Malinau District, established through partition in 1999, is the largest district in East Kalimantan and contains some of its largest tracts of forest. With decentralization, the district has sought to generate revenues from its forests, but these efforts have been handicapped by a concurrent lack of institutional capacities to manage rapid forest exploitation and conflicts over claims. Timber extraction and utilization permits (Izin Pemungutan dan Pemanfaatan Kayu or IPPK) have been the main instrument for revenue generation, with 39 IPPK covering 56,000 ha.

The report describes the impacts of forestry decentralization on district finance, local communities and spatial planning, drawing on an 18-month research project in Bulungan District in East Kalimantan Province. It describes forestry management policies following the implementation of regional autonomy, and their impacts on district revenue and local livelihoods. The authors analyze district spatial planning, forest land use and community control over forest lands.

Mr. Situma Mwichebe talking to Ann Mikia about the reality of water rights in Kenya.

Community-based Natural Resources Management (CBNRM) has been promoted as part of the development discourse on sustainable natural resources management since the mid-1980s. It has influenced recent water policy in Bangladesh through the Guidelines for Participatory Water Management (GPWM) where community-based organisations are to participate in the management of water resources. This paper reviews the extent of success of such participatory water management.

This study adopts an institutional approach to analyze the way in which informal rules, in their interaction with formal rules, shape the use of forest resources by diverse types of smallholders and communities (i.e., indigenous people, agro-extractive and traditional communities) in Latin America. Attention is given to understanding the ‘working rules’, comprising both formal and informal rules, that individuals use in making their decisions for land and forest resources access and use, which in turn affect benefits generation and distribution from such resources use.

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.

India's National River Linking Project (NRLP), which has been on the drawing board for some three decades, is the largest inter-basin water transfer planned to date in India or elsewhere. The idea has waxed and waned depending upon the political dispensation at any given point in time. Under the Challenge Program for Water and Food, IWMI undertook a broad strategic exploration of the basic idea of NRLP and its assumptions. This Highlight examines few contentious issues of the NRLP that received considerable attention in the national discourse.

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.

Throughout Southern Africa there has been a move to decentralize natural resource management (NRM). Decentralization has taken many forms, resulting in different organizational structures for NRM. Fourteen case studies from eight countries can be classed into four types, depending on the key organizations for NRM: (1) district-level organizations; (2) village organizations supported by sectoral departments (e.g. Village Forest Committees); (3) organizations or authorities outside the state hierarchy (e.g.

Around ten years ago the government of the Gambia earmarked a strip of land along the Atlantic coast for tourism development. More recently, land in the same area is being used to provide affordable housing for civil servants. The chief of one village affected by these policies describes the problem of land shortage he now faces.

Research dedicated to rare endemic plants is usually focused on one given aspect. However, holistic studies, addressing several key issues, might be more useful, supporting management programs, while unravelling basic knowledge about ecological and population level processes. A more comprehensive approach to research is proposed, encompassing: phylogenetics/systematics, pollination biology and seed dispersal, propagation, population genetics, species distribution models (SDMs), threats and monitoring.