Conditional incentives are a promising complementary approach to conserve tropical forests, for example, in multiple-use protected areas. In this paper we analyze the environmental impacts of Bolsa Floresta, a forest conservation program that combines direct conditional payments with...

Pervasive tenure insecurity in developing countries is a key challenge for REDD+. Brazil, a leader in REDD+, has advanced efforts to link forest tenure reform and environmental compliance. We describe how these policies have shaped sub-national interventions with detailed data on land tenure and...

Rural specialization strategies can be examined within the forest transition framework. We compared smallholder livelihood strategies between neighboring southwestern Amazonian sites at different stages along the forest transition curve. Surveys of 243 households in Pando, Bolivia and Acre,...

In the forest–livelihoods literature, forests are widely perceived to provide both common safety nets to shocks and resources for seasonal gap-filling. We use a large global-comparative dataset to test these responses. We find households rank forest-extraction responses to shocks lower than...

This paper presents results from a comparative analysis of environmental income from approximately 8000 households in 24 developing countries collected by research partners in CIFOR’s Poverty Environment Network (PEN). Environmental income accounts for 28% of total household income, 77% of...

For applications in agricultural and environmental economics, complex ecological systems are often oversimplified to the extent that ecologists rarely consider model results valid. Recursive optimization of complex systems represents an alternative, but requires strong assumptions regarding time...

Modern bioenergy is a core ingredient of sustainable economic development as it plays an important role in poverty reduction and green growth. This makes bioenergy innovations critical, especially in developing countries where many households and rural communities rely on traditional bioenergy....

Ethiopia's energy sector faces critical challenges to meeting steadily increasing demand given limited infrastructure, heavy reliance on hydroelectric power, and underdevelopment of alternative energy resources. The main aim of this paper is to investigate an optimal least cost investment...

Savannas cover the greater part of Africa and Australia and almost half of South America and contribute to the livelihoods of more than 350 million people. With the intensification of land use during the second half of the 20th century, savannas have become increasingly degraded through bush...