Assessment of the progress of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets set by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the safeguarding of ecosystems from the perverse negative impacts caused by Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation Plus (REDD+) requires the development of spatiotemporally robust and sensitive indicators of biodiversity and ecosystem health. Recently, it has been proposed that tree-community composition based on count-plot surveys could serve as a robust, sensitive, and cost-effective indicator for forest intactness in Bornean logged-over rain forests.

In the Ethiopian highlands, church forests have a substantial contribution to landscape restoration, and conservation of endangered indigenous tree species and biodiversity. However, the environmental and economic benefits of church forests are declining due to a combination of economic, environmental, and cultural factors. This study was conducted in Dera district, Ethiopia, to assess the perception of local communities on church forests and investigate the willingness of local communities to pay to manage and protect church forests.

Tropentag, September 18-21, 2016, Vienna, Austria

“Solidarity in a competing world —

fair use of resources”

Prosperity Prospects in Contested Forest Areas: Evidence from

Community Forestry Development in Guatemala and Nicaragua

Dietmar Stoian

1

, Aldo Rodas

2

, Jessenia Arguello

3

1

Bioversity International, Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems Initiative, France

2

Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock, Guatemala, Natural Resources and Agrotourism,

3

Whilst community forestry programmes have combined sustainable forestry with community empowerment and poverty alleviation since the late 1970s, the role of intermediary organisations in shaping the technical and political capacities of forest user groups has rarely been systematically studied. The long-term durability of community forestry groups has been linked with the congruence between local and national determinations of tenure rights, and the involvement of local communities in determining the ‘rules' that govern the management of the forests.

Community forestry (CF) was initiated in the 1970s as a way to empower communities, alleviate poverty and manage forests. Intermediary organisations are considered to have played a critical role in the sustainability and equitability of community forest management. This study analyses a second-tier institution, ACOFOP [Asociación de Comunidades Forestales de Petén], founded in the mid-1990s by local people in the Maya Biosphere Reserve [MBR] of Guatemala. ACOFOP has been

One of the main technical knowledge gaps for sustainable timber production in tropical forests is the lack of reliable information on tree growth, which is indispensable for defining cutting cycles and estimating harvest volumes. We applied dendroecological methods to measure and model the diameter growth (dbh) of mahogany Swietenia macrophylla and cedar Cedrela odorata in humid tropical forests of community-managed concessions in the Maya Biosphere Reserve, Petén, Guatemala. The width of growth rings was determined in increment cores from 32 trees of S. macrophylla and 27 of C.

A toolkit of 26 items designed for people designing or improving community-based paralegal programmes. It draws lessons from both grassroots experience and research. Includes

Land acquisitions, either driven by foreign investments or domestic investment needs have continued to polarize opinions. When this research was proposed, it was premised on arguments by scholars Ruth Meinzen-Dick and Helen Markelova, who had analysed agricultural land deals, and argued that there were potentially two schools of thought about foreign acquisitions over agricultural land.

The Centro Terra Viva (CTV), in partnership with the World Resources Institute (WRI), promoted the implementation of the project on ‘documentation of unplanned human responses to climate change’. This project was part of a more general WRI approach, involving other countries, to research how communities in Africa are responding to climate change and the effect of these responses on the environment and biodiversity.

O Centro Terra Viva (CTV), em parceria com o World Resources Institute (WRI), promoveu a implementação do projecto de „documentação de respostas humanas não planificadas às mudanças climáticas‟. Este projecto enquadrou-se numa abordagem mais geral do WRI, envolvendo outros países, para investigar de que forma as comunidades em África estão a responder às mudanças climáticas e o efeito dessas respostas no ambiente e biodiversidade.