Small-scale fisheries are central to inland aquatic food systems in sub-Saharan Africa but are increasingly threatened by climate variability and environmental change. Despite growing recognition of gendered vulnerabilities, empirical evidence from inland fisheries remains limited. This study assessed gender-differentiated livelihood vulnerability among fishing communities in Homa Bay and Migori counties along Lake Victoria, Kenya. The study applied the Livelihood Vulnerability Index (LVI) and the LVI–Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (LVI-IPCC) frameworks using a mixed-methods approach. Data were collected through household surveys (n = 477), key informant interviews (n = 42), and focus group discussions (n = 6). Bootstrap confidence intervals and non-parametric statistical tests were used to assess spatial and gender differences in vulnerability. Results revealed significant spatial variation in vulnerability, with Migori County exhibiting higher vulnerability (LVI = 0.609; 95% CI: 0.580–0.640) than Homa Bay County (LVI = 0.520; 95% CI: 0.490–0.550). Similarly, LVI-IPCC results indicated positive vulnerability in both counties, with Migori (0.136) more vulnerable than Homa Bay (0.101), driven by high exposure and sensitivity alongside limited adaptive capacity. Gender-disaggregated findings showed that men recorded higher scores across exposure- and sensitivity-related dimensions, including food security, health, and natural disasters, reflecting their direct engagement in capture fisheries. In contrast, women exhibited lower index scores in these dimensions but experienced structurally embedded vulnerabilities associated with limited access to assets, decision-making power, and livelihood opportunities. Spatial and gender differences were statistically significant (p < 0.05). The findings demonstrate that vulnerability among fishing communities is shaped by both exposure-driven and structurally mediated factors. While men experience greater direct climate exposure through fisheries activities, women face persistent socio-economic constraints that limit adaptive capacity. These results underscore the need for gender-responsive and context-specific climate adaptation strategies to strengthen resilience in small-scale fisheries and inland aquatic food systems.
Tag: community involvement
A relational turn in Indonesian food security perspectives: connecting values in land, nutritional and planetary health
Food security debates in Indonesia increasingly extend beyond concerns of food availability, access, utilization, and stability. Environmental degradation, climate change, nutritional transitions, and competing land-use priorities highlight the need for broader perspectives that connect food systems with human and planetary well-being. This paper argues that a relational perspective can strengthen food-security analysis by emphasizing how food systems are embedded in relationships among people, landscapes, institutions, and ecological processes. Building on expanded food-security frameworks that include sustainability and agency, we examine four Indonesian policy arenas: landscape transitions in East Java, food-estate development in Merauke, school lunch programmes, and coastal protection along the North Java coast. These examples show how competing understandings of food security shape policy choices and development pathways, highlighting the importance of agency, identity, and ecological resilience in achieving long-term food security.
Expanding regreening across Africa’s Great Green Wall, using farmer managed natural regeneration
Key messages
- Millions of farmers across the Sahel have already invested in increasing the number of on-farm trees on their land, by protecting and managing natural regeneration of woody species, known as farmer managed natural regeneration.
- Farmer managed natural regeneration is a low-cost community-led restoration strategy that produces a wide range of economic and environmental benefits and has a high scalability potential across Great Green Wall countries, especially in areas with high population densities.
- Achieving ambitious tree-based restoration goals requires prioritizing farmer managed natural regeneration and empowering millions of smallholders to grow locally adapted trees on farmland, community land and pastures.
- But active tree planting continues to play a vital role, particularly in areas lacking natural regeneration capacity or where farmers demand specific target species.
Impacts of landscape restoration and long-term land use change on ecosystem services: Evidence from a case study in Ethiopia
Land degradation threatens food security, water resources, and biodiversity by eroding soil health and productivity. In Ethiopia, restoration initiatives like exclosures are widely implemented, yet most studies fail to integrate plot-level ecological evidence with landscape-scale land use and land cover (LULC) dynamics. Furthermore, few studies combine these biophysical trends with long-term economic valuation of ecosystem services (ES) and local knowledge to quantify ES trade-offs. Using the Sire-Dodota district of Ethiopia, as a case study, we (i) evaluated the localized ecological performances of communal exclosures relative to LULC-driven ecosystem service (ES) changes, (ii) quantified spatial and temporal (22 years) LULC impacts on ecosystem service values (ESVs), and (iii) assessed community perceptions of restoration outcomes. We combined vegetation inventories, spatial analysis, household surveys, focus group discussions, and value transfer methods across plot and landscape scales. Our results reveal a clear socio-ecological paradox across scales. At the plot-scale, community-managed exclosures significantly enhanced biomass accumulation and biodiversity, establishing a robust empirical baseline for ecological recovery. At the landscape scale, however, LULC-based ESVs increased over 22 years, driven by gains of US$80.6 million from agricultural lands and US$1.3 million from forest lands, alongside a US$3.4 million decline in shrubland ESVs. These increases are potential values rather than realized ecosystem service flows, masking systemic losses in regulating and supporting services as short-term agricultural expansion dominates valuation outcomes. Social data from 393 households strongly corroborate these patterns. While communities consistently recognized localized ecological recovery, they favored agroforestry integration over static exclosures to offset high opportunity costs of restricted access. Together, these findings caution against reliance on uncontextualized macro-scale economic indicators and underscore the need for integrated, multifunctional landscape strategies that align ecological recovery with livelihood needs. We, therefore, recommend establishing a national, open-access ESV meta-database linked to Ethiopia’s Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) targets, alongside future multi-decadal monitoring of below-ground carbon and soil biodiversity, and the cost-benefit performance of blended finance restoration models.
Regreening Africa Phase II : Annual Report. 30 October 2024 – 29 October 2025
Regreening Africa Phase II (2024–2029) is a European Union-funded initiative that aims to strengthen the resilience of communities across the Sahel and Horn of Africa through large-scale landscape restoration. Building on the achievements of the first phase, the programme focuses on creating enabling conditions for restoration by promoting inclusive governance, strengthening quality planting material systems, supporting adoption of context-specific restoration practices, and fostering green value chains. During its first year, the programme established governance structures, conducted community visioning and site-scoping exercises, strengthened partnerships with government institutions, and initiated restoration activities across participating countries. More than 5,500 hectares of degraded land were placed under restoration, engaging over 4,500 households. The programme also advanced evidence-based decision-making through Action Learning Landscapes, land health mapping, baseline studies, and stakeholder engagement processes. By integrating restoration, climate resilience, gender-transformative approaches, enterprise development, and policy engagement, Regreening Africa seeks to accelerate sustainable land management, improve livelihoods, and contribute to regional restoration goals, including the Great Green Wall initiative.
The blue carbon mangrove value chain framework
Key messages
- The blue carbon mangrove value chain (BCMVC) connects global commitments to local impacts. It links climate and biodiversity targets with on-the-ground mangrove management, aligning policy, finance and socioeconomic community outcomes across scales.
- The BCMVC is not only about carbon credit or its monetization. It must integrate ecological integrity and social values alongside economic returns to support legitimacy, equity and long-term sustainability.
- Implementation and scaling depend on enabling conditions, investment-ready systems and actor-specific capacities. Government institutions require stronger planning and coordination capacities; project developers need measurement, reporting and verification, and financing skills; and local communities require capacities to participate as rights holders, as co-investors (socially and economically) and as negotiators in decision making, monitoring and benefit-sharing processes.
Strengthening stakeholder capacities for equitable blue carbon mangrove: Mapping capacities and gaps in two pilot sites in Indonesia
Key messages
- Mangrove blue carbon presents opportunities for climate change mitigation, and other environmental and socioeconomic benefits for coastal communities, but capacity to engage effectively and fully in mangrove blue carbon financial investments is unevenly distributed across the blue carbon mangrove value chain.
- Although mangrove management capacities are increasingly present in Indonesia, gaps are evident in areas such as project development; measurement, reporting and verification (MRV); and engagement with carbon and non-carbon market mechanisms.
- Strengthening practical capacities alone is not sufficient: these must be supported by empowering governance arrangements and enabling institutions and be underpinned by strong foundational capacities. These are needed to ensure that stakeholders can move beyond project implementation roles towards sustained participation, leadership and innovation across the blue carbon value chain. In the Indonesian context, fragmented coordination, unclear distribution of mandates, and varying levels of capacity across sectors and government continue to be key barriers to effective and scalable blue carbon value chain implementation.
- Community groups play a central role in mangrove management, yet require stronger institutional recognition, clearer mandates and sustained capacity development support to participate effectively and fully in emerging blue carbon initiatives.
- Targeted, long-term and competency-based capacity development is needed to strengthen and develop stakeholder engagement; improve institutional readiness; and build trust and confidence among communities, government, private sectors and investors in Indonesia’s blue carbon initiatives and financing mechanisms.
Rights and wellbeing: an analytical approach to global case comparison of community forestry
Many countries have adopted policies supported community forestry. Trends towards community empowerment, livelihood improvement and decentralized decision-making are being done by providing more rights to forest dependent people. However, empirical data to support clear understanding on the correlation between resource rights and wellbeing or poverty are missing. The paper provides an analytical approach to figuring out forest resource rights and their connections to wellbeing. Twenty seven cases of community forestry in Asia, Africa and Latin America were selected, clustered and analyzed using non-linear principle component analysis. We found there was correlation between rights of forest resources and wellbeing although was not very strong. There was also connection between income and equity as well as between equity and sustainability of forest. This implies that giving more rights to local people is not enough for improving wellbeing without facilitating for better institution and governance.
Strengthening capacities for equitable blue carbon finance in Indonesia (e-Blue): A research-for-capacity approach
This project is a partnership between CIFOR-ICRAF and the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) that began in 2025 to address a key knowledge gap among ESCAP member states. While many member states see carbon financing as a policy priority, understanding of the opportunities, risks, and bottlenecks in blue carbon finance remains limited. CIFOR-ICRAF was brought in to strengthen this understanding, enhance member state capacities, and build regional networking around blue carbon. The collaboration focuses on how blue carbon mangrove value chains (BCMVC) function and are governed at national and subnational levels, aiming to turn research insights directly into actionable capacity development.
The objectives of the project are to (i) deepen understanding of governance and finance along the chain; (ii) strengthen capacities of governments and communities to engage equitably; and (iii) foster regional learning through a learning package, an e-course in English and Bahasa Indonesia, and regional knowledge-sharing events.