Sub-Saharan Africa is large and diverse with regions of food insecurity and high vulnerability to climate change. This project quantifies carbon stocks and fluxes in the humid forest zone of Ghana, as a part of an assessment in West Africa. The General Ensemble biogeochemical Modeling System (GEMS) was used to simulate the responses of natural and managed systems to projected scenarios of changes in climate, land use and cover, and nitrogen fertilization in the Assin district of Ghana.

Meyer’s Parrot Poicephalus meyeri has the widest distributional range of any African parrot. There are six subspecies distributed throughout the African subtropics, all of which manage to breed successfully during the winter dry season when few other cavity-nesting birds are actively nesting. In 2004, we recorded Meyer’s Parrots feeding on four cryptic arthropod larvae incubating inside fruits and pods in their seasonal diet. All of these were previously unknown in the diet of African parrots.

During the past century, humans converted extensive areas of tropical forest into cultivated lands. Three distinct processes, each predominant during a different historical period, have driven the destruction of the forests. This review describes each of these deforestation dynamics: natural resource degrading poverty traps that predominated during the colonial era, new land settlement schemes that prevailed for two decades after decolonization, and finally, financialized, large enterprise dynamics that have predominated during the past quarter century.

Previous studies of costs and benefits of forest conservation haven't considered the irreversible nature of forest clearing and the uncertainty associated with forest preservation benefits. The present study adapted a dynamic optimization framework to analyze optimal land use decisions. Results show that ignoring negative climate change effects on tea production and forest carbon storage values leads to excessive deforestation and lower optimal forest stock levels.

A modelling experiment is used to examine different land-use scenarios ranging from extreme deforestation (31% forest cover) to pristine (95% forest cover) conditions and related Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) schemes to assess whether a change in streamflow dynamics, discharge extremes and mean annual water balance of a 73.4-km² tropical headwater catchment in Costa Rica could be detected.

Policy initiatives in India, such as the Social Forestry Program and later the Joint Forest Management, were introduced for their co-benefits, including forest protection, employment opportunities, and added income for communities living in and around the forests. The evolution of these forest policies is critically reviewed. It is argued that India is perfectly positioned to benefit from climate change mitigation efforts, due to a rich, albeit chequered, history in forest management.

Previous studies have shown that collective property rights offer higher flexibility than individual property and improve sustainable community-based forest management. Our case study, carried out in the Beni department of Bolivia, does not contradict this assertion, but shows that collective rights have been granted in areas where ecological contexts and market facilities were less favourable to intensive land use. Previous experiences suggest investigating political processes in order to understand the criteria according to which access rights were distributed.

Phytodiversity is affected both by natural and anthropogenic factors and in Island ecosystems these impacts can devastate or reduce diversity, if the native vegetation is lost. In addition to rich species richness and diversity, Island systems are the sites of high endemism and any threat to these ecosystems will consequently lead to loss and extinction of species.

The rapid environmental changes occurring in the Brazilian Amazon due to widespread deforestation have attracted the attention of the scientific community for several decades. A topic of particular interest involves the assessment of the combined impacts of selective logging and forest fires. Forest disturbances by selective logging and forest fires may vary in scale, from local to global changes, mostly related to the increase of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere.

In order for carbon credits awarded for reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation of forests (REDD) to be effective, they need to be competitive with alternative land uses. In the case of Southeast Asia, oil palm cultivation is one of the most lucrative possible land uses. Existing mechanisms for awarding certified emission reductions (CERs) might not be adequately flexible to changing commodity prices or to meet the needs of landowners who heavily discount future returns from their land.