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This research examines the impact of forest management regimes, with various degrees of restriction, on forest conservation in a dry deciduous Indian forest landscape
. Forest change is mapped using Landsat satellite images from 1977, 1990, 1999, and 2011. The landscape studied has lost 1478 km2 of dense forest cover between 1977 and 2011, with a maximum loss of 1002 km2 of dense forest between 1977 and 1990. The number of protected forest areas has increased, concomitant with an increase in restrictions on forest access and use outside protected areas. Interviews with residents of 20 randomly selected villages indicate that in the absence of alternatives, rather than reducing their dependence on forests, communities appear to shift their use to other, less protected patches of forest. Pressure shifts seem to be taking place as a consequence of increasing protection, from within protected areas to forests outside, leading to the creation of protected but isolated forest islands within a matrix of overall deforestation, and increased conflict between local residents and forest managers. A broader landscape vision for forest management needs to be developed, that involves local communities with forest protection and enables their decision-making on forest management outside strict protected areas
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DÃaz, S.; Demissew, S.; Carabias, J.; Joly, C.; Lonsdale, M.; Ash, N.; Larigauderie, A.; Adhikari, J. R.; Arico, S.; Báldi, A.; Bartuska, A.; Baste, I. A.; Bilgin, A.; Brondizio, E.; Chan, K. M. A.; Figueroa, V. E.; Duraiappah, A.; Fischer, M.; Hill, R.; Koetz, T.; Leadley, P.; Lyver, P.; Mace, G. M.; Martin-Lopez, B.; Okumura, M.; Pacheco, D.; Pascual, U.; Pérez, E. S.; Reyers, B.; Roth, E.; Saito, O.; Scholes, R. J.; Sharma, N.; Tallis, H.; Thaman, R.; Watson, R.; Yahara, T.; Hamid, Z. A.; Akosim, C.; Al-Hafedh, Y.; Allahverdiyev, R.; Amankwah, E.; Asah, T. S.; Asfaw, Z.; Bartus, G.; Brooks, A. L.; Caillaux, J.; Dalle, G.; Darnaedi, D.; Driver, A.; Erpul, G.; Escobar-Eyzaguirre, P.; Failler, P.; Fouda, A. M. M.; Fu, B.; Gundimeda, H.; Hashimoto, S.; Homer, F.; Lavorel, S.; Lichtenstein, G.; Mala, W. A.; Mandivenyi, W.; Matczak, P.; Mbizvo, C.; Mehrdadi, M.; Metzger, J. P.; Mikissa, J. B.; Moller, H.; Mooney, H. A.; Mumby, P.; Nagendra, H.; Nesshover, C.; Oteng-Yeboah, A. A.; Pataki, G.; Roué, M.; Rubis, J.; Schultz, M.; Smith, P.; Sumaila, R.; Takeuchi, K.; Thomas, S.; Verma, M.; Yeo-Chang, Y.; Zlatanova, D.
The first public product of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) is its Conceptual Framework
. This conceptual and analytical tool, presented here in detail, will underpin all IPBES functions and provide structure and comparability to the syntheses that IPBES will produce at different spatial scales, on different themes, and in different regions. Salient innovative aspects of the IPBES Conceptual Framework are its transparent and participatory construction process and its explicit consideration of diverse scientific disciplines, stakeholders, and knowledge systems, including indigenous and local knowledge. Because the focus on co-construction of integrative knowledge is shared by an increasing number of initiatives worldwide, this framework should be useful beyond IPBES, for the wider research and knowledge-policy communities working on the links between nature and people, such as natural, social and engineering scientists, policy-makers at different levels, and decision-makers in different sectors of society
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Since the dawn of the nineteenth century, the ecological and cultural landscapes of forest-fringe societies have transformed dramatically
. Growing populations, top-down policies and market forces have led to the rapid depletion of natural wealth and the abandonment of many traditional systems. In rural India, communities are threatened by, among other things, abject poverty, a lack of economic opportunities, and the looming consequences of climate change. Changing global market dynamics and associated development patterns have also brought about changes in community values, attitudes and livelihoods that affect the need, ability and willingness of local people to work collectively in forests
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In this article the authors examine the role of ‘monitoring’, believed to be crucial for effective participatory common property management
. While governing a common pool resource such as forests, there may be conditions that tempt individuals to cheat and gain substantially higher benefits. This is disadvantageous for other participants, and can adversely affect resource condition. Monitoring includes ensuring rule compliance, dealing with infractions and guarding forest areas against outsider entry. Here they examine the impact of institutional structure on monitoring and, consequently, on the effectiveness of forest management. They examine the three most frequent approaches in India, namely community-initiated management, non-governmental organisation (NGO) promoted forest management, and state-sponsored Joint Forest Management (JFM). Through a comparison of three case studies in the Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra in central India, they conducted a detailed comparison of forests that are situated in similar bioclimatic conditions and similar social environments. The authors assess community approaches to monitoring using detailed social interviews with communities and integrate this with an analysis of forest condition at the tree, sapling and seedling level using forest plot data. Their findings indicate that local enforcement has been most effective in the case where forest management was initiated by the community, with better regeneration, and negligible evidence of grazing and fire. Inefficient monitoring was apparent in the state-initiated JFM village, with uncontrolled grazing and fire, leading to heavy damage to the forest. In the third case, with NGO-promoted forest management, greater importance was given to protecting the resource from outsiders, while neglecting the overuse of forest products by the community members
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The degradation of dry tropical forests proceeds more rapidly than that of most moist tropical forests, but despite their importance for human populations as a source of products and environmental services, dry tropical forests rarely become the focus of conservation efforts
. This study explores processes of land cover change in study sites in eastern Guatemala and western Honduras, where dry tropical forests have been declining with the introduction and
expansion of export market crops, especially coffee. Through analyses of remotely sensed images, landscape metrics, and spatially explicit econometric modelling, the transformations occurring across these landscapes are examined and
compared for the period between 1987 and 1996. The results show that the Guatemala region presents greater forest fragmentation, well-developed transportation networks and immigration in a context of strong linkages to coffee
export markets. Net forest regrowth occurs in the Honduran region, while net deforestation occurs in the Guatemalan region. Spatially explicit models indicate that market accessibility and topography alone explain about 60% of the totalvariation in Honduras, but only 51% of the variation in Guatemala. Integration of social data collected through fieldwork indicates that a higher degree of
community organisation to protect forests in Honduras is an important factor in the lower rate of forest transformation, as compared to Guatemala for the same period. In both cases, there is a high degree of dynamism and apparent cyclical
patterns in land cover change. These results suggest that attention to human and ecological cycles, as well as market, infrastructural and topographic factors, can
contribute to the development of effective approaches for the conservation of tropical dry forests
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Among developing countries, Nepal has been an enthusiastic leader in experimenting with participatory systems of forest governance
. This article evaluates the state-initiated implementation of the leasehold forestry programme in Nepal, aimed at providing better livelihoods to the poorest sections of society by leasing patches of degraded forest land for a 40-year period. Using case studies in the middle hills, study was made of the interaction between leasehold forestry users and forest dependent communities that were excluded from the programme. The evaluation of local institutions and forest condition before and after implementation of the programme revealed that there is a high degree of social conflict between users and non-users, with an increase in forest degradation. Nevertheless, in some situations, user groups have developed innovative approaches to conflict resolution, leading to significant improvements in forest biodiversity and biomass levels. It was concluded that it is not enough to simply change existing legislation and put a new institution in place. The degree to which such institutions can survive and succeed in achieving their objectives will depend crucially on how well they interface with existing institutions, and the manner in which this interface evolves over time in response to the needs and expectations of local communities
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