We examine five forested landscapes in Africa (Cameroon, Madagascar, and Tanzania) and Asia (Indonesia and Laos) at different stages of landscape change. In all five areas, forest cover (outside of protected areas) continues to decrease despite local people’s recognition of the importance of forest products and services. After forest conversion, agroforestry systems and fallows provide multiple functions and valued products, and retain significant biodiversity. But there are indications that such land use is transitory, with gradual simplification and loss of complex agroforests and fallows as land use becomes increasingly individualistic and profit driven. In Indonesia and Tanzania, farmers favor monocultures (rubber and oil palm, and sugarcane, respectively) for their high financial returns, with these systems replacing existing complex agroforests. In the study sites in Madagascar and Laos, investments in agroforests and new crops remain rare, despite government attempts to eradicate swidden systems and their multifunctional fallows. We discuss approaches to assessing local values related to landscape cover and associated goods and services. We highlight discrepancies between individual and collective responses in characterizing land use tendencies, and discuss the effects of accessibility on land management. We conclude that a combination of social, economic, and spatially explicit assessment methods is necessary to inform land use planning. Furthermore, any efforts to modify current trends will require clear incentives, such as through carbon finance. We speculate on the nature of such incentive schemes and the possibility of rewarding the provision of ecosystem services at a landscape scale and in a socially equitable manner.
ABSTRACT. Balancing interests to achieve legitimate and effective policies is a primary and pressing challenge in countries' efforts to prepare their national reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) strategies. Using Tanzania as a country case, we investigated the most polarizing policy discourses and assessed the influence of competing discourse coalitions on the drafting of the national REDD+ strategy. We combined discourse and social network analysis to identify discourse coalitions and assess their influence. The findings indicate that the national REDD+ strategy largely reflects the positions of the discourse coalition that is controlled by powerful state actors who support central control of REDD+ financial mechanisms. The competing coalition, led by civil society organizations, has limited influence on the national strategy, despite discursive congruence and concerted political action. The findings further indicate that discursive practices and institutional rules codetermine policy outcomes.
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