This guide sets out the main issues and significant challenges, and suggests solutions and guidelines for viable NTFP-based SMFEs. Government, nongovernmental agencies and their business partners have important roles to play in developing this sector from its vibrant, but largely informal status. This can be achieved by creating a more enabling, consistent and credible business and forest management framework of support, regulation and policy, that offers more and better opportunities to all those involved in getting a product from the forest to consumers.

The need to reduce food loss and waste is firmly embedded in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Food loss and waste reduction is considered important for improving food security and nutrition, promoting environmental sustainability and lowering production costs. However, efforts to reduce food loss and waste will only be effective if informed by a solid understanding of the problem. This report provides new estimates of the percentage of the world’s food lost from production up to the retail level. The report also finds a vast diversity in existing estimates of losses, even for the same commodities and for the same stages in the supply chain. Clearly identifying and understanding critical loss points in specific supply chains – where considerable potential exists for reducing food losses – is crucial to deciding on appropriate measures. The report provides some guiding principles for interventions based on the objectives being pursued through food loss and waste reductions, be they in improved economic efficiency, food security and nutrition, or environmental sustainability.

This publication discusses the concept, evolution, and requirements of forest management planning, focusing on multiple-use forest management and small and medium forest enterprises (SMFEs). Forest management planning is a document that translates forest policies into a coordinated programme for managing forests over a set period of time, integrating environmental, economic, and social dimensions. It serves various purposes, such as legal documents, concession agreements, and tools for sustainable forest management. Multiple-use forest management recognizes the diverse values and benefits that forests provide beyond timber, such as water regulation, climate change mitigation, biodiversity conservation, and cultural values. Despite its challenges, forest management planning can contribute to sustainability and optimize the value derived from forests. SMFEs play a crucial role in supporting livelihoods and forest-based economies. However, barriers such as policy environments, lack of support tools, and management challenges need to be addressed. Forest management planning can help overcome these barriers by ensuring legal compliance, mitigating risks, promoting sustainability, and supporting marketing and value chain development. It is also a valuable tool for empowering local forest users, involving stakeholders, and negotiating benefit-sharing arrangements.The process of forest management planning involves gathering information, defining objectives, developing silvicultural and ecosystem services plans, creating a business plan, planning for unusual events, and establishing a monitoring system. It is an adaptive learning process that continuously evaluates and adapts plans based on the results of forest management activities. Stakeholder engagement is key to developing a socially acceptable forest management plan, starting with identifying stakeholders, creating awareness, informed discussions, and monitoring to keep stakeholders accountable for their agreed responsibilities. Negotiating expectations and building consensus helps identify conflicts and integrate qualitative data to improve decision-making in multiple-use forest management.In conclusion, forest management planning is essential for sustainable forest management, contributing to the well-being of communities, the environment, and the economy. This guide provides a framework for forest management planning, guiding forest managers through the planning process stepwise and providing advice on information sources needed during the planning process. The framework can be adapted to national and local contexts in line with relevant regulatory requirements.

This book explores the gendered dimensions of recent land governance transformations across the globe in the wake of unprecedented pressures on land and natural resources. These complex contemporary forces are reconfiguring livelihoods and impacting women’s positions, their tenure security and well-being, and that of their families. Bringing together fourteen empirical community case studies from around the world, the book examines governance transformations of land and land-based resources resulting from four major processes of tenure change: commercial land based investments, the formalization of customary tenure, the privatization of communal lands, and post-conflict resettlement and redistribution reforms. Each contribution carefully analyses the gendered dimensions of these transformations, exploring both the gender impact of the land tenure reforms and the social and political economy within which these reforms materialize. The cases provide important insights for decision makers to better promote and design an effective gender lens into land tenure reforms and natural resource management policies. This book will be of great interest to researchers engaging with land and natural resource management issues from a wide variety of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, development studies, and political science, as well as policy makers, practitioners, and activists concerned with environment, development, and social equity.

A focus on forest management standards. NTFPs within the forest management certification framework: chalenges and recommendations. Accessibility and applicability of NTFP certification. A Country case study: NTFP certification in Brazil. Opportunities and challenges of NTFP certification. Social opportunities and challenges. Market and economic opportunities and challenges. Legal and institutional opportunities and challenges. Broader applications for standards and certification. Collaboration and Harmonization: the way forward?.

This discussion paper assesses the state of knowledge on tropical dry forests as it relates to CIFOR’s strategy and identifies research opportunities that align with CIFOR’s strategic goals. Over the past two decades, CIFOR has accumulated a substantial body of work on dry forests, with a particular focus on African dry forests. This paper is intended to build on that work, by gathering wider research from around the world, as CIFOR seeks to widen the geographic scope of its research on dry forests. The present assessment explores five themes: climate change mitigation and adaptation; food security and livelihoods; demand for energy; sustainable management of dry forests; and policies and institutional support for sustainable management. These themes emerged as priority areas during discussions on dry forest research priorities held at CIFOR’s Dry Forests Symposium in South Africa in 2011. Research on these themes should be considered a priority, given the importance of dry forests to people and ecosystems around the world and the threats posed to them.