Markku Kanninen

University of Helsinki | HY · Viikki Tropical Resources Institute (VITRI)

Ecological compensation, which is widely applied, is presumed to be an important mechanism to address environmental degradation that commonly occurs due to activities related to development projects and resource use. The objectives of this review are to investigate synergies and trade-offs between biodiversity and carbon offset, the challenges in t...

Voluntary sustainability standards are often inconsistent and fragmented in terms of governance, complementarity, global applicability, and traction. Calls to harmonize this space have been intensifying. The objective of this study was to better understand the role that private philanthropy has played in helping to pave the way for globally consist...

It is well established that forest conservation, restoration, and sustainable management of forests and trees outside forests can help to reduce the vulnerability of both humans and ecosystems to climate change. Yet the role of forests and trees in providing multiple goods and services that contribute to the adaptive capacity and resilience of soci...

Forests are being cut and degraded at an alarming rate, with the expansion of agricultural land as a main driver. The EU plays a significant role in global deforestation and forest degradation through the consumption of certain commodities. This report recommends the implementation of a mandatory due diligence system ensuring that commodities and d...

The dryland vegetation and particularly the Acacia-Commiphora woodlands support the livelihoods of approximately 52 million rural households in the Horn of Africa. Aromatic resins are valuable non-wood forest products (NWFPs) derived from Boswellia and Commiphora species in the drylands of this region. The study seeks to answer the following main q...

Smallholder farming is considered one of the most vulnerable sectors to the impacts of climate change, variability, and extremes, especially in the developing world. This high vulnerability is due to the socioeconomic limitations and high environmental sensitivity which affect the biophysical and socioeconomic components of their farming systems. T...

Biodiversity conservation is often considered to be an important co-benefit of REDD+ and other mechanisms aiming to increase carbon in biomass and soil to mitigate climate change. This reasoning is based on the assumption that the level of biodiversity and ecosystem carbon are positively correlated. Firstly, however, studies have shown both positiv...

Full- text available through the IPCC website: https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/

Since their widespread introduction in the 1980s, large-scale tree plantations have seen contestations over their socioeconomic impacts. With the establishment of new plantations on the rise, a review of the literature examining their impacts on local communities is needed to inform policies and practices. In this systematic review, we followed an...

Despite the plethora of discourse about how sustainable development should be pursued, the production of agricultural commodities is held responsible for driving c. 80% of global deforestation. Partially as a response, the private sector has made commitments to eliminate deforestation, but it is not yet clear what factors these commitments should t...

National food security has been a major policy goal in Sudan since the country gained its independence in 1956. One of the fundamental reasons is to ensure the social welfare for people living in rural areas. In this study we aimed to analyse how farmers secure their food and generate income in the semi-arid Sennar state in Sudan, using two selecte...

Smallholder farming constitutes an important but marginalized sector, responsible for most of the world’s agricultural production. This has a significant influence in the land use/cover change process and agrobiodiversity conservation, especially in mountainous regions of the developing world. Thus, the maintenance of sustainable smallholder farmin...

We analyzed the perceptions of resource persons from three stakeholder groups on the benefits, challenges and opportunities offered by joint forest management (JFM) in the Ziro province of Southern Burkina Faso. In other words, a strength, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) approach in combination with an analytic hierarchy process (AHP)...

Slowing the reduction, or increasing the accumulation, of organic carbon stored in biomass and soils has been suggested as a potentially rapid and cost-effective method to reduce the rate of atmospheric carbon increase¹. The costs of mitigating climate change by increasing ecosystem carbon relative to the baseline or business-as-usual scenario has...

Land use changes have been recognized to have considerable impacts on water; and vice versa, changes in water use and governance may have implications on land use and governance. This study analyzes recent land use/land cover (LULC) changes, and how changes in land use and water governance are perceived to affect land use and water-related risks in...

Decoctions and macerations of the stem bark and wood of Terminalia brownii Fresen. are used in traditional medicine for fungal infections and as fungicides on field crops and in traditional granaries in Sudan. In addition, T. brownii water extracts are commonly used as sprays for protecting wooden houses and furniture. Therefore, using agar disc di...

Decoctions, macerations and fumigations of the stem bark and wood of Terminalia brownii Fresen. are used in traditional medicine for fungal infections and as pesticides on field crops and in traditional granaries in Sudan. In addition, T. brownii is commonly used for protecting wooden houses and furniture. Therefore, using agar disc diffusion and m...

The BIODEV capacity development programme (BCDP) uses forestry, agroforestry and trees to derive a broad range of development and environmental outcomes (high-value biocarbon) while strengthening the capacities of local and national institutions to be able to sustain the benefits. The BCDP conducted 40 long and short-term training activities in Bur...

Empirical ethnobotanical studies in Burkina Faso and the Sahel apply unmodified use-value methods, which often fail to capture uses of plants within and across categories. These methods mask both the relative uses and local people’s ‘true’ knowledge of plant species. This study addresses these methodological weaknesses by assessing plant use-values...

Water-related risks and vulnerabilities are driven by variety of stressors, including climate and land use change, as well as changes in socio-economic positions and political landscapes. Hence, water governance, which addresses risks and vulnerabilities, should target multiple stressors. We analyze the institutional perceptions of the drivers and...

Journal of Natural Resources and Environmental Studies 5, 1-11. ISSN 1683-6456. The impact of meteorological drivers on crop yields, and, in addition, the effects of herbicide application on farm productivity were examined at two locations; with a 70-km distance between them, El Mazmum and El Dali in semi-arid Sudan. For ten successive years (2001...

Two key international policy processes have been developed to combat illegal logging and promote the contribution of forests to climate change mitigation in developing countries: the European Union's Action Plan on Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) and its Voluntary Partnership Agreements (VPAs), and the United Nations Framework...

Land use directly impacts ecosystem carbon and indirectly influences atmospheric carbon. Computing ecosystem carbon for an area experiencing changes in land use is not trivial, as carbon densities change slowly after land-use changes. We developed a tool, CarboScen, to estimate ecosystem carbon in landscapes. It is a simple tool typically used with...

Revenues derived from carbon have been seen as an important tool for supporting forest conservation over the past decade. At the same time, there is high uncertainty about how much revenue can reasonably be expected from land use emissions reductions initiatives. Despite this uncertainty, REDD+ projects and conservation initiatives that aim to take...

L'objectif de ce document est d'analyser les initiatives de carbone forestier (ICF) sur quatre principes qui servent de base pour la planification et la promotion des synergies entre l'atténuation du changement climatique et l'adaptation (A + A). Ce document met en évidence le projet BIODEV en Afrique de l'Ouest comme une étude de cas, tout en form...

The objective of this policy brief is to present an analysis of forest carbon initiatives (FCI) against four guiding principles to provide a basis for planning and promoting synergies between climate change mitigation and adaptation (M+A). The brief provides recommendations to maximize synergies in FCIs in general, based on experiences from the BIO...

Capacity development is a process that focuses on developing new and improving existing skills and knowledge. The target groups for capacity development must be clear from the beginning and the activities can be short term or long term in-country or abroad. The iden8fication, engagement, and consultation of stakeholders on natural resource manageme...

We systematically reviewed current climate change literature in order to examine how multiple processes that affect human vulnerability have been studied. Of the 125 reviewed articles, 79 % were published after 2009. There are numerous concepts that point out to stressors other than climate change that were used in reviewed studies. These different...

Article in print

We use a social-ecological systems framework and interview data from key informants to analyze the threshold dynamics underpinning the resilience of the local beekeeping sector, amidst changes in land use (management) and land use changes (conversions) that result from the expansions of the soy and eucalypt frontiers in Uruguay. Our results indicat...

The poverty and environmental degradation vicious circle hypothesis considers the poor as agents and victims of environmentally degrading activities. Despite some studies, however, there still has not been a sufficient empirical examination of the poverty-environment nexus. Based on participatory poverty assessment (PPA) methods with two hundred fa...

Biophysical restoration or rehabilitation measures of land have demonstrated to be effective in many scientific projects and small-scale environmental experiments. However circumstances such as poverty, weak policies, or inefficient scientific knowledge transmission can hinder the effective upscaling of land restoration and the long term maintenanc...

In the context of assessing drivers of deforestation and forest degradation (DD), for effective implementation of REDD+ (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation) this study interviewed 50 experts and analysed current political strategies in the forest related sectors of Cameroon and the Republic of Congo. The main research ques...

There is growing interest in designing and implementing climate change mitigation and adaptation (M + A) in synergy in the forest and land use sectors. However, there is limited knowledge on how the planning and promotion of synergies between M + A can be operationalized in the current efforts to mitigate climate change through forest carbon. This...

Anogeissus leiocarpus occurs in savannas in tropical and subtropical regions of Africa and is used among traditional medicinal practitioners for treatment of various diseases, among them bacterial infections [1]. Eight flavonoids [2], methyl ellagic acid, ellagic acid [4, 5] and the ellagitannins castalagin and flagallonic acid [6] have been report...

Terminalia laxiflora Engl & Diels. is used as decoctions against bacterial infections and their symptoms such as cough and diarrhea [1]. Stem wood fumigations are used against malaria parasite, venereal diseases and skin disorders [2,3,4]. Previous research demonstrated in vitro anti-acne properties of stem wood of T. laxiflora and agrees with the...

Climate variability and change significantly affect smallholder farmers' food security and livelihoods in sub-Saharan Africa. Tree planting is one of the measures promoted by development programs to mitigate and adapt to climate change. Tree planting is also believed to positively contribute to livelihoods. This paper examines factors influencing s...

Deforestation in Burkina Faso is estimated to be between 0.91–1.03% per annum and displacement by croplands or rangeland expansion is identified as its main drivers. The climate and geography of the country causes its north and central regions to be exposed to drought and desertification, which act as stimuli for rural migration to southern Burkina...

Agroforestry practices in Sudan take on various forms across the country, depending on the arrangement, distribution and integration of trees with agricultural crops and/or livestock. The study aimed to describe and analyse the arrangement of acacia trees with crops on parklands in El Dali and El Mazmum areas in Sennar State, Sudan. Specifically, a...

This book can be found in http://www.iufro.org/science/special/wfse/forests-global-balance/

Coffee, Coffea arabica L., which is native to Ethiopia, is the world’s most widely traded tropical agricultural commodity. While much is known about the productivity and management of coffee for coffee beans little attention has been given to the plants overall biomass production and carbon sequestration. The objective of this study was to develop...

For forest ecosystem management to be effective, knowledge of the horizontal and vertical structural diversity of a forest is essential. The moist Afromontane highlands of Wondo Genet in south-central Ethiopia present an opportunity to restore and rehabilitate and enhance the ecosystem services to be obtained from this forest sustainably. We focuse...

full report available at: http://www.iufro.org/science/gfep/biodiv-forman-redd-panel/report/

This study focuses on two villages in Central Java and examines the following: (a) What silvicultural practices do farmers apply in their teak plantations? (b) What is the performance (growth and quality) of farmers' teak plantations? and (c) Do farmers' socio-economic and perceptional characteristics influence their silvicultural management activi...

Enset (Ensete ventricosum), commonly known as false banana, is a large thick, single-stemmed, perennial herbaceous banana-like plant growing in the wild of sub-Sahara Africa, Madagascar and parts of Asia. In Ethiopia it has been domesticated and serves as a food plant. While the productivity and management of enset for food (pseudostem and corm) ha...

Wondo Genet Afromontane forest is one of the few remnant forests in the country However, it is experiencing deforestation and fragmentation that limits restoration possibilities. The soil seed and seedling banks of the h s forest were studied to better understand the potential contribution of the soil seed and seedling banks to the natural regenera...