This chapter reports the results of research in West Kalimantan, Indonesia, originally designed to assess quickly and easily the level and nature of participation by local people in forest management. The authors briefly describe pertinent results from their assessment methods. Although the functions initially anticipated for participation are not wrong, they reflect a way of looking at forest management that were concluded needs rethinking. In the discussion of the change needed, Jordan’s concept of “authoritative knowledge” and “social” or “cultural capital” was used. The authors also suggest substituting “rights and responsibilities to manage the forest cooperatively” for “participation” in places like Danau Sentarum Wildlife Reserve (DSWR). Important remaining policy-related issues include the variations in quality of local management systems, values held by the different stakeholders, and potential productivity of individual systems. Finally it concludes that, given the dynamism and complexity that characterise natural forests and their inhabitants, cooperation among all stakeholders in an ongoing dialogue is most likely the only way that sustainable forest management can in fact occur.
Tag: methodology
Methodological challenges in assessing the viability of agroecological practices: lessons from a multi-case study in Africa
Despite extensive research emphasizing the benefits of agroecology in Africa, its viability remains a subject of debate among policymakers, donors, and scientists. Assessing agroecological viability presents methodological challenges, which have not been systematically documented or addressed. This paper outlines key challenges encountered in evaluating agroecology across 11 case studies in Africa to guide future assessments. Seven major methodological challenges are identified: (i) defining the object of study via practices or agroecological principles, (ii) determining whether assessments should be practice-based or systemic at farm and field scales, (iii) weighing subjective farmer perspectives against “objective” evaluations of viability, (iv) choosing between qualitative and quantitative approaches, (v) conducting diachronic versus synchronic assessments, (vi) opting for a multisite approach versus a single-site study, and (vii) employing context-specific or uniform assessment methods. Findings emphasize the necessity of a multicriteria, systemic approach rooted in farmers’ perspectives, moving beyond conventional quantitative evaluation models. The study advocates for integrating both qualitative and quantitative methodologies to capture farmers’ lived experiences and insights within their farming systems, incorporating transversal and context-specific data.
Pulpwood plantations as carbon sinks in Indonesia: methodological challenge and impact on livelihoods
The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) was created under the Kyoto Protocol, in order to help industrialized countries achieve their Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emission reduction targets at a lower cost. A second objective of the CDM is to help developing countries achieve sustainable development. To become eligible these projects have to demonstrate their additionality, and have a positive impact on local communities’ livelihoods. But the methodologies that have been proposed seem unsatisfactory, and the social impacts are often debated. This paper provides new insights on these methodologies, their weaknesses and potential improvements, and explores the social impacts of an afforestation/reforestation CDM activity with a high carbon sequestration potential. We studied a large-scale pulpwood plantation in Indonesia, which is perceived as a way to sequestrate great quantities of carbon in a short time, and as an alternative to natural forest supplies for the domestic pulp industry. We collected complete data on the establishment and production costs, and the carbon sequestration potential. We also took advantage of our ongoing research on the Indonesian Pulp & Paper (P&P) sector to interpret these results, and evaluate the relevance of widely used and proposed methodologies for additionality assessment. Finally, research on site allowed us to obtain data on the plantation’s impact on the people living nearby. According to our research, fast-growing tree plantations face production costs far higher than revenues gained from the sale of carbon credits, even with a relatively important carbon sequestration. But calculations made according to usual methodologies can be misleading. We show that context analysis is more relevant, and that profitability calculations lead to wrong conclusions. From a social point of view, pulpwood plantation projects could increase livelihoods in the short term, but this depends very much on the opportunities for locals to combine employment in the plantation with land uses generating higher incomes per hectare.
Development of a methodology for selecting criteria and indicators of sustainable forest management: a case study on participatory assessment
This paper describes an application of multiple criteria analysis (MCA) in assessing criteria and indicators adapted for a particular forest management unit. The methods include: ranking, rating, and pairwise comparisons. These methods were used in a participatory decision-making environment where a team representing various stakeholders and professionals used their expert opinions and judgements in assessing different criteria and indicators (C&I), and how suitable and applicable they are to a forest management unit. A forest concession located in Kalimantan, Indonesia, was used as the site for the case study. Results from the study show that the multi-criteria methods are effective tools that can be used as structured decision aids to evaluate, prioritise, and select sets of C&I for a particular forest management unit. Ranking and rating approaches can be used as a screening tool to develop an initial list of C&I. Pairwise comparison, on the other hand, can be used as a finer filter to further reduce the list. In addition to using these three MCA methods, the study also examines two commonly used group decision-making techniques; the Delphi method and the nominal group technique. Feedback received from the participants indicates that the methods are transparent, easy to implement, and provide a convenient environment for participatory decision-making.
Rehabilitation of degraded tropical forest ecosystems: workshop proceedings, 2-4 November 1999, Bogor, Indonesia
This conference proceedings contains 26 papers based on the activities of partner institutions that the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) has facilitated. There are 4 sections: (i) evaluation of forest harvesting and fire impacts on forest ecosystems; (ii) development of methods to rehabilitate logged-over forests and degraded forest lands; (iii) development of silvicultural techniques on degraded forest lands; and (iv) network of the rehabilitation of degraded forest ecosystems.
Women’s time use and implications for participation in cacao value chains: evidence from VRAEM, Peru
Bringing inclusion into value chain development requires interventions that account for gender-based constraints and opportunities. Key determinants of women’s capacity to participate are their availability and access to interventions. Twenty-four-hour recall surveys with 53 women from households engaged in a cacao expansion intervention in Peru found women with a strong interest in cacao; however, participation was thwarted by household responsibilities and exclusion from training. Findings emphasise the need to actively engage women in intervention design, and monitor and evaluate their time use, recognising the unintended consequences of increased time investments, and hence the unexpected impacts of these development interventions.
A framework for strenghthening site-regional research linkages
It should be noted that conventional research goals (quality data, high qualityscientific publications,replicable findings, etc)and development goals (community empowerment,integrating research targets and findings into on going development process, etc ) have been kept separate in the past-with research organizatios in charge of the former and development organizations the latter.However, given the general failure of conventional ”wisdom” and methods to ensure thatboth in fact happen, AHI charged itself with exploring alternatives. for this reason, participatory action research was chosenas a possible research approach that might apply itself to both goals: the participatory action to the latter and the research to the former.AHI practitioners have notably been more used to using the conventional or formal type of research process, which has greater acceptance in their own community and institutions.However, as stated,limited impact and change has driven us to try their methods during phase2, research teams emparked upon testing participatory research through a participatory technology development(PTD)process. However emphasison the participatory weakened emphasis on the research -particularly in non-traditional research areas (social dynamics,institutinal change,etc).Thus we saw limitations in data quality and application of science to the development process. This limited our assurance that the methods used were actually leading to something more robust, and left our ability to achieve both goals wanting despite clear anecdotal evidence of change and technological adoption.
Building on lessons learned from EARO’s assessement of research approaches
This report documents the workshop that took place in June 17-21 2002 in Addis Ababa. This report is not a final synthesized report, but tries to capture the crude output of the workshop in a non-interpreted way and serves as a base for shaping the final report. This documentation is meant to be a reference document for all participants snd intends to provide the desired transparency. Almost all results of the working groups and plenary sessions are documented here. It comprises two parts of the workshop: the first part is about the processing of the field assessment by the group who carried out the assessment. The second workshop part was feedback of the assessment results to managers (including senior EARO managers) by the assessment group. The whole group identified ways to move forward.
Using n-dimensional hypervolumes for species distribution modelling: A response to Qiao et al. (†)
Hypervolume approaches are used to quantify functional diversity and quantify environmental niches for species distribution modelling. Recently, Qiao et al. (2016) criticized our geometrical kernel density estimation (KDE) method for measuring hypervolumes. They used a simulation analysis to argue that the method yields high error rates and makes biased estimates of fundamental niches. Here, we show that (a) KDE output depends in useful ways on dataset size and bias, (b) other species distribution modelling methods make equally stringent but different assumptions about dataset bias, (c) simulation results presented by Qiao et al. (2016) were incorrect, with revised analyses showing performance comparable to other methods, and (d) hypervolume methods are more general than KDE and have other benefits for niche modelling. As a result, our KDE method remains a promising tool for species distribution modelling.
Scenario Development as a Basis for Formulating a Research Program on Future Agriculture: A Methodological Approach
To increase the awareness of society to the challenges of global food security, we developed five contrasting global and European scenarios for 2050 and used these to identify important issues for future agricultural research. Using a scenario development method known as morphological analysis, scenarios were constructed that took economic, political, technical, and environmental factors into account. With the scenarios as a starting point future challenges were discussed and research issues and questions were identified in an interactive process with stakeholders and researchers. Based on the outcome of this process, six socioeconomic and biophysical overarching challenges for future agricultural were formulated and related research issues identified. The outcome was compared with research priorities generated in five other research programs. In comparison, our research questions focus more on societal values and the role of consumers in influencing agricultural production, as well as on policy formulation and resolving conflicting goals, areas that are presently under-represented in agricultural research. The partly new and more interdisciplinary research priorities identified in Future Agriculture compared to other programs analyzed are likely a result of the methodological approach used, combining scenarios and interaction between stakeholders and researchers