Pathways to win-wins or trade-offs? How certified community forests impact forest restoration and human wellbeing

Robin Loveridge; Andrew R Marshall; Marion Pfeifer; Steven Rushton; Petro Nyinti; Lilian Fredy; Susannah M Sallu

doi:10.1098/rstb.2021.0080

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Pathways to win-wins or trade-offs? How certified community forests impact forest restoration and human wellbeing

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Pathways to win-wins or trade-offs? How certified community forests impact forest restoration and human wellbeing

Robin Loveridge, Andrew R Marshall, Marion Pfeifer, Steven Rushton, Petro Nyinti, Lilian Fredy and Susannah M Sallu

Royal Society of London. Philosophical Transactions B. Biological Sciences, Vol.378(1867), pp.1-9

2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2021.0080

PMCID: PMC9661953

PMID: 36373927

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Abstract

forest certification

pathways

restoration

community forests

protected areas

wellbeing

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’.

Details

Title: Pathways to win-wins or trade-offs? How certified community forests impact forest restoration and human wellbeing
Authors: Robin Loveridge (Corresponding Author) - University of York
Andrew R Marshall (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Forest Research Institute
Marion Pfeifer (Author) - Newcastle University
Steven Rushton (Author) - Newcastle University
Petro Nyinti (Author)
Lilian Fredy (Author) - Sokoine University of Agriculture
Susannah M Sallu (Author) - University of Leeds
Publication details: Royal Society of London. Philosophical Transactions B. Biological Sciences, Vol.378(1867), pp.1-9
Publisher: The Royal Society Publishing
Date published: 2023
DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2021.0080
ISSN: 1471-2970
PMID: 36373927; PMC9661953
Copyright note: © 2022 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
Organisation Unit: Tropical Forests and People Research Centre; University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland; School of Science, Technology and Engineering; Forest Research Institute
Language: English
Record Identifier: 99605106202621
Output Type: Journal article