This book provides a novel approach to governance relating to biodiversity and human well-being in complex tropical landscapes, including forests and protected areas. It focuses attention at the interface between communities and the landscape level, building on interdisciplinary research conducted in five countries (Cameroon, Indonesia, Laos, Madagascar and Tanzania). In each country, the research was set within the framework of a major national policy thrust.

The dry forests and woodlands of Sub-Saharan Africa are major ecosystems, with a broad range of strong economic and cultural incentives for keeping them intact.

Plantation forests often have a negative image. They are typically assumed to be poor substitutes for natural forests, particularly in terms of biodiversity conservation, carbon storage, provision of clean drinking water and other non-timber goods and services.

The decentralization of control over the vast forests of the world is moving at a rapid pace, with both positive and negative ramifications for people and forests themselves. The fresh research from a host of Asia-Pacific countries described in this book presents rich and varied experience with decentralization and provides important lessons for other regions.

Illegal logging is massively widespread - more than 50 per cent of all timber in some countries - and hugely damaging, yet how can it be tackled without causing poverty in local communities? Written by the world's foremost experts, this book examines the key issues including law and enforcement, supply and demand, corruption, forest certification, poverty, local livelihoods, international trade and biodiversity conservation.

This book, written for a broad audience, is the first comprehensive introduction to the issues surrounding the health of people living in and around forests, particularly in Asia, South America and Africa.

Many countries around the world are engaged in decentralization processes, and most African countries face serious problems with forest governance, from benefits sharing to illegality and sustainable forest management. This book summarizes experiences to date on the extent and nature of decentralization and its outcomes - most of which suggest an underperformance of governance reforms - and explores the viability of different governance instruments in the context of weak governance and expanding commercial pressures over forests.

This powerful new book from leading experts provides an in-depth account of how trends towards increased local governance are shifting control over natural resource management from the state to local societies, and the implications of this control for social justice and the environment.

In recent years governments in the South have transferred at least 200 million hectares of forests to communities living in and around them . This book assesses the experience of what appears to be a new international trend that has substantially increased the share of the world's forests under community administration.

Very little has yet been written about the cultural of economic contributions of woodcarving to peoples livelihoods or the consequences of felling hardwood and softwood trees for international woodcarving trade. "Carving Out a future " is the first examination of this trade and its critical links to rural livelihoods, biodiversity, conservation, forestry and the international trade regime.

This book queries the state and effect of global decentralization movement through the study of natural resource decentralizations in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Science faces major challenges in tackling the interlinked problems of poverty and environmental sustainability.