Community managed forest systems embody a considerable portion of the wisdom, knowledge, and practical skills and management necessary for the sustainability of forest resources globally. These systems, however, are under threat in many ways, including from the rapid rate of change of their political, socio-economic, and biophysical contexts. Adapting forest management sufficiently quickly and effectively to meet these changes is both urgent and very challenging.

Land degradation is a great threat for the future and it requires great effort and resources to ameliorate. The major causes of land degradation in Ethiopia are the rapid population increase, severe soil loss, deforestation, low vegetative cover and unbalanced crop and livestock production. Inappropriate land-use systems and land-tenure policies enhance desertification and loss of agrobiodiversity. Utilization of dung and crop residues for fuel and other uses disturbs the sustainability of land resources. The supply of inputs such as fertilizer, farm machinery and credits are very low.

Large scale, catastrophic fires have become a significant and visible part of the tropical forest landscape in the past two decades with increased commercial exploitation of forests, forest conversion and increased population pressure. Secondary forests are an increasingly prominent feature of tropical landscapes and fires play a significant role in both the creation and destruction of these forests. In the past two decades large scale forest fires have become more frequent in the moist tropics.

The author highlights conceptual, substantive and methodological aspects of participatory action research (PAR) into adaptive collaborative management (ACM) of community forest in some selected FUGs in the Hills of Nepal. Three main concepts of ACM identified as the core of research include: collaboration among stakeholders, conscious social learning and application of learning feedback to management. Ten specific elements have been recently innovated around the three broad areas of ACM, and the research team uses them as a basis to assess and facilitate action research at local level.

This note is part of an on-going effort to gain insights to impact assessment and research uptake literature of relevance to natural resource management-related research. It is provided more for the reference list than for the merit of the associated text that is still at an early stage. Many more references have been collected but have yet to be screened for their potential relevance.

Scenario methods can be used to anticipate the future and expand the creativity of people thinking about complex forest management situations. This manual describes the use of scenarios with multiple stakeholders, with examples drawn from community-based forest management. Four classes of scenario methods are described: visions, projections, pathways and alternative scenarios. Examples of rapid participatory techniques relevant to scenario methods are also summarised.

The principles and practices for forest harvesting in Indonesia (2000) have been developed to provide a uniform set of minimum standards for logging practices in the production and limited production forests in Indonesia. The provide the standard for WHAT is involved in planning and implementing logging activities in natural forest and WHY certain operations should be undertaken. The Reduced Impact Logging (RIL) guidelines for Indonesia provides the mechanism for HOW the standards will be applied in the field or "how to do the work".

CIFOR's ACM program has been carrying out participatory action research with local communities to devise models for forest management by multiple stakeholders. One of the early requests by communities has been for the mapping of their villages. This report describes the facilitation team's observations during the process of mapping these territories (villages along the Malinau river, Kalimantan, Indonesia). Central theme is the question what caused conflicts within and between villages and how were these handled and overcome by the communities.

This final chapter of the book offers a set of policy recommendations. It presents some typical win-win outcomes, including technologies suited for forest poor areas, labour intensive technologies promoting intensification to replace land extensive farming practices, and promoting agricultural systems that provide environmental services similar to those of natural forests.

The principles and practices for forest harvesting in Indonesia (2000) have been developed to provide a uniform set of minimum standards for logging practices in the production and limited production forests in Indonesia. The provide the standard for WHAT is involved in planning and implementing logging activities in natural forest and WHY certain operations should be undertaken. The Reduced Impact Logging (RIL) guidelines for Indonesia provides the mechanism for HOW the standards will be applied in the field or "how to do the work".

This conference proceedings contains 26 papers based on the activities of partner institutions that the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) has facilitated. There are 4 sections: (i) evaluation of forest harvesting and fire impacts on forest ecosystems; (ii) development of methods to rehabilitate logged-over forests and degraded forest lands; (iii) development of silvicultural techniques on degraded forest lands; and (iv) network of the rehabilitation of degraded forest ecosystems.

This publication is a collection of the abstracts of in-house and external publications produced in the year 2000 by CIFOR scientists and their collaborators. It also abstracts several publications produced in 1999 that were not able to be included in the 1999 research abstrats. The abstracts are grouped into six themes that represent CIFOR's research activities. Indexes are provided by author and subject.