Prior to the eleventh session of the United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF) in 2015 a series of interlinked initiatives took place intended to generate new options for strengthening the international arrangement on forests. The paper analyses these initiatives and identifies the main proposals to emerge from them. It is shown that almost all these proposals were lost or weakened during the negotiation process. One reason for this, it is argued, is the consensual decision making procedures of the UNFF whereby it takes all states to say yes, and only one to say no. This empowers veto states, namely powerful and intransigent states that wish to resist change in key areas. It is also argued that international forest negotiations do not start from a blank page, with ‘textual shadows’, namely precedents from inside and outside the UNFF, delimiting the possibilities available for delegates and, for some issues, leading to the perpetuation of the status quo. The result is that during the formal intergovernmental negotiations creativity is stifled with the textual outputs tending towards a politics of the lowest common denominator.

In 2007, REDD emerged as the leading option for early climate change mitigation. In 2010, after the failure of negotiations at the Copenhagen COP, observers cited REDD projects and other subnational initiatives as examples of the polycentric governance (based on multiple independent actors operating at multiple levels) necessary to move climate change mitigation forward in the absence of a binding international agreement. This paper examines the ways subnational initiatives can and cannot play this role, based on the experiences and opinions of 23 REDD proponent organizations in six countries. These proponents have tested various approaches to climate change mitigation, demonstrating the value of a polycentric approach for promoting innovation and learning. However, from our sample, six initiatives have closed, four no longer label themselves as REDD , only four are selling carbon credits, and less than half view conditional incentives (initially the core innovation of REDD ) as their most important intervention. While polycentric governance in REDD has benefits, it will not enable implementation of REDD as originally conceived unless accompanied by a binding international agreement.

Against a backdrop of growing concerns over REDD implications for tenure of forest-dependent communities, very few scientific studies have attempted to assess the linkages between the two. This paper offers empirical evidences for impacts of REDD intervention based on a case study of Thailand, where de jure state property and de facto tenure apparently co-exist. In contrast to the existing literature proposing positive tenure impacts, the findings suggest that REDD would not be sufficient to incentivize the government to embark on tenure reforms or any improvement of customary tenure and challenge REDD about its incentives for countries to accelerate tenure reforms. The findings also reveal that risks associated with tenure insecurity discouraged REDD investment leading to the withdrawal of the fund altogether. The findings enrich the on-going debates on the tenure impacts, tenure reform and competing agendas and provide insights to support the development of future national strategies and frameworks. The paper moreover proposes measures to create enabling conditions for REDD .

There is a lack of studies analysing the variation in competitive advantage and operational strategies among foreign subsidiaries in the wood product sector, especially in the emerging country context. This research attempts to enhance an understanding of phenomenon with a special focus on foreign subsidiaries in the furniture industry in Vietnam. The qualitative research based on in-depth interviews in eight companies aims to elicit managerial experience in helping foreign subsidiaries overcome external threats during and after a recession period. Our results showed that under the influence of the recent global downturn, companies were affected in many different ways but one common feature has been the higher visibility of raw material legality and certification requirements throughout global trade flows in wooden furniture. In conclusion, from the managerial perspective there is no particular strategy guaranteeing an organization's success; instead, subsidiaries should flexibly enhance their strategic planning based on their own resources, organizational conditions and goals.

Most countries in the Amazon have no clear policy frameworks to provide a legal path for sustainable wildlife management (SWM), including the commercial use of bushmeat. In Colombia, despite efforts to provide more local autonomy in the management of natural resources and the openness towards the sustainable use of wildlife since the 1970s, there are still a number of legal and technical impediments that need to be addressed. In this research, we first compiled evidence of the current illegal trade of bushmeat to justify the need to clarify legal frameworks regulating the activity. Then, we explore the opportunities for legal commercial hunting by rural communities and highlight current bottlenecks. Finally, we report on lessons learnt from past initiatives of sustainable bushmeat use in the country. In our conclusion, we provide some practical recommendations to promote the sustainable use of wildlife, clarify the definition of commercial use for subsistence purposes and legalize sustainable local bushmeat trade by rural communities.

This study clarified the changes in forest management and timber marketing after acquisition of the Indonesian Ecolabelling Institute's community-based forest certification through a case of Gunung Kidul, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. The certification had good effects to improve forest management, although any apparent effects on timber marketing were not observed. Meanwhile, this study observed the potential of certification to help with the acquisition of the Indonesia Timber Legality Assurance System certification under the Voluntary Partnership Agreement of Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade. In order to disseminate the forest certification to small-scale forestry it is necessary to promote selling certified timber and generate a premium price for smallholders. In particular, the challenges of Chain of Custody and the inherent nature of small-scale forestry should be addressed. The dissemination of national forest certification, which provides more appropriate benefits for smallholders and provokes their motivation for sustainable forest management, still remains a big challenge in Indonesia.

Teak traders face indictment for exploiting small-scale teak forest owners and acquiring excessive market shares from the sale of teak stands by taking advantage of smallholders' limited access to markets and market information. To identify the importance of traders in the smallholder teak marketing, we studied the practices of traders along the market chain, including their roles and costs directly related to teak transfer and transformation, and the strategy applied in competing for value creation. The study revealed that traders play an important role. They consistently search the marketplace to link the supply and demand, perform various sorting functions, and serve to minimise and facilitate the number of contacts in the distribution system. Applying cost leadership approach, a way to establish a low cost operation, is among the suggestions for the traders to gain sustainable competitive advantage.

The implementation efficiencies of the Natural Forest Protection Program (NFPP) in ten provinces in Western China are evaluated by using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). Some findings are found that the average technical efficiency of technology is 0.910; the average growth rate of the total factor productivity among ten provinces is minus 13%. And the change in efficiency is predominantly due to technical progress. Some conclusions and recommendations are put forward to enhance the implementation efficiency based on the factor of input and output.

Participatory forest management in China has been a dynamic and evolving process towards sustainable forest management, gradually integrating forest management with rural development by enhancing community participation and benefits derived from forest management. Participatory forest management has been increasingly supported by fiscal policy, land tenure reforms, management models and capacity building initiatives. It has also become an important discourse for sustainable forest management (SFM) in China. Since the early 1990s, we have seen participatory forest management piloted at community levels, scaled to regional levels and institutionalized in policy at the national level. However, obvious challenges for enhanced adoption exist, including institutional barriers, little research, poor practices and a failure to replicate lessons learned from successful cases. To enhance SFM through participatory forest management, it is recommended that China decentralizes forest management, resolves forest tenure issues, improves multi-sectoral cooperation, incorporates the concept of participatory forest management into key forestry programs and enhances capacity for research and practice.

This study analyses spatio-temporal patterns of wildfires in Greece using a multidimensional statistical framework based on non-parametric correlations, principal component analysis, clustering and stepwise discriminant analysis. Specifically, we assess the frequency, seasonal profile, severity and land-use type of 135 178 wildfires which occurred between 2000–2012 in Greece, one of the countries most affected by fire in Europe. Our results show that both the number of fires and the average size of the area covered by fire show a specific seasonal pattern with a marked increase during the dry season. Principal component analysis identifies three dimensions linked with the main type of land-use affected by the fires: (i) medium and large fires primarily affected landscapes composed of forests, mixed woodlands/shrublands and croplands; (ii) small fires mainly affected fragmented landscapes, i.e. those with mosaics of different crops, market gardens and non-vegetated, abandoned or marginal areas; (iii) fires affecting wetlands and pastures occurred particularly in late summer and showing medium-low severity. Hierarchical clustering highlights similarities in spatio-temporal patterns between fire indicators (ignition date, burnt land cover classes, fire size, fire density). K-means clustering allows us to distinguish between low-severity fires occurring in the wet season from intense and frequent fires occurring in the dry season but with distinct land-use selectivity. The research reported here contributes insight into the complexity of wild fires in the Mediterranean region and supports the design of more effective fire prevention measures including sustainable forest management practices and careful regional planning to minimise risk factors.

The paper examines the effects of unilateral trade liberalisation of forest products amongst the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) member countries. It attempts to quantify the gains from liberalised trade when APEC member countries extend their preferential treatment to non-member countries in forest products trade using the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) model. Given that forest products comprise only a relatively small proportion of world merchandise trade, it is expected that trade liberalisation would cause small changes in terms of trade, real GDP, production, consumption and prices of forest products amongst APEC member countries. The results suggest that in general, when more countries participate in trade liberalisation the more welfare could be improved with the exception of the region North America which is comprised of three countries, the United States of America, Canada and Mexico.