The Asia-Pacific Regional Human Development Report (APHDR) focuses on the need for the region to find ways to continue to grow economically, while reducing poverty and tackling climate change and environmental concerns. The report addresses climate challenges facing small island developing states (SIDS) in the region with special attention given to the least developed countries (LDCs), including Kiribati, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.

This policy-brief examines a two year moratorium on new permits for primary natural forest and peat land that came into force in Indonesia on May 20th 2011. The brief aims to inform a range of decision-making actors in developing countries about the nature of improved forestry management in the face of a changing climate. It is asserted that the moratorium demonstrates progress in the areas of: data transparency, industry buy-in, political support and institutional co-ordination.

This report outlines how climate change is expected to have serious environmental, economic, and social impacts in South Africa. It states that rural farmers, whose livelihoods depend on the use of natural resources, are likely to bear the brunt of adverse impacts. The research uses a “bottom-up” approach to gain insights from the farmers themselves based on a farm household survey collected from 794 households in the Limpopo River Basin of South Africa for the farming season 2004–2005.

This study aims at understanding the influence of policy frameworks on climate change adaptation in Uganda. It combines literature review on existing natural resource management policies, focus group discussions with farming communities and interviews with key informants across various policy implementation levels. Findings reveal that even when farmers are exposed to appropriate adaptation practices, adoption is still constrained by limited enforcement of policies and regulations.

This ‘Inside story on climate compatible development’ by the Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN) presents Ecuador’s Socio Bosque programme as a successful example of a voluntary incentive-based scheme with combined environmental and socioeconomic targets. It engages the poorest private and communal forest landholders and, through conservation agreements, offers them annual per-hectare payments in return for maintaining forest cover.

This collection of analyses spotlight cases and interviews with prominent women activists involved in natural resource management in Nepal, Indonesia, the Philippines and China to better understand the diverse challenges faced by Asian women in relation to limited rights and insecure tenure. Despite contextual differences, the studies identify a number of similarities and trends.

The Forests and Climate Change Programme (FORCLIME) is a collaborative project implemented by Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry. The project aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the forestry sector and improve the livelihoods of Indonesia’s poor rural communities. This policy brief discusses the manner in which the FORCLIME initiative is contributing to the development of Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) in Indonesia.

Current land management approaches focus on achieving ecological resilience for natural resources and biological diversity, and socioeconomic resilience for the people who depend on the land for their livelihoods and wellbeing. In the Hindu Kush Himalayan region, landscapes extend across national boundaries and their effective management requires cooperation among the countries sharing the transboundary area, particularly in light of the impacts being experienced from a wide range of drivers of change, including climate change.

This document presents a proposed methodology, and step-by-step guidance, for Participatory Subnational Planning (PSP), tailored to operationalise subnational REDD+ programmes. PSP is a participatory planning method presented as a comprehensive, yet cost-effective approach to identifying: drivers of deforestation and forest degradation; interventions to address these drivers; environmental and social benefits/risks of these interventions; and indicators and monitoring plans.

This paper argues that stakeholder groups – specifically indigenous and local communities living in or directly dependent upon forests – can often offer an important source of knowledge and capacity.

It highlights that these people can support data gathering for safeguard information needs, especially in places where existing monitoring systems cannot do so comprehensively. The paper argues that their involvement is important for protecting their rights, and critical for minimising the risk that REDD+, or the safeguards, could fail to meet their objectives.

Despite the central role of urban areas in socio-economic and geo-political change processes at the local, regional, and global level, as well as in the regional and global biophysical processes, little attention has been paid so far to the complex and dynamic interactions between urban areas and the biophysical and chemical processes of global environmental changes.This book contributes to the knowledge about these interactions.

This guide aims to increase the technical understanding of the treatment of land use under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The land use is defined as land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF) and agriculture, sometimes referred to collectively as agriculture, forestry and other land use (AFOLU). The guide aims to explain key decisions under the UNFCCC related to land use reporting and accounting (e.g. forest-related reference levels, natural disturbances, etc.).