Verina Jane Ingram

Wageningen University & Research | WUR · Department of Forest and Nature Conservation Policy

The critical link between gender and forest and tree-based livelihoods is gaining recognition. A growing body of research has highlighted the role of gender in shaping access to, management of and use of forest, agroforestry and tree (FTA) resources and markets and their associated benefits (Mai, Mwangi et al. 2011). (Mai et al. 2011). Myriad devel...

Value chains of Cameroonian non-timber forest products move through harvesters, processors and traders, to consumers locally and worldwide. This paper characterises six governance arrangements governing eight such chains: statutory and customary regulations, voluntary market-based systems, international conventions, project-based systems and corrup...

As solutions to the multiple, long-running challenges facing cocoa growers and cocoa production, sustainability initiatives, including associations platforms and networks, voluntary sustainability standards, corporate and non-governmental and civil society initiatives have been developed. Largely implemented by cocoa farmers and groups, these initi...

This study – presented in a full report, summary and presentation for policy makers and a scientific paper - assesses the impact of different approaches advocated to reach the objective of zero-deforestation value chains (ZD-VC) by six forest-risk commodities: cattle, coffee, cocoa, soy, palm oil, and timber. We used a discourse analysis, value cha...

The use and trade of non-wood forest products (NWFPs) may simultaneously bring about positive outcomes for conservation and rural development. This assumption underlies national strategies on NWFPs and Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR) in Sao Tome and Príncipe. However, there is a lack of understanding of how native tree products such as Adansonia...

The book is free from IUCN, see https://portals.iucn.org/library/node/51451 Highlights: • Oil crops occupy roughly 37% of the world’s agricultural land, and oil demand is growing. • By 2050, expected demand for vegetable oils could require a 14% increase in production – potentially threatening biodiversity if natural areas are cleared for vegeta...

This document outlines a collaborative and sector-wide approach to evaluating the living income status of households in the cocoa sector, addressing challenges in data collection and sharing that have been hindering progress. The Cocoa Household Income Study (CHIS) methodology is introduced to harmonise and provide a comprehensive framework for ass...

This study aimed to investigate the socioeconomic characteristics of plant users in the biodiverse Mount Nlonako forest community in the Littoral region of Cameroon. The study evaluated the socio-cultural and economic characteristics of villagers; identified the different plant resources exploited in and around the forest particularly their medicin...

CONCEPTS TO UNDERSTAND & RESEARCH TRANSFORMATIVE CHANGE FOR BIODIVERSITY & EQUITY Transformative Change for Biodiversity & Equity Project Valerie Nelson, NRI, University of Greenwich V.J.Nelson@greenwich.ac.uk Verina Ingram, Wageningen University & Research verina.ingram@wur.nl Thirza Hermans, Wageningen University & Research thirze.hermans@wur.nl...

Transformative Change for Biodiversity & Equity Project CONCEPTS TO UNDERSTAND & RESEARCH TRANSFORMATIVE CHANGE FOR BIODIVERSITY & EQUITY Verina Ingram, Wageningen University & Research verina.ingram@wur.nl Valerie Nelson, NRI, University of Greenwich V.J.Nelson@greenwich.ac.uk Thirza Hermans, Wageningen University & Research thirze.hermans@wur.nl...

Although international actors have intervened to improve the management of the Cameroonian woodfuel sector, the impacts of these interventions have been little explored. This study investigated the influence of international interventions on policy processes and their impacts on the woodfuel actors and resources in Cameroon. Based on a systematical...

The Dutch landscape is highly connected with other (inter)national landscapes, implying that considering telecoupling is foundational for nature inclusive transitions in the Netherlands. Our review demonstrated that there are multiple framings of telecoupling, with a development from structural to actor based and governance approaches. Each of the...

Description of the subject. We present a literature overview of innovation platform practices in Africa, combined with case studies of sub-national platforms established in Senegal and Burkina Faso. Objectives. The main objective was to understand how the facilitation process of innovation platforms can become more effective. Two specific objective...

Understanding the impact of hunting on wildlife is necessary to protect biodiversity in remote, endangered ecosystems, where rural communities depend on bushmeat as sources of food and income. Unsustainable hunting has led to a major decline in mammal population densities across Africa, especially for ungulates and primates. The objectives of this...

With the increasing expansion of large-scale forest plantations in developing countries, concerns are rising about relationships between plantations and local communities. Community participation in forest plantation management can improve relationships between forestry companies and adjacent communities and affect the distribution of benefits from...

Climate change affects ecosystems and the well-being of rural households relying on ecosystem services for their livelihoods. The ability to withstand the adverse effects of climate change depends on their livelihood resilience. The relationship between natural resource dependence and livelihood resilience of Indigenous forest households in the Ama...

Sub-Saharan Africa hosts more than 26% of the world’s refugee population, with 6.3 million refugees – which represents a 186% increase in the last decade, from 2.2 million. There has been an increase in internally displaced persons (IDPs) following conflicts and violence in South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the Central African Re...

The 2021 State of the Forest (SOF 2021) report is the seventh in the series published since 2005. The previous report was released in 2015 during the fifteenth Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) held in Paris. This report was prepared during the COVID-19pandemic, which imposed itself as...

Interest in non-timber forest products (NTFPs) has increased due to their role in poverty reduction, conservation, and food security. However, data on the current environmental and socio-economic aspects of NTFPs harvests are sparse. Using secondary data from literature review as well as participatory rural appraisal tools, information was gathered...

Sub-Saharan Africa hosts more than 26% of the world’s refugee population, with 6.3 million refugees – which represents a 186% increase in the last decade, from 2.2 million. There has been an increase in internally displaced persons (IDPs) following conflicts and violence in South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the Central African Re...

What does it mean to be an inclusive, diverse, decolonized and intersectional university research centre specialized in sustainability governance? What are the biases that we have when researching and teaching about sustainability governance? How do we create safe spaces to reflect on these biases and experiences of discrimination at the Wageningen...

Indigenous and subsistence-oriented people are particularly sensitive to the impacts of climate change. Strategies to cope and adapt to those changes may rely on traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), which can play an important role for understanding global environmental change at the local level. We aim to provide insights regarding perceptions...

Forests play a key role in a bio-based economy by providing renewable materials, mitigating climate change, and accommodating biodiversity. However, forests experience massive increases in stresses in their ecological and socioeconomic environments, threatening forest ecosystem services supply. Alleviating those stresses is hampered by conflicting...

Community forest enterprises (CFEs) trade to meet the economic, social, and environmental challenges of their community, just as Social Enterprises (SE) do. The question is if CFEs also could and should be understood in terms of SEs. To explore this question, this study determines the extent to which CFEs can be classified as SEs, using CFEs in Cam...

This annex to the report on Natural Product value chains is part of the REFLOR-CV project. It supports the FAO project by investigating first which natural product and non-timber forest products (NTFPs ) are commercialised and form value chains in Cabo Verde. Secondly how natural products can contribute to build the adaptive capacity and resilience...

Natural products include a diverse range of foods, medicines, energy, materials and culturally important products which are sourced wild from natural areas. These products and the value chains they create, can be promising avenues for economic development, if the resources are sustainably managed and the value chains are well-thought through. Movin...

Many sources indicate that smallholder tree-crop commodity farmers are poor, but there is a paucity of data on how many of them are poor and the depth of poverty. The living income concept establishes the net annual income required for a household in a place to afford a decent standard of living. Based on datasets on smallholder cocoa and tea farme...

A widely held assumption is that intensifying agroforestry will lead to sustainable increases in production, societal resilience and food security, urgently needed in the current context of changes in markets, climate and demography. Current thinking assumes that to achieve sustainable innovation a participatory approach with public, civil and priv...

The REFLOR-CV project aims to increase resilience and enhance adaptive capacity to address the risks climate change poses to desertification and land degradation in Cabo Verde. This study as part of REFLOR-CV investigates how natural product (NP) and non-timber forest product (NTFP) value chains can contribute to build the adaptive capacity and res...

Together with his colleagues, researcher Bart de Steenhuijsen Piters of Wageningen Economic Research examined the resilience of food systems in West Africa. The knowledge they gained and consultations with the World Bank have resulted in a programme to further increase this resilience. However, greater knowledge is required.

Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, a group of Forest and Nature Conservation and Policy (FNP) group researchers came together to discuss whether and how we need to explore and fight discriminatory practices in our own institutional context. This document reports on our findings from a survey that ran over the summer 2020 (n = 44 responses...

This summary of the full study for the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL) aims to trace the impact of approaches advocated to reach the objective of zero deforestation value chains (ZD-VC). The concepts of value chains and geographic nexus were used to look at the types, impacts and success of different approaches used to reduce defo...

Trade-in Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFPs) in the Congo Basin is a source of cash income for stakeholders in their value chains, from harvesters to traders. However, gender-disaggregated data on the benefits of such trade in Gabon remains poorly captured and used by policymakers, despite a decree on women’s empowerment enacted by the Republic of G...

Geographical Indication (GI) has been proposed as a development tool, benefitting producers, consumers and local communities by creating value, improving market access, protecting local knowledge and natural resources and contributing to social cohesion as producers work together to solve common problems. However, scientific evidence on the socioec...

As large-scale forest plantations expand in developing countries, concerns are rising about their relation to and integration with adjacent local communities. In developing countries with weak enforcement of property rights, private plantations are more likely than state-owned plantations to involve villagers in plantation’s activities in order to...

Abstract Ricinodendron heudelotii (Baill.) Pierre ex Pax., locally known as njansang, is an important non-timber forest traded from the Central African tropical humid forested area. The Southwest region was selected as an important production and market hub, where little data exist on the role of gender in the livelihoods of those harvesting and ma...

Samples for drug development, a raw plant ingredient used in a cosmetic product, herbal teas, or microorganisms that contribute to biotechnology industrial processing and manufacturing …do all fall under ABS? How about a product that is based on traditional knowledge (TK) that is common and widespread? Digital sequence information (DSI) derived fro...

In recent years, the scope of access and benefit sharing (ABS) has been expanded in many countries to include the use and trade of non-timber forest products (NTFPs), also known as biological resources. This raises questions, including: How might ABS impact the local trade and use of these products, sustainability and equity in the value chain, and...

Quel est le « champ d’application » de l'APA? Le champ d'application ici signifie tout simplement ce qui est régi par les cadres APA. Cela renvoie non seulement aux activités, aux actions et aux circonstances qui sont incluses dans les règles et principes juridiques et règlementaires spécifiques à l'APA, mais aussi à l’objet ou au phénomène auquel...

Ce Policy brief se focalise sur l'un des PFNL les plus largement commercialisés et utilisés en Afrique Centrale et de l’Ouest : la mangue sauvage (Irvingia spp.). Le cas de la mangue sauvage illustre l'impact que l'APA pourrait avoir sur l'utilisation et le commerce de ce PFNL et bien d'autres dans la région, ainsi que la contribution potentielle d...

The Namibian government promotes community-based tourism (CBT) as market-based development. At Treesleeper Eco-camp, a CBT-project among marginalised Hai//om and !Xun Bushmen (San), we investigate how Bushmen's historically developed paternalist relations shape contemporary local institutional processes. Institutional design principles, seen as pre...

The Forest Stewardship Council initiated a Forest Certification for Ecosystem Services (ForCES) project from 2011 to 2017 to improve and promote sustainable forest management addressing a range of ecosystem services. Three sites in Indonesia were included in the pilot. Whilst the development of the certification standard was largely the result of a...

The Forest Stewardship Council initiated a pilot Forest Certification for Ecosystem Services (ForCES) project from 2011 to 2017 to improve and promote sustainable forest management addressing a range of ecosystem services. Three sites in Indonesia were studied in the pilot. Whilst the development of the certification standard was largely by a partn...

A clear majority of smallholder farmers in commodity value chains such as cocoa, tea, coffee and oil palm are struggling to earn a living income. This despite numerous interventions in the past two decades, aiming to lift them out of poverty. Interventions have ranged from training, to voluntary sustainability certification and the provision of fre...

Whilst ‘REDD’ is the acronym for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, ‘REDD+’ refers to efforts to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, foster conservation, promote the sustainable management of forests, and enhance forest carbon stocks [...]

Training and support for beekeeping and agroforestry were part of the 4 year Mau Mara Serengeti Sustainable Water initiative (MaMaSe), aiming to improve water safety and security, support structural poverty reduction, sustainable economic growth and conservation of the Mara River Basin’s ecosystems. Working with beekeepers, Community Forest and Wat...

In Peru, concessions for harvesting Brazil nuts (fruits of the Amazon tree Bertholletia excelsa) were launched in the Madre de Dios Department in 2000. This study analyses the extent to which the Brazil nut concession system (which covers about 1 million ha of closed canopy forest) has met its objective of providing a governance model for sustainab...

Traditional, forest resource-dependent livelihoods face multiple challenges. In Gabon, bushmeat provides food and income for rural communities. This study investigates how villagers believe livelihood practices and dependence on bushmeat changed over the last decade and if alternative income and food generating strategies can be sustainable. Our re...

Increasing global cocoa demand in the new millennium has triggered farmers in developing countries to expand cocoa cultivation. A challenge is how to sustainably increase cocoa production without causing deforestation. We examine this trade-off around the Lore Lindu National Park in Indonesia and investigate the determinants of environmental effici...

Njansang - Ricinodendron heudelotii (Baill.) Pierre ex Pax.- is a commonly traded non-timber forest product from Central African humid forests, used as a spice. South West Cameroon was selected as major production area and market where little data exist on the contribution of njansang to stakeholders livelihoods in the value chain. Interviews were...

With the rapid expansion of forest plantations worldwide, communities, NGOs and researchers are increasingly expressing their concerns about the outcomes of plantations’ activities for local households. This study investigates the perceptions of local households about forest plantations’ investments in social services and local infrastructure in ru...

This study investigates the Indonesian cocoa production to reveal the possibilities for poverty alleviation. We estimate, using 1,290 panel observations from 722 households and stochastic frontier analysis, the technical efficiency of cocoa production and disaggregate productivity growth. Our results indicate that the average efficiency of the coco...

To tackle the multiple challenges facing the cocoa sector, voluntary sustainability standards and corporate initiatives, largely focusing on farm and farmer group scale, are often implemented by public-private-civil society partnerships of stakeholders further in the value chain. This paper looks at the social, economic, and environmental effects o...

In early 2014, unprecedentedly heavy rainfall led to a flood in northern lowland Bolivia affecting the livelihoods of thousands of people relying on ecosystem services and climate sensitive sectors for their daily livelihood. Based on a case study of 50 households from indigenous forest communities living in the TCO Tacana I, ex-ante and ex-post ho...

Dutch policies have advocated sustainable commodity value chains, which have implications for the landscapes from which these commodities originate. This study examines governance and policy options for sustainability in terms of how ecosystem services are addressed in cocoa, soy, tropical timber and palm oil value chains with Dutch links. A range...

Sustainability issues are urgent in cocoa production in Côte d’Ivoire. The cocoa sector continues to face deeply embedded, interrelated challenges around productivity; low income and working conditions; scaling up grouping and service delivery to farmers; negative environmental impacts; and a tight supply and demand relationship with recession and...

In the Congo Basin, the economic, social and environmental value of non timber forest products (NTFPs), such as bush mango (Irvingia gabonensis) is widely acknowledged. However, knowledge of the volumes traded, extent and distribution of revenues along the value chain is limited while little is known about the chain's sustainability. The survey of...

This technical report serves as a guide that provides information for: i) Beekeepers - to ensure the presence of plants providing nectar and pollen year round and plants useful for beekeeping, such as making and baiting hives, and using in smokers. ii) Farmers – so that they can plant species that will encourage bees and also pollinate their crops....

As forest products from Cameroon and DR Congo are commercialised, a value chain is created from harvesters, processors, and retailers to consumers worldwide. In contrast to dominant narratives focusing on regulations and customs, these chains are actually governed by dynamic, multiple arrangements regulating access to resources and markets. New ins...

Farming is a tough business with a strong competition and high risks. One way to make your farm competitive is to produce more on the same plot of land in a growing season and with lower costs. Innovation can also help. Information that helps you to test new practices to see what works for you, and knowing how to increase farm production sustainabi...

Landscape approaches have become en vogue in the past couple of decades. Originating from nineteenth-century landscape geography, this renewed popularity since the 1980s is fueled by debates on—among others—nature conservation, landscape restoration, ecosystem services, competing claims on land and resources, sectorial land-use policies, sustainabl...

It is estimated that over 2.4 billion people worldwide depend on forest goods and services for the direct provision of food, wood fuel, building materials, medicines, employment and cash income. Forests contribute to the four dimensions of food security and nutrition (FSN) in multiple ways. The most commonly known way in which forests contribute to...