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Food asset mapping is an emerging tool to promote food security and food resiliency in Canadian cities. It provides a baseline of a city’s food assets and identifies local food infrastructures that...

The study focused on the potential role of the forest sector in Columbia’s post-conflict processes based on the multifunctionality of forests and their components: communities that live in and close to forests, economic dynamics, social actors and sectoral policies. The analysis covered the national level and the coffee region, located in the center of the country. Materials and methods included semi-structured interviews with international and national forest experts. Experts agreed that the forest sector in Colombia represents an alternative pathway for increasing employment and improving the quality of life of local populations, especially in those regions where the post-conflict process is still in effect. In the case of the coffee region, there is a reforestation potential of 54,500 ha and, with minor restrictions, the potential for 164,130 ha of forest plantations. Less than 10 % of that potential has been achieved. Likewise, there are opportunities to implement ecosystem services programs in public and private natural forests that cover 55 % of the coffee region. These potentials are not currently part of the regional priorities, although they could generate income and employment for vulnerable coffee-growing families and for indigenous communities living near natural forests, for whom poverty is a constant due to structural deprivations., El estudio se centró en el papel potencial del sector forestal en los procesos de posconflicto colombiano, basado en la multifuncionalidad de los bosques y sus componentes: comunidades que viven en y cerca de los bosques, dinámicas económicas, actores sociales y políticas sectoriales. El análisis involucró la región cafetera, situada en el centro occidente del país. Los materiales y métodos incluyeron entrevistas semi estructuradas con expertos forestales internacionales y nacionales. Los expertos coincidieron en que el sector forestal en Colombia representa una vía alternativa para aumentar el empleo y mejorar la calidad de vida de las poblaciones locales, especialmente, en aquellas regiones donde el proceso posterior al conflicto armado sigue vigente. En el caso de la región cafetera, existe un potencial de reforestación de 54.500 ha con la posibilidad de llegar a 164.130 ha de plantaciones forestales. Se logra menos del 10 % de ese potencial. Asimismo, existen oportunidades para implementar programas de servicios ecosistémicos en bosques naturales públicos y privados que cubren el 55 % de la región cafetera. Estos potenciales no forman parte de las prioridades regionales actuales, aunque podrían generar ingresos y empleo para las familias cafeteras vulnerables y para las comunidades indígenas que viven cerca de los bosques naturales, para quienes la pobreza es una constante debido a privaciones estructurales.

The reduction of illegal logging and related trade has been on the international policy agenda since the 1990s. The EU's Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade initiative (EU-FLEGT) seeks to address illegal logging through a scheme that rests on multistakeholder negotiations. However, past initiatives seeking to reform forest governance in the global South have reproduced the uneven outcomes of colonial forest governance by further empowering national government authorities. In the case of Thailand, FLEGT negotiations between November 2013 and April 2021 succeeded in opening a political space for civil society to engage with government actors. However, FLEGT negotiations during this period failed to address the uneven outcomes of forest governance, benefiting elites at the expense of the rural poor due to an 'anti-politics effect. The FLEGT multistakeholder negotiations did not consider the uneven historical relations to land and resource rights nor the intrinsic power dynamics of different actor groups. As such, dominant actors from the government and private sector succeeded in structuring the terrain of the FLEGT negotiations to determine which civil society demands for reforms to tenure and resource rights they would concede, and which they would not.

Globally, sacred groves represent a traditional form of community-based conservation system, recognized for their capacity to preserve areas that are of cultural and religious importance to local people. In most cases, the entire community takes on a watchdog role to guard against encroachment and unauthorized access either by its members or outsiders who might desecrate such sites. Our paper investigates the effects of different governance arrangements on three sacred groves in southwest Nigeria⎯Osun Osogbo Sacred Grove (UNESCO World Heritage Site); Idanre Hills (Nigerian National Monument) and Igbo-Olodumare (local cultural site)⎯on their socio-economic and religio-cultural benefits and contribution to biodiversity conservation. Using a mixed-methods design of a semi-structured questionnaire (n=167), key informant interviews (n=2), and focus groups (n=7), we collected data from local community members, traditional priests, sacred grove devotees and tourism officials. We found that customary institutions have guided reverence for sacralized spaces and wise utilization of their unique resources. The growing recognition of sacred groves has paved the way for socioeconomic rewards for individuals and government as cultural tourism increases. We found that the involvement of formal institutions alongside customary institutions in sacred grove management reinforces compliance with conservation laws within the sacred groves, especially where traditional norms are weak or may be disregarded. We discuss the implications of these observations and offer suggestions to improve community engagement, uphold traditional ecological knowledge, and develop ecotourism within the groves. We conclude that the co-existence of community-based conservation through a system of established traditional norms and prohibitions as well as formal government legislation and management, offers assurance for the long-term preservation of sacred groves and their biodiversity.

Criteria and indicator (C&I) frameworks are frequently used for assessing sustainable forest management. Despite their suitability to assess performance, less attention is given to translating them into strategic forest management planning processes and practices that are of cross-cultural compatibility. Such compatibility is particularly relevant in landscape-level plans that involve Indigenous communities, or multiple groups with various interests. Our study addresses this gap by developing targets and compatible practices that can complement C&I suitable for integrating Indigenous forest management goals and timber production interests. The process for developing C&I is informed by values expressed by four Indigenous communities in central British Columbia (BC) through close revision of traditional use studies, land use plans developed by communities, one focus group discussion, and validation of the results by community representatives. The set of targets and compatible forest management practices we propose are based on a precautionary approach and a synthesis of technical studies conducted in BC. The outcomes are suited to inform both stand- and landscape-level forest management planning and can be considered a reference system to monitor change and facilitate the resolution of multiple interests on the land, reconciling holistic Indigenous values and timber production.

Background: Non-timber forest products (NTFPs) have been traded for millennia by indigenous communities. Current increased demands driven by globalisation, however, put more pressure on local harvesters and their surrounding ecosystems. The safeguarding of indigenous access rights to harvesting grounds is needed, either through communal land titles or collaborative management agreements, both to secure prior indigenous rights and to minimise further negative ecological impacts. Methods: This study was carried out in two indigenous communities in West Suriname located along the Corentyne River. We assessed the three economically most important NTFPs for each community. We determined the land tenure status of harvesting grounds and negative impacts on target species and/or ecosystem. Ethnobotanical data were collected (n = 53), and semi-structured interviews were held with hunters and gatherers (n = 13). Local and national maps were acquired, and their data merged. Results: Results showed that the communities have no tenure security over their most important harvesting sites. These collection sites are State owned and some under (active) logging concession. All of the traded wild animal populations had decreased because of increased local and non-local commercial interest, especially the stingray Potamotrygon boesemani (first described in 2008), which was traded for US$250 per live specimen. The stingray population had become imperilled within months as local and (inter-) national regulations for this species are non-existent. Conclusions: We stress the urgent need for collaborative management agreements over the harvesting sites between the government of Suriname and the indigenous communities to prevent further non-local developments and harvesting to disturb the local economy. An immediate moratorium on the export of P. boesemani is necessary to prevent the extinction of this endemic stingray.

One of the ways that Indigenous peoples are seeking recognition of their rights to ancestral and traditional territories is through increased participation in the forestry sector. Participating in forestry represents tangible recognition of the Lilwat First Nation’s rights and allows progress towards strategic management of their territories. This study presents evidence from five years of collaborative qualitative research in the Lilwat Nation to understand how forestry is creating new opportunities and constraints for the community, and how forestry interacts with Lilwat Inherent Rights. Through government reforms, the Lilwat Nation is replacing and working together with non-Indigenous companies and the provincial government to improve protection for cultural sites and ways of being. However, the legacy of the colonial forestry regime continues to impact relationships in forestry today, and changes to forest policy have brought both new opportunities and constraints for the Lilwat Nation. This article reviews Lilwat First Nation’s evolving relationship with the forestry sector in their traditional territories in British Columbia (BC), Canada, and provides a nuanced look at one Indigenous Nation’s experience with becoming increasingly linked to global forest products markets while maintaining community objectives around self-determination.

Variants of Indigenous forest management reflect distinct historical and political-economic contexts. Indigenous forest management was largely unrecorded in the colonial period and, in the present, can range from industrial to ecosystem-based forest management, autonomous management and rentier practices. Evidence of Indigenous forest management has assumed political importance in those nation-states that require historical evidence of past land use and occupancy as the basis for negotiation of Indigenous-titled lands. The forms of tenure that include communal-titled lands, recognized or unrecognized claimed customary lands or time-limited licences influence the variations of Indigenous Forestry. The relative power held by constituency groups influence governance although the increasingly normative influence of guidelines such as Access and Benefit Sharing and Free, Prior and Informed Consent may lead to improvements across the board in all forms of forestry. Indigenous participation in voluntary, independent third-party certification schemes and the invocation of the Public Trust and Indigenous Trust doctrines by some Indigenous Peoples may also lead to improved governance of Indigenous Territories and resources by national and Indigenous governments.

While there has been a shift away from actively excluding Indigenous Peoples in forestry decisions, modern approaches to forest management often continue to disregard the multi-generational social, cultural, economic, and environmental needs of forest-based Indigenous communities. This article examines contemporary forest stewardship in British Columbia, Canada in the context of inclusive development-related policies – focusing on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) Calls to Action. Relevant literature, case studies, and public documents are examined to assess if and how inclusive development-related policies are affecting Indigenous forest stewardship in British Columbia. Implications and recommendations for Canadian forest policy makers and practitioners are provided to facilitate reconciliation. In addition, the potential significance of monitoring the progression of inclusive development within Indigenous forest stewardship practices by using UNDRIP (alongside other Indigenous-focused policies unique to individual countries) is discussed.

OBJECTIVE This study describes secular trends in physical stature, Cormic Index (CI), and body mass index (BMI) of adult Makushi Amerindians born between 1910 and 1980, compares the stature of these Makushi adults to Makushi adults measured in 1921, and provides contextual data to inform the findings. METHODS Pearson's correlation was used to assess the relationship between year of birth and physical stature, BMI, and CI for 231 females and 113 males, 20 to 90 years of age measured in 2000 to 2001. Wilcoxon's test was used to compare physical stature of Makushi adults measured in 2000 to 2001 with that of 40 Makushi adults measured in 1921. RESULTS Among Makushi measured in 2000 to 2001, females and males born more recently were taller and had a lower CI but did not differ in BMI relative to their elders. Makushi measured in 2000 to 2001 are significantly taller than those Maksuhi measured in 1921. CONCLUSION The increased physical stature of and decreased CI in more recently born Makushi may be explained by a more favorable early life environment possibly due to public health measures and dietary changes. As well, trends in stature may be linked to genetic admixture with African-Guyanese migrating into the region during this time.

The consequences of State claims to, and controls over, the territories of Guyana's Indigenous Peoples (Amerindians) are traced through successive Dutch and British colonial to post-Independence governments. From the mid-eighteenth century, a numerically small sugar plantocracy wielded influence within local government and ensured that colonial policy served its interests located on the coastland. Hinterland policies extended the capitalist approach to natural resources extraction and favoured the dominance of the small stratum of monied interests over the majority of Crown licences for forestry, mining and ranching, which were superimposed on claimed Indigenous lands. The colonial governments' approach to Amerindians was protectionist, but the Amerindian land rights were not codified in law. Authoritarian post-Independence governments have used the discretionary power in the legislative framework inherited from the colonial times to expand the numbers of, and areas covered by, logging and mining licences. The State is aided by the lack of a participatory reservation process for forests and/or a formal settlement process to determine and codify pre-existing customary rights of Indigenous Peoples, twin processes that were instituted in the majority of British colonies. Indigenous rights and privileges on their customary lands have been steadily eroded in law, policy and practice. Amerindians receive few economic benefits from natural resources operations on either their legally titled communal lands or customary lands.

We often hear about the resistance of First Nation (FN) communities to the industrial model of forestry, but we hear less about what they wish to achieve. Translating FN perspectives into concepts that are understood by the mainstream society can help inform current and future forest policies. Such translation can support initiatives that seek ways to increase FN participation in the forest sector. This paper documents one process of translation. It identifies the principles and objectives for forest-based development of the Essipit Innu First Nation in Quebec, Canada, reflective of the deep roots that anchor the Essipit to their territory. Based on participatory research carried out between January and July 2013, we identify 34 objectives folded into three core FN principles: Nutshimiu–Aitun (identity–territoriality), Mishkutunam (sharing–exchange), and Pakassitishun (responsibility–autonomy). Our analysis shows that the economic aims of the dominant forestry model are too narrow for FN communities. This paper contributes to expanding FN engagement in forestry through management and economic approaches that are better adapted to their culture and values.

SUMMARY Small loggers' associations in Guyana have grown from one to 73 between 2000 and 2014 with over 2 000 members and 4 000 chainsaw millers. They hold 128 2-year renewable harvest licences to 488 Kha, generally in rainforest already degraded by uncontrolled logging. The slippages between government policies and actual practices in respect of the associations are traced through the evolution of chainsaw milling from the mid-1980s. Using the institutional analysis of property theorists, SLAs are shown to be associations in name only. The State regulatory agency controls access to concession licences and the structure and functioning of the associations. The political patronage system, administrative discretion and the short-term licences awarded on the one hand and the individual milling operations of members on the other hand lead to dysfunctional associations. Only 1/3 of the associations have formally registered legal personality and so the majority are ineligible for bank credit or direct donor sup...

Childhood and adolescence are important life stages for the acquisition of knowledge about non-timber forest products (NTFPs). We show at which stage in life traditional plant knowledge is learned and analyze whether cross-cultural ethnobotanical knowledge transmission takes place. We evaluate whether the degree of forest dependency influences ethnobotanical knowledge by comparing two indigenous communities in Suriname. Traditional knowledge was documented and vouchers collected during forest walks with adult informants. Questionnaires were completed by 74 schoolchildren (age 4 to 14) to capture their knowledge of names and uses of nine important NTFPs. We tested for knowledge differences by ethnicity and NTFP categories. Local names for NTFPs were analyzed to determine cross-cultural transmission of ethnobotanical knowledge. Children from the forest-dependent Trio community (De jeugd en pubertijd zijn belangrijke levensfasen voor het verwerven van kennis over Niet-Hout Bosproducten (NTFP’s) bij bewoners van het Amazonegebied. Dit onderzoek had als doel te achterhalen in welke levensjaren traditionele plantenkennis wordt toegeëigend en of er ethnobotanische kennis wordt uitgewisseld tussen twee Inheemse gemeenschappen in Suriname. Verwacht werd dat de afhankelijkheid van het bos de hoeveelheid ethnobotanische kennis beïnvloedt. Tijdens boswandelingen met volwassen informanten is traditionele kennis over NTFPs gedocumenteerd en zijn er botanische specimens verzameld. Door 74 schoolgaande kinderen (4 tot 14 jaar) zijn vragenlijsten ingevuld om hun kennis te achterhalen over lokale namen en toepassingen van negen belangrijke NTFP soorten. Het verschil in kennis werd vergeleken tussen twee ethnische groepen en NTFP-categorieën (eetbaar en medicinaal). Lokale namen voor NTFP’s werden geanalyseerd om overdracht van ethnobotanische kennis tussen de gemeenschappen te bepalen. Tegen de verwachting in hadden kinderen uit de bosafhankelijke Trio-gemeenschap (

Background Human-caused disturbance to tropical rainforests—such as logging and fire—causes substantial losses of carbon stocks. This is a critical issue to be addressed in the context of policy discussions to implement REDD+. This work reviews current scientific knowledge about the temporal dynamics of degradation-induced carbon emissions to describe common patterns of emissions from logging and fire across tropical forest regions. Using best available information, we: (i) develop short-term emissions factors (per area) for logging and fire degradation scenarios in tropical forests; and (ii) describe the temporal pattern of degradation emissions and recovery trajectory post logging and fire disturbance. Results Average emissions from aboveground biomass were 19.9 MgC/ha for logging and 46.0 MgC/ha for fire disturbance, with an average period of study of 3.22 and 2.15 years post-disturbance, respectively. Longer-term studies of post-logging forest recovery suggest that biomass accumulates to pre-disturbance levels within a few decades. Very few studies exist on longer-term (>10 years) effects of fire disturbance in tropical rainforests, and recovery patterns over time are unknown. Conclusions This review will aid in understanding whether degradation emissions are a substantial component of country-level emissions portfolios, or whether these emissions would be offset by forest recovery and regeneration.

Colonial governments asserted sovereignty and property rights gradually over the territory of Guyana, disregarding preexisting Indigenous Rights. Although a Forest Department modeled on the Indian Forest Service was established, there was no equivalent settlement process to determine the rights of forest peoples. State Forest area is declared by administrative fiat. These two elements have enabled State-endorsed forestland grabbing. Logging was scattered and selective until the early 1980s. A neoliberal economic program from the 1980s has allowed Asian companies to gain control over at least 80% of large-scale forestry concessions, equivalent to one-third of the 15.8 million hectares (Mha) of State-administered public forests. The relative success of the Asian companies can be understood in terms of available capital, willingness to invest, knowledge of markets, and willingness to corrupt. The relative failure of the preexisting Guyanese-owned businesses can be understood in terms of lack of capital, inab...

In Guyana’s racialised geography, Amerindians live in scattered villages in the vast hinterland that covers 90% of the country. Amerindian iconography is appropriated in state-making, even while Amerindians themselves are consigned to a patron–client relationship with the dominant ‘coastlander’ society. In the late 1950s, Amerindians made up only 4% of the national population but voted as a bloc in the national elections of 1957, 1961 and 1964, rallying around Stephen Campbell, the first Amerindian member of the legislature. Their unified position allowed their political leaders to negotiate a commitment to the settlement of Amerindian land claims as a condition of Independence in 1966. After losing its parliamentary majority in 2011, the coastlander-based party in power has been working to disrupt cohesion among Amerindian community leaders. The government uses a variety of funds to reward community leaders who will sign pre-prepared resolutions at the statutory National Toshaos Council meetings...

SUMMARY Taxation systems for publicly-owned forests should be founded on a government's constitutional right of radical tenure, simultaneously recognising the rights of forest-dependent stakeholders to share benefits and responsibilities. Complex taxes may be historically explicable but are open to corrupt diversions. A systems approach may be essential for benefit sharing to really reach geographically or institutionally remote beneficiaries. The purpose of each tax should be justified and communicated to tax payers, including through participatory development of tax laws. Transparency in justification and implementation of forest taxes helps to diminish corruption through replacement of administrative discretion by rule-based decision making. Strategists should be more aware of the links between criminality in various sectors.

Corruption appears to be the major factor which prevents proper control of long-term forest harvesting concessions by government agencies in Guyana, South America. Corruption is easily affordable because of very low forest taxes and high profits on under-declared log exports. Three “rings of power” or social compacts mutually foster the prevalent illegalities. 1. In the highest level social compact, the State itself behaves as a criminal enterprise', allowing the available technical regulations for improving forest management to be ignored, or used selectively against those loggers who lack political influence. 2. Senior and junior forest officers keep out of each other's relations with loggers. 3. Small-scale loggers allocated non-commercial forest restore their income by over-quota and out-of-coupe felling, for which they pay off the junior government staff to forestall field inspections. Steps towards solutions include: • the links between loggers and government staff could be broken by implem...

The 15 columns document and analyze the principal forestry-related processes and events in Guyana during the final three-years in office (2011-2015) of the ethnic East Indian-dominated government that ruled uninterruptedly for 22 years (1992-2015). The evidence and consequences for the forests, economy and society of Guyana’s large-scale and long-term illegal logging and log trading are presented and assessed. I show how regulatory capture is manifest in the ways in which the log export policy from 2009 served the interests of the dominant Asian log exporters and the budget of the Guyana Forestry Commission while being fiscally ineffective. I show the points at which the Government of Guyana failed to use regulation and fiscal measures to make the implementation of national policies for in-country timber processing commercially feasible. I document the faltering steps taken to implement one of the conditions in the Guyana-Norway Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), signed in November 2009, which is ‘evidence of Guyana entering a formal dialogue with the European Union with the intent of joining its Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) processes towards a Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA)’. One of the key elements of a VPA is a legality verification system (LVS), to provide assurance that timber imported into the EU from the producer country shall have been produced at least legally if not sustainably.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) for the first 6 months of life, primarily because of potential immunological benefits which are deemed to outweigh nutritive costs for infants. This recommendation is controversial, as studies of the relationship between the term of EBF and infant and child health have produced conflicting results. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the relationship between the term of EBF and infant and child mortality among a group of swidden-horticulturalists in lowland South America. Consistent with the WHO, we hypothesized that EBF6 months will compromise the survival of the infant or child. This relationship was assessed via recall data generated in 2001 in structured interviews with 60 Makushi Amerindian women in Guyana's North Rupununi region. The data were analyzed with t-tests, Fisher's exact test, and logistic regression. The results do not support our hypothesis; the term of EBF is not found to be related to infant or child mortality. This is surprising given the potential for contamination in nonbreast-milk foods in this environment. Notably, this is occurring among mothers who are not energetically stressed. We propose that the apparent lack of benefit of EBFor=6 months is due to insufficient energy supply from breast milk alone, which may predispose the child to morbidity when subsequently stressed. This study concurs with others which revealed no significant benefits to the infant of EBF6 months, and the recognition that universal recommendations must be situated within local ecological contexts.

The prescriptions advanced by ecologists and foresters about how best to preserve and/or sustainably manage tropical forest ecosystems influence public policy to varying degrees, depending on the relative power wielded by either group in international or governmental bodies at any particular moment in time. Public policy in turn is influenced by direct lobbying and through reaction to public opinion which is shaped by the debates that are presented in specialist publications like this one, the media, and in boardrooms, classrooms and conferences. Both disciplines are dominated by Northern scientists who arguably bring their own experiential biases to bear on the debates. The Commentary on Sustainable Forest Management and Conservation Incentive Agreements by Niesten and Rice is a restatement of their positions, as set out in the articles cited in their References. The Commentary first sets out the case against SFM, then moves to a promotion of conservation incentive agreements (CIA), and finally examines the case for combining the two, i.e. logging a stand of all its commercially valuable timber species and then closing it off under a conservation incentive agreement. The stated premise in the piece is the urgent need to cordon off ever larger amounts of ‘undisturbed natural habitat’ for biodiversity conservation against the continuing trend of deforestation due to logging and land clearing. The rallying cry of all these pieces is indeed to protect against disturbance of what are portrayed as the remaining ‘old growth’ tropical frontier forests. I shall comment briefly on four issues considered in this piece by Niesten and Rice: the unstated espousal of an equilibrium state for tropical forests; the critique of Sustainable Forest Management (SFM); the ‘log-andprotect’ prescription; and conservation incentive agreements. Finally I shall summarise an alternative approach to managing tropical forests sustainably, the goal desired by a planetary majority, including ecologists and foresters. My own bias is shaped by Guyanese citizenship and anthropological training. My approach, then, is that of a non-specialist, being neither ecologist nor forester. The Western science of ecology is a comparatively new field, but one whose pronouncements on the big questions of our time, from assigning responsibility among nations for global warming and climate change to species extinction rates are generally accorded great weight by public and policy makers alike. However, a number of the pronouncements of its adherents have been questioned from both inside (Botkin 1990, Wu and Loucks 1995) and outside (Blaikie 1985, Cronon 1996, Forsyth 2003) of the discipline. The underlying premise of this piece by Niesten and Rice is the undesirability of ‘disturbance’ of tropical forest ecosystems, echoing ‘the cult of wilderness’ approach of Northern ‘deep’ or Green ecologists. The goal of ‘undisturbed natural habitat,’ is introduced in paragraph 3, and recurs throughout the Commentary. The authors maintain that ‘relative to an unlogged forest, even the most careful timber harvest implies a significant disturbance that can result in a variety of negative impacts on biodiversity’. However, many ecologists and other scientists now question the equilibrium thesis, as new scientific evidence emerges of planetary disturbances and more studies published of anthropogenic forests and landscapes. Some years ago, the geographers Karl Zimmerer and

Amazonian Indians are in the midst of a rapid cultural transition. The developments affecting Amazonian Indians present an opportunity to address important public health problems through public and private initiatives, but to do so it is imperative to begin with information on the health status of these peoples and the underlying factors affecting it. However, relatively few such data are available for this vast region.This study describes the nutritional status of Makushi Amerindians of Guyana and considers several variables which might help to explain it.Data for 792 Makushi, 0-20 years of age from 11 villages are considered. Outcome variables considered are anthropometric markers of growth and nutritional status; specifically height-for-age, weight-for-height and body-mass index. Predictor variables explored are age, sex, relative isolation, number of siblings, season of birth, diet and morbidity. Fisher's exact test, chi-square, Pearson's correlation and multiple regression were used to assess possible relationships between these variables.Relative to other Amazonian Indians, the Makushi have a lower rate of linear-growth faltering and a higher rate of linear-growth faltering relative to non-Amerindian Guyanese. Males, older cohorts, those living in isolated villages or born in the wet season showed higher rates of growth faltering.Makushi nutritional status may be explained by sex, age, relative isolation, family size, season of birth, dietary intake and infectious disease.

This briefing paper is organised with the following sections: 1. FDI arrangements for investment, milling, training, proportion of foreign staff 2. Unregistered and unapproved changes in ownership structure of the Asian companies/trading of logging concessions 3. Illegal renting and managerial control by Asian of locally-owned concessions 4. Illegal logging contracts 5. Non-observance of safety procedures, inequitable employment practices 6. Absence of required forest management and operational plans 7. Mis-use of timber tags, tree felling out of coupe and out of concession 8. Falsification of production data 9. Improper declaration of log exports 10. Does Guyana discriminate against Asian-owned enterprises? 11. Why is Guyana significant in the context of North American efforts to encourage Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade? 12. Why is Guyana significant in the context of China’s efforts to encourage Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade?

The consequences are examined of the revision of Guyana's Mining Act in 1989 that was intended to allow access to international mining companies while safeguarding national interests. One outcome was the acquisition of over 75% of small-scale and over 40% of medium-scale concessions by a small number of nationals. Landlordism expanded following the spike in the international gold price from 2006. The State’s failure to modify the poorly construed mining law, and to enforce the Regulations, enables the continued capture of the excess rent from gold sales by rentiers without commensurate responsibility for them to remedy the environmental degradation. Evidence of financial losses to the State from the renting of concessions and the smuggling of gold is presented. The legal protections of Indigenous Peoples are not enforced. The legal protections of mining workers are inadequate. We recommend: making the mining licence holder legally responsible for ensuring compliance with all Regulations on every concession; the implementation of Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) to safeguard Indigenous rights in both titled and customary territories; the capture of excess rent from gold sales for a sovereign wealth fund; and full transparency so as to end insider trading in concessions.

Since its inception in 1993, the Forest Stewardship Council certification scheme to assess the quality of responsible forest stewardship has aimed to certify both industrial-scale and smallholder forests. This article considers variations in FSC smallholder certification: single or group; Small and Low Intensity Managed Forests (SLIMF); and both company- and community-managed community forests in Global North and South countries. The classification of smallholders, as “subsistence surplus” or “sell-to-survive,” as proposed by the political ecologist Jason Moore, is also applied. Global North smallholders account for two-thirds of smallholder certified area and, in general, are able to meet the costs of FSC certification because of the demand for certified timber, their better socio-economic circumstances, a greater degree of group organization, and, in some cases, access to state subsidies. They are also more likely to be price-makers. Global South forests both house more of the planet’s remaining biodiversity and are more vulnerable to degradation. Economic and social realities dictate that global South smallholders are largely constrained by having to sell their timber to survive and fall in the price-takers category. In the absence of subsidies, price premiums, or a secure value chain, they are unable to afford renewal of FSC certification. The article concludes with an assessment of some realistic options for smallholder forestry certification., Depuis sa création en 1993, le système de certification du Forest Stewardship Council visant à évaluer la qualité de la gestion responsable des forêts a pour but de certifier les forêts à l’échelle industrielle et les forêts des petits exploitants. Cet article examine les différents modèles de certification FSC des petits exploitants : la certification individuelle ou de groupe ; la certification SLIMF pour les petites forêts ou les forêts gérées à faible intensité ; et la certification des forêts communautaires gérées à la fois par des entreprises et des communautés dans les pays du Nord et du Sud. La classification des petits exploitants, comme « surplus de subsistance » ou « vendre pour survivre », telle que proposée par l’écologiste politique Jason Moore, est également appliquée. Les petits exploitants du Nord représentent les deux tiers de la superficie certifiée des petits exploitants et, en général, sont en mesure de faire face aux coûts de la certification FSC en raison de la demande de bois certifié, de leur meilleure situation socio-économique, d’un plus grand degré d’organisation du groupe et, dans certains cas, de l’accès aux subventions de l’État. Ils sont également plus susceptibles d’être des fixeurs de prix. Les forêts du Sud abritent une plus grande partie de la biodiversité restante de la planète et sont plus vulnérables à la dégradation. Les réalités économiques et sociales font que les petits exploitants des pays du Sud sont largement limités par le fait qu’ils doivent vendre leur bois pour survivre et se retrouvent donc dans la catégorie des preneurs de prix. En l’absence de subventions, de primes de prix ou d’une chaîne de valeur sûre, ils n’ont pas les moyens de renouveler leur certification FSC. L’article se termine par une évaluation de quelques options réalistes pour la certification des petits exploitants forestiers.