CIFOR: Global study of forests and livelihoods shakes up the terrain

 

Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of articles exploring new research from the Poverty and Environment Network (PEN). Check this space in the coming weeks as new research is released.

 

BOGOR, Indonesia — In the most comprehensive study on the links between forestry and livelihoods to date, researchers have challenged conventional wisdom about key areas, including the importance of environmental income, the roles of men and women in forest-product use, and the function of forests as safety nets.

 

“It’s easy to create stereotypes about what the world is like,” said Arild Angelsen, an economics professor with the Norwegian University of Life Sciences and coordinator of the global study. “Within certain established narratives, there are a lot of nuances and variations.”

 

The global study is the product of the Poverty and Environment Network (PEN), a collaborative effort led by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR). Five complementary research papers tackle the themes of income generation and rural livelihoods, safety nets during shortfalls, gender and forest use, forest clearing and livelihoods, and tenure and forest income. The papers appear in a special issue of World Development alongside one PEN case study and six non-PEN studies ranging from micro-level cases to national-level analyses.

 

Highlights of findings from the global study of a broad sample of around 8,000 households in 24 countries include the following:

♦ Income from natural forests and other natural areas accounted for 28 percent of total household income, nearly as much as crops.

♦ State forests generated more income than private or community forests.

♦ Men generated at least as much income from forests as women do, contradicting long-held assumptions.

♦ Forests were less important than previously believed as “safety nets” in response to shocks and as gap fillers between seasonal harvests.

♦ While the most destitute of poor farmers are often blamed for deforestation, they played only a modest role in forest clearing.

 

“I was admittedly a little surprised that environmental incomes were so high,” said Sven Wunder, who directs CIFOR’s Brazil office and is the lead guest editor of the Special Issue. “Our results indicate that, even some 10,000 years after the start of the Agricultural Revolution, rural folks in developing countries still depend strongly on foraging from nature for their livelihoods.”

 

ROOTS OF STUDY RUN DEEP

 

In 2000, a landmark case study in Zimbabwe by William Cavendish had argued that analysis of households and environmental resources suffers from inadequate data. “That was the main impetus,” Angelsen said. “We wanted to get a more representative picture of the role of forests and natural environments in rural areas, not just in Zimbabwe but in other countries.”

 

But how to do it? A fully financed project of such broad scope was prohibitively expensive. PEN researchers recognized that highly motivated PhD students often do the best fieldwork, yet operate in isolation, with little financial, institutional or emotional support. Thus PEN sought to create a collaborative network of doctoral students, offering some financial support, access to workshops and supervision, while generating comparative data for the global study.

 

“I always say the business model of PEN is to exploit the loneliness of PhD students by providing some TLC (tender loving care),” Angelsen said jokingly. “And it works. They get an answer to their emails and questions the next day. They appreciate that they are not alone in the field.”

 

Building on three methods workshops between 2004 and 2006, 33 PEN partners and their teams collected field data between 2005 and 2008. Over 12 months, they surveyed more than 8,300 households in 333 villages on 58 sites in 24 developing countries. In so doing, they conducted some 36,000 household visits, generating about 250,000 questionnaire pages. With more than 2,300 data fields, the PEN global database now contains 15 million data cells.

 

“It’s not a random sample,” Wunder said. “We had to find partners willing to participate and accept the sites they had chosen, and then free resources to fill some of the holes, particularly in West Africa. But we still have balance in terms of forest types and rural areas in the developing countries of these three continents. This is the universe we can reasonably extrapolate results to.”

 

Within those countries, it’s somewhat biased to areas with considerable forests, he added. “It’s not in the middle of the forest with near 100 percent cover,” Wunder said. “It’s in a range where some development has happened — not completely isolated from markets, but still with considerable forest cover remaining.”

 

Early in the process, researchers were aiming to publish findings in a special issue of World Development. In 2005, the journal had featured a themed issue on “livelihoods, forests and conservation” that acknowledged much more empirical work was needed to generate comparable data. Both Angelsen and Wunder contributed to the issue as co-editors, including the overview article.

 

“At that time, we clearly recognized a lacuna of high-quality comparative data on many forest, poverty and policy issues,” said Wunder. “It thus seemed logical to follow up on those stated needs in the same journal a decade later.”

 

The articles in the 2014 special issue are informed by a 2011 workshop held at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK. “The PEN researchers mingled with people doing similar things in other organizations and networks,” Wunder said. “Some of their papers are included in the Special Issue. They are interesting because they complement the global study by looking at specific interventions that affect livelihoods dynamics.” Bauch, Sills and Pattanayak, for example, use panel data to examine the impacts of integrated cooperation and development projects (ICDPs) in the Brazilian Amazon, while Clements, Suon, Wilkie and Gulland examine impacts of protected areas on local livelihoods in Cambodia.

 

Please find under the following Link the Full article: HERE

Go back

CBFP News

WWF: Rainforest deforestation more than doubled under cover of coronavirus -DW

Tropical rainforests shrank by 6,500 square kilometers in March — an area seven times the size of Berlin. Criminal groups are taking advantage of the pandemic and the unemployed are getting desperate, the WWF said.

Read more …

Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park Monthly update April 2020

"At a time when many countries are beginning their gradual deconfinement and when there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon of returning to normal life, I wanted to share with you some good news that also fills us with hope for the future of the Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park."

Read more …

Resources and follow-up from the virtual FAO-EcoAgriculture Partners Roundtable

Last April 30th FAO and EcoAgriculture Partners organized a virtual Roundtable on Territorial Perspectives for Development, in which over 170 people participated.

Read more …

ATIBT -CBFP: Private Sector mobilized around the CBFP Facilitator of the Federal Republic of Germany

ATIBT co-facilitated the mobilization of the private sector of the timber sector to participate in the first meeting of the private sector college of Congo Basin Forest Partnership with the new facilitator Dr Christian Ruck and his team German Facilitation.

Read more …

Development and institutionalization of a PAFC certification system for the Congo basin: opening of the second public consultation on Sustainable Forest Management Certification Standard, 23 May 2020 - 22 June 2020

This second public consultation will be open for a period of 30 days from tomorrow Saturday the 23rd of May 2020 and will be closed on Monday the 22nd of June 2020. The public consultation is open to all stakeholders of forest management in the Congo Basin interested in participating to the PAFC Congo Basin certification standards development process.

Read more …

Forest defenders on the COVID-19 frontline stand ready to assist the global EU response – Fern

These efforts go hand in hand with ensuring continued responsible management of natural resources and preventing unsustainably and illegally sourced forest commodities. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, forest-monitoring organisations Observatoire de la Gouvernance Forestière (OGF) and Réseau des observateurs indépendants des ressources naturelles (RENOI) are set to carry out COVID awareness-raising in at-risk forest areas, and will also assess COVID’s impact on forest management and governance commitments under the Central African Forest Initiative (CAFI). Across the Congo Basin, fears that a proper lack of oversight may put forests and forest peoples in danger are looming despite emerging initiatives.

Read more …

22 May 2020 International Day for Biological Diversity

The theme of the 2020 International Day for Biological Diversity is “Our Solutions are in Nature”. It shows that "Biodiversity remains the answer to a number of sustainable development challenges that we all face. From nature-based solutions to climate, to food and water security, and sustainable livelihoods, biodiversity remains the basis for a sustainable future."

Read more …

CBFP News Archive

2024

There are no news items for this period.