Governing Multifunctional landscapes in Sub-Saharan Africa: Managing Trade-Offs between Social and Ecological Impacts

Forests are fundamental to multifunctional landscapes, providing invaluable ecosystem services, and supporting rural livelihoods and economies through their contributions to income, food, and energy needs. The functionality of forests is threatened by unsustainable use of forest resources and pressures from competing land uses. This demands concerted efforts to harmonize forest relevant policies and regulations and ensure these adequately respond to place-specific drivers of change. This project seeks to identify and support the implementation of viable news mechanisms to achieve this. It does this by using participatory approaches to unpack how effectively and sustainably income, food, and energy demands within multifunctional landscapes are met. This in turn enables the project to identify governance options that resolve structural inefficiencies and social-ecological trade-offs.