Global commitments require an increase in forest area, while agriculture land is declining in quality and there is a growing population to feed. Such commitments include: 30X30, which commits to expand forests and protected areas to 30% of the world’s land area by 2030; the Bonn Challenge, which has a goal of restoring 350 million ha of degraded and deforested land; and the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration which seeks to prevent, stop, or reverse ecosystem degradation. In this context, it is important to remember that over half of the world’s land area is under customary ownership and/or used by Indigenous Peoples and local communities – who are among some of the most marginalized populations on the planet.
Tag: community involvement
Panduan Survei Pelaksanaan Program Reformasi Tenurial Hutan di Indonesia
Kegiatan Global Comparative Study (GCS) Tenure didorong oleh perkembangan reformasi tenurial di Afrika, Asia, dan Amerika Latin yang telah memberikan ruang pengakuan hukum untuk masyarakat lokal sekitar hutan. Melalui pendekatan komparatif global dan metodologi yang terstandarisasi untuk semua negara lokasi penelitian, program ini menganalisis berbagai faktor yang mempengaruhi keberhasilan dan kegagalan program tenurial hutan di masing-masing negara. Panduan survei terhadap pelaksanaan reformasi tenurial hutan di Indonesia merupakan salah satu perangkat kegiatan kajian yang disusun untuk mendukung keberhasilan implementasi program. Kami mengucapkan terimakasih kepada GEF (Global Environment Facility) atas dukungan pendanaan program GCS Tenure dan program penelitian PIM (Policies, Institution, and Markets) atas dukungan untuk penyusunan perangkat survei khusus untuk konteks di Indonesia.
More than a meeting? The potential and limitations of invited multi-stakeholder spaces in the Brazilian and Peruvian Amazon
In the Amazon, invited multi-stakeholder forums (MSFs) have been organised by governments to engage civil society with policy and decision making. Given the unequal histories of access to resources in the region, in contexts where mainstream politics have failed to include local people and rights concerns in environmental decision-making, there is much optimism regarding the potential for collaboration in invited MSFs. Yet, questions remain on whether they are more than bureaucratic steps organised to legitimise pre-approved government decisions. The article presents comparative insight from interviews with 208 organisers, participants, and nonparticipant stakeholders to four invited MSFs that were legally required decision-making spaces for land and resource use planning in jurisdictions of the Brazilian and Peruvian Amazon. Although the same type of forum was selected in each country, research revealed different processes and outcomes based on how organisers framed their challenges and solutions. This impacted who was invited to participate, and under what terms, including the knowledge they were able to bring to the process. Examining their processes, the article examines challenges in the conception and implementation of forums and the possibility of refocusing MSF activities to better support the inclusion of civil society perspectives in policy and decision making.
Engaging faith-based organisations in land restoration across Africa: Insights and opportunities
Land users across many developing contexts in Africa are invariably part of faith communities. About 45% of the population of Africa are Christian, about 40% are Muslim and most of the remaining 15% hold traditional, animist beliefs. Faith tends to play a key part in shaping the world view and major life choices of rural communities.
Co-producing theory of change to operationalize integrated landscape approaches
Integrated landscape approaches that engage diverse stakeholder groups in landscape governance are increasingly promoted to address linked social–ecological challenges in tropical landscapes. Recent research suggests that a transdisciplinary approach to landscape management can help identify common research needs, enhance knowledge co-production, guide evidence-based policy development, and harmonize cross-sectorial integration. Meanwhile, guiding principles for landscape approaches suggest that identifying common concerns and negotiating a process of change are fundamental to implementation and evaluation efforts. As such, the use of decision support tools such as theory of change models that build ordered sequences of actions towards a desired, and agreed, future state are increasingly advocated. However, the application of the theory of change concept to integrated landscape approaches is limited thus far, particularly within the scientific literature. Here, we address this gap by applying the principles of landscape approaches and knowledge co-production to co-produce a theory of change to address current unsustainable landscape management and associated conflicts in the Kalomo Hills Local Forest Reserve No. P.13 (KFR13) of Zambia. The participatory process engaged a diverse range of stakeholders including village head people, local and international researchers, district councillors, and civil society representatives amongst others. Several pathways, actions, and interventions were developed around the themes of deforestation, biodiversity and wildlife conservation, socio-economic development, access rights, and law enforcement. To make the theory of change actionable, participants identified a need for enhanced cross-sector and multi-level communication, capacity development, and improved governance, while a lack of commitment towards coordinated knowledge exchange and access to information along with poor policy formulation and weak enforcement of rules were among potential impediments to action. Use of theory of change can both inform evidence-based policy design (by revealing place-based challenges and proposing solutions) and support policy mechanisms that promote integration between state and non-state actors (by clarifying actor rights, roles and responsibilities). Co-developing a theory of change for integrated landscape management is inherently context specific, but the process and outcomes of this study should hold relevance across a range of contexts faced with sustainability challenges related to reconciling both conservation and development objectives.
Leveraging novel partnerships for land restoration in Africa
This brief shares key learnings and insights emerging from the programme’s novel partnership-based approach in support of enhancing the scale and effectiveness of restoration interventions in sub-Saharan Africa.
Scaling up Community-Based Fire Prevention and Peatland Restoration
Sociopolitical and economic factors have driven and heightened the occurrence of vegetation fires (Purnomo et al. 2017, 2019), particularly in regions where peatlands have become degraded. Fires emit large volumes of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, cause significant economic losses, and have detrimental effects on health and other sectors.
The values of wildlife revisited
Wild animals are important worldwide because of the multiple values they represent for human societies. Different frameworks have been proposed to understand the values of wildlife from economic and noneconomic perspectives. Despite efforts from different disciplines to provide a holistic framework for the analysis of wildlife values, the focus is still based on the monetary value derived from market prices. Community-oriented approaches to wildlife conservation have an especially strong economic rationale because they depend on the economic costs and benefits that wildlife represents to local communities. However, purely economic approaches ignore that values are subjective and as such are perceived differently among stakeholders according to their social, economic, cultural, and ecological context. The lack of a holistic framework hinders the possibility to provide a clear and practical tool for the resolution of wildlife conservation conflicts and the identification of management options that maximize values. Based on a wide literature review, we propose a comprehensive wildlife value framework (WVF) incorporating the values of wildlife identified in the academic literature into the total economic value (TEV) framework. Costs associated with human-wildlife conflicts are also incorporated as well as subjective perceptions of values based on multidimensional well-being criteria. This work aims to provide a common structure within which different perspectives related to wildlife can be captured to inform multi-actor, multi-objective decision making related to wildlife management.
Co-Investment for sustainable production landscape in the downstream Rejoso Watershed
The Rejoso Kita project involved a research pilot to test specific methodologies to conserve ecosystem services, to strengthen the local economy and livelihoods, and to mitigate the impacts of environmental degradation in the Rejoso Watershed. In particular, Rejoso Kita Phase 2 facilitated activities and initiatives: i) to conduct pilots to test, assess, and demonstrate the potential of sustainable paddy cultivation (SPC) techniques and methodologies to improve the production of rice in terms of both quality and quantity, including through the establishment of demonstration plots for this purpose; ii) to conduct pilots to test, assess and demonstrate the potential of appropriately-designed, community-managed artesian wells to improve the efficiency of water usage in the agricultural sector, with particular emphasis on facilitating and assessing behavioral changes, particularly among farmer groups involved in the construction, maintenance, management, monitoring and evaluation of these wells; iii) to revitalize the Pasuruan District multistakeholder watershed to facilitate the involvement of a wide range of stakeholders in replicating, upscaling and mainstreaming of the piloted initiatives to amplify the positive economic and environmental impacts of the project on a wider scale.
Gergera Watershed: A success story of restoration community-based adaptation and climate-smart practices
Gergera watershed is located in Tabia Hayelom, Atsbi Wonberta district of Tigray region in northern Ethiopia. The altitude of the district ranges from 1500 to 2800 m.a.s.l. The average daily temperature of the area is between 15°C and 30°C with a mean annual rainfall of about 529mm. The area is prone to drought with erratic, unevenly distributed rainfall and high runoff. However, it has good sources of underground and seasonal water from the surrounding mountain catchments.