Integrated landscape approaches (ILA) aim to reconcile multiple, often competing, interests across agriculture, nature conservation, and other land uses. Recognized ILA design principles provide guidance for implementation, yet application remains challenging, and a strong performance evidence-base is yet to be formed. Through a critical literature review and focus group discussions with practitioners, we identified considerable diversity of ILA in actors, temporal, and spatial scales, inter alia. This diversity hampers learning from and steering ILA because of the intractable nature of the concept. Therefore, we developed a tool—an ‘ILA mixing board’—to structure the complexity of ILA into selectable and scalable attributes in a replicable way to allow planning, diagnosing, and comparing ILA. The ILA mixing board tool presents seven qualifiers, each representing a key attribute of ILA design and performance (for example, project flexibility, inclusiveness of the dialogue, and the centrality of the power distribution). Each qualifier has five (non-normative) outcome indicators that can be registered as present or absent. This process in turn guides planners, evaluators and other participating stakeholders involved in landscape management to diagnose the ILA type, or its performance. We apply the ILA mixing board to three ILA cases in Nicaragua, Madagascar, and the Congo Basin to show some of the many possible configurations of qualifiers on the mixing board. Further application of the tool would allow comparative analysis of the complexity of ILA in a structured and manageable way thereby enhancing the understanding of ILA performance and informing the development of evidence-based land use policy.
Tag: governance
Community capacity for social enterprise development: Empirical evidence from community forest enterprises (CFEs) in Cameroon
With increasing forest devolution globally, community forest enterprises (CFEs) are emerging as potential options for local development based on forest resources. CFEs trade to meet their economic, social, and environmental goals; however, empirical studies have highlighted capacity deficiencies as key drawbacks to their development. Knowledge of what these capacity gaps are is low. This paper uses a systematic framework to explore capacity and deficiencies in capacity and the relation between the two in CFEs in Cameroon. Using the contextualized organizational capacity theory in combination with asset-based community development theory, data was gathered from 31 CFEs based on focus group discussions. Principal component analysis and descriptive statistics were used to evaluate community capacity at individual, organizational (CFE), and network levels. Pearson correlation tests were used to explore the relationships between different domains of community capacity. The results indicate that community members and development practitioners agree that communities are weak in creating partnerships, networking, and resource mobilization. The participatory community evaluation highlights major capacity gaps in infrastructure, skills and knowledge of members, and sense of community. This confirms that capacity gaps were larger at the individual and social network level, where, except for a sense of community and resource mobilization, organizational capacity scored higher. Although the capacities of individual members of CFEs are generally low, these capacities correlate strongly with organizational capacity; thus, the potential of the CFEs to meet objectives depends a lot on the capacities of individual members and networking capacity, indicating that these should be prioritized in development efforts, which should be a process involving multiple stakeholders, with policy support and participation by the entire community.
Cross-scale interdependencies require attention in forest restoration
A governance perspective that connects actors at multiple levels in forest restoration is largely missing and much needed to expedite the translation of national restoration targets into long-lasting outcomes. An explicit focus on the interactions across governance levels, and how these influence ecological processes at different spatial levels, can overcome the general tendency to focus on forest restoration either from the top-down or bottom-up and help improve the quality of forest restoration.
Governing peatlands in the Democratic Republic of Congo: Context, agents of change and policy making
Since 2017, peatlands in the DRC have gain traction in natural resources governance debate in general and specifically in the national efforts to address climate change through sustainable management of forested landscapes. This document provides an overview of the current situation of DRC peatlands, actors, agent of change and policy making. It investigates how the current research, projects and policy processes attempt to address the challenges of providing the DRC with a legal and institutional framework for peatlands management. It proposes insights in support to informed decision making in the country.
Indigenous Peoples’ lands are threatened by industrial development; conversion risk assessment reveals need to support Indigenous stewardship
Indigenous Peoples are custodians of many of the world’s least-exploited natural areas. These places of local and global socio-ecological importance face significant threats from industrial development expansion, but the risk of conversion of these lands remains unclear. Here we combine global datasets of Indigenous Peoples’ lands, their current ecological condition, and future industrial development pressure to assess conversion threats. To assess vulnerability and risk of conversion, we create an index based on indicators of the strength and security of Indigenous Peoples’ rights to their territories and resources, their representation and engagement in decisions impacting them, and the capital available to support conservation and sustainable development. We find that nearly 60% of Indigenous Peoples’ lands (22.7 million km2) are threatened in 64 countries. Among the 37 countries with the highest threat, socio-economic and political vulnerabilities increase conversion risk, particularly the limited recognition and protection of territorial rights. We suggest strategies and actions to bolster Indigenous Peoples’ self-determination, rights, and leadership to reduce this risk and foster socio-ecological well-being.
To what extent is REDD + integrated into land-use sectors driving deforestation? Insights from Cameroon
Environmental policies ought to be integrated into economic sectors for successful outcomes. We assess to what extent Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD +) is integrated into land-use sectors driving deforestation in Cameroon. REDD + governance has been extensively examined, including the challenges of a multisectoral approach to tackle the drivers of deforestation, especially those lying outside the forestry sector. Yet, these studies have focussed on cross-sectoral coordination, giving little attention to factors such as political will and the adequacy of policy instruments for integration. We amend and apply an innovative framework for environmental policy integration to conduct a comprehensive assessment of REDD + policy integration in Cameroon, a Congo Basin country experiencing increasing deforestation rates due to agriculture, husbandry, infrastructure development and mining. Drawing from policy documents and in-depth interviews with key informants, we found out that territorial battles between ministries, insecurity about their understanding of forest matters in different land-use sectors, and dysfunctional policy instruments have undermined REDD + policy integration. Our study suggests that REDD + integration into land-use sectors would be enhanced by informing stakeholders about their roles in the REDD + process, completing and legitimising the forest zoning plan, addressing loopholes in environmental assessment regulations, and alleviating inconsistencies in land-use rules. These instruments would be reinforced with an economic tool internalising carbon costs in projects generating forest emissions.
Stakeholder Perceptions on Landscape Governance in Northern Ghana: A Q-Study to Identify Common Concern Entry Points for Integrated Landscape Approaches
In a landscape, perceptions can influence people’s actions and behavior toward natural resource use. Improving landscape governance, therefore, requires understanding the different concerns of stakeholders operating within the landscape. This paper analyzes the perceptions of local stakeholders—local landscape users, practitioners engaged in conservation and sustainable resource use, and private actors—regarding the landscape governance system, using the Q-methodology to identify common concern entry points for the implementation of a landscape approach in the Western Wildlife Corridor (WWC) in northern Ghana. To this end, individual interviews and focus groups were conducted with local communities and organizations operating in three Community Resource Management Areas (CREMAs). They identified destructive livelihood activities, constrained livelihoods, and a weak governance system as the main challenges, and the need to balance livelihoods with conservation, strengthening landscape governance through the CREMA initiative, and awareness raising as the main solutions. Thus, the Q-method allowed identifying common concern entry points regarding landscape challenges, governance issues, and potential solutions. I argue that consensus among stakeholders regarding these challenges and solutions could lay the groundwork for a multi-stakeholder process in the area, which could help foster the implementation of an integrated landscape approach in the WWC landscape. It is crucial to support the livelihoods of local people to reduce pressures on natural resources. It is also important to strengthen the functioning of local CREMA management bodies with technical, logistical, and financial support. Implementing a participatory monitoring and evaluation mechanism is critical in this regard.
Framing the peatlands governance in the Congo Basin
Key messages
- There is a growing consensus among national and international actors about the need to protect and sustainably manage the peatlands in the central Congo Basin because of their importance for the environment and communities.
- The central Congo Basin peatlands extend over two countries, the Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Consequently, permanent coordination is key if both countries’ actions are to be effective in preserving the transnational peatlands.
- Coordination to protect the central Congo Basin peatlands involves not only international and regional actions, but also joint efforts of national institutions because of overlapping land uses in the peatlands.
- Ongoing efforts to improve the governance of the central Congo Basin peatlands are largely driven by national climate change efforts. These provide an intersectoral framework to inform debate for legal and institutional reforms, improve land use and management, and reduce emissions from the Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Recent forest and land-use policy changes in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo: Are they truly transformational?
This paper analyses the policy changes occurring in the forest and palm oil sectors of Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, through the lens of the transformational change concept. The aim is to first examine whether Sabah is transforming and, if so, to identify the determinants enabling or hindering the change. To determine if Sabah is transforming, we used two criteria: – (i) an ambitious change in the policy framework, that promotes forest conservation and sustainable use, and is moving away from business-as-usual activities; and (ii) the level of implementation of the policies that we identified as supporting transformational change. We found that Sabah very likely did intend to transform. We made this conclusion based on comparing changes in policies occurring in Sabah, and we decided if it is ambitious by primarily comparing Sabah’s policies with other Malaysian states, the federal government, and internationally. We showed that: (i) Sabah decided to use voluntary international certification standards (private market instruments) like FSC and RSPO, while the other Malaysian states did not; (ii) they decided to protect more forest compared to national and international targets; and (iii) Sabah is an early mover as the state is one of the first in the world to adopt the RSPO Jurisdictional Approach. But intention needs to be followed by implementation, and this is where the state falls short. The policies in Sabah were not fully implemented because of the patronage system where the more powerful actors used their power to continue with business-as-usual activities, there is frequent political turnover in Sabah, and the state faced difficulty in meeting international standards. Our research shows that local leadership and a local transformational change coalition (civil society actively working in Sabah) mainly prompted the transformational change, although the promises of economic gains and better reputation also played a role. We conclude by emphasising the change must be made more compelling for political leaders, as part of a broader institutional structure, not only through the narrow focus on reducing deforestation but through the development of a more sustainable and equitable national economy, and that consumer countries should play a role in reducing pressures on forest by providing incentives to a state that manages its natural resources sustainably.
Routledge Handbook of Community Forestry
This handbook provides a comprehensive overview and cutting-edge assessment of community forestry.
Containing contributions from academics, practitioners, and professionals, the Routledge Handbook of Community Forestry presents a truly global overview with case studies drawn from across Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. The Handbook begins with an overview of the chapters and a discussion of the concept of community forestry and the key issues. Topics as wide-ranging as Indigenous forestry, conservation and ecosystem management, relationships with industrial forestry, trade and supply systems, land tenure and land grabbing, and climate change are addressed. The Handbook also focuses on governance, looking at the range of approaches employed, including multi-level governance and rights-based approaches, and the principal actors involved from local communities and Indigenous Peoples to governments and national and international non-governmental organisations. The Handbook reveals the importance of the historical context to community forestry and the effects of power and politics. Importantly, the Handbook not only focuses on successful examples of community forestry, but also addresses failures in order to highlight the key challenges we are still facing and potential solutions.
The Routledge Handbook of Community Forestry is essential reading for academics, professionals, and practitioners interested in forestry, natural resource management, conservation, and sustainable development.