As the United Nations Decade on Biodiversity 2011–2020 comes to a close and countries prepare to adopt a post-2020 global biodiversity framework, this edition of The State of the World’s Forests (SOFO) examines the contributions of forests, and of the people who use and manage them, to the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity.

One of the main components of Indonesia's Just Economy policy is extensive and rapid land reform, which targets about 12% of the country's land area for redistribution to farmers and communities by 2019. Much of the reform is occurring on forest land. At the same time, the country has pledged a significant reduction of its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, two thirds of which is to be achieved from forests. Hence agrarian reform potentially conflicts with emission reduction commitments.

Tropical forests in Indonesia are subject to major transformation processes from native forests to other land uses, including rubber agroforestry as well as rubber and oil palm plantation systems. Using content analysis of policy documents, this paper aims at (i) analysing the formal administrative responsibilities related to the four rainforest transformation systems and (ii) based on the informal motives of the competing bureaucracies involved generating hypotheses on their future course of action and related research.

Nine Latin American countries plan to use silvopastoral practices—incorporating trees into grazing lands—to mitigate climate change. However, the cumulative potential of scaling up silvopastoral systems at national levels is not well quantified. Here, we combined previously published tree cover data based on 250 m resolution MODIS satellite remote sensing imagery for 2000–2017 with ecofloristic zone carbon stock estimates to calculate historical and potential future tree biomass carbon storage in Colombian grasslands.

Belowground roles of agroforestry in climate change mitigation (C storage) and adaptation (reduced vulnerability to drought) are less obvious than easy-to-measure aspects aboveground. Documentation on these roles is lacking. We quantified the organic C concentration (Corg) and soil physical properties in a mountainous landscape in Sulawesi (Indonesia) for five land cover types: secondary forest (SF), multistrata cocoa–based agroforestry (CAF) aged 4–5 years (CAF4), 10–12 years (CAF10), 17–34 years (CAF17), and multistrata (mixed fruit and timber) agroforest (MAF45) aged 45–68 years.

Knowledge transfer depends on the motivations of the target users. A case study of the intention of Indonesian coffee farmers to use a tree canopy trimming technique in pine–based agroforestry highlights path-dependency and complexity of social-ecological relationships. Farmers have contracts permitting coffee cultivation under pine trees owned by the state forestry company but have no right to fell trees.

Rapid expansion of unsustainable farming practices in upland areas of Southeast Asia threatens food security and the environment. This study assessed alternative agroforestry systems for sustainable land management and livelihood improvement in northwest Vietnam. The performance of fruit tree-based agroforestry was compared with that of sole cropping, and farmers’ perspectives on agroforestry were documented.

This is a regional overview of the main legal and regulatory questions concerning ownership or access to and management of land-based natural resources. Using the Listening Learning and Sharing (LLS) method, RECOFTC, the Southeast Asia office of the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) and other RRI partners from the Asia region produced a regional overview of the main legal and regulatory questions concerning ownership or access to and management of land-based natural resources.

This report gives an overview of the Woodfuel Integrated Supply/Demand Overview Mapping (WISDOM) analysis carrried out under the Sustainable Forest Management and Bio-Energy Markets to Promote Environmental Sustainability and to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Cambodia (SFM) project in order to understand the viability of fuelwoodbased businesses in its target community forest (CF) sites and to assess their possible integration into an overall energy plan at the commune level.

เอกสารที่รวบรวมข้อมูลพื้นฐานของชุมชนบ้านทุ่งยาวไว้อย่างครบถ้วน เหมาะสำหรับผู้ที่สนใจทั่วไป

The workshop was attended by 89 participants representing government agencies, national assembly, civil society groups, and international organizations working in Lao PDR. In order to share experience of reforming forest tenure from other countries, resource persons were also invited from China, Nepal, Brazil and Vietnam.The key objective of the workshop was to continue the process of learning on forest land tenure reform from various countries, review and reflect on the current states of forest tenure in Lao PDR, and work out on pathways to forest tenure change.

Hand tools are the most commonly used for subsistence or household use when harvesting bamboo or fuelwood. Axes, two-man handsaws and other hand tools are presented and discussed in this factsheet.