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Forest education plays a crucial role in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and promoting sustainable forest management amidst global challenges. However, existing programs struggle to keep pace with rapidly evolving crises and uncertainties that contribute to deforestation and forest degradation. To tackle these challenges, integrating innovative approaches into forest education is essential. This paper showcases the transformative use of a strategy game, MineSet, as an innovative teaching method for integrated forest management. The game facilitates deeply engaging experiences that provide unique insights into complex issues like deforestation. By assuming various stakeholder roles, graduate students actively engage with and confront the intricate tradeoffs inherent in forest management. This interactive and immersive role-play game not only fosters critical thinking skills but also promotes collaborative problem-solving, making MineSet a highly innovative and attractive tool in forest education. The importance of extended debriefings, facilitation throughout the game, and ongoing discussions should not be underestimated, as they establish meaningful and necessary connections between in-game events, validated educational material, and published research outcomes. Moreover, the game equips students with practical experience and a comprehensive understanding of landscape approaches, using the Congo Basin as a case study. We emphasize the potential of innovative forest education to foster sustainability, stimulate critical thinking, resolve conflicts, and prevent costly forest losses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how increasing agricultural productivity through agricultural intensification may influence farmland expansion decisions of smallholder farmers in Ethiopia, Ghana, and Zambia. Six pairs of farmers at each site (72 in total) from different wealth groups were involved in serious games sessions that simulated different institutional, economic, and governance contexts, with players choosing their resource allocation accordingly. The approach was used to explore with farmers, in a 'safe space', whether an increase in agricultural productivity and profitability via intensification would reduce or end farmland expansion into natural habitats. The results show that, under certain conditions (such as poor forest governance and lack of alternative income-generating and investment opportunities), agricultural intensification can lead to more agricultural expansion at the expense of natural habitats, such as forests and grasslands. This suggests that intensification strategies to promote increased productivity may need companion strategies to protect forest ecosystems from expansion at the agricultural frontier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Protected areas (PAs) are a cornerstone for conservation biodiversity. Madagascar, as a hotspot for biodiversity, has a network of 114 terrestrial protected areas covering the main forest types occurring on the island. Deforestation continues unabated despite the network covering 11% of the island. Here we present a case study approach reporting on four PAs from the humid forests, dry western forests, and southwestern dry and spiny forests and thickets. To describe deforestation in and around the case sites, we have considered a time window of 30 years for analysis, focusing on six years with reliable data: 1990, 2000, 2010, 2015 (the year of latest PA network update), and 2017. We have considered forest versus other land covers within the PAs in "buffers" at a distance of 500 m, 2.5 km, 5 km, and 10 km from the border of the PA. These buffers were set from the border towards the center of the PA (inside the PAs) and from the border outside the PAs. The smallest PAs, Kasijy (IUCN IV), and Behara Tranomaro (no IUCN category), showed the least forest loss. Tsaratanana (IUCN I) had the highest deforestation rates within the last two years of analysis, with deforestation concentrated in the core area. Ranobe PK-32 (no IUCN category), originally with the largest forest extent, has lost most of its forest cover and showed the highest annual deforestation rate (3.5%) between 2015 and 2017. All four cases prove to be very challenging to manage. Future conservation activities require tailored interventions to account for site-specific current and potential future threats, as detailed in this contribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forests are defined in many different ways. Apart from ecological and structural factors, associated values and provided ecosystem services are an important part of forest definitions. Typically, forest types are differentiated based on climatic regions and on degrees of human modification. A better understanding of how to distinguish different forests on the basis of the values they provide is needed to advance global policies put forward by organisations such as the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), or the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These policies so far approach all forests in a similar manner, regardless of their condition. Without this distinction, benefits stemming from forest intactness and their contribution to global environmental challenges remain unaccounted for. Forest definitions provide the basis for policies and monitoring systems driving or enabling deforestation, degradation, reforestation, and restoration. Here, we provide a systematic approach to disentangle and synthesise different value classifications of forests. As part of a collaboration between ETH Zurich, the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD), the University of Liège and Biotope, Forest Stewardship Council International (FSC) commissioned a systematic map that aims to clarify how definitions of forests of high value are understood and described. Focusing on forests of high value, the systematic map will address three research questions: (1) How are various terms linked to forests of high value defined in the literature?; (2) Do definitions vary between different actors?; and (3) How common are the various definitions? Bibliographic databases and organisational websites will be searched, and internet search engines used to find relevant peer-reviewed and grey literature. The searches will be conducted in English, French and Spanish. Data extraction and coding will be performed at the same time when full texts are considered for inclusion. Definitions will be extracted as well as their respective sources and other study information. We will produce a catalogue of definitions for different terms associated with forests of high value, a narrative synthesis describing the evidence base, and visualisations illustrating the relationships between definitions and terms for forests of high value and their frequencies in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of mycological research and current activities in the Polish part of the Białowieża Primeval Forest are presented. The review of literature-derived and unpublished data on species of non-lichenized fungi and protozoan and chromistan fungal analogues indicates a minimum of 3504 species observed in this area. The gaps in the exploration of fungi: unstudied taxa, plant communities, habitats, hosts, and substrates, as well as the limitations of former studies, are discussed. Our estimates show that a total of 8000 fungal species possibly occur in the Białowieża National Park alone, and more than 10,000 are expected to be found in the Polish part of the Białowieża Primeval Forest. Despite more than a centennial history of mycological research, the majority of data come from only a few older scientific projects and several more recent citizen-science-related activities, emphasizing the need for a modern, interdisciplinary study on the diversity and ecology of fungi in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a new framework that allows understanding those we deem irrational in the climate debate. Realizing if the issue is one of information, beliefs, values or means opens the door for more constructive dialogue. Decision-makers diverge in their responses to the urgent need for action on climate and biodiversity. Action gaps are fueled by the apparent inability of decision-makers to respond efficiently to the mounting threats described by scientists—and increasingly recognized by society. Surprisingly, with the growing evidence and the accumulation of firsthand experiences of the impacts of environment crises, the gap is not only a problem of conflicting values or beliefs but also a problem of inefficient strategies. Bridging the gap and tackling the growing polarization within society calls for decision-makers to engage with the full complexity of the issues the world is facing. We propose a framework characterizing five archetypes of decision-makers to help us out of the current impasse by better understanding the behavior of others. Dealing with the complexity of environmental threats requires decision-makers to question their understanding of who wins and who loses, and how others make decisions. This requires that decision-makers acknowledge complexity, embrace uncertainty, and avoid falling back on simplistic cognitive models. Understanding the complexity of the issue and how people make decisions is key to having a fighting chance of solving the climate crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deforestation and biodiversity loss in agroecosystems are generally the result of rational choices, not of a lack of awareness or knowledge. Despite both scientific evidence and traditional knowledge that supports the value of diverse production systems for ecosystem services and resilience, a trend of agroecosystem intensification is apparent across tropical regions. These transitions happen in spite of policies that prohibit such transformations. We present a participatory modelling study run to (1) understand the drivers of landscape transition and (2) explore the livelihood and environmental impacts of tenure changes in the coffee agroforestry systems of Kodagu (India). The components of the system, key actors and resources, and their interactions were defined with stakeholders, following the companion modelling (ComMod) approach. The underlying ecological processes driving the system were validated through expert knowledge and scientific literature. The conceptual model was transformed into a role-playing game and validated by eight workshops with a total of 57 participants. Two scenarios were explored, a No Policy Change as baseline, and a Restitution of Rights where rights to cut the native trees are handed over to farmers. Our results suggest that the landscape transition is likely to continue unabated unless there is a change to the current policy framework. However, the Restitution of Rights risks speeding up the process rather than reversing it, as inter alia, the differential growth rate between exotic and native tree species, kick in. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding landscape change starts with understanding what motivates farmers to transition away from one system, shifting cultivation, into another, like plantation crops. Here we explored the resource allocation strategies of the farmers of the Karbi tribe in Northeast India, who practice a traditional shifting cultivation system called jhum. Through a participatory modelling framework, we co-developed a role-playing game of the local farming system. In the game, farmers allocated labour and cash to meet household needs, while also investing in new opportunities like bamboo, rubber and tea, or the chance to improve their living standards. Farmers did embrace new options where investment costs, especially monetary investments, are low. Returns on these investments were not automatically re-invested in further long-term, more expensive and promising opportunities. Instead, most of the money is spend on improving household living standards, particularly the next generation's education. The landscape changed profoundly based on the farmers' strategies. Natural ecological succession was replaced by an improved fallow of marketable bamboo species. Plantations of tea and rubber became more prevalent as time progressed while old practices ensuring food security were not yet given up. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) is a widely used approach aimed at involving those utilizing resources in their management. In Madagascar, where forest decentralization has been implemented since the 1990s to spur local resource users' involvement in management processes, impacts remain unclear. This study aimed to investigate farmers' perceptions and practices regarding forest use under various forest governance systems, using a participatory gaming approach implemented in the Zahamena region of Madagascar. We report on (i) the conceptual models of the Zahamena socio-ecological system; (ii) the actual research tool in the form of a tabletop role-playing game; and (iii) main outcomes of the gaming workshops and accompanying research. The results allow the linking of game reality with real-world perceptions based on game debriefing discussions and game workshop follow-up surveys, as well as interviews and focus group research with other natural resource users from the study area. Results show that the Zahamena protected area plays the role of buffer zone by slowing down deforestation and degradation. However, this fragile barrier and CBNRM are not long-term solutions in the face of occurring changes. Rather, the solution lies in one of the main causes of the problem: agriculture. Further use of tools such as participatory gaming is recommended to enhance knowledge exchange and the development of common visions for the future of natural resource management to foster resilience of forest governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]