Land-use Decisions in Complex Commons: Engaging Multiple Stakeholders through Foresight and Scenario Building in Indonesia.

In the midst of global change uncertainties, Indonesian spatial planning authorities are developing 20-year strategies. However, the lack of collaborative engagement of stakeholders and unclear methodology around using futures studies in addressing land management undermine such plans and affect environmental governance. A crucial question is how to link a future-oriented process with governance transformation processes, particularly related to land-use planning and management.

Accessing local knowledge to identify where species of conservation concern occur in a tropical forest landscape.

Conventional biodiversity surveys play an important role in ensuring good conservation friendly management in tropical forest regions but are demanding in terms of expertise, time, and budget. Can local people help? Here, we illustrate how local knowledge can support low cost conservation surveys. We worked in the Malinau watershed, East Kalimantan, Indonesia, an area currently at risk of extensive forest loss.

Recognizing local people's priorities for tropical forest biodiversity.

Tropical forest people often suffer from the same processes that threaten biodiversity. An improved knowledge of what is important to local people could improve decision making. This article examines the usefulness of explicitly asking what is important to local people.

Scoring the importance of tropical forest landscapes with local people: patterns and insights.

Good natural resource management is scarce in many remote tropical regions. Improved management requires better local consultation, but accessing and understanding the preferences and concerns of stakeholders can be difficult. Scoring, where items are numerically rated in relation to each other, is simple and seems applicable even in situations where capacity and funds are limited, but managers rarely use such methods.