“I always endeavor to be part of the solution in addressing environmental issues particularly in the tropics, and I hope to make a contribution to science-based research into the socioeconomic aspects of tropical conservation and development. That small act combined with others ultimately will phase out the issues.”

BIO

Vivi Selviana grew up in a village surrounded by forests in Lampung, Indonesia. Forests are her playground, nature is her therapy. Vivi’s passion for the socioeconomic aspects of forestry and natural resources management pushed her to travel to the other side of the world to pursue her Master’s degree and earn a GIS Certificate at North Carolina State University. She was a USAID PRESTASI (Program to Extend Scholarships and Training to Achieve Sustainable Impacts) scholar and received a field research fellowship as part of CIFOR’s Global Comparative Study on REDD+. The fellowship allowed her to work with and learn from notable scientists around the world. Vivi’s growing concern with how environmental policy affects local communities led her to continue working with CIFOR as a research consultant with the Climate Change, Energy and Low-Carbon Development team, and she hopes to make a contribution to environmental research. Like two sides of a coin, Vivi is into the wild and into the crowd “concert”.

RESEARCH

Vivi’s research focuses on a quantitative description of how a subnational REDD+ initiative in Katingan district, Central Kalimantan, Indonesia, was implemented, with particular attention to how it sought to achieve both environmental and socio-economic goals. She seeks to shed light on the benefits that the project sought and that may or may not have been achieved, and the challenges faced by the REDD+ project as a result of the political, economic and stakeholder dynamics at the local and national level.

Additionally, Vivi assesses whether and which specific forest interventions have occurred, and when, where and what have been the impacts on household wellbeing. Finally, she also assesses whether the REDD+ project affected local community incomes and behavior in clearing the forest around where the community lives. Understanding the impacts of REDD+ can lead to improvements in intervention design, thus strengthening the quality of those interventions. In the future, this analysis could also help to identify the best types of interventions for achieving co-benefits for local communities. The findings from Vivi’s study aim at discussions of the effectiveness and efficiency of REDD+ policy at the broader scale, including the international and national level.