Community forest

The problem of misuse or loss of natural resources like the forests are due to a limited understanding of the processes that lead to improvements in or deterioration of natural resour ces (E. Ostrom, 2009). This is because the Social-Ecological systems (SESs) are inherently complex, hence the problems related to their use are rarely due to a single cause which complicate the institutional design and change to solve it. It is in this context that the E. Ostrom's SES framework was developed as a tool of diagnostic analysis to understand the complexity embedded into the governance of the SESs (E. Ostrom, 2007). However, the use of the SES framework to identify how institutional change can be stimulated is still at lower level of development (E. Ostrom, 2009). The objective of this paper is to present how institutional change can be studied using SES framework in a concrete SES case study, and how the micro-/macro-relations can be modelled to understand the functionality of the commons in the context of variable patterns of interactions. This paper bases its methodology on the E. Ostrom SES framework theory and its application (E. Ostrom, 2011), and the meta-analysis of 32 case studies of Mexican community forests in the context of the Social-Ecological System Meta-Analysis Database (SESMAD, 2014). As the results, it was identified that: (i) the performance of each case study is based on a complex set of interactions whose patterns of interactions result into desired or undesired outcomes, hence the institutional change should be based on, to set out the configurations of variables of each case which may lead or not to desired outcomes, (ii) based on a case study as a unit of analysis, the micro-/macro-relations can be modeled through the institutional design founded on and fostered by considering the community forests SES as a complex system of variable interactions, whose patterns lead to successful of unsuccessful situations of the resource use. These results share a conception of that each case should not be considered as unique. The successful cases share some attributes whereas the failed cases present a lack of some of those attributes. Thus, a comparative study is necessary. Keywords: Social-Ecological Systems (SESs), Social-Ecological System (SES) framework, variable patterns of interactions, micro-/macro-relations of the commons, case-based meta-analysis.

Journal of Horticulture and Forestry Vol. 3(8), pp. 244-250, August 2011 Available online http://www.academicjournals.org/jhf ISSN 2006-9782 ©2011 Academic Journals ... Comparative assessment of floristic diversity in a ... Rishi Ram Dhakal, Gandhiv Kafle* and Jay N. ...

Hyaena is one of the twenty seven mammals species protected by National Park and Wildlife conservation ACT-1973 of Nepal. Study of hyaena is lacking in Nepal so less information is available about this species in country. A single den was recorded in Kalapani community forest of Deukhuri Valley in Dang District located at the elevation of 282m above sea level. Signs, camera trap images and video confirm the den of striped hyaena which is first confirmed record of Hyaena den in Nepal.

Kemiskinan yang sudah lama didera oleh bangsa Indonesia mengharuskan adanya perubahan pendekatan. Program reforma agraria yang saat ini akan digulirkan oleh pemerintah, merupakan peluang baru untuk melakukan perubahan pendekatan penanggulangan kemiskinan ini. Dengan pendekatan asset building, penulis menemukan bahwa reforma agraria sebagai konsep dan praktik pembangunan sangat relevan untuk melalukan pemberdayaan kaum miskin di pedesaan. Pendekatan asset building ini akan menjadikan program reforma agraria efisien dalam mencapai tujuan intinya: mengentaskan kemiskinan di Indonesia

In sum of my dissertation, food security is the targeted subject. Its relation with Malthus theory of population growth and the role of scarcity, is equivalent to pronounce scarcity an endemic result. I evolve the discussion, into problems inclusive in food security, which includes food wars, conflict, religious-ethnic, ideological battles. I used has evidence to my assertion, case studies: Ethiopia & Brazil.

Much of the literature on the ‘land grab’ has thus far focused on the international drivers of foreign agricultural investment, with far less attention paid to the roles of developing country states and domestic political economy in changing forms of agrarian production. This paper analyses how global and domestic processes combine to produce patterns of agrarian transformation in Ethiopia, one of themain targets of foreign agricultural investment. The paper presents a typology of changes in land use and examines in detail three case studies of investments in Ethiopia drawn from this typology. The paper concludes that the most dramatic changes are taking place in lowland, peripheral regions where large-scale, capital-intensive farms employing wage labour pose a serious risk to pastoralists whose ‘use’ of land is contested by the state. Although the government has been careful to avoid mass displacement of settled smallholders, there are also important changes taking place in highland areas, with the government encouraging investments that combine the resources of investors with the labour and land of smallholders. These investments have resulted in exposure to new forms of market risk.

Scholars and advocates increasingly favor rights-based approaches over traditional exclusionary policies in conservation. Yet, national and international conservation policies and programs have often led to the exclusion of forest-dependent peoples. This article proposes and tests the hypothesis that the failures of rights-based approaches in conservation can be attributed in significant measure to the political economic interest of the state in the tropics. To this end, the article presents findings from the empirical analysis of the Forest Rights Act of 2006 in India. Two key recommendations emerge from this analysis. One, the proposals for operationalizing rights-based approaches will likely be far more effective if they protect the inalienability of a minimal set of rights critical to the subsistence and well-being of forest people, as opposed to promising the protection of an expansive set of rights subject to the instrumentality of conservation. Two, the proponents of rights-based approaches in conservation need to guard against their actions reinforcing the institutional status quo of the state control of forests. This, in turn, requires international conservation groups to join hands with national forest rights movements. Full text is available here <http://tiny.cc/i8df9w>

The social-ecological systems are inherently complex and their destruction is highly due to a limited understanding of the processes that lead to their improvements in or deterioration. In an effort to respond to this problem, E. Ostrom and colleagues associated with the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University developed a Social-Ecological System (SES) framework. however, even if the importance of SES framework to enhance the sustainability of complex social-ecological systems is highly accepted, its implication to understand the functionality of the SESs which may leads to successful or unsuccessful situations is still lacking. In this paper, referring to the context of decomposability of complex systems, and using E. Ostrom SES framework theory and a meta-analysis of 31 case studies of community forests in Mexico, the importance of using this framework in the course of explaining variable interactions and configurations to achieve desired system outcomes is explained.

The current process of industrialization, urbanization and globalization are adversely influencing on the natural resources like land, water, forests etc. There is utmost need to conserve and utilize these resources in a sustainable manner since they are the very basic components of human development. In a developing country like India, the thrust for economic development has put more pressure on the natural resources, particularly the forest resources. The present paper deals with the issue of forest conservation in India with special role of the Supreme Court of India. In India the conservation of forest has been ensured through legislative acts, judicial pronouncements and executive orders. It is a fact that there are number of legislative steps taken to ensure forest conservation in India but the contribution of Indian Supreme Court in this context is unparallel. Since last two decades the Supreme Court of India has been performing the stellar role by taking a Herculean task of comprehensive conservation and protection of forest across the country. It has added a new dimension to environmental scenario in a country. With the help of some cases, it has covered almost all aspects related to forest conservation and other related issues like conservation of biodiversity, national parks etc. The Court has emerged as a lawmaker on forest conservation issues. How far it is correct? What would be the consequences if the same trend persists? This is the focal point of the present paper.

Our body compulsory demands food, water and air to keep its vital functions and yet their economic nature is rather diverse
with food mostly considered a private good, water suffering an accelerated privatization process and air so far considered a
global common good. Food has evolved from a common good and local resource to a national asset and then to a
transnational commodity as the commodification process is rather completed nowadays. Cultivated food is fully privatized
and this consideration means that human beings can eat food as long as they have money to but it or means to produce it.
With the dominant no money-no food rationality, hunger still prevails in a world of abundance. In order to provide a sound
foundation for the transition towards sustainable food systems, the very nature of food as a pure private good is contested and
subsequently reversed in this paper, proposing a re-conceptualisation of food as a common good, a necessary narrative for the
redesign of the dominating agro-industrial food system that merely sees food as a tradable commodity. This aspirational
transition shall lead us to a more sustainable, fairer and farmer-centred food system. The idea of the commons is applied to
food, deconstructing food as a pure private good and reconstructing it as an impure commons that can be better produced and
distributed by a hybrid tri-centric governance system compounded by market rules, public regulations and collective actions.
Several food-related elements are already considered as common goods (i.e. fish stocks, wild fruits, cuisine recipes,
agricultural knowledge, food safety regulations and unpatented genetic resources) as well as food’s implications (hunger
eradication) and benefits (public health and good nutrition). Should food and be consider as a commons, the implications for
the governance of the global food system would be enormous, with examples ranging from placing food outside the
framework agreements dealing with pure private goods, banning financial speculation on food commodities or preparing
international binding agreements to govern the production, distribution and access of food to every human being.

The literature on sacred natural sites has often regarded such landscapes and associated institutions as hotspots of conflict. The way in which different parties have utilized sacred sites as the loci for claiming allegiance and rights of access, thereby engendering conflict, has often surfaced in the literature (Barkan & Barkey, 2014;). While in recent years, studies documenting the relevance and role of indigenous institutions and conflict resolution mechanisms have appeared in the literature, the role that sacred natural sites play in conflict resolution has drawn little attention. The relationship between sacred natural sites and the rel-evance of these as instruments for conflict resolution are also little understood. On the other hand, traditional communities in Africa, across time and space have for millennia used sacred natural sites as important instruments in the process of ensuring public order, peace building and conflict resolution (Ajayi & Buhari, 2014; Bukari, 2013); studies are emerging showing that sacred natural sites among indigenous peoples and local communities serve as the locus of peace building and conflict resolution (Posey, 2000; Sponsel, 2008, 2012, 2013).

This chapter intends to address the issue of the role sacred natural sites play in conflict resolution, aside from their being often regarded as loci of conflictual relationships. The chapter will attempt to address such salient issues as: why and how traditional communities utilize sacred nature as a resource and instrument of conflict resolution; types of issues and conflicts commonly managed within the remit of sacred site institutions’ conflict resolution instrumentality; the foun-dational principles and processes involved in the sacred nature-based conflict resolution; the mechanisms and social organization of such processes; and the resilience and dynamics of conflict resolution instrumentality of sacred sites and factors that challenge their continuity.

Since the 1970s, the implementation of community forestry (CF) programs in Nepal has recognized that local
involvement is a prerequisite for sustainably managing forests and fulfilling local resource needs. Although this
devolution policy of active local participation has halted and in many cases reversed forest degradation, a
comprehensive research on attributes of CF and its impact on local community livelihoods, especially among the
rural populations in the low-lying Terai region- is lacking. Hence, using an institutional analysis approach, this
research attempts to understand changes in forest management and governance. More specifically, this paper
explores major attributes of CF, i.e. the forest, dependency of local people on the forest, institutions that govern
local people interaction with the forest and other actors as well as economic and tree cover outcomes. The overall
results indicated that most respondents were highly dependent on local forests for economic, ecological and
cultural purposes and were collectively involved in creating rules and regulations that defined access to and
distribution of CF benefits. The results also indicated that locals’ main priorities were to improve their income
generation capabilities, whereas CF management primarily emphasized forest protection and local development,
as CF-generated funds were used to improve local infrastructure. Hence, the main constraints to CF sustainability
were identified to be the CF committee’s lack of transparency in fund expenditure and the exclusion of poor and
disadvantaged households in the decision-making process. The study concludes that CF implementation is feasible
in the Terai region and that equal decision-making participation is critical toward future CF sustainability.

This article compares land dispossession for industrial development under state-developmentalism and neoliberalism in India. Drawing on interviews, ethnography and archives of industrial development agencies, it compares earlier steel towns and state-run industrial estates with today's Special Economic Zones (SEZs) and argues that they embody different regimes of dispossession. While steel towns and industrial estates reflected a regime of land for production with pretensions of inclusive social transformation, SEZs represent a neoliberal regime of land for the market in which ‘land broker states’ have emerged to indiscriminately transfer land from peasants to capitalist firms for real estate. The present regime has been unable to achieve the ideological legitimacy of its predecessor, leading to more widespread and successful ‘land wars’. The article argues more broadly that variations in dispossession across space and time can be understood as specific constellations of state roles, economic logics tied to class interests and ideological articulations of the ‘public good’.

While much recent research has focused on the Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP), this is by no means the only social protection policy in rural Ethiopia. Drawing on a very different rationale to the PSNP, the Ethiopian government also justifies state land ownership as a form of social protection for smallholders. This paper examines the links between these policies through a case study of an extremely food insecure site. The paper concludes that while the PSNP and land policy together provide minimal security for landholders, land shortages and the problematic nature of agricultural production are such that there is little chance that the PSNP and its complementary programmes can achieve food security. As a result, the PSNP is used to support failing agricultural policies, limiting urban migration in the interests of political stability. These findings highlight the importance of situating safety net programmes within the socioeconomic context which generates insecurity.

Most of the North East enjoys unbridled authority over forests unlike the rest of the country, free from state control under the debilitating impact
of the colonial-era Indian Forest Act, 1927. Therefore, the Forest Rights Act, 2006 is perceived as irrelevant. But, the sweeping expansion of how “forest” is defined in law by the Supreme Court and its proposed  incorporation into the Indian Forest Act threatens the customary forest  rights of these peoples.

The aim of the work is to examine, by means of a look of synthesis based on historical and archaeological research, the different models of state settling (provincial and national) that were implemented in the south frontier of Buenos Aires during the 19th century, with emphasis in the results that his putting had in practice depending on the contexts, the local conjunctures and the social interaction, contemplating the official policies towards different sectors and their actions together. It splits of a scale of micro-regional analysis that includes the current parties of Azul, Tapalqué and Olavarría (with epicentre in the basin of the Nievas creek), as object of the application of these models through which the State sought to expand his territory and to consolidate its control on the long of the 19th century. The temporary framework contemplates scales of medium and long duration, from the beginning of the state settling in the first decades of the century up to the installation of the agricultural colonies of russian-german immigrants of the Volga towards the last quarter of the same one. There is discussed the thesis of military unilateral expansion and the direct correspondence between the successive governments with social specific sectors, emphasizing the miscegenation, their overlap and complexity.

Inclusion of marginalized sections and minorities remains one of the most vexing problems for democratic politics. This article discusses the enactment of a recent Indian law, ‘The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Rights) Act, 2006’, as exemplifying the possibilities of inclusion of marginalized groups in democratic processes. The law was enacted in response to a nationwide mobilization of marginalized forest dwellers and their advocates demanding rights over forests. Grassroots-level formations representing forest dwellers came together across scales and spaces to form a network that successfully negotiated India's democratic politics to achieve the passage of the law. The case illustrates the role of grassroots mobilizations in creating alternate discourses of legitimacy, networking across scales and locations, and using spaces provided by representative democracy to include the voices and demands of the marginalized in democracies.

Tulisan ini membahas tiga kasus devolusi hutan di Indonesia yang mencerminkan dua kecenderungan dalam spektrum kebijakan devolusi, yakni (1) Community Based Resource Management (diwakili oleh kasus Hutan Repong Damar di Lampung Barat dan Hutan Tanaman Rakyat di Konawe Sulawesi Tenggara); dan (2) Collaborative Resource Management (diwakili kasus Kesepakatan Konservasi Masyarakat di Taman Nasional Lore Lindu, Sulawesi Tengah).
Dengan membandingkan ketiga kasus devolusi di atas, tulisan ini menunjukkan bahwa ketiga kasus tersebut pada dasarnya merupakan "devolusi yang dikontestasikan" di mana akses dan kontrol atas sumberdaya hutan dan penarikan manfaat darinya secara aktual merupakan sesuatu yang dibentuk (ulang) dalam proses interaksi dan negosiasi di antara komunitas dengan negara di satu sisi, dan di antara keIompok-kelompok dalam masyarakat sendiri di sisi yang berbeda.

This paper tries to contribute to the knowledge of the land policy developed by the provincial State of Buenos Aires in the first half of the nineteenth century, specially during the Rosas government. Throughout the analysis of the micro-regional impact of the central policy in a case study, the frontier of the Azul brook one, it is discussed the historiographical thesis that has traditionally considered the Rosas government as the forger of an agrarian structure of large entailed estate in the south frontier of Buenos Aires. On the contrary, the study of Azul shows the predominance of rural property and production unities of small and medium size, which have coexisted with others of big one. The policy of conditioned grants of public lands that was different from other regions of the Buenos Aires countryside contributed to the settlement of the county and is understood in the frame of a nick of time of agrarian expansion, the fastening of the rosista order and the territorial consolidation of the provincial State into the internal frontier.

Community Forests play an important role within the overall urban green space. In peri-urban areas such forests represent nature close to where people live and offer unique recreational settings. Moreover, they provide special educational environments, e.g. for children to learn about nature. While the use of peri-urban forests and urban forest management have both been covered separately in recent literature, the linking of the two has not been paid much attention to. In addition, the impact local communities have on forest use and management has not been considered sufficiently.
The objective of this paper is to link recreational forest use and management by elaborating a realistic and sustainable development concept for a peri-urban forest. Moreover, it shows approaches of how local communities can participate in the development process as their involvement is important when these green spaces are planned, designed, established and managed in order to meet the differing demands of urban society.

This paper contributes the example of the participatory development concept for Balfour Forest. The area is located southeast of Migdal HaEmek in the Lower Galilee and Jezreel Valley region in northern Israel. Balfour Forest is a peri-urban forest, and it is part of a replanted Mediterranean forest network around Nazareth. It is thus a cultural landscape that origins from the 20th century, representing the unique legacy of forestation efforts that occurred in Israel for several decades, with some plantings dating back as far as the British Mandate Period.
The case of the Balfour Community Forest is presented and approaches to shaping peri-urban forests according to the (ever changing) preferences and needs of local urban societies are discussed. Such approaches imply that peri-urban forests are managed on the basis of local needs and use preferences in order to become sustainable landscapes.

Human inhabitance and agriculture have fundamentally altered global pattern of biodiversity and ecosystem processes. Therefore, integration of community-based approach is an effective conservation strategy. Community forestry is an important community-based approach, which can help in conserving local ecological assets in a sustainable manner. Lichens are known to be more sensitive indicators of ecosystem functions and disturbances than any other cryptogam and vascular plant community. Present study reports a preliminary assessment of epiphytic lichens in a community forest in Dadeldhura district, west Nepal, in order to identify potential indicator of forest health and land-use pattern. Epiphytic (corticolous) lichens were sampled from ten land-use units (LUU), using narrow frequency grids of 10 cm × 50 cm, each divided into five sampling units of 10 cm × 10 cm, on the bark of selected tree species. Quercus leucotrichophora was the dominant phorophyte followed by Pinus roxburghii, Rhododendron arboreum and Myrica esculenta. Foliose parmeloid (Parmotrema spp., Heterodermia spp., Hypotrachyna spp., Bulbothrix spp., Canoparmelia spp., Canomaculina spp.) was the most abundant lichen group, found inhabiting all the phorophytes followed by crustose, fruticose and dimorphic growth forms. Maximum diversity of parmeloid lichens was recorded on older stand of Quercus while younger stands usually harbored crustose lichens (e.g., Lecanora spp., Basidia spp.). Though the lichen diversity increased from outer fringes of the forest to the core, the vegetation stand age was not distributed in any consistent pattern suggesting unconstrained harvesting of the forest. Lichen diversity was found constrained by phorophyte determinants (stand age, aspect, and bark properties) and community harvesting of the forest.

Synoptic, remote sensing of the national-scale, societal response of trees and forests to human driving forces in Nepal has been a wicked problem. This problem is a complex of four ancillary issues, namely, minimum mapping unit, radiometric scatter due to terrain, modeling of human dimensions, and democratizing robust environmental analysis. Beginning with the November 2018 conference convened by the East-West Center (EWC), USA, in Nepal, the state-of-the-art and key works in this problem-solving have been reviewed in this paper. Though this technology has improved the detection of forest and tree changes due to human driving forces at earlier stages, it is still not robust enough to inform global and national policy.

Whether land transactions can benefit the local population depends on the governance system, the so‐called rules of the game and their enforcement. As investors often face a weak institutional environment in target countries, outcomes for the local population frequently seem to be arbitrary and vary. This study draws on past and recent experiences in the Ghanaian oil palm sector. Based on qualitative and quantitative field research conducted in 2010/2011, the effects of a land‐based, large‐scale investment on people who received compensation, on neighbouring communities, on permanent and casual workers, as well as on contract farmers are analysed against a conceptual framework for land acquisitions inspired by the thoughts of Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson. This leads to the main finding that outcomes are predominantly mixed and vary from very negative to positive for different population groups.

The ‘Community Forestry Program&#39; has been considered successful in improving the environmental situation in the hills of Nepal by enhancing the vegetation coverage of degraded sites and by improving the supply of forest products to farmers. The restoration measures are considered sustainable if the ecosystems are self-supporting and resilient against perturbation. A community forest (CF) in the mid-hills of Nepal has been assessed for restoration success based on the comparison of vegetation structure and species diversity along a disturbance gradient, using a semi-protected natural forest as a reference site. In general, the community forest management (CFM) was able to re-establish forests on formerly severely degraded sites. Forest operations carried out during CFM have altered plant community composition, species richness and distribution, age class distribution of trees and vegetation structure. As a result, the CF was being transformed into a less diverse regular forest al...

Diversity index (SI=0.9367 and WI =3.3714) and species richness index of (MI=10) of BZCF were found higher than the diversity index (SI=0.8749 and WI =3.0099) and species richness index (MI=9.0491) of SCF. We conclude that floral diversity is higher in BZCF than the CF outside the buffer zone under similar edaphoclimatic conditions.

Este libro aborda las políticas y herramientas implementadas por el gobierno de Juan Manuel de Rosas para construir su dominio en la frontera sur de Buenos Aires (Azul y Tapalqué) en interacción con la sociedad rural. En la primera parte se estudian las características del proceso de poblamiento, producción y relaciones interétnicas, con especial atención en los patrones de acceso y tenencia de la tierra, marcando la singularidad de la colonización oficial regional dentro de la campaña bonaerense. En la segunda parte se analizan las medidas y recursos de corte institucional, ritual y simbólico implicados en la formación del “vecindario federal”, así como la respuesta concreta de los diferentes sectores socio-étnicos, que legitimaron a la federación a través de su participación en el sistema de representación electoral, el servicio armado, fiestas y rituales, contribuciones materiales a la causa, etc. El libro se aleja de aquellas tradicionales concepciones historiográficas que planteaban al poder del caudillo erigido en un sistema de clientelismo polarizado basado en el uso exclusivo de la coerción, el monopolio de los recursos o la preeminencia de los grandes propietarios rurales en su sustento, proponiendo una mirada renovada sobre el federalismo rosista desde la historia social, que focaliza en la relevancia y el accionar de otros sectores como indígenas y pequeños-medianos productores, y en los intercambios y contraprestaciones entablados con el régimen.

Certification initiatives are an increasingly prominent means of quelling public concern about the wider socio‐political, economic and environmental consequences of commodity production (timber, palm oil, soy) on increasingly concentrated land holdings in countries characterized by large, poor, rural populations. This paper examines the ways in which the discourse of sustainable soy production – created and mobilized through the Roundtable on Responsible Soy (RTRS) certification initiative – enables the coalescence of diverse justifications for land‐grabbing in South American producer countries with particular attention to Paraguay. Using data and information from fieldwork, academic literature, online media, the 2008 Paraguayan agricultural census, and the UNDP development report, five such justifications are presented here and critically assessed. They are:reduced deforestation; improved agricultural practices; national economic growth; food security; and standards development processes that feature inclusive politics. The paper concludes that such claims leave out important dimensions of the growth of the soy industry and the concomitant concentration of land holdings in Paraguay. Any hope for equity and justice will depend on a radical shift in sustainable development policy; one that highlights the distribution of land and resources.

This thesis explores the security implications of a wave of large-scale land acquisitions in developing countries led by foreign investors – generally known as the ‘global land grab’ – which came about in the aftermath of the 2008 Global Food Price Crisis. This ‘land grab’ phenomenon poses some fundamental questions about the state of the world food system and the role of emerging non-traditional challenges and threats to our future food security. At the same time, the security studies perspective that underlies the approach taken in this thesis has a rather uncomfortable association with the study’s main subject matter of ‘food security’. As a result, empirical enquiries into the phenomenon of land grabs need to be pre-empted by a solid theoretical foundation to elucidate the multifaceted relationship between food and security. This necessitates a thorough assessment of food as a matter of security; asking how our understanding of ‘food’ changes when we approach it as a security question.

This thesis therefore sets out to achieve two objectives: 1) to bring the subject of ‘food’ into the security realm, and 2) to utilise a contextualised case study to critically assess the human security implications of a ‘land grab’. At the same time, however, a more holistic argument runs throughout the work, propounding the notion that there may be no technical solution to the world food problem. The idea is put forward that the natural sciences are perhaps not capable of single-handedly safeguarding our future food security. To be more precise, the solution to the world food problem may need to emanate from a radically changed human vision; one to inspire new values, ideas, morality, and above all, a change in behaviour.

In an increasing interaction between indigenous or isolated ethnic communities and outside actors, a lack of confirmation of local forestland rights is seen as one of the most critical issues. Does the outsiders’ occupancy of land for rent seeking and authoritative patronage for forest management meet the dispossessed people’s aspirations? How and to what extent should local communities be involved in forestland management and play a determining role in their own future? To answer these questions, this research is based on in-depth interviews focusing on the folk traditions, cultural beliefs, customary laws, local knowledge, and comments and recommendations of the local Thai ethnic people and some outsiders residing in the Hanh Dich commune, Que Phong district, Nghe An province, Vietnam. In addition, a number of previous case studies and reports from the archive of SPERI (Social Policy Ecology Research Institute) and its alliance members have been synthesised and analysed.
The essential findings and arguments in this thesis comprise the local Thai people’s cultural traits, chronicles of outside interventions, local responses, and cognitive and methodological approaches to the study of indigenous cultures and their forestlands. It was found that local people have been upholding their holistic and unique perspectives, beliefs, customary laws, traditional organizational and institutional practices and that these inherent values and strengths can contribute effectively to forest protection and improvement of local people’s livelihood. However, it was also observed that the increasing imposition of the mainstream top-down approaches have not recognized or encouraged, that is to say, have undermined local strengths and values. In addition, on the basis of an ethnocentric view, superficial perceptions of the ethnic minority peoples and their values have pervaded in the Vietnamese media. These phenomena raise questions as to cultural rights, human rights, and the quality of the policy making process and law enforcement which are inevitably affected by these ethnocentric views and approaches.
To counteract the hurtful effects of mainstream interventions, local people have responded in a subtle and implicit way. As a result of outside interventions, they have had to find ways to adjust their productive and cultural settings. However, there remain wishes to recover traditional cultural values, especially in the minds of the elders. In an alternative bottom-up approach facilitated by SPERI, the people are stimulated to promote their own institutional and organizational strengths towards their brighter future. In a democratized and decentralized process, community’s land rights and customary rights should be officially recognized and confirmed. But official recognition should not be seen as the final goal, only as a supportive factor while the local community’s strengths and self-enforcement of their rights are determinant. To this end, indigenous peoples need further opportunities for networking, capacity building, and taking part in thorough socio-cultural ethnographic research in order to ensure that they are more truly and fairly represented.

Because New Guinea is little known to the world at large, I have prepared a brief profile of the island, together with some snippets of personal experience from my time as an academic in Papua New Guinea. More detailed information is readily available from Internet search engines.

Community Forests play an important role within the urban green space. Such forests represent nature close to where people live, offer unique recreational settings, and provide special educational environments, e.g. for children and people with special needs. The objective of this article is to link recreational forest use and management by elaborating a sustainable development concept for a peri-urban forest and by showing approaches of how local communities can participate in the processes of planning, designing, establishing, and managing their forest.
This article contributes the example of the participatory development concept for Balfour Forest. The area is located in northern Israel, and it is part of a replanted forest network around Nazareth. It constitutes a cultural landscape that origins from the 20th century, representing the unique legacy of forestation efforts in Israel, with some plantings dating back as far as the British Mandate Period.
The case of the Balfour Community Forest is presented and approaches to shaping peri-urban forests according to the (ever changing) preferences and needs of local urban societies are discussed. Such approaches imply that peri-urban forests are managed on the basis of differing local needs and use preferences in order to become sustainable cultural landscapes.