It’s a warm August day in the pristine forest of Cordillera Azul National Park, located in Central Peru’s Amazon Rainforest. Cordillera Azul, home to more than 1,800 species of plants and animals, is one of the most biologically diverse areas in the world—and one of the most endangered. On this day, new patches of forest-clearing pop […]
The rapid rise of interest and action in integrated landscape management in the last few years has exceeded anything I had anticipated. While the environmental community was earliest to recognize the necessity of coordinating strategies with other sectors, the agribusiness and food sectors are rapidly innovating towards landscape partnerships; farmer organizations are beginning to take […]
Can small protected areas still deliver large benefits for both people and nature? New research from Papua New Guinea demonstrates that locally managed marine areas effectively protect grouper spawning aggregations. And with modest expansions, these protected areas can greatly improve their conservation benefits. Local Protection for Local Benefits Known to the local community as manang, […]
In February, I joined San Francisco-based photographer Mitchell Maher on a trip to Tanzania and Malawi. The two of us journeyed out together to make films and collect images for some ongoing projects IFPRI is involved with in the region. In Tanzania, we joined IFPRI senior research fellow Ephraim Nkonya and his German collaborators, on the massive Trans-SEC […]
Put yourself for a moment in the shoes of a small-scale farmer in rural Mozambique. Two weeks before harvest, a massive flood wipes out your entire maize crop. You had been counting on this harvest for most of your annual income and much of your food. What would you do? How would you cope? When […]
When you cut and burn a tropical forest, you’re left with a barren plain of cracked red mud, incapable of supporting life – the opposite of the teeming, hyperdiverse array of life that was destroyed. Once the trees are gone, the nutrients wash away and the soil degrades into a dense, brick-like layer so hardened […]
CIFOR scientists James Reed and Josh Van Vianen explain why policy makers tackling climate and development goals need to be aware of how all sectors affect each other.
Although continents apart, hunters in the forests of Africa and Latin America can learn from each other’s experiences in wildlife management and the use of bushmeat, according to experts from the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR). “In both the Congo and the Amazon, millions of people depend on wild species for food, and hunting […]
Community-based forestry has shown itself to be a potent vehicle for promoting sustainable forest management, reducing poverty and generating jobs and income for rural communities, but unlocking its true potential will require greater support by governments through policy reforms and other measures. Many community-based forestry regimes are showing great promise as engines for sustainable development […]
What do cucumbers, mustard, almonds and alfalfa have in common? On the surface very little. But there is one thing they share: they all owe their existence to the service of bees. For centuries, this tiny striped helper has labored the world’s fields without winning much recognition for its many contributions to food production. Wild […]
This past autumn, I saw a shocking headline: Forest fires in Indonesia were creating as many greenhouse gas emissions as the entire United States economy. Between June and October 2015, an estimated 2.6 million hectares—or 4.5 times the size of Bali— burned to clear land for production of palm oil, the world’s highest value non-timber […]
Rural communities across Africa face a variety of threats to their customary and indigenous land and natural resource claims. The drivers of these threats are diverse: increasing foreign investment, national elite speculation, rising population densities, climate change, and national infrastructure mega-projects, to name a few. The introduction of such external destabilizing influences often sets off […]
Nature has solutions that can sustainably balance environmental health and human priorities. In other words, sometimes nature can outperform our best technological innovations. Watch The Nature Conservancy discuss the “forgotten” climate solutions.
An estimated 1.3 billion people—nearly 20 percent of humanity—rely on forests and forest products for their livelihoods, with the majority living on less than $1.25 a day. In some areas, forest activities even rival agriculture in terms of benefits and earnings, and they may provide an especially important source of income for women. But do forests actually […]
Which of the world’s forests are natural, and which have been planted by humans? It seems like a simple question, but researchers have been struggling to answer it for years. Satellites can’t easily distinguish between primary and secondary forests, which occur naturally, and planted forests, which are created and managed by people to supply timber, […]
