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

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.

This paper first provides a brief overview of what are and what represent forest ecosystem services. Then it considers the issues of price and valuation, and shows that valuation itself is not a solution but merely a tool. Considering then the reasons of the overall degradation of forest ecosystem services it shows that the main reasons tend to be fundamental: deforestation most often happens because it pays for local people - not so much because the institutionally created arrangements are perverse.