Forest-linked livelihoods in a globalized world.

Forests have re-taken centre stage in global conversations about sustainability, climate and biodiversity. Here, we use a horizon scanning approach to identify five large-scale trends that are likely to have substantial medium- and long-term effects on forests and forest livelihoods: forest megadisturbances; changing rural demographics; the rise of the middle-class in low- and middle-income countries; increased availability, access and use of digital technologies; and large-scale infrastructure development. These trends represent human and environmental processes that are exceptionally large in geographical extent and magnitude, and difficult to reverse. They are creating new agricultural and urban frontiers, changing existing rural landscapes and practices, opening spaces for novel conservation priorities and facilitating an unprecedented development of monitoring and evaluation platforms that can be used by local communities, civil society organizations, governments and international donors. Understanding these larger-scale dynamics is key to support not only the critical role of forests in meeting livelihood aspirations locally, but also a range of other sustainability challenges more globally. We argue that a better understanding of these trends and the identification of levers for change requires that the research community not only continue to build on case studies that have dominated research efforts so far, but place a greater emphasis on causality and causal mechanisms, and generate a deeper understanding of how local, national and international geographical scales interact.This work was funded by the UK’s Department for International Development (grant number 203516-102) and governed by the University of Michigan’s Institutional Review Board (HUM00092191). JAO acknowledges the 520 support of a European Union FP7 Marie Curie international outgoing fellowship (FORCONEPAL). LVR was funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (Grant agreement No. 853222 FORESTDIET). AJB acknowledges the support of an Australian Research Council Australia Laureate Fellowship (grant number 525 FL160100072). LBF acknowledges support from the European Union Marie Curie global fellowship (CONRICONF). PM was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (Grant agreement No 677140 MIDLAND)

A Price Index for Deflating State Agricultural Experiment Station Research Expenditures

The extent to which inflation has eroded the real purchasing power of public agricultural research budgets is poorly understood. Official Government research and development (R&D) statistics use the gross national product (GNP) deflator to express research expenditures in constant dollars, despite the serious shortcomings of such a broad indicator of inflation for deflating research expenditures. A State Agricultural Experiment Station (SAES) research price index is calculated in this paper and compared with the GNP deflator. The GNP deflator substantially underestimated the rate of inflation in SAES research in recent years mainly due to real growth in faculty compensation during the 1980's. The divergence between the SAES research price index calcuated in this study and the GNP deflator indicates that the purchasing power of SAES research is significantly less than estimates based on the GNP deflator would suggest

Hmong Americans and Public Lands in Minnesota and Wisconsin

Natural resource managers and policy-makers need to understand the cultures and perspectives of ethnic minority communities in order to serve them effectively. In this exploratory study, we focus on Hmong Americans, perhaps the least-studied and -understood Asian ethnic group in the United States. The Hmong, who lived in the mountains of Laos,were relatively isolated until they were secretly recruited and armed by the United States Central Intelligence Agency in the early 1960s to fight the communist Pathet Lao and their North Vietnamese allies (Warner 1998). When the Americans abruptly withdrew from Vietnam and Laos and the pro-American Royal Laotian government collapsed in 1975, the Hmong fled persecution and annihilation from the new communist regime. Laotian Hmong refugees came to the United States in the years following the war in Vietnam and Laos. The number of Hmong refugees grew rapidly in the late 1970s and reached a peak of about 27,000 admitted to the United States in 1980. The Hmong are now the third-largest Southeast Asian group in the U.S. after Vietnamese and Cambodian, with the largest Hmong populations in California (65,095), Minnesota (41,800) and Wisconsin (33,791) (HNDI and HCRC 2004). All other states have a combined total of only 28,742 Hmong

Urban Containment Policies and the Protection of Natural Areas: The Case of Seoul's Greenbelt

Countries around the world have responded to the problems associated with rapid urban growth and increasingly land-consumptive development patterns by creating a wide range of policy instruments designed to manage urban growth. Of the array of growth management techniques, urban containment policies are considered by some to be a promising approach. This paper focuses on greenbelts, the most restrictive form of urban containment policy. The long-standing greenbelt of Seoul, Republic of Korea is examined as a case study. Seouls greenbelt has generated both significant social costs and benefits. Costs include higher land and housing prices in the urban area surrounded by the greenbelt, additional costs incurred by commuters who live beyond the greenbelt and work in Seoul, and increased congestion and related quality of life impacts. Benefits include the amenity value of living near the greenbelt, recreational resources, bequest and heritage values, fiscal savings due to increased efficiency in the provision of public services and infrastructure, and a wide range of life-supporting ecosystem services. After standing virtually unchanged for almost three decades, Koreas greenbelt policy is currently being revised and weakened, largely due to pressure from greenbelt landowners and developers. Although there is no definitive answer to the question of whether Seoul would be a more or less sustainable city today without the greenbelt, it is certain that in the absence of the greenbelt, Seoul would have lost much of its rich natural heritage and essential ecosystem services

Shifting Forest Value Orientations in the United States, 1980-2001: A Computer Content Analysis

This paper examines three forest value orientations - clusters of interrelated values and basic beliefs about forests - that emerged from an analysis of the public discourse about forest planning, management, and policy in the United States. The value orientations include anthropocentric, biocentric, and moral/spiritual/aesthetic orientations toward forests. Computer coded content analysis was used to identify shifts in the relative importance of these value orientations over the period 1980 through 2001. The share of expressions of anthropocentric forest value orientations declined over this period, while the share of biocentric value expressions increased. Moral/spiritual/aesthetic value expressions remained constant over time. The observed shifts in forest value orientations have implications for identifying appropriate goals for public forest management and policy, developing socially acceptable means for accomplishing those goals, and dealing with inevitable conflict over forest management.Forest value orientations, anthropocentric, biocentric, moral, spiritual, aesthetic, content analysis

Forestry research capacity in the Asia-Pacific region : an evaluation model and preliminary assessment

For more about the East-West Center, see http://www.eastwestcenter.org/</a