Loveridge, R, Marshall, AR, Pfiefer, M et al. (4 more authors) (2023) Pathways to win-wins or trade-offs? How certified community forests impact forest restoration and human wellbeing. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 378 (1867). 20210080. ISSN 0962-8436
Abstract
Certified community forests combine local governance with forest certification and aim to serve multiple objectives including forest protection, restoration, human wellbeing and equitable governance. However, the causal pathways by which they impact these objectives remain poorly understood. The ability of protected area impact evaluations to identify complex pathways is limited by a narrow focus on top-down theoretical, quantitative perspectives and inadequate consideration of local context. We used a novel mixed-methods research design that integrates the perspectives of multiple actors to develop a generalized conceptual model of the causal pathways for certified community forests. We tested the model using a combination of statistical matching, structural equation modelling and qualitative analyses for an agroforestry landscape in Tanzania. We found certified community forests positively impacted human wellbeing, equitable governance and forest restoration. Equitable governance had the largest impact on wellbeing, followed by crop yield and forest resource availability. Timber revenues varied widely between villages and the average effect of financial benefits did not impact wellbeing due to the immature stage of the certified timber market. We identified positive interactions and trade-offs between conservation and agriculture. Our findings suggest that no simple solution exists for meeting multiple objectives. However, developing understanding of the pathways linking social and conservation outcomes can help identify opportunities to promote synergies and mitigate negative impacts to reconcile competing objectives.
This article is part of the theme issue ‘Understanding forest landscape restoration: reinforcing scientific foundations for the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration’.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2022 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. |
Keywords: | pathways; forest certification; community forests; wellbeing; protected areas; restoration |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Sustainability Research Institute (SRI) (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number BBSRC (Biotechnology & Biological Sciences Research Council) BB/S014586/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 02 Dec 2021 12:24 |
Last Modified: | 25 Jan 2023 10:22 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | The Royal Society |
Identification Number: | 10.1098/rstb.2021.0080 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:180535 |