The Global Forest Transition as a Human Affair

Forests across the world stand at a crossroads where climate and land-use changes are shaping their future. Despite demonstrations of political will and global efforts, forest loss, fragmentation, and degradation continue unabated. No clear evidence exists to suggest that these initiatives are working. A key reason for this apparent ineffectiveness could lie in the failure to recognize the agency of all stakeholders involved. Landscapes do not happen. We shape them. Forest transitions are social and behavioral before they are ecological. Decision makers need to integrate better representations of people’s agency in their mental models. A possible pathway to overcome this barrier involves eliciting mental models behind policy decisions to allow better representation of human agency, changing perspectives to better understand divergent points of view, and refining strategies through explicit theories of change. Games can help decision makers in all of these tasks

Drivers of transgression: What pushes people to enter protected areas

The establishment of protected areas is central to biodiversity conservation strategies. However, they often fail in meeting their expectations, especially in the tropics. One core reason for their failure is human pressure. Protected area transgression has tremendous impacts on biodiversity, but also on persecuted rule-breakers whose necessities are often ignored. Despite the increasing enforcement of strict protection rules, non-compliance is a phenomenon experienced in protected areas around the world. To improve biodiversity and social outcomes of any conservation intervention, we need to understand what drives transgressive behavior but also the gazettement of protected areas. By using a role-playing game with Indigenous people in the Colombian Amazon we were able to openly discuss transgression. In the game, park managers designed protected areas primarily for biodiversity conservation but also for restoration. Communication among stakeholders and a resource-abundant landscape were key to increase compliance without exerting enforcement while the violations history of the protected area as well as the abundance of resources within its boundaries encouraged transgression. To achieve voluntary compliance, we recommend to acknowledge transgression's multidimensionality and integrate it into conservation planning

Dry forests in Madagascar: neglected and under pressure

(Article is in English) Les forêts sèches de Madagascar représentent un remarquable écosystème tropical forestier et sont distribuées sur la quasi-totalité du versant occidental jusqu'à l'extrême nord de l'île, et plus particulièrement sur les terrains associés à des formations sédimentaires. Ces forêts compren- nent plusieurs types de végétation sylvicole dont: (i) la formation buissonnante côtière du sud-ouest, (ii) la forêt sèche épineuse du sud-ouest, et (iii) la forêt sèche de l'ouest. Ces paysages abritent une importante biodiversité avec plusieurs centres d'endémisme qui hébergent des faunes uniques à l'échelle globale, avec des particularités en matière de richesse et de diversité en fonction des groupes, probablement liées aux paléo-refuges. Ces paysages fournissent également d'importants services écosystémiques pour les divers groupes ethniques résidant sur la bande côtière occidentale, notamment aux Mikea, qui sont le seul groupe autochtone reconnu pour Madagascar. Dans cet article, nous passons en revue la littérature scientifique pour souligner l'importance des paysages socio-écologiques des forêts sèches, afin d'identifier les lacunes de connaissance à combler pour mieux informer une gestion et une politique capables d'harmoniser les besoins de la conservation et du développe- ment. Dans ce cadre, nous préconisons la nécessité des approches transdisciplinaires portées par un grand nombre de parties prenantes pour permettre les adaptations des politiques face aux changements actuels et futurs, comme, par exemple, pour l'agriculture et les besoins et les demandes en énergie

Structuring the complexity of integrated landscape approaches into selectable, scalable, and measurable attributes

Integrated landscape approaches (ILA) aim to reconcile multiple, often competing, interests across agriculture, nature conservation, and other land uses. Recognized ILA design principles provide guidance for implementation, yet application remains challenging, and a strong performance evidence-base is yet to be formed. Through a critical literature review and focus group discussions with practitioners, we identified considerable diversity of ILA in actors, temporal, and spatial scales, inter alia. This diversity hampers learning from and steering ILA because of the intractable nature of the concept. Therefore, we developed a tool—an ‘ILA mixing board’—to structure the complexity of ILA into selectable and scalable attributes in a replicable way to allow planning, diagnosing, and comparing ILA. The ILA mixing board tool presents seven qualifiers, each representing a key attribute of ILA design and performance (for example, project flexibility, inclusiveness of the dialogue, and the centrality of the power distribution). Each qualifier has five (non-normative) outcome indicators that can be registered as present or absent. This process in turn guides planners, evaluators and other participating stakeholders involved in landscape management to diagnose the ILA type, or its performance. We apply the ILA mixing board to three ILA cases in Nicaragua, Madagascar, and the Congo Basin to show some of the many possible configurations of qualifiers on the mixing board. Further application of the tool would allow comparative analysis of the complexity of ILA in a structured and manageable way thereby enhancing the understanding of ILA performance and informing the development of evidence-based land use policy

Differential and shared genetic effects on kidney function between diabetic and non-diabetic individuals

A large-scale GWAS provides insight on diabetes-dependent genetic effects on the glomerular filtration rate, a common metric to monitor kidney health in disease.Reduced glomerular filtration rate (GFR) can progress to kidney failure. Risk factors include genetics and diabetes mellitus (DM), but little is known about their interaction. We conducted genome-wide association meta-analyses for estimated GFR based on serum creatinine (eGFR), separately for individuals with or without DM (n(DM) = 178,691, n(noDM) = 1,296,113). Our genome-wide searches identified (i) seven eGFR loci with significant DM/noDM-difference, (ii) four additional novel loci with suggestive difference and (iii) 28 further novel loci (including CUBN) by allowing for potential difference. GWAS on eGFR among DM individuals identified 2 known and 27 potentially responsible loci for diabetic kidney disease. Gene prioritization highlighted 18 genes that may inform reno-protective drug development. We highlight the existence of DM-only and noDM-only effects, which can inform about the target group, if respective genes are advanced as drug targets. Largely shared effects suggest that most drug interventions to alter eGFR should be effective in DM and noDM