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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Marion PfeiferORCiD, Professor Stephen Rushton
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
Certified community forests combine local governance with forest certification and aim to serve multiple objectives including forest protection, restoration, human wellbeing and equitable governance. However, the causal pathways by which they impact these objectives remain poorly understood. The ability of protected area impact evaluations to identify complex pathways is limited by a narrow focus on top-down theoretical, quantitative perspectives and inadequate consideration of local context. We used a novel mixed-methods research design that integrates the perspectives of multiple actors to develop a generalized conceptual model of the causal pathways for certified community forests. We tested the model using a combination of statistical matching, structural equation modelling and qualitative analyses for an agroforestry landscape in Tanzania. We found certified community forests positively impacted human wellbeing, equitable governance and forest restoration. Equitable governance had the largest impact on wellbeing, followed by crop yield and forest resource availability. Timber revenues varied widely between villages and the average effect of financial benefits did not impact wellbeing due to the immature stage of the certified timber market. We identified positive interactions and trade-offs between conservation and agriculture. Our findings suggest that no simple solution exists for meeting multiple objectives. However, developing understanding of the pathways linking social and conservation outcomes can help identify opportunities to promote synergies and mitigate negative impacts to reconcile competing objectives. This article is part of the theme issue 'Understanding forest landscape restoration: reinforcing scientific foundations for the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration'.
Author(s): Loveridge R, Marshall AR, Pfeifer M, Rushton S, Nnyiti PP, Fredy L, Sallu SM
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences
Year: 2023
Volume: 378
Issue: 1867
Print publication date: 02/01/2023
Online publication date: 14/11/2022
Acceptance date: 16/11/2021
Date deposited: 28/11/2022
ISSN (print): 0962-8436
ISSN (electronic): 1471-2970
Publisher: Royal Society Publishing
DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2021.0080
PubMed id: 36373927
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