Home
 
 
Landscape Mosaics Project
 The Landscape Mosaics Project is studying landscapes in six developing countries: Tanzania, Madagascar, Cameroon, Indonesia, Guinea and Laos. It seeks to answer the questions:
  • How can action and empirical research improve livelihoods and conserve forests?
  • What key scientific information is needed to achieve this?
  • How can land use planning and policy be influenced?

At each of the project sites, we hope to affect land use policies and strategies so that local people become involved in determining their future; one which results in food security, income generation and environmental stability.

 
Adaptive Collaborative Management (ACM)
 Improving the ability of forest stakeholders to adjust to heir systems of management and organization to respond more effectively to the challenge of trying to manage a complex and dynamic system is an urgent task. The ACM research focuses on developing and testing the concepts, management principles, tools and policy options needed to help strengthen this ability. We also aim to understand under what conditions such innovations can lead to real improvements in human well-being and forest quality.
   
CAPRi Research Project "Collective Action to Secure Property Rights for the Poor: Avoiding Elite Capture of Natural Resource Benefits and Governance Systems"
 A participatory action research team worked with local communities (women’s and men’s groups) in two districts in Jambi through planning-action-reflection steps attempting to engage in equitable collective action, to secure property rights and to articulate aspirations through development forums. The team also worked with district level local officials identifying forestry and natural resource policies that affect the lives of local communities and communities’ abilities to engage in collective action, and facilitated district officials in their interaction with local community groups, private companies, NGOs and the Ministry of Forestry, focused on collaborative land use planning and forest resource benefit distribution.
   
Devolution
 This research project focuses on the question "What kinds of government-civil society relations enable people living near forests to influence forest management decisions, improve their livelihood and enhance forest resources?"
   
Institutional Analysis
   
   
Accommodating Multiple Interests
 It is often assumed that having a community representative in a meeting or decision-making body concerning resource management assures that the communities' interests are being met. The purpose of this research is to show why most community representation in resource management processes has not been not effective. The intent is to provide suggestions for how to improve such representation, especially as opportunities for pluralistic input into policy making increase and the capacities of villagers to participate in such processes are greater than ever before (with increasing tools for communication such as maps, NGO facilitation etc). The conclusions should prove useful for improving the selection of representatives and their functions within policy-making.

 

 

 

  

 

   
The goal of this programme is to achieve more sustainable and equitable management of forest resources and human well-being in a multi-stakeholder environment through the development and identification of a set of models, institutional arrangements, methods, tools and strategies to empower local communities.