Policy and legal changes in Uganda have partly devolved forest management from the central to local governments and local community organisations. This paper analyses the roles, responsibilities, powers, legal instruments and incentives for local organisations that are implementing decentralised forest governance in Uganda. Semi-structured questionnaires and key informant interviews of 236 respondents revealed that local organisations promoted decentralised forestry functions such as forest monitoring, making of forest byelaws, tree planting, environmental education, collaborative and integrated planning and budgeting. Donor and central government fiscal support, awareness of forest degradation, understanding the role of forestry and the desire to conserve forests motivated local organisations to participate in decentralised forest management. Lack of a clear policy on ownership and control of private forest resources, inadequate fiscal support from national government, inequitable distribution of benefits and inadequate delegation of decision-making powers over forest management to local actors have hindered full implementation of decentralised forest management. The central government should empower local government authorities and support organisations to effectively implement decentralised forest management in Uganda.

Research on the role of local institutions in conflict management is still limited. This study highlights various inter-settlement conflicts over the issue of unclear resource boundaries in Danau Sentarum National Park, Indonesia. The park is home to two major ethnic groups (Dayak Iban and Malay) whose livelihoods are highly dependent on fish and forest resources available in the park area. We demonstrate how local institutions (adat) are used to address boundary conflicts and consider their effectiveness. The study also discusses challenges that adat face in ensuring the effectiveness of conflict management. We argue that enhancing communication and developing a mechanism of exchange among settlements engaged in conflict will promote better understanding of the problem and thus allows improvement in the current approaches in managing conflict. We propose a co-management arrangement to ensure the sustainability of the park and to constructively manage the conflict in the area.

Two management scenarios are simulated: a cork oak stand with regeneration treatments (sustainable scenario) and, a cork oak stand with no-regeneration treatment (unsustainable scenario), which leads the cork oaks to age until they eventually disappear. The aim of the paper is to compare the present value of income changes from the sustainable and unsustainable management scenarios in Cadiz (Spain) and Ain Snoussi (Tunisia), considering the multiple commercial uses and forest amenities enjoyed by private owners (only in Cadiz) of cork oak forests. The results show that the sustainable cork oak forest management in Ain Snoussi generates a higher present value of aggregated labour and capital incomes and leads to a capital loss when compared to the current cork oak depletion scenario. In addition, the sustainable scenario in Ain Snoussi would reduce the total self-employed income for households that depend on open-access grazing resources. In Cadiz, the cork oak forest sustainable management scenario leads to a significant capital loss for private forest owners given current cork prices and government aid to forest natural regeneration.

As a relatively new country, the forests of Bangladesh have only been managed for 34 years under current management authority. During this period, forest management practices have been changed and revised from time to time in accordance with Government policy and legal regimes. The status of forest ecosystems has also changed. This paper reviews and analyzes the past 34 years of forest management practices in Bangladesh and identifies the effects of management practices on the forest ecosystem. The paper also discusses sustainability issues in addition to constraints and opportunities of the forests and forest management practices in Bangladesh.

This paper suggests a new approach that recognises distinct forest types based on altitude and associated factors for the high mountain region of Turkey. It describes the situation in four case-study regions of Turkey, in comparison to observations elsewhere such as the Alps. The Turkish high mountain areas have distinct life zones associated with broad geographic areas and changes in altitude, and the altitudinal distributions of tree species in the Turkish mountains are generally placed in three groups. Four zones differentiated by altitude are described in the case-study regions of the Turkish high mountains. These are: 1) ‘Lowland Forest’, 2) ‘Mountain Forest’, 3) ‘High Mountain Forest and 4) ‘Alpine’. In applying this approach to close-to—nature forest management, in contrast to traditional more formal treatments, it reflects local ecological conditions and distinctive forest character. Awareness of zonation and its reflection in practical management is a key to close-to-nature silviculture. It also brings added benefits of enhanced landscape value, nature conservation, and ecosystem functions which potentially improve the economic impacts of tourism.

The paper reviews China's forestry discourses and normative framework, providing contextualization of China's forestry norms and legislation, and considers how they were produced via the struggles of actors, in particular in the forestry sector at the national level. The normative framework in China represents the common needs of forestry development in a particular context and reflects the knowledge and underdstanding of forest management of individuals in the forestry sector together with their needs, power, and social status. Thus, many policy statements appear to be either cohesive or contradictory. In particular, at national level, the meanings of sustainable forestry management has been shaped by the forestry sector's own political and social struggles.

University curricula, particularly forestry curricula, have been traditionally orientated to the employers' needs and the society's wants. Modern curriculum development requires a dialogue between universities and potential employers of graduates even more to keep abreast of diversity and change. To this end, the Malaysian-German Forestry Education Project at the School of International Tropical Forestry commissioned three surveys in Peninsular Malaysia, Sarawak and Sabah to learn about employers demand in forestry and related fields. Apart from putting emphasis on sound state-of-the-art knowledge in core technical fields such as Forest Management and GIS/Remote Sensing, employers interviewed judged basic computer skills, soft skills and adequate practical training programmes as being equally important.

Although community managed forests constitute a significant proportion of the worlds' forests, there is little information about their condition or how they are managed. The International Forestry Resources and Institutions (IFRI) network is a research programme established in 1992 to collect interdisciplinary information about forest sustainability and governance. IFRI is unique in terms of the large number of small-scale sites monitored (more than 350 communities and 9000 forest plots) for more than a decade, under the guidance of strong central leadership, a well defined research framework, relative autonomy of network members, and a strong inward focus. These features have enabled IFRI to have particular impacts on new knowledge, policy and local communities, and capacity building. Lessons about how to further strengthen, extend and sustain these impacts include developing more robust agreement about measures of forest sustainability, building network members' capacities to conduct comparative analysis, ensuring the database meets the needs of multiple users and expanding the membership and outreach of the network.