Describes how woodland communities in Asia use community forestry to raise incomes and protect the environment. Looks at access and rights to forest products and land, community-based organizations, and the role of NGOs and research institutions.

A global assessment of potential and anticipated impacts of efforts to achieve the SDGs on forests and related socio-economic systems. This title is available as Open Access via Cambridge Core.

The UN's International Initiative of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) has enabled wide comparative research on forestry in global climate change. In this book, an international team of authors who are deeply committed to this initiative provide the first comprehensive account of the mutual influence of deforestation and climate change in various areas throughout the countries of Asia. The authors also report on the policies and programs embarked on by local governments and inhabitants to maintain sustainable forest usage and their implications for fair trade, biological diversity, and environmental preservation.

Describes how woodland communities in Asia use community forestry to raise incomes and protect the environment. Looks at access and rights to forest products and land, community-based organizations, and the role of NGOs and research institutions.

Enhancing social and economic development while preserving nature is one of the major challenges for humankind in the current century. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment showed an alarming degradation of ecosystems and exacerbated poverty for many groups of people across the world due to unprecedented changes in ecosystems caused by human activities in the 20th century. Sustainable Rural Development is key to maintaining active local communities in rural and semi-natural areas, avoiding depopulation, and preserving high-ecological-value sites, including protected areas. Establishing protected areas is the most common strategy to preserve biodiversity around the world with the advantage of promoting the supply of ecosystem services. However, depending how it affects economic opportunities and the access to natural resources, it can either attract or repel human settlements. The convergence of development and conservation requires decision-making processes capable of aligning the needs and expectations of rural communities and the goals of biodiversity conservation. The articles compiled in this Special Issue (nine research papers and two review papers) make important contributions to this challenge from different approaches, disciplines and regions in the world.

Experiences from incentive-based forest management are examined for their effects on the livelihoods of local communities. In the second section, country case studies provide a snapshot of REDD developments to date and identify design features for REDD that would support benefits for forest communities.

This ground-breaking book combines detailed analysis of the forest sector with modern strategic management principles to develop a vision for sustainable forest management which is both practical and theoretically robust. The book adopts a holistic approach to propose a new theoretical framework for this once traditional sector; one which reconciles current thinking in strategic management with natural resource management.