverse ecological and institutional settings in the Indian Himalaya.

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The Political Economy of Reforestation and Forest Restoration in Asia-Pacific: Critical Issues for REDD+

background

This study examines the political and economic factors that have commonly shaped reforestation and forest restoration initiatives in the greater Asia-Pacific region.

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Contextual Analysis of Agroforestry Adoption in the Buffer Zone of Podocarpus National Park, Ecuador

Background

Promoting sustainable agriculture and community development has been an important strategy both to alleviate resource pressures on Ecuador’s Podocarpus National Park (PNP) and surrounding forested areas in its buffer zone, and to aid local communities. However, many contextual factors drive neighboring rural and agricultural communities to put pressure on PNP and the surrounding landscape.

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Landscape Rehabilitation of Degraded Tropical Forest Ecosystems: Case Study of the CIFOR/Japan Project in Indonesia and Peru

background

The CIFOR/Japan project on tropical forest restoration involves three principal components: 1) evaluation of logging impacts on forest systems, 2) development of methods for the restoration of logged and degraded forests, and 3) development of silvicultural practices for degraded forests.

Open access copy available

What Role Should Government Regulation Play in Ecological Restoration? Ongoing Debate in São Paulo State, Brazil

background

This article addresses the degree of detail that should be present in legislation dealing with reforestation and restoration, and if there is a relationship between technical content/scope of regulation and success of projects. The relationship between law and reforestation is also discussed. In São Paulo state, legislation establishes precise reforestation requirements, such as the use of a minimum of 80 species of native trees and the presence of specific proportions of functional groups. This is the only existing legislation known by the authors with this degree of technical detail.

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A Case Study Assessment of Agroforestry: The Panama Canal Watershed

background

This article provides a qualitative assessment of three agroforestry sites in the Panama Canal watershed based on management objectives, project life span, incentives, technology, economic feasibility, community involvement, and extension. It seeks to guide sustainable forest management options for the Panamanian government.

 

conclusions & takeaways

Environmental managers should view agroforestry as a production system and consider this in its social and biophysical context. 

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Payments for Environmental Services in Latin America as a Tool for Restoration and Rural Development

Background

Two Payments for Environmental Services (PES) projects are assessed in this article: 1) a bundled PES system in forestry projects in Costa Rica, and 2) the Regional Integrated Silvopastoral Approaches to Ecosystem Management Project in Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Colombia. The first project based PED on the provision of four different environmental services (carbon sequestration, biodiversity conservation, watershed protection, and aesthetic improvements and/or maintenance of the landscape) within the same plot of land. The second project implemented PES proportional to carbon sequestration and biodiversity outputs by participants.

Open access copy available
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