This is a compilation of twenty seven articles focusing on the interactions, impacts and effects of the changing climate on the Amazon region. Each article examines a specific area, providing a multidisciplinary analysis of climate change impacts. Areas discussed include:

This short report details the assessment of tropical forestry and biological diversity Pakistan.

Grey literature collection includes documents from India over the last twenty years, the collection traces the process of social forestry, which aimed to satisfy local needs through fuelwood plantations and to divert pressure from natural forest through the participation of private framers and communities.The papers included are as follows:Village-level management of common property resources, especially fuelwood and fodder resources in Karnataka, IndiaBrokensha, D. 1988Women and wasteland development - policy issues.

Will intensifying the road network around market areas produce greater economic returns and less environmental damage than extending the road network into new areas?Rural roads promote economic development but also facilitate deforestation. To explore the trade-offs between development and environmental damage posed by road building, Chomitz and Gray develop and estimate a spatially explicit model of land use.

A recent eighteen-month economic study of the benefits of alternative uses of forest and in Ratanakiri province recommends the exclusion of customary forest land from current and future commercial concessions. The study compares the economic benefits of using forest land in Ratanakiri for the traditional collection of non-timber forest products by ethnic communities, with the benefits of commercial timber harvesting. The main conclusions of the study are that non-timber forest products (NTFP) are worth a lot, much more than previously thought.

Results demonstrate that the effects of management on cropland can be beneficial for carbon and nutrient retention without risking (large) yield losses.

Nevertheless, effects on soil carbon are small compared with extant stocks in natural and semi-natural ecosystem types and managed forests.

While agricultural management can be targeted towards sustainable goals, from a climate change or carbon sink perspective avoiding deforestation or reforestation constitutes a far more effective overall strategy for maintaining and enhancing global carbon sinks.

Desertification has had an acute impact in Africa, particularly in the Community of the Sahel-Saharan States (CEN-SAD), which is characterised by climate ranging from hyper-arid to dry sub-humid. The local communities and their livelihoods are heavily dependent on the increasingly fragile natural resources. This note, conducted by the Sahara and Sahel Observatory (OSS) on the request from CEN-SAD, summarises the results obtained from available documentation and consultations from experts and practitioners for the preparation and implementation of the Great Green Wall in the region.

There is an increasing global demand for oil palm, but its production provokes societal debate on the environmental and social aspects that surround it, particularly in southeast Asia. This study, at the request of request of the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality (LNV), ISRIC-World Soil Information, Alterra and Plant Research International, assessed the biophysical land suitability for the production of oil palm in Kalimantan, Indonesia.

This paper argues that legal reform of land tenure will not take place fast enough to enable developing countries to reduce carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation through REDD+. It highlights that a global agreement on REDD+ is needed by 2020, if the mechanism is to have a significant impact on mitigating climate change. However, legally defensible and enforceable land tenure rights, while a key enabling condition for effective and equitable REDD+, will not be achieved in most forest countries before this date.

Utilises a number of situations observed in tropical Asia to motivate a simple trade-theoretical analysis of the implications of technological progress in agriculture.

This annotated bibliography provides evidence that community tenure over forests can result in more forest cover and more species-rich forests, less deforestation and degradation, and fewer fires than some other approaches to protecting forests. The authors initiated the review by identifying relevant scholarly articles published since 2002 based on interviews with experts and keyword searches of databases.

Everyone agrees that logging and agriculture can cause deforestation. But does shifting cultivation, or ‘slash and burn’ farming destroy forests particularly? Are local farmers solely to blame? Recent research by Overseas Development Institute (ODI) suggests the role of shifting farming in starting forest fires has been exaggerated. It is not, in fact, a major cause of biodiversity loss. The report finds that the causes of deforestation are many and varied, and that governments and international investors are also responsible.