Recognising land rights for conservation tenure reforms in the Northern Sierra Madre, The Philippines

The legalisation of the customary land rights of rural communities is currently actively promoted as a strategy for conserving biodiversity. There is, however, little empirical information on the conservation outcomes of these tenure reforms. In this paper, we describe four conservation projects that specifically aimed to formalise land rights in the Philippines, a country widely seen as a model for the devolution of control over natural resources to rural communities. We demonstrate that these legalistic interventions are based on flawed assumptions, on: 1) the capacity of the state to enforce tenure; 2) the characteristics of customary land rights; and 3) the causal links between legal entitlements and sustainable natural resource management. As a result, these state-led tenure reforms actually aggravate tenure insecurity on the ground, and ultimately fail to improve natural resource management.FWN – Publicaties zonder aanstelling Universiteit Leide

What Is Genetic Diversity and Why Does it Matter?

Published: 09 December 2021All living things on Earth contain a unique code within them, called DNA. DNA is organised into genes, similar to the way letters are organised into words. Genes give our bodies instructions on how to function. However, the exact DNA code is dierent even between individuals within the same species. We call this genetic diversity. Genetic diversity causes differences in the shape of bird beaks, in the flavours of tomatoes, and even in the colour of your hair! Genetic diversity is important because it gives species a better chance of survival. However, genetic diversity can be lost when population get smaller and isolated, which decreases a species’ ability to adapt and survive. In this article, we explore the importance of genetic diversity, discuss how it is formed and maintained in wild populations, how it is lost and why that is dangerous, and what we can do to conserve it.Melissa Minter, Erica S. Nielsen, Colette Blyth, Laura D. Bertola, Michael Benjamin Kantar, Hernán E. Morales, Chloé Orland, Gernot Segelbacher, and Deborah M. Leig