Community forestry can be part of an approach that ensures important rights such as basic livelihood needs, forest access and tenure and participation in decision-making are met. It also provides a basket of multiple benefits with the potential to incentivise sustainable forest management whether or not carbon payments come through.

Climate change-induced agriculture failures will increase the reliance of rural communities on forest resources to make ends meet, particularly for communities with the least household assets. Women in rural communities will be especially impacted by climate change, as traditionally, they are responsible for ensuring household food security and collecting food from the forest.

Changing weather patterns, declining agricultural productivity and health impacts have already spurred adaptive responses in communities across Nepal. Local coping strategies currently being employed include: crop diversification, rainwater collection, grass cultivation in forest areas, shifting natural resource based livelihoods to livestock, seasonal migration (to urban areas), storing grain seed fodder and grasses as well as a number of practices specifically related to sustainable forest management.

RECOFTC - The Center for People and Forests with support from USAID Adapt Asia-Pacific are working to empower local women in the village of Bishnupur, Nepal to take climate action into their own hands and protect their community's vital forestry resources.

Agricultural and Food Policy, Environmental Economics and Policy, Farm Management, Health Economics and Policy, Industrial Organization, International Relations/Trade, Land Economics/Use,

... This paper attempts to analyse the key aspects of reforms required to ‘democratise’ Myanmar's timber trade, and the political–economic interests contributing or obstructing reform. The main aim of this paper is to assess the prospects for reform of Myanmar's timber sector in light of theemerging FLEGT process, and to apply a political ecological analysis to the ways in which the political–economic power balance will determine the outcomes.

This scoping study was commissioned to identify issues on land/forest related investment in Tanzania as part of a strategic engagement between Tanzania Natural Resource Forum (TNRF), HAKIARDHI/ LARRRI and the World Wide Fund for Nature – Coastal East Africa Initiative (WWF-CEAI).

In many Sub-Saharan African countries, fuelwood collection is among the most important drivers of deforestation and particularly forest degradation. In a detailed field study in the Kafa region of southern Ethiopia, we assessed the potential of efficient cooking stoves to mitigate the negative impacts of fuelwood harvesting on forests. Eleven thousand improved cooking stoves (ICS), specifically designed for baking Ethiopia’s staple food injera, referred to locally as “Mirt” stoves, have been distributed here. We found a high acceptance rate of the stove.

Currently, many studies on benefit sharing mechanisms (BSM) and the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation programme (REDD+) focus on poverty alleviation and livelihood development. However, relatively few studies incorporate an integrated livelihood framework. This study employs the sustainable livelihoods framework to assess the impact of BSM in Vietnam. The lessons learned could be used in creating social safeguards for REDD+. The communities in Central Vietnam involved in BSM were impacted by the programme on various dimensions.

Climate change and agriculture influence each other. The effects of climate change on agriculture seem to be predominantly negative, although studies show a large variation in impacts between crops and regions. To compensate for these effects, agriculture can either intensify or expand in area; both of these options increase greenhouse gas emissions. It is therefore likely that such negative effects will increase agriculture’s contribution to climate change, making this feedback a positive, self-reinforcing one.

The accelerated development of energy resources around the world has substantially increased forest change related to oil and gas activities. In some cases, oil and gas activities are the primary catalyst of land-use change in forested landscapes. We discuss the challenges associated with characterizing ecological change related to energy resource development using North America as an exemplar. We synthesize the major impacts of energy development to forested ecosystems and offer new perspectives on how to detect and monitor anthropogenic disturbance during the Anthropocene.

The rapid economic growth in Lao PDR over the last two decades has been driven by the natural resource sectors and commercialization in the agriculture sector. Rural landscapes are being transformed over the past decade from land use mosaics of subsistence and smallholder farms to large-scale plantations dominated by a few commercial crops.