Social media should enable professional bodies to improve their communication with members, policy makers and the general public. Current use of the internet, particularly of social media, by foresters in the United Kingdom was surveyed to determine opportunities for their professional body, the Institute of Chartered Foresters (ICF) to improve engagement. Existing use of social media was high, especially by younger early career Associate Members. This indicated an opportunity for the ICF to provide continuing professional development training via forms of social media such as live streamed on-line seminars (a webinar). A pilot webinar on forests and carbon was given to a small group of participants who then completed a short on-line survey to record their experience. Responses to the pilot webinar were positive. Implications for forestry in the UK and for other professional bodies are discussed.

The storage of carbon in harvested wood products (HWP) is an important forestry issue in the United Nations Framework on Climate Change Convention. Given that China is a large HWP-trading country, studies on carbon storage and flow of HWP trade are important to help mitigate carbon concentrations in this country. Total carbon storage has continuously increased, and the accumulated carbon storage of HWP in use is greater than that from wood harvested in China. The average annual changes in carbon stock from 1961 to 2011 based on stock-change, production, and atmospheric-flow approaches were 10.6, 7.6, and 2.6 Mt C per year, respectively. Carbon flow in wood product imports has increased constantly, thereby increasing carbon stocks via a stock-change approach. Based on atmospheric-flow approach, large imports of primary wood materials increased the carbon emissions. As a result, the trade of HWP has made HWP in China become a “carbon source.”

Within the perspective of evolving negotiations for Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD), the opportunity costs of deforestation are regarded as the basis for constructing a REDD mitigation cost curve. This paper presents a land-use model that measures the impact of economic and physical variables on farmers' decisions about the allocation of their land among competing uses in Brazil. It is based on a multi-output land allocation model with agricultural land as a fixed input that is to be allocated. For the first time such a land allocation model has been estimated that explicitly separates all main competing uses for forest in Brazil — soybeans, sugarcane and pasture. Our results suggest a clear substitution effect between land allocation for forest and soybeans, and for forest and pasture. The results presented here contribute to the understanding of farmers' land use decisions while providing an estimate of the opportunity costs of deforestation at the county level in Brazil.

As gum arabic is widely used in food and non-food industries, demand is high all over the world. Still, smaller production countries in West Africa such as Cameroon, Niger and senegal seem to have so many difficulties producing and commercializing gum arabic that their market shares have declined significantly over the years despite their production potential. This paper reviews the development of the gum arabic market chains in Cameroon, Niger and senegal, in order to evaluate the limiting factors and identify appropriate strategies to the sector progress. The main challenges in production and commercialization are limited knowledge and management of resources, pricing and quality. Some of the general strategies that could improve performance are the professionalization of the sector, the integration of Acacia senegal development into rural economic activities, capacity building for producers and other actors, and the organization of the marketing system.

Small-scale timber plantations have increasingly become an important source of wood supply in Indonesia. One important government-driven community tree-growing strategy inside state forests was initiated under the Community Forestry Scheme (CFS). The paper explores the feasibility of this strategy as the basis for developing commercially competitive management. The primary challenge to feasibility had been the high dependency of local communities on land inside state forest for cultivating food and cash crops. Feasibility was also determined by low current standing stocks of planted timber, as a result of illegal logging and forest encroachment under open access conditions due to the delay in involving communities. Ways forward include easing the bureaucratic procedures to hand over exclusive rights in state forest management to local communities. In order to maintain long-term community commitments to the tree-growing programme, it is important to have secured timber benefits, improving community business skills, as well as ensuring cost-effective government investment.

Illegal logging is a major global problem causing damage to forests, indigenous people and to the economies of the main wood producer countries. Europe as a whole is an important producer and consumer partner and it is likely that the circulation of illegal wood also takes place within EU borders. This Review tries to identify the main EU wood suppliers and discuss the discrepancies in official and non-official statistical data between wood production and consumption, which difficult the accurate validation of the suspicious flows. The importance of Voluntary Partnership Agreements within the EU and main producer countries is emphasized. Finally, and despite the measures to tackle illegal logging, all initiatives must be extensive and uniform throughout the EU and focused in the use of certified timber.

Rural households are being forced to cope and adapt to changing availability of important forest resources while also dealing with the devastating effects of HIV/AIDS. The purpose of this study was to explore the range of local forest-related coping strategies being used, and innovations that local people would like to try, to alleviate the HIV/AIDS burden on rural households in Malawi. The data were collected from sixty semi-structured interviews with local respondents. The results confirm the use of a range of labour-related coping strategies associated with one of four important forest resources (firewood, water, medicinal plants, thatch grass), along with other broad economic, social, and nutritional coping strategies. Interventions that policy makers and development practitioners could provide in order to foster the most commonly used coping strategies include: provisioning households with required forest resources; investing in agroforestry projects and the domestication of important medicinal plants, wild vegetables and indigenous fruits; and strengthening indigenous responses such as savings clubs and labour and draught power clubs.

Considerable efforts are being deployed to reduce illegal forestry activities in the Congo basin forests, but these efforts seem to be concentrated on illegal timber logging and wildlife poaching to the neglect of other illegal forest activities such as Non Timber Forests Products (NTFP) harvesting and trade. This paper applies a choice experiment approach to evaluate policy options that are hypothesised to provide incentives for small scale forest actors to comply with the forestry law governing trade in NTFP in Cameroon. Data was collected from 70 traders. Based on willingness to pay measures, it was revealed that the options most preferred by the sampled traders included a decentralisation of the application process to obtain permits and a reduction in the volume of paper work involved in the process. The authors conclude that acknowledging the preferences of small scale actors can be relevant in reducing illegality in the forestry sector.

Gum arabic has a wide range of industrial uses worldwide and is collected in sparsely populated dry land regions typically inhabited by poor households. In the study sample of 201 households in northern Kenya, observed marketed quantities were low. Primary data collected through personal interviews were complemented by GIS data on precipitation and vegetation cover. An economic model was developed in which a shortage of rainfall decreases the return to alternative sources of income by more than the return to gum collection, which point to an increasing relative return to gum collection, thus explaining why rainfall shortage can have a positive effect on marketed quantities. Regression results confirm this prediction. We conclude that gum arabic collection is an activity with low economic returns yet provides a safety net when other sources of income fall short.