This book for the first time brings together a suite of effective methods as a guidance on how to deal with the needs of local communities and biodiversity in landscapes required by decision makers. The techniques provide conventional biophysical descriptions of the landscape and explicitly relate this information to local needs, preferences and value systems. These methods can be used to guide future research and to make recommendations on options about land use and policy. The methods described in this report also provide a foundation for deeper dialogue with the forest communities.

This document is intended for those interested in gathering natural resource information that reflects the needs of local communities. It describes a multidisciplinary survey developed with indigenous communities in the fores-rich landscapes of the Malinau watershed in East Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo). The final methods reflect a mixture of judgements, compromises and reactions to trials over many months. It is intended that it is useful to readers from diverse backgrounds given the multidisciplinary nature of the procedures described. This is not intended as a manual.

This paper provides a global review of the link from forests to poverty alleviation. Definitions are clarified and the key concepts and indicators related to livelihoods and policy reduction and prevention are explored--distinguishing between the analysis and the measurements of poverty. Reviewing the macro-level literature on the relationship between economic growth, inequality and poverty, the authors found that economic growth usually does trickle down to the poor and that poverty reduction without growth is in practice very difficult to achieve.

In this guidebook, we share suggestions for how a team of facilitators and a community forest user group (CFUG) can catalyse and maintain an approach to governance and management that draws on and strengthens the CFUG’s own adaptive and collaborative capacities. This approach fits within the Community Forestry framework and supports CFUGs in addressing two fundamental challenges: equity and the generation of livelihood benefits.

This study analyses Indonesia’s experience with its Reforestation Fund, and examines implications for REDD+. The Reforestation Fund (Dana Reboisasi, DR) is a national forest fund financed by a volume-based timber levy to support reforestation and forest rehabilitation. Since 1989, the fund has had receipts of US $5.8 billion. During the Soeharto era, the Ministry of Forestry allocated more than US $1.0 billion in cash grants and loans from the Reforestation Fund to promote commercial plantation development.

As community involvement in natural forest management expands and matures, the need to lodge the rights and obligations of both state and community in workable and legally binding institutional frameworks becomes more pressing. This is particularly so where power and authority are being redistributed. This publication looks specifically at Tanzania, where forest-local communities are beginning to be designated as the management authority of particular woodlands and, in some cases, even their owners.

Bulungan regency is the northern part of the province of East Kalimantan, Indonesia. In the course of the last decade, Kalimantan's or Borneo's hinterland has been the target of unprecedented non-timber forest products (NTFP) collecting activity. More intensive NTFP use has contributed to unsustainable extractive practices and environmental damage and to deep social and political disruption. This book examines northern East Kalimantan's trade networks. The historical scope extends from about 1880 to present and primarily focus on Long Pujungan and Malinau districts.

Projects implemented as part of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol will have the dual mandate of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and contributing to sustainable development. Basic agreement on core elements was reached in 2001, including the decision to allow afforestation and reforestation projects. However, it is not yet clear what rules will address social concerns.

Very large numbers of the rural poor derive some part of their livelihood inputs from forest resources, in different ways and to different extents. For many the dependence on forests is a function of their poverty, because they lack better alternatives. Helping meet their subsistence and survival needs can therefore be as important a role for forestry aid as supporting those able to increase their incomes through forest activities, but needs to avoid encouraging forms of forest dependence that could lock the very poor into continued poverty.