The importance of the role of local community forestry institutions towards forest conservation is exemplified through a comparison of two adjacent areas within the Central Yucatan Peninsular Region (CYPR) in which Land-Use Cover Change (LUCC) analyses were conducted. We also used logistic regression analyses to examine key environmental, socioeconomic and institutional drivers associated with deforestation.

This article examines how property rights expectations affect resource management incentives. It utilizes expected property rights over different timespans and of different strengths, corresponding to (a) investments of different intensities and (b) farmers' sense of security regarding their often de facto property rights. The results suggest that property rights and their alienability in ten-year time matter to intensive infrastructural investments, although not to lighter investments.

This study analyzes forest change in an area of Nepal that signifies a delicate balance between sustaining the needs and livelihood of a sizable human population dependent on forest products, and an effort to protect important wildlife and other natural resources.

Over the last 130 years, patterns of land use in central Australia have altered dramatically, and so too have fire regimes and fire management objectives. Although Aboriginal people still have tenure over large parts of the landscape, their lifestyles have changed. Most Aboriginal people now live in towns and settlements and, although fire management is still culturally important, the opportunities for getting out on country to burn are constrained. Large parts of the landscape are now used for pastoral production.

Smallholders in many tropical highlands cause serious environmental damage. The Cameron Highlands of Malaysia offer an excellent opportunity for studying how farmers interact with environment, changing markets, infrastructure development, indigenous peoples, and tourism, and how these shape innovation. Our surveys in 2002-2004, 2006 and 2007 show that farmers have intensified production and in doing so some have adopted less damaging practices. We assess trends and causation of changes; this offers opportunities for more proactive management.

A new social forestry program has been implemented in Java to overcome encroachment of state forests. In this program, the state and local communities jointly manage the state forests and share the benefits of increased forest resource stock and flow as a result of the management. This article aims to investigate the complete incentive structure of the social forestry program and how the incentive structure changes community member participation in forest management. Property rights transfers and economic analyses were employed to analyze the incentive structure.

We investigated the relationships of land tenure, biological, cultural and spatial variables and their effect on the intensity of management of 20 edible plants used by the Santa Maria Tecomavaca community in Oaxaca State, Mexico. We developed a non-linear generalized model showing that land ownership, cultural importance and biological characteristics of a plant are the most significant factors influencing farmers' decisions to intensify management of plant resources.

This study looks at wood curio carving in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, Africa. Although the local people, Ndebele and Shona, have always carved, they now face a weakened economy, due in large part to land reforms in 2000. Thus, more people sculpt wood as a form of livelihood. As one man said “Starvation taught me art”. As a result, gender roles are shifting as men and women begin to enter realms previously reserved for the other. Environmentally, carvers poaching trees deforests the woodlands. As more individuals turn to making crafts sustainability deteriorates.

Among the remaining tropical forests of lowland Latin America, many are inhabited by indigenous peoples, and the sustainability of their land uses is a point of heated debate in the conservation community. Numerous small-scale studies have documented changes in indigenous land use in individual communities in the context of expanding frontier settlements and markets, but few studies have included larger populations or multiple ethnic groups.

The Cambodia environment monitor 2008 is one of a series of environmental reports prepared for East Asian countries under an initiative sponsored by the World Bank. The objective of this series is to present a snapshot of environmental trends across a range of issues. The purpose of the monitor is to engage and inform interested stakeholders about key environmental changes in an easy to understand format accessible to a wide audience. This report identifies seven strategic priorities for the Royal government of Cambodia and its conservation partners.

Cette étude sur les transactions foncières dans les campagnes cambodgiennes part d’un double constat. D’une part, la politique foncière cambodgienne, essentiellement structurée par un grand programme de cadastrage et d’immatriculation foncière (LMAP) financé par la Banque mondiale, ignore les relations foncières ne correspondant pas au modèle de la propriété privée individuelle, à savoir les droits délégués et les modes de faire-valoir indirect.