Big congratulations to Winy Vásquez for winning the prestigious 2020 John G. Bene Fellowship
Our lab member Winy just won the 2020 Trees and People: Resilience in a changing climate – John G. Bene Fellowship ! This will support her research on ‘The Right to Food in Contested Spaces: How Food Sovereignty Can Help Alleviate Food Insecurity and Meet Conservation Goals Inside of Protected Areas in the Peruvian Amazon’. […]
Communities, conservation, and development in the age of COVID:A Mongabay commentary co-authored by Terry Sunderland
‘The global conservation community now faces the added challenge of Covid-19 on top of a longstanding set of complex conservation, sustainability, and development challenges. In the wake of this pandemic, return to business as usual is not a viable option. The existing systems and structures upon which conservation is based must evolve. Climate change, biodiversity […]
Deforestation and pandemics. Radio interview with Terry Sunderland by Global News Programme, The Shift
Chris Gilbert from Global News Programme spoke with Terry Sunderland about COVID-19, biodiversity, food and forests. Listen to the full interview here.
How our food choices cut into forests and put us closer to viruses: Perspective from Terry Sunderland on The Conversation
‘As the global population has doubled to 7.8 billion in about 50 years, industrial agriculture has increased the output from fields and farms to feed humanity. One of the negative outcomes of this transformation has been the extreme simplification of ecological systems, with complex multi-functional landscapes converted to vast swaths of monocultures. We must harness […]
Integrated landscape approaches in the tropics: Webinar by Terry Sunderland and James Reed
‘Integrated landscape approaches’ are governance strategies that attempt to reconcile multiple and conflicting land-use claims to harmonize the needs of people and the environment and establish more sustainable and equitable multi-functional landscapes. In this webinar, Terry Sunderland and James Reed discuss a paper that provides an update on developments in the science and practice […]
A photo essay on traditional practices and beliefs in landscape management in West Kalimantan
Traditional and local beliefs, taboos, norms and knowledge play such a critical role in conserving local biodiversity and landscapes that researchers are now considering whether these might be applied more widely and in a variety of locations that are under threat. Could informal “institutions” – including belief systems and practices – become more recognized as […]
Forests News coverage: Reflections on landscape challenges and opportunities in Kalomo
With our field work stalled by social unrest in Zambia and then the global COVID-19 pandemic, we decided to seize this opportunity to reflect on what we have accomplished in two years of work in Zambia’s Kalomo district with the initiative Collaborating to Operationalise Landscape Approaches for Nature, Development and Sustainability (COLANDS). Before the project’s […]
New paper on ‘Conceptual Links between Landscape Diversity and Diet Diversity’
Conceptual Links between Landscape Diversity and Diet Diversity: A Roadmap for Transdisciplinary Research Malnutrition linked to poor quality diets affects at least 2 billion people. Forests, as well as agricultural systems linked to trees, are key sources of dietary diversity in rural settings. In the present article, we develop conceptual links between diet diversity and […]
IUFRO Landscape Ecology Webinar featuring Terry Sunderland
Landscape ecology, both conceptually and methodologically, has the potential to play an active role in explaining, describing and forecasting the emergence and spread of zoonoses, to inform decision-making on sustainable measures to minimize their spread and to build spread safe landscapes. This is a research responsibility for landscape ecology but mostly it is an obligation for landscape […]
A case study from Indonesia featuring Terry Sunderland’s work
Palm oil industry leaves Indonesian village struggling with loss and regret In 2002, Rukam villagers sold their land to a palm oil company. Since then, they’ve seen their peatlands, forests and fish stocks vanish. Now they’re weighing up the environmental cost of their decision and future hopes. Free, prior, & informed consent is critical in […]