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The Colombian Amazon has experienced rapid forest loss in the past decades due to growing colonization, infrastructure development, and commercial agriculture expansion. While much of the analyses of deforestation in the Amazon have been in Brazil, there is a need to extend to Colombia where forest and land use exploitation are driven by post-conflict social and political dynamics. This research contributes to this knowledge gap by unpacking the mechanisms underpinning deforestation on the northwestern side of the Colombian Amazon. We used theory-building process-tracing to guide us in conceptualizing the underlying logics of deforestation in the region through qualitative text analysis of policy documents, articles, reports, and grey literature, and virtual semi-structured interviews with key national, regional and local actors. Findings indicate that the power vacuum resulting from the demobilization of FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia), Marxist-Leninist guerrillas, acted as a window of opportunity for peasants, squatters, narco-traffickers, cattle ranchers, landlords, and other investors to access public lands and capitalize from converting forests to coca crops and pastures for cattle ranching. Accumulation of land and surplus primarily from cattle ranching and coca production has increased the ability of these actors to reshape the landscape and societal structures. Traditional elites and old and emerging narco-bourgeoisie have capitalized on preexisting power asymmetries by disproportionally accumulating land, money, gun power, influence, and prestige seeking to consolidate territorial hegemony, and controlling the means for material reproduction in society. Powerful actors use their resources and prestige to displace historically marginalized groups – such as indigenous communities, peasants and squatters – from their means of subsistence and production, resulting in the installation of a capitalist economy based on land rent and drug traffic

Southeast Asia has long promoted social forestry (SF) in conservation areas, fallow forests, tree plantations, areas in timber concessions and locally managed agro-forest systems, with the engagement of diverse actors and objectives. SF has evolved from early aims of empowerment and devolution of rights advocated by global reform movements, and is now reframed in the market ideal as a win–win–win endeavor for sustainable forest management, climate change mitigation and robust entrepreneurial livelihoods. Southeast Asian states have formulated numerous standardized SF programs and policies that are often linked to broader development goals and priorities, but which have not always been a ‘win’ for local communities in falling short to provide full tenure rights. Civil society organizations that have provided grounded perspectives on environmental justice and rights have also converged with states on entrepreneurship and market-based solutions. Meanwhile, the private sector actor that is seen as key to these solutions is conspicuously absent within the SF policy space. Within this space of diverse and at times contradictory objectives, whose interests do SF policies serve? We examine the social forestry assemblage to investigate the different discourses, interests and agendas in the implementation of SF schemes in Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Malaysian state of Sabah. The formal SF schemes involve shifting or reinforcing old discourses around forest problems and possible solutions, territorialization processes that can lead to inequities in the exclusion of rights, participation and access, and risks exacerbating contestations and inequities in claims to forest land and resources.

Swidden cultivation practices have been seen as a major driver of deforestation and forest degradation in Southeast Asia. Using two case studies from Vietnam, this paper examines discourses around swidden practices at multiple levels of governance. Our findings show diverse interpretations of swidden resulting in different policy preferences and policy translations when addressing the issue. At national level, swidden is blamed as a principal driver of deforestation and forest degradation, and as such is a practice to be eliminated. As a result of this national stance, provincial level authorities see the existence of swidden as a failure by which their political performance will be judged. Conversely, swidden communities are seen at district level as an innovative solution to help resource-limited police forces ensure national security in border areas. Local commune and village leaders view swidden as a traditional practice to be respected, so as to maintain harmonious relationships amongst social groups, and avoid ethnic groups protesting against the government. Such differences in discourses and political interests have led to swidden becoming an ‘invisible’ issue, with government authorities failing to collect and report on data. Not recognizing swidden also means that swidden actors are practically ‘forgotten’ in the design and implementation of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) and Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES). Their omission from forest conservation and management incentive programmes could lead to further social marginalization, and potentially result in deforestation and forest degradation in the area. Our findings suggest that REDD+ policies should take into account diverging political interests on controversial land uses such as swidden cultivation.

We extend the Actor-Centred Power framework to consider dimensions beyond the life of community natural resource management partnership initiatives by examining social forestry partnership projects in Indonesia. We do this by examining how power constellations realign across the temporal phases that operationalize project partnerships. We propose a sequential power analysis framework that examines power in three parts. The framework first proposes a method for historicizing actors into their power background. Second, we present mode for examining the arrival of a partnership scheme, which we call the power delivery phase. Third, we highlight approaches for examining the way power relations are adjusted, whether reinforced or reconfigured, by introducing an approach for examining programmatic outcomes of social forestry partnership schemes. This article thus provides broadly applicable but targeted guide for the researchers collecting data and seeking to make sense of power relations on community forest partnership schemes in various contexts. This framework is particularly useful for analysing equity and justice dimensions by highlighting who benefits and who loses. •Sequential Power Analysis (SPA) methodology is rooted in interest based and historical power framework. •SPA is consisted of three parts: power background, power delivery, and power adjustment. •SPA framing provides a protocol for researchers to collect data.

Studies on power dynamics have helped to develop a better understanding of the role of actors and interests influencing community forestry initiatives. This article introduces a sequential power analysis as a framework for expanding research on power dynamics to better understand the various stages that shape benefit sharing outcomes in community forestry. The research is based on the increasingly popular partnership scheme in Indonesia, but the framework is introduced as a method for potential application in other community forestry contexts. The framework is based on three parts. It first historicizes the actors in what we term the power background. Thereafter we examine the arrival of a partnership scheme described as power delivery. Third, we highlight a process of power adjustment, which serves to explain the way actors achieve benefit sharing outcomes. Our research draws from a diverse set of partnership schemes from four sites across five different comparative variables. We find that the framing of power delivery allows us to identify the key actors that serve as the messengers of partnership schemes (the prophets) promoting the terms of project implementation. In the latter stages however, power adjustment determines the outcomes, which are contingent upon benefit-sharing arrangements (profits). Not only does our sequential power analysis help to enrich studies of power dynamics in community forestry, we also show that the current implementation of the partnership scheme in Indonesia is unlikely to result in more equitable outcomes, but rather serves to strengthen the position of existing powerful actors.

Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) aims to transform and reorient farming systems to decrease greenhouse gas emissions, boost adaptive capacity, and improve productivity while supporting incomes and, ostensibly, food security. In Ghana-the world's second biggest cocoa producer-the cocoa sector is challenged by increasing global cocoa demand, climate change impacts, as well as mounting consumer pressure over cocoa's deforestation. Climate-smart cocoa (CSC) has emerged to address these challenges as well as to improve smallholder incomes. As with CSA more widely, there are concerns that CSC discourses will override the interests of cocoa smallholders, and lead to inequitable outcomes. To better understand if and how the implementation of CSC in Ghana can meet its lofty ambitions, we examine (1) the dominant CSC discourses as perceived by stakeholders, and their reflection in policy and practice, and (2) subsequent implications for cocoa smallholders through an equity lens. Through semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with key stakeholders in Ghana's cocoa sector, we find overwhelming consensus for an ecological modernisation discourse with the promise of a triple win narrative that simultaneously stops deforestation, supports climate mitigation and adaptation, and increases smallholder livelihoods. Moreover, we find that implementing CSC on the ground has generally converged around sustainable intensification and private-sector-led partnerships that aspire to generate a win-win for environment and productivity objectives, but potentially at the expense of delivering equitable outcomes that serve smallholders' interests. We find that the success of CSC and the overly-simplistic sustainable intensification narrative is constrained by the lack of clear tree tenure rights, complexities around optimal shade trees levels, potential rebound effects regarding deforestation, and the risks of agrochemical-dependence. More positively, local governance mechanisms s

The Anthropocene presents a set of interlinked sustainability challenges for humanity. The United Nations 2030 Agenda has identified 17 specific Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a way to confront these challenges. However, local initiatives have long been addressing issues connected to these goals in a myriad of diverse and innovative ways. We present a new approach to assess how local initiatives contribute to achieving the SDGs. We analyse how many, and how frequently, different SDGs and targets are addressed in a set of African initiatives. We consider goals and targets addressed by the same initiative as interacting between them. Then, we cluster the SDGs based on the combinations of goals and targets addressed by the initiatives and explore how SDGs differ in how local initiatives engage with them. We identify 5 main groups: SDGs addressed by broad-scope projects, SDGs addressed by specific projects, SDGs as means of implementation, cross-cutting SDGs and underrepresented SDGs. Goal 11 (sustainable cities & communities) is not clustered with any other goal. Finally, we explore the nuances of these groups and discuss the implications and relevance for the SDG framework to consider bottom-up approaches. Efforts to monitor the success on implementing the SDGs in local contexts should be reinforced and consider the different patterns initiatives follow to address the goals. Additionally, achieving the goals of the 2030 Agenda will require diversity and alignment of bottom-up and top-down approaches.

Non-technical summary We argue that the ways in which we as humans derive well-being from nature - for example by harvesting firewood, selling fish or enjoying natural beauty - feed back into how we behave towards the environment. This feedback is mediated by institutions (rules, regulations) and by individual capacities to act. Understanding these relationships can guide better interventions for sustainably improving well-being and alleviating poverty. However, more attention needs to be paid to how experience-related benefits from nature influence attitudes and actions towards the environment, and how these relationships can be reflected in more environmentally sustainable development projects. Technical summary In the broad literatures that address the linked challenge of maintaining ecosystem integrity while addressing poverty and inequality, there is still a need to investigate how linkages and feedbacks between ecosystem services and well-being can be taken into account to ensure environmental sustainability and improved livelihoods. We present a conceptual model towards a dynamic and reciprocal understanding of the feedbacks between human well-being and ecosystems. The conceptual model highlights three mechanisms through which people derive benefits from ecosystems (use, money and experience), and illustrates how these benefits can affect values, attitudes and actions towards ecosystems. Institutions and agency determine access to and distribution of benefits and costs, and also present barriers or enabling factors for individual or collective action. The conceptual model synthesises insights from existing but mostly separate bodies of literature on well-being and the benefits humans derive from ecosystems, and reveals gaps and areas for future research. Two case studies illustrate how recognizing the full feedback loop between how ecosystems support human well-being and how people behave towards those ecosystems, as well as intervention points within the loo

Market-driven development is transforming swidden landscapes and having different impacts along intersections of gender, age and class. In Kapuas Hulu, West Kalimantan, Indonesia, Dayak communities practicing swidden agriculture are making choices on maintaining traditional land use systems, and engaging in rubber, oil palm and conservation (REDD + ) in their livelihood strategies. Although REDD + has been heralded as an alternative to oil palm as a sustainable development option, it is still far from full implementation. Meanwhile, oil palm has become a reality, with large scale plantations that offer job opportunities and produce new sources of prestige, but create contestations around traditional land use systems. We employ the gender asset agriculture project (GAAP) framework and apply an intersectional lens to highlight power relations underlying gendered differences in land, labor and social capital in this process of transformation. Our findings suggest that market interventions produce major changes for men and women, young and old, land cultivators and wage earners. This has created new opportunities for some and new risks for others, with those having power to access diverse types of knowledge, ranging from inheritance rights to market information and job opportunities, best able to exploit such opportunities.

Interventions to strengthen forest conservation in tropical biomes face multiple challenges. Insecure land tenure and unequal benefit sharing within forest user groups are two of the most important. Using original household level survey data from 130 villages in six countries, we assess how current wealth inequality relates to tenure security and benefit flows from forest use. We find that villages with higher wealth inequality report lower tenure security and more unequal flows from forest income and externally sourced income. Furthermore, we find that wealthier individuals within villages capture a disproportionately larger share of the total amount of forest benefits available to each village, while external income often benefits poorer individuals more. These findings suggest that unless future forest conservation interventions actively work to mitigate inequalities linked to existing forest benefit flows, there is a risk that these interventions-including those associated with REDD + activities reproduce or even aggravate pre-existing socioeconomic inequalities within user groups, potentially undermining both their conservation and economic objectives.