This digital story was produced to communicate work done by the Nile Basin Development Challenge (NBDC), specifically activities undertaken by the team working on 'Technologies, Institutions and Policies'. The NBDC aimed to improve the livelihoods of farmers in the Ethiopian highlands through land and water management and was funded by the Challenge Program for Water and Food. For more information see: http://nilebdc.org

Estimates of the area of swidden fallow secondary forest in Indonesia are inaccurate, partly because swidden agricultural practices giving rise to the secondary forest are heterogeneous. Throughout Indonesia, swidden agriculture is evolving into more intensive land use. A mixed secondary forest tree crop management appears to be the first stage towards a tree crop based production in Sumatra and Kalimantan. This changes the value of the forest/tree component of swidden agriculture, or the systems it evolves into.

The most prominent international responses to climate change focus on mitigation (reducing the accumulation of greenhouse gases) rather than adaptation (reducing the vulnerability of society and ecosystems). However, with climate change now inevitable, adaptation is gaining importance in the policy arena, and is an integral part of ongoing negotiations towards an international framework.

Several Indonesian plywood industry companies involved in logging are beginning to adopt improved harvesting practices. A number of organizations and individuals have undertaken analyses of the costs and impacts of implementing selected reduced impact logging (RIL) components. These analyses include cost estimates of the impact of RIL compared with conventional logging (CL). This work has been undertaken in an attempt to provide support for the adoption of the various RIL components.

Increasing forest financing requires better communication and understanding between the forestry and finance sectors. This can take the form of joint development of financing strategies, instruments and business cases. Limited forest financing is often less about money availability than about poor access.

This paper presents a quantitative analysis of the extent of forest and scrub burning in the Danau Sentarum area, West Kalimantan, Indonesia. Burn scar areas were detected using remotely sensed data from four periods (1973, 1990, 1994 and 1997) obtained from a 24-year record. The results show a significant increase in the total burnt area in the 197,000 ha study site, from 5,483 ha in 1973 to 17,941 ha by mid-1997. Of the area burnt by 1997, 8,021 ha, or 45% of the total burnt area, was tall forest (fresh-water swamp, peat swamp, or riverine) in 1990.

Fires are considered a potential threat to sustainable development for their direct impacts on ecosystems, their contribution to carbon emissions, and impacts on biodiversity. In 1997/98, Indonesia had the most severe fires worldwide, and smoke haze pollution recurs yearly. The fire-related policy problems are defined as smoke haze pollution, forest degradation and deforestation, and impacts on the rural sector. Some of the apparent major causes of the problems are identified. The estimate of area affected by fires in 1997/98 is revised from 9.7 million hectares to 11.7 million hectares.