Local communities and state forest actors, such as Protection Forest Management Boards (PFMBs), State Forest Companies (SFCs), play equally important roles in forest resource management. Yet local communities have limited legal rights. This is one reason that leads to a lack of forest ownership for local communities. In order to support local communities to effectively engage in sustainable forest management and livelihood development, a fuller set of rights should be legally given to them.

Madagascar is renowned for the loss of the forested habitat of lemurs and other species endemic to the island. Less well known is that in the highlands, a region often described as an environmental “basket-case” of fire-degraded, eroded grasslands, woody cover has been increasing for decades. Using information derived from publically available high- and medium-resolution satellites, this study characterizes tree cover dynamics in the highlands of Madagascar over the past two decades.

This report is about forests that provide a substantial contribution to mitigation in Romania by sequestering carbon, helping to counter carbon emissions from other sectors in the economy. Sustainable forest management is challenged by fragmented ownership and insufficient financial resources in particular. A summary of key existing analytic studies, and the construction of a marginal abatement cost curve for mitigation actions in the forestry sector, was the basis for identifying key adaptation and mitigation measures for Romania’s forests.

Forest trees are long-lived species with high genetic diversity that is crucial for their survival,

regeneration and adaptation. However, forest managers and conservationists are often not well informed

Recent research on payments for environmental services (PES) has observed that high transaction costs (TCs) are incurred through the implementation of PES schemes and farmer participation. TCs incurred by households are considered to be an obstacle to the participation in and efficiency of PES policies. This study aims to understand transactions related to previous forest plantation programmes and to estimate the actual TCs incurred by farmers who participated in these programmes in a mountainous area of northwestern Vietnam.

Agricultural landscapes presently cover about 46 % of earth terrestrial surface. This cultivated area is decreasing, whereas the global food demand is projected to increase up to 70 % in 2050. The intensification of agriculture is not a solution to this food issue because intensive agriculture has often resulted in pollution and loss of biodiversity. On the other hand, mechanistic models with optimization algorithms can be used to design alternative land uses for sustainable agriculture.

Por sus condiciones biofísicas, los bosques tropicales poseen gran capacidad para ofrecer servicios ecosistémicos. La Selva Paranaense, uno de los bosques tropicales lluviosos más amenazados de Sudamérica, alcanza actualmente 1.200.000 ha, conservadas fundamentalmente en Argentina y en menor medida en Brasil y Paraguay. Este trabajo propone analizar la pérdida de servicios de regulación a partir de la evaluación del proceso de deforestación y cambio de uso del suelo entre 2001 y 2011 en una cuenca binacional argentino-brasileña, la Cuenca del río San Antonio CrSA).

The Little Sustainable Landscapes Book aims to clarify and disseminate sustainable landscape management methods, and to catalyse their implementation across private and public sectors worldwide.