Events

Second DIVERSITAS Open Science Conference - DIVERSITAS OSC2
Biodiversity and society: understanding connections, adapting to change
13th to 16th October 2009 - Cape Town, South Africa

Symposium: Research for adaptive management of biodiversity-rich tropical landscape mosaics

Background and Goal
Scientists and conservationists have become aware that conservation approaches based on targeting threats and establishing protected areas are necessary but not sufficient. Production forests, forest patches, secondary forests, agroforests and plantations play a key role for biodiversity conservation in the tropics. They are often beyond the direct control of the governments and their institutions and subject to pressures originating from sustaining people’s livelihoods or conversion to more profitable agricultural systems. To address these issues, The Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and the World Agroforestry Centre have developed and tested action research frameworks for supporting landscape-scale management processes. The approaches consider the spatial distribution of forests and the services they provide, demands from local communities and other actors regarding forest resource management, and addresses governance and land-use planning issues.

Based on a comparison of various tropical landscape conditions, the goal of the symposium is to contribute to new ways of conducting research in landscape mosaics to support the integration of biodiversity conservation into adaptive management processes.

Results and discussion
Presentations will highlight the relationships between biodiversity conservation and livelihood uses, landscape patterns, incentives for conservation and governance in selected landscapes. The discussion will consider multidisciplinary options to assess and monitor landscape mosaics and how research which can catalyze adaptive management should be undertaken.

Conclusions
The findings will be used to define relevant variables to assess and monitor tropical landscapes in view of supporting adaptive and multifunctional management. The experiences and salient points will be synthesized to discuss transdisciplinary research approaches. The results will be published in journals and synthesized in wider-ranging media.