“Why do so many forestry aid projects fail?” is a question being asked more frequently. Most replies list technical difficulties in implementation. However, this paper argues that the answer can only be found through understanding two much more general processes; how a forestry activity relates to the broader socio-economic context in which it is embedded; and how development assistance operates in practice.

This document is a report on the implementation of an initial project of Bulungan Research Forest in East Kalimantan, Indonesia 1997-2001 with financial support from International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO). It contains an executive summary, the main text of the project objectives and outputs, brief report on technical and scientific aspects, lessons learned and recommendations for future projects.

CIFOR's research in the Bulungan Model Forest in Malinau, East Kalimantan, Indonesia took the form of a 3-year investigation into ways of achieving forest sustainability in a large forest landscape with diverse, rapidly changing and conflicting uses. The study reported in this book highligts the complexity of the challenge while also clarifying the key aspects.

Between 2005 and 2009, the EU-financed project ForLive set out to analyse promising local forest management initiatives in the Amazon Basin in four countries: Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil, and Peru. Researchers aimed to identify locally viable practices that benefit livelihoods and ecological stabilisation of landscapes, as well as to define ways to promote these practices as a basis for sound rural development. This book presents lessons learnt from more than 100 studies by researchersfrom Latin America, from practitioners and from local families themselves.

There have been several major research efforts on the rate and causes of Indonesia's deforestation in recent years and much associated literature, but there is still no consensus in the research community on these issues. This paper reviews the areas of uncertainty and confusion, and proposes questions that must be answered to get a better grasp of the subject.