CIFOR's research in the Bulungan Model Forest in Malinau, East Kalimantan, Indonesia took the form of a 3-year investigation into ways of achieving forest sustainability in a large forest landscape with diverse, rapidly changing and conflicting uses. The study reported in this book highligts the complexity of the challenge while also clarifying the key aspects.

CIFOR facilitated 27 communities in the Upper Malinau watershed to develop agreements about their village boundaries and map them through participatory methods. Decentralization reforms created new values of forest resources and uncertainties that increased conflict over local resources. We report on the nature of these conflicts, the stability of agreements and the factors affecting how agreements were reached.

Technical information

A trainee at the Songhay Centre in Benin describes a very innovative mixed crop and livestock system of organic production.

In this chapter, results of recent research conducted in the northern Ethiopian region of Tigray, which has experienced severe land degradation are synthesized. This paper highlights the technological and institutional factors determining the adoption of natural resource conservation at both the household and the community levels.

A commercial farmer from Cameroon discusses the difficulty of large-scale organic production, and a plant health specialist comments on crop rotation and organic market development.

Organic fertilizer may be the only type available to poor farmers, but it can help to restore their land and keep their crops alive during drought. The report comes from Malawi.

This manual is a participatory methods guide (1) to assist those involved with multiple stakeholder situations or groups to appreciate and acknowledge the relevance and impact of micro-politics on stakeholder relations and resultant cooperative behaviour in these groups; (2) to provide a simple and systematic approach or framework to gather and analyse data on micro-politics among multiple stakeholders; (3) to highlight and offer practical suggestions for dealing with some of the methodological issues that influence gathering data on politics and relations among stakeholders; (4) to suggest

Since the 1970s, federal policies promoting migration and encouraging agricultural development of large farms, logging, and ranching have led to the deforestation of vast areas of the Amazon rainforest.Though these policies have largely been replaced, deforestation continues. What effects do current macroeconomic and regional policies and events have on deforestation and on the well-being of settlers on the agricultural frontier?

"As part of its 2020 Vision for Food, Agriculture, and the Environment Initiative, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) has articulated a vision of what the world should look like in 2020: it should be a world free from poverty, hunger, malnutrition, and unsustainable natural resource management.