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Indonesia hosts one of the world’s largest tropical peatlands, yet half of them have been drained and cleared, making them prone to recurring fires. To prevent fires, it is essential to protect intact peatlands and restore degraded ones. Such efforts must reconcile competing land uses and interests to achieve multifunctional peatlands that combine protection, restoration, and suitable agricultural practices. In this article we focus on Ketapang Regency in West Kalimantan, where extensive peatlands were drained and then cultivated with oil palm or left degraded. In response to recurring fires, the Regency government, through a multistakeholder approach, developed an innovative planning instrument that was formalized as a Regency policy to reduce fires while maintaining the multiple functions of peatlands. We address two research questions: (1) What are the potentials and constraints of achieving a multifunctional peatland landscape in Ketapang, West Kalimantan? (2) What roles have the multistakeholder forums played in enabling reconciliation toward multifunctional outcomes? We employed key informant interviews and stakeholder discussions to validate and elaborate our findings. We found that while stakeholders recognized the importance of the regency-level policy instrument for preventing peatland fires and promoting multifunctionality, its implementation remained constrained. The findings suggest that applying zero-burning agriculture is unrealistic; efforts to protect critical peat areas are hindered by incoherent policies across government levels and conflicting land classification; and there is a lack of incentives to change agricultural practices. Multistakeholder forums played crucial roles in facilitating collective learning, bridging institutional gaps, and mediating power asymmetries, and enabled the development of a local policy response. We conclude that multi-stakeholder processes are a foundation for reconciliation in contested landscapes and a catalyst for local policy innovation. However, the achievement of sustained multifunctional landscapes will also depend on strengthening economic instruments and aligning policies across governance levels.

Landscape governance refers to the combination of rules and decision-making processes of civic, private, and public actors with stakes in the landscape, that together shape the future of that landscape. As part of the Green Livelihoods Alliance, a program that supports civil society organizations (CSOs) to strengthen the governance of tropical forested landscapes, we developed and implemented a method that facilitates stakeholders to assess the status of governance in their own landscape and to identify options for improvement. In this article, we aim to reflect on landscape governance, based on our work within the Green Livelihoods Alliance. We present the method, summarize the results of its implementation, and draw practical lessons regarding the role of CSOs to improve landscape governance. We conducted workshops with stakeholders in 17 forested landscapes across 10 countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. During each workshop, participants scored and discussed a set of governance indicators, developed a common vision for landscape governance, and identified the practical steps that would need to be taken to achieve that vision. Analyzing the results from the workshops, we found that landscape stakeholders tend to perceive that: opportunities to influence decision-making are unequal; integrated landscape planning efforts remain noncommittal; and implementation and enforcement of regulations is weak. To improve governance in the future, it is common to call for the development of multi-stakeholder processes, to allow different actors to discuss, negotiate, and develop collaborative action to address landscape-level challenges. CSOs can support such processes, by helping to develop a shared understanding of landscape governance, differences in interests, and possibilities for collaborative action. CSOs can also help stakeholders to develop multi-stakeholder procedures, and build trust and capacity among stakeholders to take an active role in such processes.

Rural landscapes in many parts of Indonesia are rapidly being transformed, due to the expansion of agrocommodity plantations—oil palm in particular. At the same time, communities in those landscapes face declining crop yields and ecosystem degradation as a result of both climate and non-climate factors. We assessed local perceptions on climate stressors, adaptation and vulnerability using focus group discussions in Ketapang, West Kalimantan. We found that the main perceived climatic stressors were extreme and unpredictable seasons, fires, and saltwater intrusion, affecting ecosystem services and agricultural production. Land clearing and forest loss were mentioned as exacerbating non-climatic stressors. Respondents indicated willingness to adapt to these changes by investing in long-term measures, such as tree-planting. To adapt to yield declines, respondents indicated that many farmers shifted from rubber to oil palm. Such adaptation actions benefit households in the short term but may be at odds with long-term adaptation objectives at the landscape level. Finally, we found that perceptions about vulnerability differed between landscapes, and between communities at the landscape level and stakeholders at the district level. This stresses the importance of participatory and inclusive planning and multi-stakeholder processes towards context-based climate action planning to accommodate the differences in contexts and scale, and to reconcile the differences in perceptions.

While studying ecological patterns at large scales, ecologists are often unable to identify all collections, forcing them to either omit these unidentified records entirely, without knowing the effect of this, or pursue very costly and time-consuming efforts for identifying them. These “indets” may be of critical importance, but as yet, their impact on the reliability of ecological analyses is poorly known. We investigated the consequence of omitting the unidentified records and provide an explanation for the results. We used three large-scale independent datasets, (Guyana/ Suriname, French Guiana, Ecuador) each consisting of records having been identified to a valid species name (identified morpho-species – IMS) and a number of unidentified records (unidentified morpho-species – UMS). A subset was created for each dataset containing only the IMS, which was compared with the complete dataset containing all morpho-species (AMS: = IMS + UMS) for the following analyses: species diversity (Fisher's alpha), similarity of species composition, Mantel test and ordination (NMDS). In addition, we also simulated an even larger number of unidentified records for all three datasets and analyzed the agreement between similarities again with these simulated datasets. For all analyses, results were extremely similar when using the complete datasets or the truncated subsets. IMS predicted ≥91% of the variation in AMS in all tests/analyses. Even when simulating a larger fraction of UMS, IMS predicted the results for AMS rather well. Using only IMS also out-performed using higher taxon data (genus-level identification) for similarity analyses. Finding a high congruence for all analyses when using IMS rather than AMS suggests that patterns of similarity and composition are very robust. In other words, having a large number of unidentified species in a dataset may not affect our conclusions as much as is often thought.

Integrated landscape initiatives typically aim to strengthen landscape governance by developing and facilitating multi-stakeholder platforms. These are institutional coordination mechanisms that enable discussions, negotiations, and joint planning between stakeholders from various sectors in a given landscape. Multi-stakeholder platforms tend to involve complex processes with diverse actors, whose objectives and focus may be subjected to periodic re-evaluation, revision or reform. In this article we propose a participatory method to aid planning, monitoring, and evaluation of such platforms, and we report on experiences from piloting the method in Ghana and Indonesia. The method is comprised of three components. The first can be used to look ahead, identifying priorities for future multi-stakeholder collaboration in the landscape. It is based on the identification of four aspirations that are common across multi-stakeholder platforms in integrated landscape initiatives. The second can be used to look inward. It focuses on the processes within an existing multi-stakeholder platform in order to identify areas for possible improvement. The third can be used to look back, identifying the main outcomes of an existing platform and comparing them to the original objectives. The three components can be implemented together or separately. They can be used to inform planning and adaptive management of the platform, as well as to demonstrate performance and inform the design of new interventions.

Systems devised for managing tropical forests sustainably have yet to prove successful. In many instances, they have fallen short of initial prospects, but the reasons for these shortfalls are often not apparent. Here, we explore factors that can shape the likelihood of success, collectively referred to as background conditions, which are not always adequately considered prior to selecting a suitable management system. We examine the ability of one background condition, geologic terrane, to explain crude spatial variation in a number of trailing indicators of varying forest land use. Forest areas on Precambrian and Phanerozoic terranes show significant differences in production of fossil hydrocarbons, gold, and tropical roundwood, among other indicators, even after considering regional effects. Background conditions are considered to be factors capable of quantifying spatial variation in the likelihood of achieving management success given predefined benchmarks of sustainability. A number of avenues for further exploring and discriminating spatial variation of background conditions are discussed.

It has long been argued that seed dispersal enhances recruitment in tropical trees by allowing offspring to 'escape' strong density/distance-dependent attack by insects, pathogens and rodents. Here we examined the effects of canopy openness and parent-offspring distance upon the frequency and timing of Chlorocardium rodiei seed attack and germination within a 15-ha plot of Guyanan tropical rain forest. Seeds were artificially dispersed beneath parent trees, in the understorey away from trees and in gaps. Analysing our data from an 85-week period of regular monitoring, we found that the main spatial gradients, canopy openness and distance to nearest adult conspecific, do not lead to differences in the final number of seeds attacked by infesting scolytid beetles or rodents. The timing of beetle attack, however, varied along the distance gradient and this difference affords seeds at further distances a 'window' in which to germinate and produce a seedling before attack. Canopy openness was not a good predictor of rooting success, but distance was strongly associated with root and shoot formation success and the mean time to shoot formation. There was a strong negative effect of distance on the likelihood of a seed being colonised by scolytid beetles prior to removal by rodents and shoot failure was strongly associated with prior infestation. We believe these results bring a key point to bear on the well-established notion of distance-dependent attack on seeds in tropical rainforests, viz. that seed characteristics (size, germination syndrome) and the timing of attack may be more important in explaining patterns of early seedling recruitment than distance. Our studies suggest that advantages accrued through dispersal in species like Chlorocardium will depend heavily on the 'race' between seed germination and attack. In the case of Chlorocardium, the 'race' can be lost at considerable distances due to its prolonged dormancy and the temporal fluctuations in fruitfall and rainfall which influence attack and germination. The results presented here suggest that the lag between seed attack and germination in tropical trees can regulate the influence of parent-offspring distance on cohort recruitment at this life history stage.

Lineages tend to retain ecological characteristics of their ancestors through time. However, for some traits, selection during evolutionary history may have also played a role in determining trait values. To address the relative importance of these processes requires large-scale quantification of traits and evolutionary relationships among species. The Amazonian tree flora comprises a high diversity of angiosperm lineages and species with widely differing life-history characteristics, providing an excellent system to investigate the combined influences of evolutionary heritage and selection in determining trait variation. We used trait data related to the major axes of life-history variation among tropical trees (e.g. growth and mortality rates) from 577 inventory plots in closed-canopy forest, mapped onto a phylogenetic hypothesis spanning more than 300 genera including all major angiosperm clades to test for evolutionary constraints on traits. We found significant phylogenetic signal (PS) for all traits, consistent with evolutionarily related genera having more similar characteristics than expected by chance. Although there is also evidence for repeated evolution of pioneer and shade tolerant lifehistory strategies within independent lineages, the existence of significant PS allows clearer predictions of the links between evolutionary diversity, ecosystem function and the response of tropical forests to global change.

We analyzed the most extensive data set of tree inventory plots spread over the complete Amazon basin and Guiana shield. We aimed to separate the regional and local tree alpha-diversity to investigate the drivers of diversity at the relevant scale. Our results are consistent with the partitioning of total tree alpha-diversity into regional and local components, which are controlled by evolutionary- and ecological processes, respectively. Regional diversity is correlated with palaeo-climatic stability (31%), and long-term large-scale ecosystem dynamics (14%), as represented by the age of the geological formation. Both mechanisms contribute to high diversity in the central to western Amazon. Actual rainfall seasonality is correlated with regional tree diversity to a certain extent (19%), but we argue that this is of little consequence for the evolutionary drivers of the regional species pool. Frequency of disturbance is the main process driving local diversity, although its explanatory power is relatively small (17%)

The carbon sink capacity of tropical forests is substantially affected by tree mortality. However, the main drivers of tropical tree death remain largely unknown. Here we present a pan-Amazonian assessment of how and why trees die, analysing over 120,000 trees representing > 3800 species from 189 long-term RAINFOR forest plots. While tree mortality rates vary greatly Amazon-wide, on average trees are as likely to die standing as they are broken or uprooted—modes of death with different ecological consequences. Species-level growth rate is the single most important predictor of tree death in Amazonia, with faster-growing species being at higher risk. Within species, however, the slowest-growing trees are at greatest risk while the effect of tree size varies across the basin. In the driest Amazonian region species-level bioclimatic distributional patterns also predict the risk of death, suggesting that these forests are experiencing climatic conditions beyond their adaptative limits. These results provide not only a holistic pan-Amazonian picture of tree death but large-scale evidence for the overarching importance of the growth–survival trade-off in driving tropical tree mortality.