Political and economic transformations in many parts of the world have threatened the existence of forests and the sustainability of forestry. Industry, agriculture, energy and land settlement policies inflict damage on forests and other natural assets. This kind of damage, tantamount to deforestation, is the result of government policies that consider forests as a source of revenue, not as an asset to be protected. This study evaluated the success of forestry policies and practices under the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) over a period of 13 years. The previous 13 years were then taken as a control group and compared to them in order to evaluate the success of the AK Party. Overall 26 years of forestry policies and practices in Turkey (1989–2015) were examined. According to the official records, Turkey's forests areas are growing. This growth, however, is not caused by the afforestation but by the effects of immigration from the countryside to cities. Also increased demand for wood is intensifying the pressure on forests. Although the use of forests for non-forestry purposes fragments the forest ecosystems and reduces forested areas, these losses have not been recorded by official statistics. Protected areas are being transformed into recreational areas and their management is not following the wishes of the people. The reason for this is that the government prioritises economic growth over environmental concerns.

The Brazilian Amazon is at the forefront of forest policy because of its importance for the conservation of the world's largest rainforest and its leading role in the implementation of the Reducing Emissions through Deforestation and Forest Degradation programme (REDD+). However, the increasing population and the extraction of natural resources challenge forest governance. This paper assesses the historical evolution of the policy narratives that have driven environmental governance in Brazil. We argue that environmental policy has evolved through an overlapping of narratives, rather than a change in governance logics. The success of REDD+ relies not only on the soundness of its scientific base but also on its interaction with existing narratives, the susceptibility of policies to economic and political changes at the national and international level and the mechanisms of social exclusion it may reinforce.

The depletion of forest resources in developing countries affects more than 1 billion people who depend on forests for their livelihoods. Support to forest conservation initiatives is increasing, as well as the interest in studying the drivers underpinning projects' success. In this multidisciplinary article, we analyse how and to what extent the wealth of household assets, defined following the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework, influences the long-term outcomes of initiatives aimed at promoting improved forest management practices. Based on a unique dataset from household survey data collected in Guinea, an economic-statistical analysis is conducted in order to determine how such assets influence the achievement of projects' long-term outcomes. The results reveal that human, social and financial capitals greatly affect the attainment of positive results related to planned interventions. As a main outcome of the study, every project should consider, in the design phase, the status of the households' livelihood assets within the target area, as they are shown to be crucial for projects' success.

Community resilience is the sustained ability of a community to use available resources while responding to stress, as well as the ability to recover from adverse situations accounting for social vulnerability, environmental hazards, and economic conditions. As climate change increases risk and unpredictability for management and planning, understanding resilience is crucial. Focusing on Mexico, this work explores international forestry sector investments as a tool to increase resilience. This research uses interviews, surveys, and programmatic documents comparing two case studies to explore the impact of certain foreign investments on community resiliency. The resilience concepts measured include diversity, economic and ecological variability, social capital, tight feedbacks, innovation, governance overlap, and ecosystem services. Results show that such investments can increase community resilience by improving community management, resource utilization, and recovery ability in times of economic, social, or biophysical stress.

This paper presents an assessment of the outcomes of research carried out under the Sustainable Wetlands Adaptation and Mitigation Programme (SWAMP). SWAMP aimed to inform national and international climate policy and practice by developing tools and methods to quantify greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, carbon stocks and flux in tropical wetlands due to land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF). This assessment modelled SWAMP's intended outcomes as a theory of change (ToC) and used qualitative methods to test the ToC and to evaluate whether and how the outcomes were achieved. It found that SWAMP research has helped raise academic and policy interest in wetlands, mangroves and peat forests as carbon reservoirs, and that SWAMP's recommendations informed policy discourse and supported the development of technical guidance and strategies of sustainable wetland management. However, the research had a weak effect on international and Indonesian climate change policies compared to other factors. The Paris Agreement and Indonesia's nationally determined contribution (NDC) do not include the quantification of carbon stocks from mangroves, which are not all located in the forest areas. Knowledge translation was achieved through a variety of mechanisms, with direct engagement identified as particularly important. The outcome evaluation approach proved useful as a way of conceptualising and organising the analysis of research impact on development outcomes.

Through a case-study of Arabuko-Sokoke forest, this paper investigates the potentials and limitations of participatory forest management (PFM) and forest-based income generating activities (IGAs) as conservation strategies. Based on household surveys, individual interviews, and forest transects, the paper shows how formal and especially informal institutions establish incentive structures that undermine the conservation and livelihood objectives of PFM and IGAs. PFM has reproduced, rather than reduced, on-site state control and local elite capture. As an IGA, butterfly farming has some small-scale economic potential but questionable effect on forest conservation. However, official and hidden institutions largely prevent the current manifestations of PFM and butterfly farming from influencing actual forest uses, i.e. who extracts what products, in which quantities, why, and how? Hence, continued support to PFM should focus on exposing and challenging overt but not least hidden institutions to improve the chances for a positive impact on local livelihoods and forest conservation. Further, since sustainable forest utilisation through PFM and IGAs is unlikely to generate enough benefits to make forest conservation attractive to those who can legitimately and effectively regulate access, some form of carefully designed payment for nature conservation seems the only realistic way to conserve Arabuko-Sokoke forest.

Forest ecosystem services (forest ES) in Nepal help sustain livelihoods and strengthen the national economy. However, its flow is affected by human and environmental pressures. In the present study, a systematic review of literature published between 2000 and 2017 in the ISI Web of Science, Scopus, Nepjol, and Himaldocs was undertaken to (i) explore the current research status on forest ES and (ii) identify the likely effects of future climate change on forest ES and forest-based livelihoods and economy. A total of 140 papers were obtained from these publications, of which 46 papers (33%) directly focused on forest ES in Nepal. However, the publication trends have increased only in recent years, and the distribution is non-homogenous and clustered around the central and western regions. Many studies (62%) dealt with regulating services, especially estimating carbon stock. We have listed eight major implications of this synthesis while discussing the likely effects of climate change on forest ES in Nepal. Payment for ecosystem services (PES), a global policy design, appears to be a better option to tackle climatic impacts on forest ES through adaptation measures in Nepal, in addition to more collaborative research involving universities and research organizations and expanding in spatial scale and coverage of all ecosystem service categories.

We analyze survey data collected from interview of 367 randomly selected rural households from the Sichuan and Yunnan provinces of China to assess the influence of rural households' livelihood capital (physical, financial, human, natural, and social capital) on their income from participation in the forest carbon sequestration project. The project is implemented under the Climate, Community, and Biodiversity standards. Results show that, with regional differences controlled, natural capital and physical capital have a positive and statistically significant influence, whereas the human capital, financial capital, and social capital of rural households have a negative and statistically significant influence on their income from participation in the project.

This paper presents an analysis of the cost of reducing carbon dioxide emissions through the introduction of improved cookstoves. The analysis constructs mitigation cost curves for three types of wood fuel user in 75 countries that account for 95 percent of all emissions from cooking with wood. Each curve is based on a Monte Carlo simulation of the costs and benefits of households switching to improved cookstoves, using a range of values for the most important variables in the calculation (wood fuel consumption and cost, stove cost and lifespan, level of adoption and emission reduction). The simulation results are then used to produce cost curves at the country and global level, using expansion coefficients based on national wood fuel statistics and census results.

The analysis shows that the cost of an improved cookstove would be recovered by fuel cost savings in about 215 million households. After excluding households already using improved stoves, the net number of households that should switch to improved stoves is 155 million, which would result in an emission reduction of 95 MtCO₂. If emission reductions are also valued (i.e. given a carbon price), more households should switch and the emission reduction potential increases to 165 MtCO₂ at a carbon price of USD 20/tCO₂. While these amounts are relatively small compared to total global emissions, improved cookstoves could make an important contribution in some countries, especially in Africa. It is also worth noting that the benefit-cost ratio of investing in improved cookstoves is relatively high, ranging from 2.9 to 3.5 at a carbon price of zero and USD 20/tCO₂ respectively.