The use of crop wild relatives (CWR) genes to improve crop performance is well established with important examples dating back more than 60 years. In this paper, we review available information on ...the presence of genes from CWR in released cultivars of 16 mandate crops of the CGIAR institutes, and some selected additional crops, focusing on the past 20 years--the period since a comprehensive review by Robert and Christine Prescott-Allen in 1986. It appears that there has been a steady increase in the rate of release of cultivars containing genes from CWR. While there continues to be a strong emphasis on using pest and disease resistance genes, a wider range of characteristics are being introduced than in the past. Those crops whose wild relatives have traditionally been used as sources of useful traits (e.g., wheat, tomato) continue to be most likely to include new genes from their wild relatives. CWR are continually gaining in importance and prevalence, but, we argue, their contributions to the development of new cultivars remain less than might have been expected given improved procedures for intercrossing species from different gene pools, advances in molecular methods for managing backcrossing programes, increased numbers of wild species accessions in gene banks, and the substantial literature on beneficial traits associated with wild relatives.
Small and medium forest enterprises (SMFEs) are small firms in developing countries aimed at generating income from a diverse set of forest-related activities. They result in multiple dimensions of ...economic, social, and cultural prosperity in forest-dependent economies, and as such they constitute an important strategy for fostering prosperity. However, SMFEs face a number of barriers and challenges, including inhospitable or incompatible regulatory environments, difficulties achieving economies of scale, and insufficient access to technical and financial capacity to overcome these issues. Through a comprehensive literature review of scholarly research published on the subject of SMFE failures and successes, our study addressed the following question: what political, economic, and socio-cultural conditions are needed for SMFEs to thrive? In answering this question, we identified and characterized twelve (12) emergent critical success factors (CSFs) of enabling business environments: macroeconomic setting, regulatory frameworks, forest law enforcement, tenure and ownership rights, management and land use planning rights, markets, natural capital, financial capital, forest management capacities, business management capacities, organizational capacities, and clustering. The integrative enabling environment framework proposed in our study can be used as a tool by practitioners seeking to promote SMFEs through programs of support or policy reforms. By considering the various CSFs that act as the foundation for successful SMFE development, the efficacy of forest-dependent livelihood interventions aiming to achieve prosperity around the world can be meaningfully enhanced.
•Individual small and medium forest enterprises (SMFEs) need external and internal critical success factors (CSFs) to thrive•External CSFs: macroeconomics, regulations, law enforcement, tenure, management rights, markets, and natural capital•Internal CSFs: financial capital, forest management, business management, organizational capacities, and clustering•CSFs have varying interplaying roles and impacts depending on context, and can be put in place by a wide array of actors•Collectively, they allow SMFEs to be pathways to prosperity for forest-dependent communities in developing countries
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
•Three novel trends in community forest management literature are identified.•Studies examine REDD+ projects, superimposed on CFM institutions, and what they contribute to CFM goals.•Studies analyze ...cost-effectiveness and inner workings of community forest enterprises.•Studies use secondary socio-economic and environmental datasets to determine outcomes of CFM.
Community forest management (CFM) has been promoted worldwide as a means to conserve forests, recognize community rights, and improve local livelihoods. Here, we synthesize findings across recent CFM studies and identify two thematic and one methodological trend at the forefront of CFM scholarship. The first thematic trend is an examination of community forest enterprises as hybrid business models. The second is the increase of studies examining how REDD+ can contribute to the goals of CFM, and vice versa. The key methodological trend is the use of secondary data sets to determine outcomes of CFM policies at regional and national scales. These three trends add new perspectives to the debate on the effectiveness of CFM as a forest policy and institutional intervention.
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GEOZS, IJS, NUK, OILJ, SBJE, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZRSKP
Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) has emerged as an important and cost-effective climate change mitigation strategy internationally. In many localities around the ...world, REDD+ and related interventions have been superimposed on, and overlap with, existing decentralized institutional arrangements such as community forests. These interventions often modify local institutions through new rules and practices that comply with mostly carbon-related objectives, prompting questions about the compatibility of a top-down mechanism such as REDD+ with the decentralized approaches of community forestry. Thus, we asked: are REDD+ interventions in community forests enhancing or detracting from communities' abilities to practice adaptive management and governance-key desired components of local social-ecological resilience and the ability of communities to respond to disturbance and global change? We conducted a systematic review of studies examining REDD+ interventions in community forests. We extracted data on 59 case studies reported on in 43 articles, stemming from 14 countries, with two thirds of the cases located in two countries alone. Our meta-analysis found that REDD+ has had mixed impacts on communities' social-ecological resilience. Increases in network ties, connectivity across scales, and increased participation in decision making are indicators of enhanced potential for local adaptability. However, we also see that, through restrictions on local forest practices, rigidity in rules, and communities' natural capital being locked into carbon contracts, REDD+ has limited communities' ability to manage for uncertainty. While not representative of all existing REDD+ projects, our results suggest important implications for REDD+ policymakers and forest-reliant communities engaging in REDD+. Reconciling REDD+ goals with the need for forest communities to retain adaptive capacity will be a challenge moving forward, particularly if REDD+ compromises the ability of forest-reliant communities to respond to unexpected shocks or their ability to adapt to changing environmental or economic conditions.
This editorial reflects on the history of the conservation movement, the strong continuing influence of its colonial past, and the counter‐emergence of a more pluralistic and respectful worldview. ...Conservation Letters seeks to support and foster an ethical and inclusive discipline of conservation that discards elements of its colonial and racist history. This will involve broadening the disciplinary scope of “conservation” and paying greater attention to traditional ecological knowledge and nonwestern conservation approaches. We also see a particular need for theoretical advances that guide conservation practice by informing and connecting different kinds of expertise to understand social‐ecological interactions and their implications for both people and ecosystems. Conservation can and should play a vital role in securing the joint future of ecosystems and people, but it will only achieve its full potential if it retains its social license and stays relevant to emerging concerns and values.
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FZAB, GIS, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
•Oaxacan community forest enterprises face trade-offs between their social performance and more profit-oriented aims.•Organizational features adopted to increase profit often hurt aspects of social ...performance such as trust and participation.•Communities actively navigated and, in some cases, mitigated trade-offs between their social and financial performance.•The trade-offs we found among community forest enterprises can also be found among other forms of social enterprise.•Acknowledging trade-offs allows communities to better weigh and respond to the consequences of organizational changes.
Community forest enterprises (CFEs) have been promoted globally in conservation and rural development initiatives. CFEs, which are considered social firms, commercialize various forest products and services to provide income, employment, public goods, and services. However, as with other social firms, CFEs may experience a tension between generating revenue and fulfilling their social mission. We explored this tension through a qualitative case study that examined the organizational choices of four CFEs in Oaxaca, Mexico, including the processes and practices they adopted that prioritized their social mission or more profit-oriented aims, and the way they navigated the tensions between their social and financial goals. Interviews revealed that the different organizational features of CFEs, including leadership structures, decision-making processes, enterprise locations, and benefit-distribution schemes, often elevated CFEs’ social mission or more profit-oriented aims, typically at the cost of the other. With some exceptions, we found that the organizational processes and practices CFEs adopted to generate more revenue often negatively impacted trust, transparency, and participation. We build on scholarship that has documented tensions between historical communal governance and enterprise management in Mexico by demonstrating how communities are modifying their organizational structures in ways that blur the lines between traditional governance and enterprise management and, in some cases, in ways that mitigate trade-offs. Better understanding organization and associated trade-offs may allow CFEs–or other stakeholders interested in their proliferation and success–to make more transparent and deliberate decisions and avoid or adapt to undesirable outcomes and unanticipated consequences. As CFEs are promoted and replicated globally, our study is an important step in understanding the perverse outcomes and unintended feedbacks that arise from enterprise organization and illustrates the tension between social and financial performance in CFEs.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
Emerging from the conflict and gridlock that characterized forest management in the Pacific Northwest in the 1970s–1990s, community-based forest management offered a path forward. As forest ...collaboratives have gained in number and prominence, a shift towards social forestry, network governance consisting of collaborative processes that drive or influence U.S. Forest Service decision-making has taken root. In this era of social forestry, and as decentralization of natural resource management continues to increase, it has become increasingly important to understand the ways that power dynamics and decision-making processes have shifted. This qualitative, embedded case study research assesses the power dynamics between forest collaboratives and the Forest Service, and how these power dynamics impact the policy outcomes of the collaboratives. Our research reveals that forest collaboratives bring an added layer of institutionalization and public engagement in the decision-making process with their own suite of power dynamics. These findings suggest an increasing importance of non-state actors in forest management where collaboratives are providing increased access to knowledge and financial resources while also lending increased legitimacy and public trust to the Forest Service.
•Forest collaboratives are not absent of power dynamics.•Forest collaboratives add an additional layer of institutionalization and public engagement in forest management.•Non-state actors provide increase knowledge and funding to forest management.•Non-state actors lend increased legitimacy and public trust to the Forest Service.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
In Ghana, small and medium-scale forest enterprises (SMFEs) provide income and livelihoods for three million people and supply a growing domestic timber demand. However, most SMFEs operate in the ...informal sector, and thus have become a target for current forest sector reforms stemming from Ghana's involvement in two international mechanisms: FLEGT and REDD. This paper examines how SMFEs are being incorporated into FLEGT and REDD plans, and asks whether reforms under these mechanisms will serve to advance SMFEs in the country while tackling illegal and unsustainable forest activities. The analysis shows that FLEGT-related reforms will target governance issues downstream in the domestic lumber supply chain, without tackling a root cause of illegalities and challenges within the SMFE sector: tree tenure. In contrast, REDD planning includes a strong focus on the illusive tenure issue, but to date has placed little emphasis on SMFE promotion. The paper concludes that reforms associated with both mechanisms may work complementarily to advance a legal and sustainable SMFE sector, but only if local communities are incentivized to manage forest and tree resources through clarification of land and tree tenure. Reasons for why tenure reform has been such a sticking point are discussed.
•FLEGT and REDD reforms are attempting to formalize small-scale forest enterprises.•Reforms may lead to improved forest governance along domestic timber supply chain.•Tree tenure remains a stumbling block in promoting a legal and sustainable industry.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
While multilateral agencies have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the forestry sector to curb deforestation, mitigate climate change, and improve local livelihoods, there is a lack of ...rigorous empirical analyses demonstrating past investments' effectiveness in improving livelihoods. We investigate such programs' effectiveness in changing livelihoods by estimating the Forest Investment Program (FIP)’s short-term impacts in Ghana. We do not find significant changes in income, expenditure, and food security of households in FIP communities compared with non-FIP communities post-FIP. However, households in FIP communities with increased monitoring and enforcement activities decreased the harvest of forest products, which caused forest-dependent households to allocate their labor toward own farm production. These results suggest mitigation programs relying on increased monitoring and enforcement should also support practical ways to offset negative livelihood impacts from the decreased harvest of forest products.
•Ghana's Forest Invest Program (FIP) did not change income and food security.•Increased monitoring by FIP decreased the harvest of forest products.•Forest-dependent households adapted by increasing on-farm production.•Programs that limit forest access should support non-forest livelihood strategies.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
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