The interfaces between high-altitude rangelands and other ecosystems in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region such as forests, wetlands, and agricultural land are suffering from degradation, desertification, and soil erosion, which are further aggravated by climatic and anthropogenic factors. However, more information is needed on the ecological role of high-altitude rangelands and their interfaces as a basis for developing and implementing plans for conservation and sustainable management of these fragile ecosystems.

A growing recognition of the need to delimit the role of the government, to promote the market framework, and to rely on the private sector as the engine of growth, offers the prospect of a new beginning in rural development in Africa. Rural people must take a more dominant role, both in shaping their economic prospects and in assuming the responsibility for a high quality of stewardship of natural resources. To help to bring about such an empowerment of the people, governments and the donors will need to undertake some drastic reforms in the old systems and habits of governance.

In Mesoamerica, coffee is an important part of agricultural GDP and export revenues which supports about half a million farmers, and employs millions of people on the farms and all along the supply chain. This policy brief summarises the potential risks and impacts of climate change on coffee farming in the region. Traditional coffee agroforests provide important ecosystem services and conserve significant carbon stocks.

The violence which followed the contested December 2007 Kenyan election was, arguably, an opportunity for historical grievances to be settled. This paper focuses on the land issue in regards to Kenya, asserting that land is a primary cause of conflcit in the country as it has been the crux of economic, cultural and socio-economic change.

This is the draft report of a scoping study for the Forestry Commission on forests and climate change. The report discusses the role that sustainable forest management can play in mitigating climate change.

Legislation was passed in India in 1992 imparting constitutional status on Panchayati Raj (village-level local government) institutions. This study attempts to assess the success and sustainability of such local institutions (particularly Village Forest Committees) in their attempts to rehabilitate common lands in the Aravalli hills in Haryana State, and to enact a transition from an ‘open access’ system to a community controlled regulated access system for governing the use of these lands.

Over the past century South Africa has become increasingly reliant on the manufacturing and services industries for its economic development and growth. However, the natural environment continues to play an important role in the livelihoods of particularly the poor, those in rural areas and the agriculture sector – the latter being essential for urban living.

Is the formal education system the best avenue for delivery of effective environmental education? Can Ethiopia’s newly decentralised educational administrations work with other arms of government and farmers to tackle the short-term and unsustainable resource exploitation patterns which imperil prospects of ever achieving food self-sufficiency?

The slow progress of the Cadastral Survey Program in the Philippines has been associated with implementation issues that have affected the effectiveness and efficiency of the program. A review of the processes, procedures, and existing institutional set-up in the conduct of cadastral surveys helped identify factors behind the slow progress and delays in implementation.

The triple challenge of rapid population growth, declining agricultural productivity, and natural resource degradation are not isolated from one another; they are intimately related. However, strategic planning and development programming tend to focus on individual sectors such as the environment, agriculture, and population; they do not explicitly take into account the compatibilities and inconsistencies among them. Farm households and their livelihood strategies are at the core of the intersectoral linkages approach advocated in this chapter.

Kissidougou in Guinea, West Africa, is characterised by so-called 'forest islands', relics - it was assumed -of original dense forest cover. It was also assumed that local cultivation practice was to blame for the destruction of the trees. However, as collaborative research led by the School of Oriental and African Studies, the Institute of Development Studies and Guinean researchers discovered, villagers had a different story to tell: that the forest islands had in fact been established over several generations as part of a process of deliberate forest management.