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This study examines and characterizes the potential impacts of climate change on the lands of the Nisga'a Nation in British Columbia, Canada, and how these impacts might affect traditional forest practices. The study results were integrated with a review of current Nisga'a forest policy. The current forest policy has developed an inflexible approach to forest management that perpetuates a top-down decision-making framework inherited from the past relationship with the provincial government. Building from the experiences of the Nisga'a Nation, it is revealed that inflexible forest policies coupled with climate change impacts could lead the forest ecosystems to ecological thresholds. No approach by itself will be sufficient to meet the challenges these changes will bring to Indigenous peoples and society in general. An integrative approach, where the forest management is undertaken from a resilience point of view, is needed if current conditions are to be improved.

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Co-management in the Rema-Kalenga Wildlife Sanctuary was evaluated to assess how fairly capital assets were considered in the beneficiary selection, and to what extent it affected vegetation cover. A semi-structured questionnaire survey was employed to collect necessary information along with satellite images. The study revealed that many variables of social capital and a few variables of natural and financial capital played a significant role in the participant selection process. Analysis of dependency showed that the participants did not rely significantly on the forest both in terms of resource collection and their monetary value implying that the most dependent people were not adequately represented in the co-management team. The dominance of local leaders suppressed the voices of others in the management venture. An increase in forest vegetation cover was observed during the project period, although shortly after the end of co-management projects a slight deterioration of forest cover was noted. The findings of the study can serve as a guide in the future application of community forestry programmes in protected areas of Bangladesh and elsewhere in the world within similar socio-physiographic settings.

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The formalisation of community forestry through legal registration could enhance the tenure security of local communities, although its effectiveness remains unclear. The issue of whether Thailand's registration programme strengthened the tenure security of community forests and altered their customary forest institutions was investigated. The tenure security and forest management of registered community forests with varying levels of tenure disputes were compared across five different localities. The formalisation process and its effects on tenure security were discussed with representatives from communal forest committees and forest officials. Findings indicated that neither management organisation nor forest rules were altered following registration but remained adapted to local forest uses. Moreover, forest communities were confident in the assurance of their use and management rights. The registration generally enabled communities to prevent further forest encroachment and resolve conflicts if forest officials and police provided support. However, limited financial resources hindered communities to manage and monitor forests effectively.

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Participatory forestry has been recognized as a tool for improving tropical forest management. The current study assessed the impacts of participatory forest management (PFM) on the structure and regeneration of a mangrove forest at Gazi Bay, Kenya. Data were collected along belt transects perpendicular to the waterline in both co-managed and state-managed mangrove forests. Basal area and standing density were significantly higher in the co-managed mangrove forests (16 m²/ha and 4 341 tree/ha) as compared to the state forests (eastern block 10.3 m²/ha and 2 673 trees/ha; western block 6.2 m²/ha and 2 436 trees/ha). There were significantly higher (p = 0.0068) densities of merchantable poles in community-managed as compared to state-managed forests. Natural regeneration patterns in community-managed and state-managed forests were deemed adequate to support the recovery of both forests. The results demonstrate that community participation contributes to improved management of mangrove forests and is in agreement with the principles of sustainable forest management.

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Riparian communities activities threaten conservation in biosphere reserves in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The Yangambi Biosphere Reserve (YBR) is no exception to this degradation. Thus, the objective of the presents study was to elucidate the local factors underlying the high pressure on natural resources and analyze the complexity of biosphere reserve zoning management using an interdisciplinary approach combining document review, field surveys and semi-structured interviews.

Our results revealed that the zoning applied to the YBR did not take into account social dynamics. With population growth, the riparian community is doomed to remain in restricted areas, leading to over-exploitation of the space and land degradation, forcing the population to travel long distances to reach fertile plots into the protected area. Also, the lack of employment and the absence of participatory zoning also exacerbate tensions between the manager and the riparian community. For an effective management of the YBR, political authorities should become more involved in the participatory zoning of conservation areas and village exploitations. In addition, they should improve farming techniques to mitigate soil degradation.

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This paper draws on a study conducted in the selected districts of Iringa and Njombe regions in the Southern Highlands of Tanzania where over the past decade Non-industrial Private Forestry (NIPF) has emerged involving village-based domestic investors. Data for the study were largely collected using focus group discussions (FGDs) of men and women tree growers. Data were analysed using content analysis focusing on the emerging themes, subthemes, and patterns. The paper shows that gender division of labour characterizes silvicultural practices in private forestry. Men play a key and dominant role in decision making on the allocation of labour and marketing of timber. We argue that, given this arrangement, as long as men continue to dominate the market sphere, mere ownership of woodlots by women is not a feasible pathway to having control over income obtained from the sales of timber from their woodlots. To address this, the paper comes up with some recommendations.

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The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has implemented Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+), a process that requires inclusive decision making and accountability. Our research analyses the participation of policy actors in DRC by asking: (1) Who is involved in national REDD+ policy making and what is their interest in participating in core policy events? (2) What level of participation do the different political actors have in core policy events? (3) To what extent do the outcomes, of REDD+ policy events incorporate different preferences of policy actors? We found that although actors' interest in REDD+ policy events have increased over time, their concerns have rarely been taken into account in decision-making processes. The presence of local civil society and indigenous group organizations is weak while international organizations play a major role in the REDD+ arena. REDD+ is treated as a project rather than being embedded in national politics.

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The study focuses on the importance of institutional factors for the different governance structures of community forestry in Myanmar. The village forest management (VFM) model and sub-village forest management (SVFM) model were characterised using the Institutional Analysis and Development framework of Ostrom (2011) and analysed for how the governance structures influenced the action situation (actors and actions related to management) and the outcomes. The VFM model, despite its bigger group size and smaller forest area, performed better than the SVFM model due to its well-established local institutional arrangements. The inclusion of all villagers in collective actions and equitable benefit sharing in the VFM model reduced conflicts and improved outcomes. In contrast, individual utilisation of community forest patches by only small number of user group members in the SVFM model, in combination with unclear social and physical boundary rules, reduced its sustainability. Further research relating to the governance models as well as other factors is recommended.

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Forest certification has been widely hailed for its positive impacts on implementing sustainable forest management. Despite various adjustments to promote its adoption, most of the world's certified forests are in developed countries, with about 87% in Europe and North America. To analyse the reasons for the slow certification uptake in the developing world, two rounds of literature searches were conducted, and the hindrances identified were then discussed under six themes: forest quality, socioeconomic interactions, governance capacity, certification investment, firm expectations and market responses, and risk aversion and the attitude-behaviour gap. Among them, conventional institutions and governance are the most restrictive constraints. Certification, while a non-state form of governance, may not exercise its regulatory power freely through the market without being impeded by the unfavourable contexts in which it takes hold. Finally, recommendations were proposed from the perspectives of politics, legislation, market, and certification schemes to resolve the hindrances in achieving certification.