Resilience pathways through community- based forest management for navigating the triple planetary crisis

Community-based Forest management (CBFM) has emerged as a promising approach for reconciling biodiversity conservation with rural livelihoods. However, despite its growing implementation in Ethiopia, limited empirical evidence exists on how CBFM influences biodiversity outcomes and socioeconomic conditions across different local contexts. This study addressed this gap by examining the biodiversity outcomes and socioeconomic implications of CBFM across three districts in Northwest Ethiopia—Dangila, Fagita–Lokoma, and Banja—where forests are communally managed. A structured questionnaire was administered to 412 randomly selected farmers, and responses were analyzed quantitatively using Likert scale ratings, descriptive statistics, and chi-square tests in SPSS Version 23. The findings revealed statistically significant variations among districts in terms of community engagement in conservation, awareness of environmental policies, and involvement in habitat restoration efforts. Fagita–Lokoma showed the highest levels of participation and knowledge regarding conservation laws (χ2 = 11.81, p < 0.019; χ2 = 13.3, p = 0.01) as well as active involvement in habitat restoration (χ2 = 301, p = 0.000). These differences appear to be associated with stronger local governance structures and greater livelihood dependence on forest resources in Fagita–Lokoma than in the other districts. It consistently demonstrated the highest levels of participation and knowledge, whereas Banja had the lowest levels. Most respondents (76.7%) indicated that socioeconomic interests, particularly related to timber, wildlife, and tourism, were key drivers of their conservation activities. While the economic benefits of biodiversity were generally perceived as moderate, the cost of conservation was seen as low to medium by 65% of participants. These results highlight the critical role of community participation and local awareness in shaping the outcomes of biodiversity conservation. This study concluded that CBFM can achieve positive biodiversity results when local livelihood interests are effectively aligned with ecological goals through inclusive and well-supported governance frameworks.

This study aims to identify the level of resilience and its correlation with support for community forest management in KTH Putra Manglayang in Cilengkrang Village, which implements the community-based forest management. A total of 31 respondents were interviewed using a Likert scale questionnaire and in-depth interviews with key figures, and then analyzed descriptively and with the Spearman rank correlation test. The results show that social resilience (3.94) and governance (3.62) are classified as good, while economic resilience (3.12; SD 1.99) and ecological resilience (2.86) are quite good. Social resilience is significantly positively related to support for forest management (r = 0.458; p < 0.05), while economic resilience is significantly negatively related (r = -0.407; p < 0.1). Governance has a non-significant negative correlation (r = -0.352) and a weakly positive ecological correlation (r = 0.147). These results show that resilience-building strategies focus on increasing economic capacity through livelihood diversification that preserves community values, improving infrastructure and support facilities, and maintaining social and ecological strength through member cooperation, social cohesion, and forest resource conservation.

Enhancing climate resilience is imperative for cities to mitigate the effects of global warming and the rising frequency of extreme weather events. This paper develops an evaluation index system for urban climate resilience in Hebei Province, based on data from 11 cities within the province. It evaluates the levels of climate resilience and identifies their limiting factors using the entropy weight method, an urban climate resilience assessment model, and an obstacle degree model, with a focus on four dimensions: ecological resilience, economic resilience, social resilience, and infrastructure resilience. The results indicate that (1) spatial variations in climate resilience across cities in Hebei Province are minimal, with the majority of cities exhibiting climate resilience levels within the moderate resilience category. (2) The majority of regions display low ecological and infrastructure resilience (0.1–0.3), while economic resilience is distributed across three tiers, with regional variations; social resilience remains moderately resilient (above 0.3). (3) Among the social resilience factors, C3 and C8 exhibit the highest obstruction levels, emerging as key barriers. (4) In order to effectively respond to climate change risks and challenges in a scientific manner, differentiated implementation of climate response strategies, the core of which lies in identifying the dominant vulnerability dimensions of different cities and accurately applying policies, such as Shijiazhuang, Baoding, Xingtai, Handan, and other cities with fragile ecological resilience, should comprehensively deepen the construction of sponge cities to alleviate urban flooding and the heat island effect.

There is an increasing interest in community-based forest management as a potential approach for improving forest governance. India is among the few countries in the world where such an approach-called Joint Forest Management (JFM)-has not only been successfully introduced but also achieved large-scale implementation, covering 18% of all state forests. Forests cover 23% of India's geographical area and almost all are under state ownership. However, over half the forests are in a degraded condition. Forests also provide livelihood support to a large proportion of the population, especially the poor. Around 147 million people live in and around forests. But until the 1980s, the focus was on commercial forestry and people were excluded from forest management. This led to forest degradation on the one hand, and conflicts between the Forest Department and local communities on the other. A new policy in 1988 stressed forest management for ecosystem services and meeting local communities’ needs. Under this policy, Joint Forest Management promoted agreements between the Forest Department and village communities to jointly protect and manage adjacent forest land and to share responsibilities and benefits. JFM has had several positive impacts on forest governance in the form of improved forest condition, increased income and livelihood opportunities for participating communities and, most importantly, a dramatic change in the attitude of communities and the Forest Department towards each other and toward forests. Although challenges still remain, if implemented in its true spirit, JFM can be a viable long-term strategy for contributing towards the goals of sustainable livelihoods and forest management.

ABSTRACTThis study empirically investigates the causal relationship between resource industry dependence and urban resilience from three perspectives: ecological, economic, and social, contributing to the resource curse theory and the sustainable development of resource‐dependent cities. We use the entropy method to establish an urban resilience index system to measure the resilience of 269 Chinese cities from 2000 to 2019, and construct a two‐way fixed‐effects model to test the impact of resource industry dependence on urban resilience. The results show that resource industry dependence impairs urban resilience, and this finding remains robust to the estimation using an instrumental variable approach. Moreover, mechanism tests show that resource industry dependence undermines urban resilience by inhibiting industrial structural upgrading and hindering green technological innovation. We further categorize urban resilience into ecological resilience, economic resilience, and social resilience, and find that resource industry dependence has a more significant negative impact on urban ecological resilience and social resilience than on economic resilience. Our investigations suggest that cities should develop strategies based on their unique endowments to reduce resource dependence, improve urban resilience by strengthening industrial systems and promoting innovation, and achieve sustainable economic development.

"Los huertos urbanos a través de la historia y de numerosas experiencias recientes han sido utilizados para aminorar el impacto de crisis económicas, naturales e incluso sociales, en las ciudades, especialmente aquellas ubicadas en países en desarrollo.El presente artículo analiza diversos ejemplos de huertos urbanos implementados como estrategia para incrementar la resiliencia en ciudades de África, Asia y América Latina, cada una con diferentes contextos económicos, sociales y climáticos con el objetivo de identificar prácticas que puedan ser replicables en contextos similares.Desde la resiliencia económica (subsistir a momentos de crisis o guerras), social (integración de sectores vulnerables de la población) y ambiental (enfrentar fenómenos naturales), los huertos urbanos han demostrado ser una estrategia viable para resolver estos aspectos. Al implantarse en zonas no edificables por riesgo de inundación, como en las orillas de los ríos, funcionan como barrera natural y zona de absorción de agua. En algunas ciudades los cultivos pueden representar ahorros familiares importantes y mejorar la calidad alimentaria. Además, su utilización como estrategia de generación de empleo y disminución de inseguridad ejemplifica que los huertos urbanos son una estrategia eficaz y económica que contribuye a la resiliencia urbana en aspectos económicos, sociales y ambientales de las ciudades actuales."

Social resilience and ecological resilience are related and distinguished, and the potential of social resilience to enhance resilience of encompassing social-ecological systems is discussed. The value of resilience thinking is recognized, yet social resilience needs to be better understood in its distinctive qualities, while resisting identification of social resilience with one particular form of governance or organization. Emerging self-organizing citizen’s initiatives in The Netherlands, initiatives involving re-relating to nature in the living environment, are analyzed, using a systems theoretical framework which resists reduction of nature to culture or vice versa. It is argued that space for self-organization needs to be cultivated, that local self-organization and mobilization around themes of nature in daily life and space have the potential to re-link social and ecological systems in a more resilient manner, yet that maintaining the diversity of forms of knowing and organizing in the overall governance system is essential to the maintenance of social resilience and of diverse capacities to know human-environment relations and to reorganize them in an adaptive manner. Conclusions are drawn in the light of the new Biodiversity Strategy.

Forest fires pose a significant threat to ecosystems, biodiversity, climate stability, and human livelihoods, particularly in fire-prone regions like India. This review study investigates the causes, socioeconomic and environmental effects, and current management techniques of forest fires in order to better understand their complicated dynamics. The frequency and intensity of fires are rising due to both natural and man-made factors, such as shifting farming, climate change, and uncontrolled resource extraction. In addition to lowering biodiversity, degrading soil quality, and upsetting forest-based economies, forest fires also emit significant amounts of greenhouse gases, which exacerbate global warming. The study emphasizes how forest fires affect tourism, endanger non-timber forest products (NTFPs), and worsen socioeconomic vulnerabilities, particularly in tribal groups. It also looks at how community-based forest management, remote sensing, and satellite data are being used more and more for early detection and reaction. This review, which draws from recent research and policy developments, highlights the necessity of integrated fire management strategies that combine community involvement, policy enforcement, and technology innovation in order to reduce the danger of forest fires and promote ecological resilience in India.

This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Natural Hazard Science. Please check back later for the full article. About four decades ago, the discourse on disasters was largely about natural hazards and their characteristics. The failure of this approach to substantially explain disaster impacts led to a change in paradigm. This new paradigm places its emphasis on the influence of vulnerability or resilience on the resulting impacts of disaster—be they direct or indirect. Disasters triggered by natural hazards have since been perceived as unnatural occurrences brought about by a confluence of societal factors. Economic vulnerability and economic resilience, interacting with the hazard itself and the exposure of populations and economic systems, are considered critical determinants of the resulting disaster impacts. The theoretical conceptualization and empirical measures of vulnerability and resilience remain, however, as subjects of contentions. Some argue that vulnerability and resilience are different expressions that refer to one and the same thing; the former is viewed from a negative standpoint; and the latter, from a positive standpoint. This implies that what measures one, measures the other. Other arguments consider resilience as one of the subcomponents of vulnerability, with the other subcomponents being one or some of the following: sensitivity, susceptibility, fragility, adaptive capacity, and coping capacity. However, what these subcomponents mean and cover are not clear-cut, thereby adding to the complexity of developing appropriate measurement tools. An apparently dominant view is that, while vulnerability and resilience have similar underlying factors, they refer to different things. For instance, economic vulnerability and economic resilience are both shaped by the level of development, quality of development governance, and characteristics of development (widespread inequality, rapid and unplanned urbanization, etc.), yet vulnerability is considered a pre-disaster concern; resilience, a post-disaster concern. Here, vulnerability is taken as that component of disaster risk that explains the varying impacts on elements (people, assets, systems) that have the same level of exposure to a given hazard. Resilience is what enables the exposed elements to withstand, cope, and recover from disaster impacts. Thus, in terms of disaster risk reduction priorities, vulnerability is typically linked to prevention, preparedness, and mitigation; resilience, to rehabilitation, reconstruction, and recovery. To date, the intensified application of economic theory resulted in important advances in concretizing the concepts of economic vulnerability and resilience, as well as in measuring them. Nonetheless, alongside these advances some refinements are needed, including the following: address the overlaps with other dimensions, for instance, to social vulnerability and resilience; apply a systematic method for identifying a plausible set of indicators to capture and measure the distinct economic vulnerability and resilience of each element in different contexts and circumstances; and translate the measures into tools for systematically identifying and prioritizing a set of policies and actions to reduce vulnerability and strengthen resilience. Overall, the ultimate aim is for a sound and widely accepted set of concepts and measures that can be easily adjusted for practical application in different contexts (e.g., developed and developing countries), levels of assessment and governance (e.g., macro and micro; community, city, province, and country), hazard types (e.g., meteorological and geologic), and elements at risk.

Shrimp aquaculture and fishery, the two important economic sectors in Vietnam, have been promoted by the government to reduce poverty, provide job opportunities, and to increase exports to support economic development. However, this expansion of fishery and aquaculture has also had negative effects. Hundreds of thousands of hectares of mangrove forest have been replaced by shrimp ponds and, as a result, have brought ecological risks like water pollution, causing shrimp disease outbreaks. These consequences have negatively affected the sustainability of the livelihoods of millions of coastal people who are dependent on shrimp aquaculture, mangrove forests and fishing. As a part of the RESCOPAR program of “Rebuilding resilience in coastal populations and aquatic resources” of Wageningen University (INREF), this study was conducted across four shrimp farming systems and one fishery system in two provinces of the Mekong Delta of Vietnam with a focus the different livelihoods.. The study investigates the pathways and decision-making of shrimp farmers and fishers to cope with risks and uncertainties to sustain livelihoods and enhance socio-ecological resilience. Results show that farmers in these systems exhibit remarkable social and economic resilience at household level under declining ecological conditions, particularly mangrove decline, shrimp diseases, market price fluctuations, and misguided government policies and programs. They cope with these vulnerabilities through a wide range of livelihood pathways and strategies including intensification, diversification, migration, specification, and collaboration. The pathways they decide upon at one stage do not only influence the livelihood activities in a particular environment, but they also nurture the process of learning to adapt to the changes, to self-organize and manage their lives for long-term resilience building. This study used four indicators as proxies of social resilience: economic stability, resource protection, knowledge building and the creation of relationships.. Between the two improved extensive shrimp farming systems, the extensive mangrove-shrimp system showed more social resilience and was less risky. Moreover, the system was more resilient ecologically, as it did not put environmental pressure on the mangrove forest It needed to conserve part of the mangrove forest that would serve as a nursery ground for marine shrimp and fish species. Between the two intensive farming systems, the intensive farming system where farmers chose to cluster their ponds appeared to have greater social resilience. Farmers in this system were better off, experienced a higher net return/cost ratio, and fewer farms failed due to shrimp diseases. They could also apply to advanced bio-farming technology for shrimp farming. They would build relationships with external agencies for support and they were more active, flexible, and professional in their adaptation. They were able to direct and shape the changes in order to acquire a stronger legal and equity position, thus increasing their social resilience. Small-scale fishery was less socially and ecologically resilient, so fishers diversified their gear and boats to fish more intensively to secure livelihoods and reduce vulnerability. However, this caused near- shore resource decline and ecological disturbance, and violated fishery regulations. The Vietnamese Government has established a political and institutional system to support aquaculture and fishery. However, the implementation of the current policies and institutions in the field of aquaculture and fisheries is still weak and inadequate. The institutional interventions, firstly, need to focus on balancing between household economic improvement and natural resources conservation. It is not enough to emphasize only the government’s capacities of control and enforcement to make farmers and fishers comply with the regulations for the conservation of the resources without also emphasizing the need to promote socio- economic improvement at household level. The solution could be to enhance non-farm or non- fishing livelihood diversification, improve pond farming and fishing technologies and to promote farmers collaboration and shrimp certification. Finally, the most important is to devolve the responsibilities and rights for the management of the mangrove forests and the coastal inshore resources to local individual farmers and communities.

The aim of this research is to examine and describe the strategy of the Jimbar Village Government and the obstacles faced as well as solutions to achieving independent village status.The method used in this research uses a qualitative method with a descriptive approach. The research location is on Jl. Pracimantoro-Jimbar KM.7 Jimbar Village, Pracimantoro District, Wonogiri Regency. Data collection techniques used in this research were interviews and documentation. The focus of this research is to describe strategies, obstacles and solutions for achieving independent village status in Jimbar Village. In testing the validity of the data used, source triangulation and technical triangulation were used. Meanwhile, the data analysis technique uses the qualitative analysis technique through the stages of data collection, data reduction, data presentation and drawing conclusions.The results of the research show that the strategy carried out by the Jimbar Village Government to achieve independent village status is carried out through strategies including: first, the preparation of six-year medium-term goals for the Village RPJM and realizing them through the Village RKP each year through the Village APBDes; second, implementing the Village RPJM strategy through IDM achievement dimensions such as social resilience with access to education, health, housing and good social capital. Economic resilience through innovative ideas for developing community welfare through the one home one business program as well as ecological resilience through environmental quality and disaster response mitigation. The obstacles experienced in achieving independent village status are internal obstacles, namely the low quality of human resources and budget limitations, while external obstacles include low community participation and seasonal conditions. So the solution is carried out through intense communication between the village government and the community as well as schedule adjustments. Based on this research, researchers suggest that the achievements of independent villages in Jimbar Village can become a role model for local government policy to improve independent villages, improve the quality of human resources through various training programs and can become a reference for continuing research with deeper and different studies.

As a complex social ecosystem, cities continue to suffer from various impacts and disturbances from the outside and themselves. In this context, the research on resilient cities becomes more and more necessary. This study takes Ulaanbaatar City as the research object, uses the TOPSIS-entropy weight method to measure and analyze the resilience level of Ulaanbaatar City from 2017 to 2021, and puts forward strategies to improve urban resilience according to the measurement results. The results show that: (1) the index ranges of economic resilience, social resilience, ecological resilience, infrastructure resilience and urban resilience of Ulaanbaatar are 0.097-0.901, 0.237-0.893, 0.465-0.622, 0.368-0.631 and 0.036-0.789, respectively. (2) The economic resilience index increased most significantly among the four resilience dimensions, with an increase of 828.86%. The social resilience index showed a trend of first increase and then decrease, but the overall increase was 0.387. The ecological resilience showed a wave-like downward trend, while the infrastructure resilience index showed a steady upward trend compared with the development fluctuations of other dimensions. (3) Under the joint action of the four dimensions, the urban resilience index showed a trend of first increasing and then decrease, with an increase of 0.644 compared with 2017. This study is of practical significance for clarifying the current situation of urban resilience development in Ulaanbaatar and improving the level of urban resilience in Ulaanbaatar.

The role of women in community resilience to climate change: A case study of an Indigenous Fijian community

BackgroundIn addition to their educational role, resilient schools have a good capacity in response to disasters. Due to the large student population, the schools can be a safe and secure environment during disasters, in addition to maintaining their performance after. Given the role and importance of the schools, the impact of culture and environment on resilience, without any indigenous and comprehensive tool for measuring the resilience in Iran, the study aimed to design and psychometrically evaluate the measurement tools.MethodThis study was conducted using a mixed-method sequential explanatory approach. The research was conducted in two main phases of production on items based on hybrid model and the psychometric evaluation of the tool. The second phase included validity (formal, content and construction) and reliability (multiplex internal similarity, consistency and reliability).ResultThe integration of systematic and qualitative steps resulted in entering 91 items into the pool of items. After formal and content validity, 73 items remained and 44 were omitted in exploratory factor analysis. A questionnaire with 5 factors explained 52.08% of total variance. Finally, after the confirmatory factor analysis, the questionnaire was extracted with 29 questions and 5 factors including "functional", "architectural", "equipment", "education" and "safety". Internal similarity and stability in all factors were evaluated as good.ConclusionThe result showed that the 29-item questionnaire of school resilience in emergencies and disasters is valid and reliable, that can be used to evaluate school resilience. On the other hand, the questionnaire on assessment of school resilience in disasters enables intervention to improve its capacity.

Baseline framework for assessing community resilience using a balanced index approach and spatial autocorrelation in the Mill river watershed, Nassau County, New York