May 30, 2014
Even A Little Bit Goes a Long Way: The Role of Green Spaces in Resilient Cities
By Eva Fillion, EcoAgriculture Partners I decided to leave the air-conditioned office this afternoon to eat my lunch outside in a nearby park. Even though the air was heavy with humidity and hazy heat, I found the park packed with people on their own lunch breaks. The scene reinforced the fact that many of us […] ...
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May 28, 2014
Dancing Our Way to Effective Integrated Landscape Management
A collaborative endeavor by nature, integrated landscape management depends upon striking a balance between multiple stakeholders and their various strengths and weaknesses in order to achieve the goal of effectively managing a multipurpose landscape. Abby Hart and Camilla Zanzanaini investigate the efficacy of institutionalized integrated landscape management in their post o ...
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May 27, 2014
The Forgotten Majority? – Peruvian Smallholders at the Farm-Forest Interface
Peter Cronkleton
CIFOR
Mary Menton
In recent decades, Peru has experimented with policy reforms to promote more sustainable forest management. At the same time, donors and NGOs have introduced community forestry initiatives that have tried to encourage rural people to participate legally in the forestry sector. However, it’s not clear whether these efforts have had a widespread positive effect on […] ...
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May 23, 2014
Moving Away From Win-Wins and Towards Sustainable Solutions in Palm Oil
Kedar Mankad, EcoAgriculture Partners It seems that a week doesn’t pass these days without a new editorial on palm oil. Sometimes they highlight the bad, other times they highlight the good. When speaking of solutions, the dialogue on both sides inexorably leads toward “win-win” solutions, where consumers, the environment and companies all come out on top. […] ...
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May 22, 2014
Assessing Sustainable Palm Oil Production With The Help of Dung Beetles
By Claudia Gray, Post-doctoral research fellow in ecology and conservation, University of Sussex, UK Every time you go to the supermarket, you are likely to buy something containing palm oil. In the UK and the US, 10 – 50% of all items in an average shopping basket contain it. Palm oil is the world’s most […] ...
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May 21, 2014
Indigenous Knowledge Spurs Local Biocultural Recovery in Ethiopian Community
By Pernilla Malmer, Stockholm Resilience Centre and Million Belay, MELCA-Ethiopia Food production is at the centre of Earth’s biological and cultural – or “biocultural” – diversity. The Telecho community in Ethiopia is just one out of millions of communities worldwide where cultivated crops and animal breeds have been nurtured and adapted to local conditions ov ...
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May 19, 2014
The Role of Spatial Data in Grassland Restoration
Timo Pitkänen, University of Turku, Finland
Semi-natural grasslands are often habitats dominated by a high diversity of indigenous plant species, which are characterized by their small size and tolerance for disturbance. The long-term history of the emergence of these plants is not fully known, but it is well known that they cannot survive without moderate disturbances that keep their tall and […] ...
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May 16, 2014
Why Commitments Are Not Enough – The Case of Sustainable Cocoa
Kedar Mankad
The 25th World Cocoa Foundation Partnership Meeting, and the 6th Indonesian International Cocoa Conference wrap up today in Bali, Indonesia. These meetings marked an important moment for the cocoa industry. Unlike other major commodity sectors, market demand for sustainably sourced cocoa isn’t in question. Mars, Ferrero, and Hershey have all committed to sourcing 100% sus ...
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May 14, 2014
They’re Not All Win-Win Situations
Margie Miller
EcoAgriculture Partners
The Landscapes for People, Food and Nature initiative spends a lot of time trying to show the private sector that it is in their own self-interest to practice, support and finance integrated landscape management. If we focus so much on self-interest as a motivation for good behavior, it is because we have learned that is […] ...
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May 12, 2014
Sand Rice: A Potential Food Crop for Climate Change Impacted Landscapes?
By Dr. Guoxiong Chen, Senior Researcher, Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences Sand rice (Agriophyllum squarrosum) is an annual psammophyte found mostly on mobile sand dunes in the arid and semi-arid regions of Central Asia. It has evolved a number of physiological and morphological adaptations that allow it [&hellip ...
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