A ideia de produzir este livro teve origem em um esforço compartilhado por organizações e redes vinculadas à Articulação Nacional de Agroecologia (ANA) de sistematizar evidências dos benefícios do enfoque agroecológico na gestão técnico-econômica da agricultura familiar, aqui apreendida em suas variadas formas de organização produtiva e expressão identitária.

The Land Rights Research and Resources Institute held its second National level Public Forum on land on 12-13 May 2005. The two day forum was partly one of the planned activities in the Institute’s three year Strategic plan and a special event to commemorate the Institute’s tenth Anniversary. It thus took place along with other activities such as Training of Trainers (TOT) workshop, preparation and running of a documentary on land rights advocacy, special media programmes, Special theatre performance by Dhahabu theatre arts Group and moving into a more specious office premise.

Compreender a questão agrária sob o modo capitalista de produção sempre foi tarefa difícil e complicada. Não porque muitos autores não a tenham praticamente esgotada, mas porque os estudos mais trazem discordâncias do que convergência. Por isso, esta temática cria atritos entre os conservadores e os progressistas, entre os socialistas e os comunistas, e entre todos eles e os anarquistas. Não há possibilidade nenhuma de consenso ou mesmo de aproximações. Sempre haverá pressupostos que se interporão abrindo espaço para a polêmica e discussões.

In Ghana 70 per cent of the population are smallholder farmers who depend on the land for their basic needs. Growing competition for this resource is having significant impacts on rural livelihoods and governance as land changes hands. This study highlights the key drivers of pressure on rural land and their communities, such as population growth, urbanisation and acquisition of land by new actors, including government and business.

Land uses are changing rapidly in Vietnam’s upland northern borderlands. Regional development platforms such as the Greater Mekong Subregion, state-propelled market integration and reforestation programs, and lowland entrepreneurs and migrants are all impacting this frontier landscape. Drawing on a mixed methods approach using remote sensing data from 2000 to 2009 and ethnographic fieldwork, we examine how land-use and land-cover change (LULCC) has occurred across three borderland provinces—Lai Châu, Lào Cai and Hà Giang—with high proportions of ethnic minority semi-subsistence farmers.

Crown diameter and tree density were measured in 52 communities in the Sudan-Sahel using satellite imagery to determine the relationships between rainfall and distance from community center to crown size diameter and tree density. As distance from the community center increased, tree density and crown diameter decreased. As rainfall increased, tree density decreased while crown diameter increased. Distance from the community center is a proxy for age since urbanization and our results indicate that older parts of communities show longer and more consistent tree management.

Community-managed reserves (CMRs) comprise the fastest-growing category of protected areas throughout the tropics. CMRs represent a compromise between advocates of nature conservation and advocates of human development. We ask whether CMRs succeed in achieving the goals of either. A fixed reserve area can produce only a finite resource supply, whereas human populations exploiting them tend to expand rapidly while adopting high-impact technologies to satisfy rising aspirations. Intentions behind the establishment of CMRs may be admirable, but represent an ideal rarely achieved.

Traditional agrosilvopastoral systems have been an important component of the farming systems and livelihoods of thousands of ethnic minority people in the uplands of Mainland Southeast Asia. Drawing on a combination of qualitative and participatory inquiries in nine ethnic minority communities, this study emphasizes the complex articulation of local farmers’ knowledge which has been so far excluded from governmental development and conservation policies in the northern uplands of Thailand and Laos.

Smallholder farmers and indigenous communities must cope with the opportunities and threats presented by rapidly spreading estate crops in the frontier of the agricultural market economy. Smallholder communities are subject to considerable speculation by outsiders, yet large-scale agriculture presents tradeoffs that they must navigate. We initiated a study in Sintang, West Kalimantan in 2012 and have returned annually for the last four years, building the baselines for a longer-term landscape approach to reconciling conservation and development tradeoffs in situ.

The urban and the rural are increasingly interconnected. Rural areas have become places of consumption, as leisure and recreation have become important functions of rural areas. There are also indications that increased urbanisation even leads to a stronger appreciation of green areas situated far beyond city limits. Rural areas with their highly valued natural amenities nowadays seem increasingly to host urban wellbeing, given the positive relation found between green areas and human wellbeing.

Protected areas (including areas that are nominally fully protected and those managed for multiple uses) encompass about a quarter of the total tropical forest estate. Despite growing interest in the relative value of community-managed lands and protected areas, knowledge about the biodiversity value that each sustains remains scarce in the biodiversity-rich tropics. We investigated the species occurrence of a suite of mammal and pheasant species across four protected areas and nearby community-managed lands in a biodiversity hotspot in northeast India.

Public participation theory assumes that empowering communities leads to enduring support for new initiatives. The New Zealand Biodiversity Strategy, approved in 2000, embraces this assumption and includes goals for community involvement in resolving threats to native flora and fauna. Over the last 20 years, community-based ecological restoration groups have proliferated, with between 600 and 4000 identified. Many of these groups control invasive mammals, and often include protection of native species and species reintroductions as goals.