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With environmental change and conservation in West Africa's tropical rainforests becoming topics of increasing political and academic interest, this book brings a fresh set of perspectives to the debate - those of the forest dwellers themselves. Based on her detailed field research in the Mende communities around Gola North Forest reserve, and surveying the recent debates and literature concerning forest conservations and current analytical approaches to gender and the environment, Melissa Leach examines the importance of rainforest resources to the local economy and social relations and shows that neither an understanding of forest use and change, nor adequate conservation policies can be achieved without a concern for gender.

On 25 September, 2015, world leaders met at the United Nations in New York, where they adopted the Sustainable Development Goals. These 17 goals and 169 targets set out an agenda for sustainable development for all nations that embraces economic growth, social inclusion, and environmental protection. Now, the agenda moves from agreeing the goals to implementing and ultimately achieving them. Across the goals, 42 targets focus on means of implementation, and the final goal, Goal 17, is entirely devoted to means of implementation. However, these implementation targets are largely silent about interlinkages and interdependencies among goals. This leaves open the possibility of perverse outcomes and unrealised synergies. We demonstrate that there must be greater attention on interlinkages in three areas: across sectors (e.g., finance, agriculture, energy, and transport), across societal actors (local authorities, government agencies, private sector, and civil society), and between and among low, medium and high income countries . Drawing on a global sustainability science and practice perspective, we provide seven recommendations to improve these interlinkages at both global and national levels, in relation to the UN’s categories of means of implementation: finance, technology, capacity building, trade, policy coherence, partnerships, and, finally, data, monitoring and accountability.

Linking environmental sustainability with poverty reduction and social justice, and making science and technology work for the poor, have become central practical, political and moral challenges of our times. These must be met in a world of rapid, interconnected change in environments, societies and economies, and globalised, fragmented governance arrangements. Yet despite growing international attention and investment, policy attempts often fail. Why is this, and what can be done about it? How might we understand and address emergent threats from epidemic disease, or the challenges of water scarcity in dryland India? In the context of climate change, how might seed systems help African farmers meet their needs, and how might appropriate energy strategies be developed? This book lays out a new 'pathways approach' to address sustainability challenges such as these in today's dynamic world. Through an appreciation of dynamics, complexity, uncertainty, differing narratives and the values-based aims of sustainability, the pathways approach allows us to see how some approaches are dominant, even though they do not produce the desired results, and how to create successful alternative 'pathways' of responding to the challenges we face. As well as offering new ways of thinking about sustainability, the book also suggests a series of practical ways forward - in tools and methods, forms of political engagement, and styles of knowledge-making and communication. Throughout the book, the practicalities of the pathways approach are illustrated using four case studies: water in dryland India, agricultural seeds in Africa, responses to epidemic disease and energy systems/climate change. Published in association with the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)

Communication and social mobilisation strategies to raise awareness about Ebola virus disease and the risk factors for its transmission are central elements in the response to the current Ebola outbreak in west Africa. A principle underpinning these efforts is to change risky \"behaviour\" related to \"traditional\" practices and \"misinformation\".

It is no longer possible nor desirable to address the dual challenges of equity and sustainability separately. Instead, they require new thinking and approaches which recognize their interlinkages, as well as the multiple perspectives and dimensions involved. We illustrate how equity and sustainability are intertwined, and how a complex social–ecological systems lens brings together advances from across the social and natural sciences to show how (in)equity and (un)sustainability are produced by the interactions and dynamics of coupled social–ecological systems. This should help understand which possible pathways could lead to sustainable and fair futures. There is remarkably little work on the interlinkages between sustainability and equity. This paper proposes an interdisciplinary conceptual framework addressing these twin challenges in the context of the Anthropocene. It shows that both equity and sustainability need to be understood as multi-dimensional and from diverse perspectives, with acceptable standards in all defining a desirable and acceptable life support zone. It proposes a shift in focus from individual elements and interactions, to system level dynamics and behaviour, advancing a social–ecological systems perspective through which both equity and sustainability are understood as intertwined drivers and outcomes of coupled systems dynamics. Over time, such dynamics become part of pathways which may move outside, or potentially be steered within, a desirable zone of ‘equitable sustainability’. Ten sets of ‘interaction dynamics’, involving different dimensions of equity and sustainability, are illustrated, along with a provisional categorization of their interrelationships and potential intervention points. The paper discusses their roles in transformational pathways towards equitable sustainability, highlighting the importance of cross-scale change shaped by politics and power. Further conceptual, empirical and transdisciplinary effort is now needed to enrich this framework and address a range of implied research and practice questions critical to shaping fair and sustainable futures.

The urgency of charting pathways to sustainability that keep human societies within a \"safe operating space\" has now been clarified. Crises in climate, food, biodiversity, and energy are already playing out across local and global scales and are set to increase as we approach critical thresholds. Drawing together recent work from the Stockholm Resilience Centre, the Tellus Institute, and the STEPS Centre, this commentary article argues that ambitious Sustainable Development Goals are now required along with major transformation, not only in policies and technologies, but in modes of innovation themselves, to meet them. As examples of dryland agriculture in East Africa and rural energy in Latin America illustrate, such \"transformative innovation\" needs to give far greater recognition and power to grassroots innovation actors and processes, involving them within an inclusive, multi-scale innovation politics. The three dimensions of direction, diversity, and distribution along with new forms of \"sustainability brokering\" can help guide the kinds of analysis and decision making now needed to safeguard our planet for current and future generations.

Key assumptions in analysis of phylogenetics and of the ecology and drivers of Ebola virus (EBOV) spillover from wildlife hosts such as bats need to be reassessed. Local accounts Epidemiologists identified the index case of the West African epidemic to be an infant in the small village of Meliandou in Guinea’s Forest Region,2 and a multidisciplinary team suggested he was infected from a Mops condylurus bat colony.3 During DM’s scoping visits in 2016, however, some villagers, including Meliandou’s community health-worker, explained that a woman named ‘Fanta’ seeking treatment from a noted village healer brought EVD to the village. Among the recent outbreaks, one in 2018 in Équateur (DRC) was related to this same 2014 outbreak, yet explanations have still been sought only in latency within animal reservoirs and subsequent spillover.17 Another outbreak in Équateur in 2020 was composed of two distinct viral variants, one of which was so similar to the 2018 outbreak that persistence in people had to be considered, but again researchers still preferred to hypothesise persistence in an animal reservoir.18 The outbreak in North Kivu in 2021 is accepted as a flare-up from the outbreak there in 2018–2020; this, in turn, was so close to an outbreak in Likati (DRC) in 2017 that latency has had to be invoked, but again is being projected to have been in an animal reservoir.19 Conclusions There are wide-ranging implications for science and policy. While some outbreaks may be new spillovers, and the circulation of multiple EBOV variants in diverse animal reservoirs with potential to spillover as claimed by researchers in 200420 suggests this, it is increasingly clear that other outbreaks are from latency.

The emergence of zoonotic infections that can develop into pathogens of pandemic potential is a major concern for public health. The risks of emergence and transmission relate to multiple factors that range from land use to human–non-human animal contacts. Livestock agriculture plays a potentially significant role in those risks, shaping landscapes and providing hosts that can act as the source or amplifiers of emergent pathogens. The relative risks will be contingent upon the nature of those systems, with comparisons often made between intensive, indoor, biosecure systems and more extensive, outdoor, insecure systems. Microbiological, ecological and veterinary sciences provide useful entry points in specifying and modelling some of the relative risks. Yet, they often do so with little regard for social science inputs and by making assumptions about social and economic conditions. In this article, we respond to recent analyses of relative risks by raising the importance of social and economic drivers of risk. We chart social science insights and research that materially alter the zoonotic risks associated with livestock production. Our purpose is to emphasize the requirement for full appreciation of the social, economic and political components of zoonotic and pandemic risk.

Many serious emerging zoonotic infections have recently arisen from bats, including Ebola, Marburg, SARS-coronavirus, Hendra, Nipah, and a number of rabies and rabies-related viruses, consistent with the overall observation that wildlife are an important source of emerging zoonoses for the human population. Mechanisms underlying the recognized association between ecosystem health and human health remain poorly understood and responding appropriately to the ecological, social and economic conditions that facilitate disease emergence and transmission represents a substantial societal challenge. In the context of disease emergence from wildlife, wildlife and habitat should be conserved, which in turn will preserve vital ecosystem structure and function, which has broader implications for human wellbeing and environmental sustainability, while simultaneously minimizing the spillover of pathogens from wild animals into human beings. In this review, we propose a novel framework for the holistic and interdisciplinary investigation of zoonotic disease emergence and its drivers, using the spillover of bat pathogens as a case study. This study has been developed to gain a detailed interdisciplinary understanding, and it combines cutting-edge perspectives from both natural and social sciences, linked to policy impacts on public health, land use and conservation.