Buying our way out of environmental problems?
PES is often touted as win-win with both environmental gains and poverty alleviation. But REDD+ does not neccesarily translate into forest conservation or benefit local communities.
Current Conservation
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Prioritising the tiger: A history of human-tiger conflict in the Sundarbans
Human-wildlife conflict is widespread in today’s South Asia and the wider world. Forty-seven elephants, seven leopards and two tigers have been killed in the last twenty months in the forests of northern
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Whose right is it anyway? The farmer-ungulate conflict
Pushing ever closer to protected areas and wild lands are farms and settlements, the porous margins becoming the frontlines of human-ungulate conflict. Arati Rao explores the dynamics at these edges, the
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Madagascar: Where community based water resource management has gone too far
The authhor has explored the impact of increased responsibility for water management and decision-making in the communes within Madagascar's southern district of Ambovombe- Androy. Ambovombe-Androy is a semi-arid district that comprises 17 communes with marked levels of poverty. Limited water supply, extreme demand, and predatory operators drive water prices up to unaffordable levels.
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Effect of rural biomass extraction on bird communities in Sariska Tiger Reserve
Forests are extensively used by rural people for subsistence in the tropics. Biomass extraction (like grazing, fuelwood collection and collection of non-timber forest produce) is arguably the most widespread form of anthropogenic pressure in developing countries like India. Persistent extraction may alter forest structure and composition, which in turn may affect the resident forest fauna.
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The fire lantana cycle hypothesis in Indian forests
Anthropogenic fires in Indian forests probably date back to the arrival of the first people on the Indian subcontinent. Fires were used to clear areas for habitation, and quite likely, to facilitate hunting. People continue to use fires today for several reasons. Very frequent fires can result in soil degradation.
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Parks and poverty: The political ecology of conservation
In 2004, the government of Ethiopia moved 500 people out of the Nech Sar National Park in the south of the country, before handing it over to be managed by the Dutch NGO, African Parks. The following year, African Parks signed another contract to manage the Omo National Park. The issue of evictions in these parks quickly became the subject of intense lobbying by international human rights NGOs.
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Bird migration and climate change
Some of the most striking examples of rapid changes in lifehistory traits due to climate change are found in migratory birds, especially in the timing of migration and breeding.
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A new conservation and development frontier: Community protected areas in Oaxaca, Mexico
Most protected areas in the world are inhabited by people. Mexico is at the forefront of countries where local communities have direct ownership rights of their forests, with an estimated 56-80% of national forests directly owned by communities, within which extraction activities are regulated by Mexican environmental law.
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Landowner experiences regarding biodiversity outside protected areas in Kenya
Substantial biological diversity exists on lands outside protected areas and its survival depends on the goodwill of people who own those lands.
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Local communities and wildlife management reform in Tanzania
During the past 20 years, community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) has become a central element of efforts to support rural livelihoods and sustain natural resources worldwide, including in Sub-Saharan Africa.