Indonesia has turned its alleged role as global leader of land-based carbon emissions into a role as a global trailblazer exploring modalities for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+). REDD+ readiness is largely about improving forest governance, but this itself is a multilayered concept. This article analyses how the processes and practices of REDD+ readiness are leading to various forest governance reforms in Indonesia.

SUMMARYThis paper analyses the differences between forestland tenure systems in Canada and the US. Evolution of the two systems is primarily explained by variation of scarcity and land productivity. In early colonial times, Canada's economy was tightly linked to the fur trade with Indian people, while New England's economy was based more on agriculture with more intensive land use.

Land degradation is a gradual, negative environmental process that is accelerated by human activities. Its gradual nature allows degradation to proceed unnoticed, thus reducing the likelihood of appropriate and timely control action. Presently, there are few practical frameworks to help countries design national strategies and policies for its control. The study presented here developed a framework for the national assessment of land degradation. This framework is envisaged to support governments in formulating policies on land degradation.

The first few years of tropical forest restoration can be expensive, especially when applied to expansive areas. In light of this, passive restoration has been recommended as a considerably cheaper or even free alternative. There are, however, both direct and indirect costs associated with passive restoration. First, the longer recovery time that is typically required in passive restoration can be perceived as project failure, especially when compared with nearby active restoration efforts.

Slash-and-burn shifting cultivation is the conventional farming practice in Sierra Leone, where communal land tenure is by far the most common form of land use. Alley farming, the alternative agricultural system, has been introduced as a technical option to increase yield, reduce or eliminate fallow and conserve soil water. This study uses a logistic regression model to determine the factors influencing the adoption of alley farming in Sierra Leone.

Many of the large, donor-funded community-based conservation projects that seek to reduce biodiversity loss in the tropics have been unsuccessful. There is, therefore, a need for empirical evaluations to identify the driving factors and to provide evidence that supports the development of context-specific conservation projects.

There has been renewed interest in the academic discourse on land reforms due to recent high profile works suggesting a positive correlation between reforms and poverty reduction. Land is held under different tenure regimes in different regions, countries and communities. These are often in the form of community tenure, state tenure, individual tenure or a mixture of two or three of them. However, land reformers are in constant debate as to which of the three offers the most appropriate pathway to poverty reduction.

Protected area downgrading, downsizing and degazettement (PADDD) is a global phenomenon that has not received formal attention in Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) policies designed to reduce forest carbon emissions and conserve biodiversity. Here, we examine how PADDD affects deforestation and forest carbon emissions. We documented 174 enacted and 8 proposed PADDD events affecting more than 48,000 km² in three REDD+ priority countries: Democratic Republic of the Congo, Malaysia, and Peru.

Global changes in climate today present hostile weather conditions which pose considerable threats to the rich and poor alike. The capacity for developing countries to cope with these impacts is weak and a development concern. The post-conflict West African nation of Sierra Leone is no exception. In fact, rural areas are exposed to high degrees of vulnerability, livelihood insecurity and hostile environments. This paper explores the experiences of rural people and identifies impacts and coping mechanisms used in response to these changes.

The term, Working Knowledge, is introduced to describe the content of a local cross-cultural knowledge recovery and integration project focussed on the indigenous-owned Oriners pastoral lease near Kowanyama on the Cape York Peninsula, Queensland. Social and biophysical scientific researchers collaborated with indigenous people, non-indigenous pastoralists, and an indigenous natural resource management (NRM) agency to record key ecological, hydrological and geomorphological features of this intermittently occupied and environmentally valuable ‘flooded forest’ country.