Although the historical focus on tenure reforms has resulted in some important improvements in the livelihoods of forest communities, it has not prevented them from suffering social exclusion and impoverishment.

In 2002, Forest Trends reported that in recent decades governments had begun to reduce their legal ownership and control of the world’s forests. This document evaluates whether this forest tenure transition continued in the 2002–2008 period, and assesses the implications of statutory forest tenure change for forest people, governments, and the global community. The report is based on the monitoring of governments’ data on formal and legal tenure by the Rights and Resources Initiative. The authors find that the transition did continue in the 2002–2008 period.

Water projects have, arguably, the greatest potential to create conflict in development programmes. Not only is water central to health, sanitation and agrarian livelihoods but it can contribute to other conflict dynamics such as land or grazing rights. Applying conflict-sensitive programming to water projects, therefore, seeks to minimise the potential for fuelling conflict whilst looking to maximise the potential positive impact of the development. This paper details the experience of applying conflict-sensitivity to two water projects in Uganda.

The violence which followed the contested December 2007 Kenyan election was, arguably, an opportunity for historical grievances to be settled. This paper focuses on the land issue in regards to Kenya, asserting that land is a primary cause of conflcit in the country as it has been the crux of economic, cultural and socio-economic change.

Sahelian rural populations’ needs are sourced from on-farm indigenous tree species. However, access, use and management of indigenous tree species within their territories are restricted by forestry laws. This has built suspicion and discontent between foresters and natural resource users. Natural resource users argue that they own the trees on their farms; in contrast, the state claims to own protected indigenous trees on farms as stipulated in the forestry laws. These mismatches have served to increase deforestation despite stringent penalties and use of permits and licenses.

This paper summarises a study undertaken by the Indonesian Forest Climate Alliance (IFCA) to support Indonesian stakeholders to participate in global negotiations. The authors note that the objective of reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) payment distribution mechanisms is to support policies and measures that reduce deforestation and degradation through transfer of revenues from international REDD funds or carbon markets to national levels.

This report highlights key developments and recent sustainability trends in agriculture, rural development, land, desertification and drought, five of the six themes being considered by the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) at its 16th and 17th sessions (2008-2009).

Recent years have seen pastoralist communities in Tanzania becoming increasingly impoverished and vulnerable, due to  livestock diseases, drought, fluctuating market prices and unfavourable policies. This paper discusses strategies to address the last of these factors with reference to the Ereto-Ngorongoro Pastoralist Project, which was set up in response to growing concern about the unprecedented and rising levels of poverty among pastoralists in Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA).

Despite the central role of urban areas in socio-economic and geo-political change processes at the local, regional, and global level, as well as in the regional and global biophysical processes, little attention has been paid so far to the complex and dynamic interactions between urban areas and the biophysical and chemical processes of global environmental changes.This book contributes to the knowledge about these interactions.

This report provides an overview of the issues, root causes, and driving forces behind the crimes related to illegal logging. The report includes a comprehensive review of existing initiatives to address the challenges of illegal logging in Southeast Asia. The results are derived mainly from a literature review of various publications, websites, and project documents, but also from personal communication through interviews with people working on the issues of illegal logging in the region.

Using the Khanasser Valley in Syria as an example, this paper looks at Integrated Natural Resource management (INRM) as an approach to tackle land degradation. The authors argue that INRM is a better approach because of its comprehensive nature and simplification of the inherently complex socio-ecological systems. One of the greatest challenges currently facing humankind is the alleviation of poverty while maintaining life support systems. Many people are dependent on natural resources that are often unsustainably used by poor people themselves or by other powerful stakeholders.

This African atlas is the first publication to use satellite photos to depict environmental change in each and every African country during the last thirty years. Through an array of satellite images, graphs, maps, and photographs, this Atlas presents a powerful testament to the adverse changes taking place on the African landscape as a result of intensified  natural and human impacts. The atlas is composed of three parts: