Over the past 40 years Chile has implemented a set of forest policies that have been very successful in generating economic benefits. Yet the reasons for that success are also at the root of the growing conflicts around forestry. The main policy has been the promotion of exotic plantation forests that has resulted in the development of a significant export-oriented forest sector, whose ownership is highly concentrated. The expansion of plantations has had negative socioeconomic and environmental impacts on local communities and indigenous peoples, resulting in growing inequalities and conflicts at the local level. Native forests, while important contributors to local livelihoods, have received far less policy attention. For Chile to prosper, policymakers need to better consider how native forests can contribute to local economies, while exportoriented forest companies must find sustainable ways to mitigate or avoid their negative impacts. Without a rebalancing of forest policies, these divergent outcomes will continue to exacerbate local conflicts, compromising the long-term sustainability of both sectors.

Political and socioeconomic settings for policy decision-making about forests are increasingly complex and characterised by growing user demands, the strong influence of non-state actors and an expanding internationalisation of forest policy issues. In this context, efforts in information provision must produce data that are not only technically reliable and cost-efficient but also relevant to and accessible by stakeholders. Based on the experiences gained in national forest inventory projects as well as national forest programmes and forest policy processes in several countries, this paper proposes a set of principles and their application in key action areas of planning to help guide the process of designing national forest monitoring and inventory projects or programmes from the perspective of users of information in forest-related policy processes.

Tropical peat swamp forests (TPSF) in Indonesia have long faced competition between industrial demand for timber, the subsistence requirements of local communities and, more recently, global concern about the need to conserve tropical peat carbon stores, ecosystem services and biodiversity. This paper uses concepts of ecological distribution and environmental justice to investigate how tensions between conservation and livelihood goals have played out on the ground and examine who has gained and lost out from recent TPSF exploitation, conservation and rehabilitation initiatives. A central focus is how peat-based communities in Central Kalimantan have adapted their livelihoods to changing peatland conditions and management policies with particular emphasis on the livelihood impacts of conservation-with-development initiatives in the area. It is argued that despite recent emphasis on ‘win-win’ initiatives, the costs of environmental conservation are rarely distributed in proportion to their benefit.

Chronic stress and little physical activity play an increasing role in dominant civilization diseases. The positive contribution of nature to health has been examined in a multitude of studies. The ambition of this study is to review the present state of international research on exposure to forests and its specific effects on human health, particularly stress-reducing effects. The review focusses on research in Asia and Germanspeaking countries (GSC) in Europe, distinguishing between forest benefits for physical and mental well-being. Considering the objective of the EU Forest Action Plan (FAP) to contribute to quality of life by improving the social dimensions of forests, it also examines and compares the forest strategies and programmes of GSC. With regard to plan implementation at national levels, attention is drawn to preventive health care aspects. The results are discussed and challenges, especially for forestry in GSC, are deduced.

In recent years, the increase in China's timber demand has brought increased sourcing by Chinese logging companies worldwide. In Africa, Chinese companies have established both timber buying and logging operations. Although Zambia is not a major producer, it is a repository of several valuable wood species, attracting several Chinese logging companies. The presence of these export-oriented companies is potentially a matter of concern in regards to rural livelihoods and the environment. Using a comparative approach to understand the differences in effect between Chinese and non-Chinese companies, we ask how the timber trade affects rural livelihoods. The results of household and community —level fieldwork in Western Province suggest that the activities of both Chinese and non-Chinese logging companies bring limited benefits to rural communities. Meanwhile, non-Chinese logging companies provided more local employment opportunities. In contrast, Chinese logging companies outbid their non-Chinese counterparts in the local timber market, providing greater opportunities to small-scale loggers.

For Tanzania's emerging REDD policy to successfully build on existing community based natural resource management structures, a critical analysis of the outcomes of existing policy approaches for ecosystem services and poverty alleviation is needed. Our research addresses this aim, and provides an analysis of Tanzania's four prominent natural resource management programmes. Our analysis focuses on impacts on poverty alleviation (PA) and ecosystem services (ES). The research, conducted between June 2011 and April 2012, involved a 10-months period in Tanzania engaging with key policy and academic experts and reviewing relevant literature. Programmes relating to forests, environment and development as well as to community-based natural resource management in Tanzania were reviewed. These were further analysed based on governance themes, namely their level of: (1) decentralisation; (2) intersectoral integration; (3) community access to resources; (4) operational simplicity; and (5) equitable benefit sharing (both within the local community/user groups, and between governance levels). We derive a relative assessment of the degree of influence (High, Intermediate, Low) and nature of influence (Positive, Neutral, Negative) of the programmes on ES and PA outcomes. Building on this analysis, we provide contextual insights and recommendations specific to Tanzania for nascent policy initiatives (e.g. REDD ). The need for such contextual recommendations has been profoundly stressed.

Zambia has one of the largest forest resources in southern Africa with almost 66% of its land mass under forest cover. However, indiscriminate harvesting of valuable timber resources for commodity-type products such as sawn-timber, charcoal and fuel-wood are the main drivers of forest depletion. Challenges related to customary-lands, land-tenure, lack of information about forest resources as well as the weak institutions is contributing factors that have accelerated to steady reduction of forest cover in the country. The need for investments in the forest products sector and an equitable sharing of benefits with local communities are pre-requisites to shift into higher value-added manufacturing. In the context, the implementation of the REDD initiatives, which aims to build capacity and technical knowledge on the ground together with improved monitoring, reporting and verifying of the forest resources data from a centrally planned command could help to arrest the depletion of the forest through better planning and management of the resources.

The present study evaluates the vulnerability to soil degradation of four land-use classes (urban areas, cropland, forests and non-forest natural land) during 1960–2010 using the Environmental Sensitive Area Index (ESAI) to verify if forests mitigate the increase of desertification risk in Italy. Results indicate that forests was the class with the lowest level of vulnerability during the whole investigated period and with the growth rate (1960–2010) in the ESAI always below the one observed on a landscape scale. Non-forest natural land showed a moderate increase in the ESAI coupled with a relatively high vulnerability level. The temporal pattern of four indicators (climate, soil, vegetation and land management) composing the ESAI was analyzed to identify the variables which affect the level of vulnerability for each land-use class. Results contributes to the understanding of complex landscape-forest interactions in Mediterranean fragile ecosystems.

Tropical forest management and policy decisions are hampered by lack of reliable information about forest responses to timber harvesting and other silvicultural interventions. Although the necessary raw data from permanent sample plots (PSPs) mostly exist, the relevant results are generally unavailable due to lack of analytical capacities within data-holding institutions or lack of incentives to make the results available. Where analytical deficiency is the bottleneck, collaborative data-sharing agreements that go beyond the outsourcing of data-analysis to third parties can provide equitable and effective short- and long-term options. Simply outsourcing PSP data analysis to established scientists from extra-tropical countries might solve short-term problems, but does not prepare the community of scientists in tropical countries to address future research challenges. The design of such collaborative agreements that satisfy the needs and desires of the various parties involved is complicated by cultural and institutional differences, but progress on this front is evident.