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Forests, trees and the eradication of poverty
Abstract
Addressing poverty is an urgent global priority. Many of the world's poor and vulnerable people live in or near forests and rely on trees and other natural resources to support their livelihoods. Effectively tackling poverty and making progress toward the first of the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals to “end poverty in all its forms everywhere” must therefore consider forests and trees. But what do we know about the potential for forests and tree-based systems to contribute to poverty alleviation? This Special Issue responds to this question. It synthesises and presents available scientific evidence on the role of forests and tree-based systems in alleviating and, ultimately, eradicating poverty. The articles compiled here also develop new conceptual frameworks, identify research frontiers, and draw out specific recommendations for policy. The scope is global, although emphasis is placed on low- and middle-income countries where the majority of the world's poorest people live. This introductory article stakes out the conceptual, empirical and policy terrain relating to forests, trees and poverty and provides an overview of the contribution of the other seven articles in this collection. This Special Issue has direct implications for researchers, policymakers and other decision-makers related to the role of forests and tree-based systems in poverty alleviation. The included articles frame the relationships between forests, trees and poverty, identify research gaps and synthesize evidence to inform policy.
... They offer a multitude of essential products, from food resources to traditional medicine ingredients and building materials, thus making a significant contribution to our daily lives [2]. In monetary terms, forests play a key role in the national economies of developing countries as sources of income through the timber industry and recreational areas [3,4]. Beyond their economic impact, forests maintain the ecological balance by storing large quantities of atmospheric carbon in their vegetation and soils [5]. ...
Although charcoal production is a source of income, it is often associated with deforestation due to the felling of trees in rural areas. In this study, we quantified the yield of carbonization in the rural area of Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo), and identified its determinants. By analyzing 20 kilns of professional producers in different villages, we found that these charcoal producers build large kilns, which contained an average of 46.9 ± 21.5 m 3 of wood from 19 species of Miombo woodland trees, with a predominance of Julbernardia paniculata (Benth.) Troupin, alongside Brachystegia microphylla Harms and B. spiciformis Benth. The average carbonization yield was 10.2%, varying from village to village due to parameters such as kiln size, quantity of wood used, kiln coverage time, wind exposure, substrate type, and tree species. It was noted that the moisture content and dimensions of the wood did not significantly correlate with the quantity of charcoal harvested per kiln. Yield improvement should, therefore, take these parameters into account to enable charcoal producers to increase their income while adopting sustainable production practices.
... [8][9][10] Beyond their vital roles for biodiversity conservation and climate-change mitigation and adaptation, forests face various demands and needs that extend to supporting livelihoods, serving as a source of safety nets, and contributing to poverty reduction and overall well-being. 11,12 These demands are particularly pronounced for the 1.2 billion individuals who rely on forests in the tropics. 13 Moreover, a significant global population of 1.4 billion resides in areas identified as priorities for forest and ecosystem restoration. ...
The way forests are defined, using terms such as ancient, old-growth, primary, sacred, or intact forest landscapes , has far-reaching impacts on how, why, and where forests are conserved and managed. Definitions of terms such as ''old-growth forests'' have been discussed individually but not collectively assessed. Here, we review the definitions and uses of terms associated with natural and near-natural forests using systematic mapping methods and critical analysis. Our findings reveal a variety of definitions for different terms, although a few frequently cited ones prevail. Our results also highlight the dominance of Western institutions and scientific knowledge in shaping global discourses on forest conservation, often at the expense of Indigenous and local perspectives. Despite the increasing recognition of the value-based benefits that forests provide , definitions that explicitly incorporate values are scarce. This omission of the voices of forest-proximate communities and a lack of consideration for their local values and needs result in recognition, contextual, and procedural inequities when employing mainstream terms to define natural and near-natural forests.
... In a recent study, Fedele and colleagues (2021) found that 1.2 billion people in tropical countries are dependent on nature to meet basic human needs. The ecosystem services that forest-proximate people derive from these landscapes vary widely (Miller et al. 2020) and includes nonmaterial cultural and spiritual benefits (Cooper et al. 2016). Many people further derive positive benefits from landscapes (for example linked to recreation) even if their livelihoods and culture are not directly landscape dependent. ...
Ecosystem restoration is an important means to address global sustainability challenges. However, scientific and policy discourse often overlooks the social processes that influence the equity and effectiveness of restoration interventions. In the present article, we outline how social processes that are critical to restoration equity and effectiveness can be better incorporated in restoration science and policy. Drawing from existing case studies, we show how projects that align with local people's preferences and are implemented through inclusive governance are more likely to lead to improved social, ecological, and environmental outcomes. To underscore the importance of social considerations in restoration, we overlay existing global restoration priority maps, population, and the Human Development Index (HDI) to show that approximately 1.4 billion people, disproportionately belonging to groups with low HDI, live in areas identified by previous studies as being of high restoration priority. We conclude with five action points for science and policy to promote equity-centered restoration.
... To identify the key levers, firstly four authors brainstormed the full range of possible levers. All other members of the Global Forest Expert Panel on Forests and Poverty (Miller et al., 2020a) subsequently reviewed the list to suggest any additional levers that were missed during the first step. No new levers emerged, for a final list of 21 levers. ...
An extensive set of policies, programmes, technologies and strategies have been implemented in the forest sector. Collectively, these 'levers' cover a diverse range of approaches, at a variety of scales and are governed by many different stakeholders. It is important for decision-makers to understand which levers might be most useful in achieving poverty alleviation. This paper seeks to answer the question: which forest management policies, programmes, technologies and strategies have been effective at alleviating poverty? We studied 21 different rights-based, regulatory, market and supply chain, and forest and tree management levers for which we could identify a plausible theory of change of how implementation of that lever might alleviate poverty. For every lever we: define and describe the lever; describe the logic or theory of change by which the lever might plausibly be expected to alleviate poverty; summarize the available evidence showing how the lever has alleviated poverty; and discuss the variables that explain heterogeneity in outcomes. Overall, we found limited evidence of these levers being associated with reducing poverty (i.e. moving people out of poverty). Some of the strongest evidence for poverty reduction came from ecotourism, community forest management, agroforestry and, to a lesser extent, payments for ecosystem services (PES). However, we found substantial, varied and context-dependent evidence of several levers being associated with mitigating poverty (i.e. by improving well-being). A multitude of cases showing positive outcomes for poverty mitigation came from community forest management, forest producer organisations, small and medium forest enterprises, PES, and tree crop contract production. A combination of more rigorous and long-term research designs, along with examinations of the cost-effectiveness of different levers, would go a long way to contributing to the design of effective interventions for poverty alleviation.
Climate action and the management of natural resources, including forests, are salient features of the sustainable development agenda of Small Island Developing States (SIDS). REDD+, an incentive-based climate-related forestry mechanism with an emphasis on the promotion of sustainable forest management (SFM), offers a potent opportunity for boosting drivers of development in SIDS. It appears, however, that African SIDS have not adequately engaged with REDD+. The chapter explores the basis for leveraging SFM instruments and mechanisms for enhancing REDD+ readiness and implementation in African SIDS, in view of advancing progress in sustainable development. It draws the nexus between the two regimes and sustainable development before examining the state of implementation of REDD+ and SFM in African SIDS. It concludes that enhanced REDD+ readiness and implementation can be achieved by strengthening partnerships with SIDS-led organisations and through a more active advocacy of climate-related forestry by the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS).
The unexpected nature of COVID-19 tested the institutional strength and resilience of state agencies across the world. Preliminary evidence is presented on how reduced mobility due to COVID-19 affected the functioning of the Forest Department in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh and triggered changes in forest use by local communities as perceived by forest officials. Our evidence shows mixed outcomes in terms of the effectiveness of the forest bureaucrats in handling the COVID-19 pandemic as assessed through their own perceptions and other forestry records. The positive and negative elements relating to the bureaucratic forest administration during the COVID-19 lockdown are presented, and some possible reasons behind these varying patterns across the state of Himachal Pradesh are suggested. Lessons drawn from the COVID-19 crisis that can help guide forest bureaucracies to deal effectively with unpredictable events in the future are presented.
Yoksulluk, küreselleşme ile birlikte dünya için önemli bir problem haline gelmiştir. Özellikle 20. yy’ın son yarısı ve 21. yy.’ın ilk çeyreği boyunca Birleşmiş Milletler, Ekonomik İş Birliği ve Kalkınma Örgütü (OECD), Dünya Bankası ve bu organizasyonlara taraf olan ülkeler, sürdürülebilir toplum ve çevre ilişkisi ön planda tutarak, yoksullukla mücadele ile ilgili önlemler almaya ve politikalar geliştirmeye çalışmışlardır. Bu çalışmada, Türkiye’de coğrafi koşullar altında zaman ilişkisi kurularak değişen yoksulluğu etkileyen etmenler ve yoksullukla mücadele kapsamında alınan önlemler NUTS-2 (Düzey-2) bölgelerine göre araştırılmıştır. Bu doğrultuda Türkiye’de 2014-2021 yılları arasında TÜİK tarafından yayımlanan “Eşdeğer hane halkı kullanılabilir fert gelirinin yoksul sayıları ve yoksulluk oranları” istatistiklerinin bölgelere göre mekânsal dağılımı Coğrafi Bilgi Sistemleri kullanılarak gerçekleştirilmiştir. Türkiye’deki istatistiki bölgelere göre ortaya çıkan yoksulluk oranları arasındaki farklar belirlenerek gelir düzeyinde denge kurulması ve makro-mikro düzeydeki planlamalarda coğrafi özelliklerin dikkate alınması gerekliliği vurgulanmıştır. Bu kapsamda Türkiye’de yoksullukla mücadele için sürdürülebilir kalkınma yaklaşımlarına yönelik öneriler sunulmuştur.
Achieving food and nutrition security for the world’s population while at the same time reversing and minimizing damage to the natural environment is a grand societal challenge. A growing body of evidence has shown that access to forests can support food security in some settings, but the linkages between forests and people’s diets are not well understood. The goal of this review is to provide an overview of the explanations behind observed associations between forests and food and nutrition security. We found that 77% of publications show that forests contribute positively to food and nutrition security. The two main explanations are (1) the direct provision of forest foods and (2) indirect effects from forest-based ecosystem services on surrounding agriculture. Our findings suggest that it is pertinent to rethink the dichotomy between agriculture and nature and move toward more integrated nutrition-sensitive landscapes.
The objective of this paper is to explore the potential of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest degradation, and Foster conservation, Sustainable management of forests, and Enhancement of forest carbon stocks (REDD+) to support Caribbean Small Island Developing States (SIDS) efforts in achieving their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. A comprehensive overview of the region's perspective on REDD+ in meeting their climate targets in the forestry sector was conducted. The methodology adopted a content analysis of Caribbean countries' NDCs and REDD+ Readiness Preparation Proposals (R-PP). The data used for the content analysis were obtained from initial and updated NDCs for sixteen Caribbean SIDS and REDD+ R-PP for four countries. The results demonstrate that Caribbean countries have high interest in adopting deforestation and forest degradation into their NDC targets. However, REDD+ does not appear to be a high priority in these countries and has been adopted in only four countries. REDD+ systems and mechanisms including measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) in forests, forest and land governance and land rights, and safeguards and financing for REDD+ are hardly considered in Caribbean SIDS NDCs except for the four countries that have already adopted REDD+. These four countries have paid considerable attention to adhere to REDD+ rules as demonstrated in their R-PPs. They are however still in the process of developing MRV forest systems and yet to develop national forest monitoring systems, and details on financing REDD+ and implementation are scarce.
Wild foods, from forests and common lands, can contribute to food and nutrition security. Previous studies have established correlations between forests and dietary diversity. We use matching, a rigorous, quasi-experimental method, and monthly-interval data to assess the contribution of wild foods to women’s diets. We collected 24-hour recall data from 570 households monthly from November 2016 to November 2017 in two districts in East India. We found that wild foods contributed positively to diets, especially in June and July when consumption of wild foods was highest. Women who consumed wild foods had higher average dietary diversity scores (12 and 15% higher in June and July, respectively) and were more likely to consume nutrient-dense, dark green leafy vegetables, than women who did not eat wild foods. Our results show that access to wild foods is critical to addressing undernutrition in rural India.
Forest and tree-based landscapes represent complex social-ecological systems. In tropical and subtropical regions, these landscapes are home to hundreds of millions of resource-poor people. Gaining a better understanding of how contextual factors influence forest-poverty dynamics is essential for the design, targeting and implementation of effective policy instruments and interventions to alleviate poverty. In this article we present an innovative framework for exploring the social, economic, political, institutional and environmental factors affecting forestry-poverty dynamics. We use two examples of widely used forest management and conservation interventions, namely protected areas and community forestry, to illustrate how these factors can take multiple roles in complex causal chains of processes of social and environmental change in forest and tree-based landscapes. We highlight how future research can provide a more comprehensive understanding of the processes and contexts shaping forest-poverty dynamics, including elucidating the differentiated effects of different drivers of change on multiple social and environmental outcomes over time.
Despite the growing interest in social forestry (SF), how much do we understand the social, economic and environmental outcomes and the conditions that enable SF to perform? In this article, we use a content analysis of literature on existing traditional SF practiced throughout Indonesia. It examines the outcomes of these systems and the conditions that enabled or hindered these outcomes to understand possible causal relations and changing dynamics between these conditions and SF performance. We discuss the gaps in how SF is assessed and understood in the literature to understand the important aspects of traditional SF that are not captured or that are lost when the diverse traditional systems are converted into other land uses. It aims to understand the potential trade-offs in the State's push for formalizing SF if these aspects continue to be ignored.
Background
Agroforestry bridges the gap that often separates agriculture and forestry by building integrated systems to address both environmental and socio-economic objectives. Existing empirical research has suggested that agroforestry—the integration of trees with crops and/or livestock—can prevent environmental degradation, improve agricultural productivity, increase carbon sequestration, and support healthy soil and healthy ecosystems while providing stable incomes and other benefits to human welfare. However, the extent of the literature supporting or refuting these claims has not been well documented. This study addresses this research gap by collating and describing the evidence for the impacts of agroforestry on ecosystem services and human well-being in high-income countries and presents the characteristics and gaps in the literature.
Methods
We searched 5 primary databases and 24 organizational websites using a pre-defined search string designed to capture articles relating agroforestry practices and policy interventions to outcomes in high-income countries. Searches included peer-reviewed and grey literature published in the English language between January 1990 and June 2020. We screened the identified articles for inclusion or exclusion in two stages: title/abstract and full text. We extracted data from articles included at the full-text stage to form the map and associated database. For inclusion, the study in question must have assessed the impacts of the deliberate promotion and/or actual integration of woody perennials (trees, shrubs, etc.) with agricultural crops and/or animals.
Results
Our search returned 31,852 articles of which we included 585 primary articles, 6 ongoing primary articles, and 41 systematically conducted literature reviews. The articles spanned three decades and 31 countries. The most studied practices are on linear boundary plantings (hedgerows, shelterbelts, windbreaks, and riparian buffers) and silvopasture systems. The most studied outcome is regulation and maintenance of physical, chemical, and biological conditions as an ecosystem service, followed by agricultural yield and mediation of waste/toxics/other nuisances (nutrient runoff and carbon storage).
Conclusions
Results highlight key evidence gaps and areas where research has concentrated. Knowledge on the impacts of specific policy interventions to promote agroforestry remains scarce. The impacts of actual agroforestry practices are more well-studied, but the kinds of practices studied are limited, with most research focusing on two-component systems consisting of a simple tree configuration with one crop or livestock species, such as shelterbelts, windbreaks, and hedgerows, riparian buffers, and scattered trees on farms with crops and/or livestock. Regulating ecosystem services outcomes are by far the most studied, followed by agricultural productivity (an aspect of provisioning ecosystem services), while evidence on human well-being remains limited. We also found geographic biases, with little to no evidence for many countries. These biases suggest the strong need for further research to build the evidence base on agroforestry across high-income countries. The results can inform future research and policy decisions by making the evidence easily accessible and highlighting knowledge gaps as well as areas with enough evidence to conduct further systematic review.
This article examines global trends likely to influence forests and tree-based systems and considers the poverty implications of these interactions. The trends, identified through a series of expert discussions and review of the literature, include: (i) climatic impacts mediated through changes in forests, (ii) growth in commodity markets, (iii) shifts in private and public forest sector financing, (iv) technological advances and rising interconnectivity, (v) global socio-political movements, and (vi) emerging infectious diseases. These trends bring opportunities and risks to the forest-reliant poor. A review of available evidence suggests that in a business-as-usual scenario, the cumulative risks posed by these global forces, in conjunction with limited rights, resources, and skills required to prosper from global changes, are likely to place poor and transient poor households under additional stress. The article concludes with an assessment of how interventions for enhancing forest management, combined with supportive policy and institutional conditions, can contribute to a different and more prosperous future for forests and people.
Rising global demand for vegetable oil during the last few decades has led to a drastic increase in the land area under oil palm. Especially in Southeast Asia, the oil palm boom has contributed to economic growth, but it has also spurred criticism about negative environmental and social effects. Here, we discuss palm oil production and consumption trends and review environmental, economic, and social consequences in different parts of the world. The oil palm expansion has contributed to tropical deforestation and associated losses in biodiversity and ecosystem functions. Simultaneously, it has increased incomes, generated employment, and reduced poverty among farm and nonfarm households. Around 50% of the worldwide oil palm land is managed by smallholders. Sustainability trade-offs between preserving global public environmental goods and private economic benefits need to be reduced. We discuss policy implications related to productivity growth, rainforest protection, mosaic landscapes, land property rights, sustainability certification, and smallholder inclusion, among others.
The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030) frames restoration as a momentous nature-based solution for achieving many of the ecological, economic, and social objectives outlined in the Sustainable Development Goals. Yet, a critical void lies at the heart of this agenda: The lack of attention to social and political dimensions of nature and restoration initiatives. At this critical juncture, urgent attention is needed to the power and politics that shape the values, meanings, and science driving restoration; and to the uneven experiences of these processes as national restoration pledges touch down in diverse and unequal contexts. In this introduction to the special issue on "Restoration for Whom, by Whom?", we critically examine the social inclusivity of restoration agendas, policies, and practices as these unfold across ecological and geographic scales. We argue that feminist political ecology (FPE), with its focus on gendered power relations, scale integration, and historical awareness, and its critique of the commodification of nature, offers a valuable lens through which to examine the socio-political and economic dynamics of restoration. Taking an FPE perspective, we elucidate how the ten papers comprising the special issue challenge mainstream narratives of environmental sustainability and suggest more grounded and nuanced ways forward for inclusive restoration initiatives. In conclusion, we highlight the urgency of addressing the systemic fault lines that create exclusions in restoration policies and practice; and the need to legitimize the plural voices, values, situated knowledges, and paths to sustainably transform degraded landscapes.
Sustainable development requires knowledge of trade-offs and synergies between environmental and non-environmental goals and targets. Understanding the ways in which positive progress in matters of development not directly concerned with the environment can affect the natural environment, whether for better or for worse, can allow policymakers and development agencies to avoid the negative impacts of their actions, while capitalising on mutually beneficial opportunities. Through a systematic review of the literature, we consider the impacts of UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets on forest ecosystems, and identify 63 targets associated with potentially beneficial, damaging or mixed (i.e. damaging and/or beneficial depending on context or location) impacts. Types of impact are not uniform within SDGs, nor necessarily within individual targets. Targets relating to energy and infrastructure are among the most damaging and best studied, while targets expected to potentially result in beneficial outcomes, typically associated with social progress and well-being, have been investigated to a much lesser degree, especially in the context of external interventions. Thirty-eight targets have some variation in the direction of their impacts (i.e. at least one record with mixed impacts, or two or more records with different directions), suggesting the potential to achieve beneficial over damaging impacts in many cases. We provide illustrative examples of a range of impacts and use our findings to provide recommendations for researchers, development agencies and policymakers.
COVID-19 is proving to be the long awaited ‘big one’: a pandemic capable of bringing societies and economies to their knees. There is an urgent need to examine how COVID-19 – as a health and development crisis - unfolded the way it did it and to consider possibilities for post-pandemic transformations and for rethinking development more broadly. Drawing on over a decade of research on epidemics, we argue that the origins, unfolding and effects of the COVID-19 pandemic require analysis that addresses both structural political-economic conditions alongside far less ordered, ‘unruly’ processes reflecting complexity, uncertainty, contingency and context-specificity. This structural-unruly duality in the conditions and processes of pandemic emergence, progression and impact provides a lens to view three key challenge areas. The first is how scientific advice and evidence are used in policy, when conditions are rigidly ‘locked in’ to established power relations and yet so uncertain. Second is how economies function, with the COVID-19 crisis having revealed the limits of a conventional model of economic growth. The third concerns how new forms of politics can become the basis of reshaped citizen-state relations in confronting a pandemic, such as those around mutual solidarity and care. COVID-19 demonstrates that we face an uncertain future, where anticipation of and resilience to major shocks must become the core problematic of development studies and practice. Where mainstream approaches to development have been top down, rigid and orientated towards narrowly-defined economic goals, post-COVID-19 development must have a radically transformative, egalitarian and inclusive knowledge and politics at its core.
Land tenure security is increasingly recognized as a foundational element for advancing global sustainable development agendas, but questions remain about how it affects human well-being and environmental outcomes. We identify 117 studies that aimed to estimate the causal effect of land tenure security interventions on these outcomes. Approximately two-thirds of these studies reported positive links between improved tenure security and human well-being or environmental outcomes. Close to half of the studies that examined social and environmental outcomes reported positive impacts on both. The majority of studies assessed government-implemented interventions that statutorily recognized rights through land titling and formalization in the 1990s and 2000s. More research is needed to bolster the body of evidence on the effects of non-technical interventions (for example, capacity building and awareness raising) and the devolution of rights to inform future land policy efforts and accelerate sustainable development.
Although REDD+ is primarily a mechanism for reducing carbon emissions from forests, concerns regarding social benefits, wellbeing and gender are increasingly part of its mandate. This is consistent with the Paris Declaration as well as SDG 5 on gender equality and women’s empowerment. Critics have argued, however, that REDD+ design, both in policy and projects, does not take gender into account effectively, rather marginalizing women from decision making processes and exacerbating inequalities. Most of that research has been site specific or on single countries. This article uses data from a longitudinal study of subnational REDD+ initiatives in six countries to analyze their gendered impact on perceived wellbeing. Comparative research on subjective wellbeing was conducted at 62 villages participating in 16 REDD+ initiatives and 61 control villages at two periods in time, using a before-after-control-intervention (BACI) design. Focus groups with villagers (68% male) and women (100% female) permit a gendered comparison of definitions of wellbeing and outcomes of initiatives. The results highlight that while definitions of wellbeing overlapped between the two groups, almost half of the women’s focus groups thought that having their own source of income was important. Outcomes regarding wellbeing change suggest that perceived wellbeing decreased in REDD+ villages both for villagers as a whole and for women, relative to control villages, but the decrease was much worse for women – a decrease that is significantly associated with living in a REDD+ village. These declines may be due to unrealized expectations for REDD+, combined with little attention to gender in REDD+ initiatives, in spite of an important portion (46%) of specific interventions that women view positively. These interventions provide insights into potential ways forward. Overall, however, REDD+ initiatives appear to be repeating past mistakes, with insufficient attention to gender equality and safeguarding women’s rights. More effort needs to be paid to ensuring that gender is an integral part of future initiatives to combat climate change in rural communities.
Forest restoration occupies centre stage in global conversations about carbon removal and biodiversity conservation, but recent research rarely acknowledges social dimensions or environmental justice implications related to its implementation. We find that 294.5 million people live on tropical forest restoration opportunity land in the Global South, including 12% of the total population in low-income countries. Forest landscape restoration that prioritizes local communities by affording them rights to manage and restore forests provides a promising option to align global agendas for climate mitigation, conservation, environmental justice and sustainable development. An analysis of the overlap between tropical forest restoration, human populations, development and national policies for community forest ownership shows that 294.5 million people live within forest restoration opportunity land in the Global South.
With COVID-19 and its economic fallout now spreading in the poorest parts of the world, many more people will become poor and food-insecure. In a new scenario analysis, we estimate that globally, absent interventions, over 140 million people could fall into extreme poverty (measured against the $1.90 poverty line) in 2020 — an increase of 20% from present levels. This in turn would drive up food insecurity. A global health crisis could thus cause a major food crisis — unless steps are taken to provide unprecedented economic emergency relief.
The world's forests provide valuable contributions to people but continue to be threatened by agricultural expansion and other land uses. Counterfactual-based methods are increasingly used to evaluate forest conservation initiatives. This review synthesizes recent studies quantifying the impacts of such policies and programs. Extending past reviews focused on instrument choice, design, and implementation, our theory of change explicitly acknowledges context. Screening over 60,000 abstracts yielded 136 comparable normalized effect sizes (Cohen's d). Comparing across instrument categories, evaluation methods, and contexts suggests not only a lack of “silver bullets” in the conservation toolbox, but that effectiveness is also low on average. Yet context is critical. Many interventions in our sample were implemented in “bullet-proof” contexts of low pressure on natural resources. This greatly limits their potential impacts and suggests the need to invest further not only in understanding but also in better aligning conservation with local and global development goals.
Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Resource Economics, Volume 12 is October 5, 2020. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
The Sustainable Development Goals require countries to halve poverty in all its dimensions by 2020 but the dimensions are nowhere specified. Reflecting the United Nation’s aspiration that policy should be informed by ‘the meaningful participation of persons living in poverty’, participative research was undertaken in six contrasting countries (Bangladesh, Bolivia, France, Tanzania, the United Kingdom and the USA) to identify the dimensions of poverty. People experiencing poverty were involved at all stages of the research as members of national research teams alongside academics and practitioners. The core methodology, Merging of Knowledge, entailed recruitment in each country of people in poverty, social welfare practitioners and specialist academics, their participation in extended parallel groupwork in order to specify the dimensions of poverty, and meetings between representatives of all three groups to seek consensus. Consensus was achieved at national level as it subsequently was at international level with representatives from all six countries. Nine dimensions of poverty were recognised, only three of which are commonly included in existing measures: disempowerment; suffering in body, mind and heart; struggle and resistance; social maltreatment;, institutional maltreatment; unrecognised contribution; lack of decent work; insufficient income; and material and social deprivation. Five factors were determined to influence the manifestation of the dimensions: cultural beliefs; identity; location; environment and environmental policy and timing and duration. The research suggests that it may be possible to view poverty in the global North and South through a single perspective creating a template for the development and evaluation of policy, while also stimulating work on new indicators of poverty.
Solutions to poverty and ecosystem degradation are often framed as conflicting. We ask whether Indonesia’s national anti-poverty program, which transfers cash to hundreds of thousands of poor households, reduced deforestation as a side benefit. Although the program has no direct link to conservation, we estimate that it reduced tree cover loss in villages by 30% (95% confidence interval, 10 to 50%). About half of the avoided losses were in primary forests, and reductions were larger when participation density was higher. The economic value of the avoided carbon emissions alone compares favorably to program implementation costs. The program’s environmental impact appears to be mediated through channels widely available in developing nations: consumption smoothing, whereby cash substitutes for deforestation as a form of insurance, and consumption substitution, whereby market-purchased goods substitute for deforestation-sourced goods. The results imply that anti-poverty programs targeted at the very poor can help achieve global environmental goals under certain conditions.
As we enter the 2020s, global poverty is still a grave and persistent problem. Alleviating and eradicating poverty within and across the world’s societies requires a thorough understanding of its nature and extent. Although economists still standardly measure absolute and relative poverty in monetary terms, a consensus is emerging that poverty is a socially relational problem involving deprivations in multiple dimensions, including health, standard of living, education and political participation. The anthology Dimensions of Poverty advances the interdisciplinary debate on multidimensional poverty, and features contributions from leading international experts and early career researchers (including from the Global South). This introductory chapter gives an overview of formative debates, central concepts and key findings. While monetary poverty measures are still dominant in public and academic debate, their explanatory power has been drawn into question. We discuss relevant criticisms before outlining the normative concepts that can inform both multidimensional poverty and monetary measures, including basic capabilities, basic needs and social primary goods. Next, we introduce several influential multidimensional poverty indices, including the Human Development Index and the Multidimensional Poverty Index. The anthology shows in detail how such measures can be improved, from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. It shows that there are different methods of poverty research that require further investigation, including participatory studies, (value) surveys, public consensus building, the constitutional approach, and financial diaries. Finally, we show that there is an ongoing problem of epistemic asymmetries in global poverty research, and discuss responsibility for addressing poverty, including the responsibilities of academics. The remainder of the chapter is dedicated to a more detailed preview of the volume’s 20 contributions, which are assembled along the following five themes: (I) poverty as a social relation; (II) epistemic injustices in poverty research; (III) the social context of poverty; (IV) measuring multidimensional poverty; and (V) country cases.
Biodiversity conservation interventions have long confronted challenges of human poverty. The ethical foundations of international conservation, including conservation's relationship with poverty, are currently being interrogated in animated debates about the future of conservation. However, while some commentary exists, empirical analysis of conservation practitioner perspectives on poverty, and their ethical justification, has been lacking thus far.
We used Q methodology complemented by more detailed qualitative analysis to examine empirically perspectives on poverty and conservation within the conservation movement, and compare these empirical discourses to positions within the literature. We sampled conservation practitioners in western headquartered organizations, and in Bolivia, China, Nepal and Uganda, thereby giving indications of these perspectives in Latin America, Asia and Africa.
While there are some elements of consensus, for instance the principle that the poor should not shoulder the costs of conserving a global public good, the three elicited discourses diverge in a number of ways. Anthropocentrism and ecocentrism differentiate the perspectives, but beyond this, there are two distinct framings of poverty which conservation practitioners variously adhere to.
The first prioritizes welfare, needs and sufficientarianism, and is more strongly associated with the China, Nepal and Uganda case studies. The second framing of poverty focuses much more on the need for ‘do no harm’ principles and safeguards, and follows an internationalized human rights‐oriented discourse.
There are also important distinctions between discourses about whether poverty is characterized as a driver of degradation, or more emphasis is placed on overconsumption and affluence in perpetuating conservation threats. This dimension particularly illuminates shifts in thinking in the 30 or so years since the Brundtland report, and reflecting new global realities.
This analysis serves to update, parse and clarify differing perspectives on poverty within the conservation, and broader environmental movement, to illuminate consensual aspects between perspectives, and reveal where critical differences remain.
A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.
Recent research and policies recognize the importance of environmental defenders for global sustainability and emphasize their need for protection against violence and repression. However, effective support may benefit from a more systematic understanding of the underlying environmental conflicts, as well as from better knowledge on the factors that enable environmental defenders to mobilize successfully. We have created the global Environmental Justice Atlas to address this knowledge gap. Here we present a large-n analysis of 2743 cases that sheds light on the characteristics of environmental conflicts and the environmental defenders involved, as well as on successful mobilization strategies. We find that bottom-up mobilizations for more sustainable and socially just uses of the environment occur worldwide across all income groups, testifying to the global existence of various forms of grassroots environmentalism as a promising force for sustainability. Environmental defenders are frequently members of vulnerable groups who employ largely non-violent protest forms. In 11% of cases globally, they contributed to halt environmentally destructive and socially conflictive projects, defending the environment and livelihoods. Combining strategies of preventive mobilization, protest diversification and litigation can increase this success rate significantly to up to 27%. However, defenders face globally also high rates of criminalization (20% of cases), physical violence (18%), and assassinations (13%), which significantly increase when Indigenous people are involved. Our results call for targeted actions to enhance the conditions enabling successful mobilizations, and for specific support for Indigenous environmental defenders.
Economic approaches to combat environmental degradation and deforestation have resulted in development initiatives such as the Payment for Environmental Services program (PES). This study deals with the effects of PES on women's livelihoods in Thuong Lo commune, Central Vietnam. Employing a feminist political ecology perspective and adopting a qualitative approach, we analyze the gendered roles, responsibilities and effects of PES on local livelihoods. We found that the women in our study portrayed different preferences and knowledge in relation to PES, forest management and livelihoods. Women are often excluded in PES projects due to a range of various socio-cultural factors.
Keywords: Payments for Environmental Services; forest management; gender; women's empowerment; livelihoods; Central Vietnam; Co Tu people
The impact caused by the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in different parts of the world, currently reaches 745, 308 infected and 35,307 deaths according to the latest reports. In this context, in our country, an area of epidemiological relevance is the Peruvian Amazon, due to the distribution of endemic diseases such as metaxemic diseases (Dengue, Malaria, among others), where the problem increases due to the COVID infection. -19 can lead to false positives in Dengue screening tests. Thus leading to a delay in the diagnosis of COVID-19 infection and further spread of the virus, since in most cases of Dengue there are no warning signs and treatment is ambulatory. This article seeks to express an opinion on the need to address cases of coinfection between Dengue and Covid-19 in endemic areas.
Universidad Nacional de Córdoba
ContextDeforestation and landscape fragmentation have been identified as processes enabling direct transmission of zoonotic infections. Certain human behaviors provide opportunities for direct contact between humans and wild nonhuman primates (NHPs), but are often missing from studies linking landscape level factors and observed infectious diseases.Objectives
Our objective is to better understand landscape and livelihood factors influencing human-NHP contact in rural communities whose landscapes undergo deforestation. We investigate core loss and edge density within a buffered area around survey respondent households to identify which landscape changes and behaviors increase the risk of human-NHP contact.Methods
Behavioral survey data were collected from small-scale agriculturists living near forest fragments around Kibale National Park in western Uganda. We combined spatially explicit behavioral data with high-resolution satellite imagery. Using land cover classification and change detection, we investigated the relationships between forest loss and fragmentation, behavioral data, and human-NHP contact using logistic regression.ResultsBetween 2011 and 2015, there were differences in the landscape metrics around the households of individuals who had experienced human-NHP contact compared to those who had not had contact. Increased edge density around households, collection of small trees for construction, and foraging and hunting for food in forested habitat significantly increase the likelihood of human-NHP contact.Conclusion
This study provides empirical evidence that forest landscape fragmentation and certain smallholders’ behaviors in forest patches jointly increase the likelihood of human-NHP contact events. Combining spatially explicit data on land use and human behaviors is crucial for understanding the social and ecological drivers of human-NHP contact.
This research paper was created with funding and technical support of the Research Consortium on Women's Land Rights, an initiative of Resource Equity. The Research Consortium on Women's Land Rights is a community of learning and practice that works to increase the quantity and strengthen the quality of research on interventions to advance women's land and resource rights. Among other things, the Consortium commissions new research that promotes innovations in practice and addresses gaps in evidence on what works to improve women's land rights. Learn more about the Research Consortium on Women's Land Rights by visiting https://consortium.resourceequity.org/ This paper assesses the effectiveness of a specific land tenure intervention to improve the lives of women, by asking new questions of available project data sets.
Deforestation can increase the transmission of malaria. Here, we build upon the existing link between malaria risk and deforestation by investigating how the global demand for commodities that increase deforestation can also increase malaria risk. We use a database of trade relationships to link the consumption of deforestation-implicated commodities in developed countries to estimates of country-level malaria risk in developing countries. We estimate that about 20% of the malaria risk in deforestation hotspots is driven by the international trade of deforestation-implicated export commodities, such as timber, wood products, tobacco, cocoa, coffee and cotton. By linking malaria risk to final consumers of commodities, we contribute information to support demand-side policy measures to complement existing malaria control interventions, with co-benefits for reducing deforestation and forest disturbance.
Environmental resources are often cited as important for households coping with hazards in the Global South. However, a recent large-scale analysis has challenged the narrative of ‘forest as safety net’. Clarifying this contradiction is important given the anticipated increase in the frequency of severe hazards due to climate change, and also because calls for habitat restoration may drive transformation of resource access in tropical landscapes. Here we examine the importance of environmental coping strategies to 85 households in Wedza District, Zimbabwe, exploring how the situation of households in different vulnerability contexts shapes dependence on environmental safety nets. We firstly compare recalled responses to two past hazard exposures, the drought of 2002 and the interacting harvest failure and hyperinflation crisis of 2008, to assess how exposure to multiple interacting hazards might alter the coping strategies available to and preferred by rural households. We secondly use scenario exercises to explore why households might or might not choose to adopt environmental coping strategies. We find that interactions between co-occurring covariate hazards can increase dependence on environmental resources by rendering preferred strategies unavailable, with the proportion of respondent households recalling dependence on environmental resources as a core strategy increasing from 31% in 2002 to more than 50% in 2008. We find also that the co-occurrence of covariate and idiosyncratic hazards, such as incapacitation of the primary income earner during a drought period, can increase dependence on environmental coping strategies. While respondents acknowledge the downsides of environmental safety nets, such as illegality, seasonality, and market unreliability, they still perceive environmental resources to be among the most important strategies. Our results demonstrate the importance of considering the whole vulnerability context when evaluating the importance of environmental coping strategies, in order to avoid underestimating the contribution made by environmental resources to the resilience of rural livelihoods.
Local projects for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) were frequently designed as pilot actions to inform future upscaled initiatives. Drawing lessons from these project experiences may thus help improve the design of jurisdictional programs, which is the focus of REDD+ implementation in the Paris Agreement. Here we first scrutinize how REDD+ was historically conceptualized, the most prominent model being that of a multitier payments for environmental services (PES) scheme of “passing on” carbon mitigation responsibilities and credits across scales, from international buyers to forestland owners. Then we analyze two REDD+ project databases, ID-RECCO and GCS-REDD, using principal component and regression analysis. Among 226 conservation-oriented REDD+ projects, only 88 had planned conditional incentives to landowners—the key feature of PES. Intentions to apply PES rose after 2007, and correlate strongly with efforts to seek certification, including as a benefit-sharing strategy, and with carbon sales. Zooming closer into a portfolio of 23 local REDD+ projects that were actually implemented on the ground, we found project implementers reported conditional incentives as potentially being both the most promising and effective intervention. Likewise, treated households identified conditional incentives as comparatively effective in changing their land-use plans, while also providing above-average welfare returns. Still, these conditional incentives remained underutilized in implementation, with only one-third of the treatment intensity compared to non-conditional incentives. Project implementers cited insecure land tenure and uncertain REDD+ financial flows as key impediments to using conditional incentives. The original vision of a multitier PES model for REDD+ thus ran into both supply and demand side problems, jointly explaining the discrepancy between REDD+ theory and practice. Since jurisdictional approaches to REDD+ so far also receive only hesitant and slow climate financing flows, coming mostly in non-conditional form, and operate under forest-frontier governance with similar tenure restrictions, jurisdictions would seem well-advised to plan for conditional landowner incentives only in scenarios where the preconditions for PES are met. Implementers of jurisidictional approaches may also want to avoid conceptualizing their new model too narrowly and prescriptively, as was arguably the case with the conceptualization of REDD+ as a multitier PES scheme.
This article examines how Afro-Brazilian YouTube channels Papo de Preta (Black woman’s chat) and Afros e Afins use African-American media representations and cultural references to discuss social justice issues in Brazil. They also rely on African-American entertainers and activists to articulate the particularities of marginalization in Brazil. Their use of African-American entertainers demonstrates the transnational exchange of ideas among Afro-descendants. The social justice work of these YouTubers is part of a long tradition of transnational communication among Afro-descendants to resist marginalization in the home country.
This book is concerned with the social science of poverty and covers topics ranging from the intricacies of measuring poverty using objective quantitative, income-based measures, to the interrelationships between structural violence, poverty, and social suffering; capability deprivation as the basis for analyzing poverty; ideologies and beliefs about poverty; how politics and institutions shape poverty and inequality; and the effects of poverty on child development. The book also explores the link between gender and poverty; the historical origins of poverty in developing countries; poor neighborhoods in the metropolis; how segregation perpetuates disadvantage; the association between nonmarital family structures, poverty, and inequality; whether social ties matter for poor people who are seeking employment; the link between poverty and education; intergenerational mobility; hunger and food insecurity; and the relation between crime and poverty.
An extensive set of policies, programmes, technologies and strategies have been implemented in the forest sector. Collectively, these 'levers' cover a diverse range of approaches, at a variety of scales and are governed by many different stakeholders. It is important for decision-makers to understand which levers might be most useful in achieving poverty alleviation. This paper seeks to answer the question: which forest management policies, programmes, technologies and strategies have been effective at alleviating poverty? We studied 21 different rights-based, regulatory, market and supply chain, and forest and tree management levers for which we could identify a plausible theory of change of how implementation of that lever might alleviate poverty. For every lever we: define and describe the lever; describe the logic or theory of change by which the lever might plausibly be expected to alleviate poverty; summarize the available evidence showing how the lever has alleviated poverty; and discuss the variables that explain heterogeneity in outcomes. Overall, we found limited evidence of these levers being associated with reducing poverty (i.e. moving people out of poverty). Some of the strongest evidence for poverty reduction came from ecotourism, community forest management, agroforestry and, to a lesser extent, payments for ecosystem services (PES). However, we found substantial, varied and context-dependent evidence of several levers being associated with mitigating poverty (i.e. by improving well-being). A multitude of cases showing positive outcomes for poverty mitigation came from community forest management, forest producer organisations, small and medium forest enterprises, PES, and tree crop contract production. A combination of more rigorous and long-term research designs, along with examinations of the cost-effectiveness of different levers, would go a long way to contributing to the design of effective interventions for poverty alleviation.
Forest and tree-based landscapes represent complex social-ecological systems. In tropical and subtropical regions, these landscapes are home to hundreds of millions of resource-poor people. Gaining a better understanding of how contextual factors influence forest-poverty dynamics is essential for the design, targeting and implementation of effective policy instruments and interventions to alleviate poverty. In this article we present an innovative framework for exploring the social, economic, political, institutional and environmental factors affecting forestry-poverty dynamics. We use two examples of widely used forest management and conservation interventions, namely protected areas and community forestry, to illustrate how these factors can take multiple roles in complex causal chains of processes of social and environmental change in forest and tree-based landscapes. We highlight how future research can provide a more comprehensive understanding of the processes and contexts shaping forest-poverty dynamics, including elucidating the differentiated effects of different drivers of change on multiple social and environmental outcomes over time.
The alleviation of global poverty is a major objective of the 2030 UN Sustainable Development Goals (notably SDG1 “to end poverty in all its forms everywhere”). Many rural people experiencing poverty often rely on forests and tree-based systems, such as agroforestry, suggesting the existence of links between such systems and poverty outcomes. This paper reviews the evidence of such links across multiple dimensions of poverty and well-being, based on an expert panel convened by the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO) and an extensive literature search. We consider whether, how, where, when, and for whom forests and trees in the wider landscape influence poverty dynamics. We organize the evidence according to four pathways through which forests and trees influence household poverty dynamics: 1) helping households move out of poverty; 2) maintaining well-being levels through subsistence, food security, health, and cultural and spiritual values; 3) preventing declines by mitigating risks and stabilizing consumption; 4) decreasing well-being by generating negative externalities that could trap or move households into poverty. We found that local context matters considerably, with the roles of forests and trees strongly varying across geographical, social, economic, and political settings. Another key finding is that evidence of forests and trees providing livelihood diversification and benefits that help households move out of poverty remains limited, based primarily on a small number of case studies. Evidence on the impact of gender gaps in relation to forest landscapes and poverty pathways is also lacking. However, our findings do suggest that ecosystem services provided by forests and trees play critical roles in maintaining well-being and food security and have the potential to contribute more to helping households move out of poverty and mitigating risks amplified by climate change. This review also highlights cautionary findings related to negative forest externalities that can maintain or move households into poverty. Together, these findings call for policy efforts to support the conservation and sustainable management of forest landscapes and agroforestry systems that are more targeted towards meeting the diverse needs of the rural poor. Our results also point to a need for greater effort to address gender disparities, which have been largely overlooked yet provide a critical opportunity to not only enhance gender equality but also advance sustainable poverty reduction goals.
Major advances have been made over the past two decades in our understanding of the contribution forests and trees outside forests make to human well-being across the globe. Yet this knowledge has not always been incorporated into broader poverty and development policy agendas. The result is a missed opportunity to effectively and sustainably reach national and international poverty alleviation goals. Here, we address the need for greater integration of forests and trees in development policy. We distil five key findings based on the current evidence base and discuss their implications for decision-makers. We find that (1) forests and trees are critical to global efforts to end poverty but (2) their benefits to human well-being are unevenly distributed. Although the evidence indicates that (3) forests and trees can help the rural poor as they face profound global changes, it also shows that (4) poorly aligned forest and land use policies and programmes may lead to excessive costs being borne by the poor. However, we do find that (5) policy and management measures exist that can enable forests and trees to effectively address poverty goals even as there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution. Key overarching policy implications of these findings include the need to integrate forests and trees more explicitly into land-use planning and poverty reduction programs, strengthen forest property rights, self-governance and technical skills of forest-reliant communities, and carefully tailor policy measures to the context in which they are implemented.
Forests and trees provide a range of goods and services vital for human well-being, particularly for people who live below the poverty line. Yet a number of important knowledge gaps remain regarding the relationship between forests, trees, and poverty dynamics. Here, we highlight five research priorities that require urgent attention if policy makers and practitioners are to realize the potential for forests and tree-based systems to contribute to poverty alleviation. These are: examining forest-poverty dynamics, especially over the medium- to long-term; assessing the relative effectiveness of different forest-related policy and management interventions for poverty alleviation; identifying the key barriers to more equitable, just, and sustainable use of forests and trees, and ways to overcome them; expanding the evidence base to cover under-represented geographies and contexts; and bringing to light the ‘hidden dimensions’ of forest contributions to poverty alleviation.
Forests have re-taken centre stage in global conversations about sustainability, climate and biodiversity. Here, we use a horizon scanning approach to identify five large-scale trends that are likely to have substantial medium- and long-term effects on forests and forest livelihoods: forest megadisturbances; changing rural demographics; the rise of the middle-class in low- and middle-income countries; increased availability, access and use of digital technologies; and large-scale infrastructure development. These trends represent human and environmental processes that are exceptionally large in geographical extent and magnitude, and difficult to reverse. They are creating new agricultural and urban frontiers, changing existing rural landscapes and practices, opening spaces for novel conservation priorities and facilitating an unprecedented development of monitoring and evaluation platforms that can be used by local communities, civil society organizations, governments and international donors. Understanding these larger-scale dynamics is key to support not only the critical role of forests in meeting livelihood aspirations locally, but also a range of other sustainability challenges more globally. We argue that a better understanding of these trends and the identification of levers for change requires that the research community not only continue to build on case studies that have dominated research efforts so far, but place a greater emphasis on causality and causal mechanisms, and generate a deeper understanding of how local, national and international geographical scales interact.
Forest landscapes are complex socio-environmental systems. The degree to which forests support human livelihoods, and humans affect forest ecology, depends in part on the spatial relationship between people and forests. Here, we estimate the number of people who live in and around forests globally. We combined forest cover and human population density data to map the spatial relationship between people and forests on a global scale in 2000 and 2012. Globally, 1.6 billion rural people lived within 5 km of a forest in 2012. Of these, 64.5% lived in tropical countries and 71.3% lived in low-income, lower-middle-income, or upper-middle-income countries. We propose the term “forest-proximate people” to refer to people who live in and around forests. Forest proximity is related to, but not synonymous with, forest dependency. Our findings have implications for researchers and decision-makers interested in forest conservation, forest livelihoods, and sustainable socio-economic development in communities in and around forests.
This book was first published in 2001. Scholars have long studied how institutions emerge and become stable. But why do institutions sometimes break down? In this book, Michael L. Ross explores the breakdown of the institutions that govern natural resource exports in developing states. He shows that these institutions often break down when states receive positive trade shocks - unanticipated windfalls. Drawing on the theory of rent-seeking, he suggests that these institutions succumb to a problem he calls 'rent-seizing' - the predatory behavior of politicians who seek to supply rent to others, and who purposefully dismantle institutions that restrain them. Using case studies of timber booms in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, he shows how windfalls tend to trigger rent-seizing activities that may have disastrous consequences for state institutions, and for the government of natural resources. More generally, he shows how institutions can collapse when they have become endogenous to any rent-seeking process.
Peru's response to Covid-19 has favored large-scale mining interests while constraining livelihood possibilities for artisanal and small-scale miners. Large-scale mining has been offered opportunities to reinforce its role in territorial governance and been freed of certain regulatory requirements. In this essay we identify a significant risk that the response to Covid-19 facilitates authoritarian forms of government as a legitimate form of rule.
Developing countries are highly vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic, in part due to the lack of international support for ensuring progress towards the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Yet the mounting financial burden faced by all countries means that additional support is unlikely to be forthcoming in the near future. It is critical that developing countries find innovative policy mechanisms to achieve sustainability and development aims in a cost-effective manner. This requires identifying affordable policies that can yield immediate progress towards several SDGs together and aligns economic incentives for longer term sustainable development. We identify three policies that meet these criteria: a fossil fuel subsidy swap to fund clean energy investments and dissemination of renewable energy in rural areas; reallocating irrigation subsidies to improve water supply, sanitation and wastewater infrastructure; and a tropical carbon tax, which is a levy on fossil fuels that funds natural climate solutions. Such innovative and cost-effective policy mechanisms do not require substantial external support, and they foster greater progress towards achieving the SDGs in poorer economies.
This essay outlines and analyses the spread of the coronavirus in Brazil. In doing so it explores how the pandemic, whilst initially brought into the country by the wealthy elite, has predominantly affected the country’s poor, revealing structural inequalities that encompass class, race and ethnic differences, in which the poor are not afforded the right to live. It additionally examines the response to COVID-19 by the country’s far right president, Jair Messias Bolsonaro, looking at how his laissez faire reaction to the virus builds on a history of violence against the marginalized, especially to the country’s indigenous peoples, that has not just excluded them from the nation state but at times actively and violently eradicated them.
The ongoing pandemic of a new human coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, has generated enormous global concern. We and others in China were involved in the initial genome sequencing of the virus. Herein, we describe what genomic data reveal about the emergence SARS-CoV-2 and discuss the gaps in our understanding of its origins.
Smallholder livelihoods and the restoration of tropical forests are intimately intertwined. To address the question of how reforestation affects livelihoods and how they in turn affect reforestation, a meta-synthesis was undertaken of 339 scientific publications identified from a systematic literature search. This study is focused on smallholders in the humid tropics, and uses the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework, which was developed by the UK Department for International Development as the framework for analysis. The links between reforestation and livelihoods are found to be diverse and highly interconnected. Reforestation is only one of a smallholder’s activities and typically forms part of a mosaic of land uses across a landscape. Therefore, reforestation should be designed, managed and evaluated under the perspective of a diverse livelihood portfolio, and not as a single activity isolated from other portfolio components, especially under current landscape approaches. It is important for reforestation to be a complementary rather than a competitive livelihood activity. Reforestation has great potential to address poverty, and to increase smallholder socio-ecological resilience and local social equity. However, reforestation outcomes are often suboptimal. Assessing smallholder capacity and the surrounding environment prior to reforestation, and addressing limiting local capacities and conditions in a timely manner, may enhance the likelihood of optimal benefits.
For decades, government agencies and nongovernmental organizations have invested in programs aimed at alleviating poverty and those aimed at protecting the environment. Whether these investments mutually reinforce each other or act in opposition has been widely debated by scholars. Studies that have tried to resolve this debate suffer from a variety of shortcomings, including the challenge of inferring causal relationships from non-experimental data. To help address some of these shortcomings, randomized controlled trials (RCTs) can play an important role. When done well, RCTs permit credible causal inferences and can be designed to directly test competing assumptions about how the world works. Yet few RCTs of poverty programs examine their effects on the environment. Worse, we know of no RCTs reporting the poverty effects of environmental interventions, which may be unsurprising given that environmental scholars rarely use RCTs. The lack of RCTs that can shed light on the relationships between actions to alleviate poverty and actions to reverse global environmental change is an obstacle to advancing the science and practice of sustainability. If scholars of poverty include environmental outcomes in their RCTs, and if environmental scholars use RCTs to study the poverty effects of environmental programs, the long-running debates about the dual challenges of alleviating poverty and protecting the environment could be resolved. Moreover, by forcing people to pay greater attention to the mechanisms and pathways that link the solutions to these two challenges, RCTs can make it more likely that environmental and poverty programs will be designed in ways that ensure progress on one challenge will also imply progress on the other.