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		<title>CIFOR: POLEX</title>
		<link>http://www.cifor.org/</link>
	<atom:link href="http://www.cifor.org/online-library/polex-cifors-blog-for-and-by-forest-policy-experts.html?type=100" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" /><description>Latest news from example.com</description><language>en</language><lastBuildDate>Wed, 15 May 2013 20:21:00 -0700</lastBuildDate><item>
			<title>Beyond carbon storage: the Congo Basin forest as rainmaker</title>
			<link>http://www.cifor.org/online-library/polex-cifors-blog-for-and-by-forest-policy-experts/english/detail/article/1220/beyond-carbon-storage-the-congo-basin-forest-as-rainmaker.html</link>
		<guid>http://www.cifor.org/online-library/polex-cifors-blog-for-and-by-forest-policy-experts/english/detail/article/1220/beyond-carbon-storage-the-congo-basin-forest-as-rainmaker.html</guid><description><![CDATA[ By Denis J. SonwaScientist, Center for International Forestry Research Responses to climate change are grouped into two main categories: mitigation (reducing greenhouse gas emissions responsible for climate change) and adaptation (adjusting livelihoods and life styles due to the influences of climate change). Amongst adaptation strategies, ecosystem-based adaptation (EBA) is an approach that promotes ways to use natural resources and biodiversity to help develop adaptation strategies for vulnerable communities. In this context, recent studies highlight the role that the Congo Basin forests play in generating rainfall, both regionally and in the continent as a whole. Rainfall in an ecosystem originates from three main sources: moisture that is already in the atmosphere, moisture from outside the region, and evapotranspiration from surfaces within the ecosystem (forests and other land uses). Pokam et al. studied how the climate of the Congo Basin is primarily a result of moisture...]]></description>
		<pubDate>Wed, 15 May 2013 20:08:00 -0700</pubDate>
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		<title>What do people think? Finding optimism in tree plantations</title>
		<link>http://www.cifor.org/online-library/polex-cifors-blog-for-and-by-forest-policy-experts/english/detail/article/1220/what-do-people-think-finding-optimism-in-tree-plantations.html</link>
	<guid>http://www.cifor.org/online-library/polex-cifors-blog-for-and-by-forest-policy-experts/english/detail/article/1220/what-do-people-think-finding-optimism-in-tree-plantations.html</guid><description><![CDATA[ By Manuel R. Guariguata Principal Scientist, Forests and Environment, Center for International Forestry Research While timber harvested from natural tropical forests is expected to reach “peak production” in the coming decades, the area occupied by tree plantations to supply future wood demand is concurrently increasing. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), tree plantations expanded by about 5 million hectares each year from 2000 to 2010, and expansion of both large- and small-scale tree plantations is underway in many tropical countries. In many cases, tree plantations are being established on sites that have been deforested for decades, or in places that do not naturally support forest. While tropical deforestation is almost invariably perceived as negative by the public, what about when “no trees” give way to “lots of trees”? Numerous studies on the impacts of tree plantations have focused on environmental issues yet far fewer have dealt...]]></description>
	<pubDate>Tue, 12 Mar 2013 23:11:00 -0700</pubDate>
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	<title>Understanding the role of forest income in rural livelihoods and poverty alleviation: New insights from China </title>
	<link>http://www.cifor.org/online-library/polex-cifors-blog-for-and-by-forest-policy-experts/english/detail/article/1220/understanding-the-role-of-forest-income-in-rural-livelihoods-and-poverty-alleviation-new-insights-f.html</link>
<guid>http://www.cifor.org/online-library/polex-cifors-blog-for-and-by-forest-policy-experts/english/detail/article/1220/understanding-the-role-of-forest-income-in-rural-livelihoods-and-poverty-alleviation-new-insights-f.html</guid><description><![CDATA[ By Louis Putzel Senior Scientist, Forests and Environment Programme, Center for International Forestry Research With almost a quarter of the world’s population relying on forest resources for their livelihoods, understanding how forests can improve the lives of the poorest people is an important topic in economic development. In a recently published World Development article, Nicholas Hogarth and colleagues show that rural households in a poor and remote mountainous region in southern China get more than 30% of their livelihoods from managing plantation forests. Since 1994, the Chinese government has been engaged in a national poverty reduction plan incorporating a number of important policies to promote forest-based cash crops while increasing both forest cover and the area of forestlands allocated and managed by rural households. In the 15 years since it established its Priority Forestry Programs, including the national Conversion of Cropland to Forest Program, China has become a...]]></description>
<pubDate>Sun, 03 Feb 2013 22:43:00 -0800</pubDate>
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<title>Globalisation, logging concessions, conservation organisations and local people</title>
<link>http://www.cifor.org/online-library/polex-cifors-blog-for-and-by-forest-policy-experts/english/detail/article/1220/globalisation-logging-concessions-conservation-organisations-and-local-people.html</link>
<guid>http://www.cifor.org/online-library/polex-cifors-blog-for-and-by-forest-policy-experts/english/detail/article/1220/globalisation-logging-concessions-conservation-organisations-and-local-people.html</guid><description><![CDATA[ By Robert Nasi, Director CGIAR Research Programme on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry A commonly held view in the developed part of the world is that conservation organisations are doing &quot;good&quot; when offering small-scale development activities to improve local livelihoods of people in remote forested areas, such as those in southeast Cameroon. Similarly, logging concessions are often seen as creating conflicts about resource use or environmental degradation while claiming to enhance local development, with little to show in reality. Many remote areas, such as in parts of Central Africa, are also considered somewhat immune to the havoc of our developed world’s financial cycles and crises, yet suffer from the plundering of their natural resources without receiving much in the way of local benefits. Two recently published papers &nbsp;by teams of scientists from various institutions (Sayer et al. 2012, Lescuyer et al. 2012) paint a somewhat different and...]]></description>
<pubDate>Sun, 16 Dec 2012 19:09:00 -0800</pubDate>
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<title>Communication challenges in science for forest policy</title>
<link>http://www.cifor.org/online-library/polex-cifors-blog-for-and-by-forest-policy-experts/english/detail/article/1220/communication-challenges-in-science-for-forest-policy.html</link>
<guid>http://www.cifor.org/online-library/polex-cifors-blog-for-and-by-forest-policy-experts/english/detail/article/1220/communication-challenges-in-science-for-forest-policy.html</guid><description><![CDATA[ By Peter Holmgren Director General, Center for International Forestry Research Communicating science and research findings, and their implications, is a challenge for senders as well as receivers. We strive to have rigorous and relevant evidence at one end, and a democratic decision process at the other. But we will still fail if communication between the two malfunctions or is overwhelmed by information that is only poorly based on science. The goal is to package relevant results so that the consequences of action (or inaction) are understood, picked up and cannot lightly be ignored. This blog entry is a personal reflection on the possible consequences of using good information badly and – more dangerously – when bad information is used convincingly. I borrowed the figure above from Gill Petrokofsky, of the University of Oxford's Biodiversity Institute, to schematically illustrate possible scenarios. Many people, including academics, policy-makers and...]]></description>
<pubDate>Tue, 13 Nov 2012 02:46:00 -0800</pubDate>
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<title>Sharing land with tigers in Nepal</title>
<link>http://www.cifor.org/online-library/polex-cifors-blog-for-and-by-forest-policy-experts/english/detail/article/1220/sharing-land-with-tigers-in-nepal.html</link>
<guid>http://www.cifor.org/online-library/polex-cifors-blog-for-and-by-forest-policy-experts/english/detail/article/1220/sharing-land-with-tigers-in-nepal.html</guid><description><![CDATA[ By Amy Ickowitz CIFOR Scientist, Center for International Forestry Research There is intense ongoing debate in the scientific literature about whether ‘land sharing’ or ‘land sparing’ is the best way to maintain global biodiversity (Godfray et al. 2010, Perfecto and Vandermeer 2010, Phalan et al. 2011, Tscharntke et al. 2012). The ‘land sparing’ proponents argue that the most effective way to conserve biodiversity is to further intensify agricultural production on the most fertile lands so that other land can then be set aside for wildlife. Advocates of the ‘land sharing’ approach claim that the emphasis should be on wildlife-friendly and sustainable land use practices that limit pesticide use and manage diversified farmland, to maintain biodiversity and produce food and wood in an increasingly crowded world. Although there are many dimensions of biodiversity and thus many ways to measure it, research suggests that top predators play a fundamental role in regulating...]]></description>
<pubDate>Tue, 23 Oct 2012 21:15:00 -0700</pubDate>
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<title>Going once, going twice….. The great green land grab</title>
<link>http://www.cifor.org/online-library/polex-cifors-blog-for-and-by-forest-policy-experts/english/detail/article/1220/going-once-going-twice-the-great-green-land-grab.html</link>
<guid>http://www.cifor.org/online-library/polex-cifors-blog-for-and-by-forest-policy-experts/english/detail/article/1220/going-once-going-twice-the-great-green-land-grab.html</guid><description><![CDATA[ By Terry Sunderland Principal Scientist, Center for International Forestry Research “Buy land, they're not making it anymore!” Mark Twain’s wry observation on the North American land acquisition boom of the late 19th century remains just as pertinent today as it was then. More than a 100 years later, the sheer scale of contemporary global land purchases and its appropriation from local stakeholders is unprecedented since the colonial land acquisitions of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Stimulated by a global spike in food prices toward the end of the first decade of 2000, a number of affluent nation states reliant on food imports began to buy up large areas of land in the developing world for agricultural production to achieve their own food security. Added to this the emergence of the biofuel market, plantation-based forestry and the increasing expansion of commodity crops such as oil palm, vast areas of the global forest estate have been transferred...]]></description>
<pubDate>Wed, 12 Sep 2012 18:58:00 -0700</pubDate>
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<title>Soybeans and forests in Brazil’s Arc of Deforestation: A temporary truce?</title>
<link>http://www.cifor.org/online-library/polex-cifors-blog-for-and-by-forest-policy-experts/english/detail/article/1220/soybeans-and-forests-in-brazils-arc-of-deforestation-a-temporary-truce.html</link>
<guid>http://www.cifor.org/online-library/polex-cifors-blog-for-and-by-forest-policy-experts/english/detail/article/1220/soybeans-and-forests-in-brazils-arc-of-deforestation-a-temporary-truce.html</guid><description><![CDATA[ By Christine Padoch Programme Director, Forests and Livelihoods Programme With global demand for commodities like palm oil, soy and beef rapidly increasing, and the supply of usable lands dwindling, can forests survive? Can the planet’s growing billions be better fed, clothed and housed without destroying tropical forests? A new article by scientists from several US and Brazilian institutions suggests that promoting more efficient agricultural land use while also enforcing anti-deforestation measures may have achieved just that in what was once the tropics’ most notorious area of forest loss: the infamous “Arc of Deforestation” at the southern edges of Brazil’s Amazonia. Focusing their study on recent trends in soy production and changes in forest cover in the state of Mato Grosso, Marcia Macedo and her collaborators show that the seemingly inevitable link between agricultural growth and forest loss can be broken, and the goals of forest conservation and more...]]></description>
<pubDate>Wed, 01 Aug 2012 20:37:00 -0700</pubDate>
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<title>Is REDD+ moving too slow? Not necessarily…</title>
<link>http://www.cifor.org/online-library/polex-cifors-blog-for-and-by-forest-policy-experts/english/detail/article/1220/is-redd-moving-too-slow-not-necessarily.html</link>
<guid>http://www.cifor.org/online-library/polex-cifors-blog-for-and-by-forest-policy-experts/english/detail/article/1220/is-redd-moving-too-slow-not-necessarily.html</guid><description><![CDATA[ By Louis Putzel Scientist, Forests and Governance Programme REDD+ implementation was supposed to be “big, quick and cheap”. So far, it is not one big thing, but many smaller efforts designed and implemented by many different donors and agencies, a collection of programmes that are slow to design and implement, and likely to be more expensive than at first expected. Is that all bad? In its first 5 years, REDD+ has grown increasingly broad and complex in many unpredicted ways, say Angelsen et al., the editors of a new collection of studies entitled Analysing REDD+: Challenges and choices. Partly due to a lack of reliable long-term financing and a huge diversity of interests, institutions, ideas, and information, the first REDD+ projects were established with development funds. They have not had the grounding and reliable financing that a new international climate change agreement...]]></description>
<pubDate>Sun, 01 Jul 2012 20:13:00 -0700</pubDate>
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<title>Logging in tropical forests: not all is lost</title>
<link>http://www.cifor.org/online-library/polex-cifors-blog-for-and-by-forest-policy-experts/english/detail/article/1220/logging-in-tropical-forests-not-all-is-lost.html</link>
<guid>http://www.cifor.org/online-library/polex-cifors-blog-for-and-by-forest-policy-experts/english/detail/article/1220/logging-in-tropical-forests-not-all-is-lost.html</guid><description><![CDATA[ By Manuel R. Guariguata Principal Scientist, Center for International Forestry Research As tropical forests give way to cities, roads and soybean fields, what’s left behind is a collage of forest remnants and ‘secondary’ forests that regrow after agricultural lands are abandoned. While protecting primary forests will always be essential for tropical conservation, these mosaic landscapes do retain a substantial proportion of forest species, even where forest products are extracted. Researching the impacts of timber harvesting on tropical forest plants and animals has kept ecologists busy over the past three decades. The question of just how much selectively logged forests contribute to global biodiversity conservation remains poorly analysed, and essentially, unanswered. But two recent meta-analyses of previously published research provide fresh evidence that selective logging, if carefully ...]]></description>
<pubDate>Sun, 06 May 2012 23:45:00 -0700</pubDate>
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