How Social Considerations Improve the Equity and Effectiveness of Ecosystem Restoration.

Ecosystem restoration is an important means to address global sustainability challenges. However, scientific and policy discourse often overlooks the social processes that influence the equity and effectiveness of restoration interventions. In the present article, we outline how social processes that are critical to restoration equity and effectiveness can be better incorporated in restoration science and policy. Drawing from existing case studies, we show how projects that align with local people's preferences and are implemented through inclusive governance are more likely to lead to improved social, ecological, and environmental outcomes. To underscore the importance of social considerations in restoration, we overlay existing global restoration priority maps, population, and the Human Development Index (HDI) to show that approximately 1.4 billion people, disproportionately belonging to groups with low HDI, live in areas identified by previous studies as being of high restoration priority. We conclude with five action points for science and policy to promote equity-centered restoration.

Silvicultural Practices in the Management of Diospyros melanoxylon (Tendu) Leaf Production: Options and Trade-offs.

Non-timber forest products (NTFPs) are known to provide livelihoods for forest-based communities across the world. While ensuring the sustainability of NTFP harvests is a key challenge, optimizing the production of NTFPs through appropriate silvicultural practices is also critical for forest-based economies. In Central India, the suitability of fire or pruning practices for enhancing the production of leaves of the tendu tree (Diospyros melanoxylon) has been much debated. While villagers commonly adopt annual litter fires, the state Forest Department urges leaf collectors to adopt the more labor-intensive practice of pruning. On the other hand, conservationists recommend completely hands-off management (no fire or pruning). In this study, we compared leaf production from the competing practices of litter fire, pruning, pruning-with-fire, and hands-off management, that are experimented with in community-managed forests. We checked for confounding factors such as tree canopy cover, presence of tendu trees, and inherent differences in forest type. We conducted the study during the pre-harvest season from March to May 2020 in villages in the northern Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra, India. We found that pruning and pruning-with-fire lead to higher root sprout production and, in turn, higher leaf production per unit area when compared to litter fire and the control (no pruning or fire). Fire alone led to a negative impact on leaf production. Implementing pruning instead of litter fire, however, comes with labor costs. Its adoption is therefore linked with the institutional arrangements for tendu management and marketing that shape community perception of costs. गौण वन उत्पादने जगभरातील वन-आधारित समुदायांसाठी उपजीविका म्हणून महत्त्वाची आहेत. त्यांच्या शाश्वत उपलब्धतेसाठी तसेच त्यांच्यावर अवलंबून आजीविकांच्या दृष्टीने वन उपजाच्या नियोजन पद्धतींचा वनवृक्षशास्त्राच्या दृष्टीने अभ्यास होणे गरजेचे आहे. मध्य भारतातील वन-आधारित समुदाय अनेक वर्ष तेंदू वृक्षाच्या पानांना (म्हणजे बिडी-पत्त्याला) निरनिराळ्या पद्धतीने संकलित करीत आहेत व त्याकरिता निरनिराळ्या पद्धतीने नियोजन करीत आहेत. झाडाची झुडपी वाढ करून, पाने हाता जवळ वाढवणे हा त्यातील मुख्य उद्देश आहे. यामध्ये झाडाच्या रोपांची मुळाशी छाटणी करणे (खुट/बेल कटाई) किंवा, जंगलातील पाचोळा पेटवणे, किंवा या दोन्ही पद्धती एकत्रित वापरणे ('छाटणी-व-आग') अशा पद्धतींचा समावेश आहे. अलीकडे काही लोक तेंदू संवर्धनासाठी झाडाची विना-नियोजन वाढ होऊ देतात (म्हणजे विना आग आणि विना खुट कटाईने). यातील कोणत्या पद्धतीने प्रती हेक्टरी सर्वात जास्त तेंदू पाने तयार होतात याचा अभ्यास आम्ही केला. यासाठी आम्ही उत्तर गडचिरोली, महाराष्ट्र येथील काही गावांच्या सामुहिक वन क्षेत्रात मार्च ते मे २०२० मध्ये वेगवेगळ्या नियोजन पद्धतीमध्ये होणाऱ्या तेंदूपत्ता उत्पन्नाचा पद्धतशीर अभ्यास केला. एकूण आम्हाला असे दिसले की, आग वापरण्यापेक्षा तेंदूच्या रोपांची मुळाशी केलेली छाटणी व 'छाटणी-व-आग' या पद्धती अधिक पानांचे उत्पन्न देतात. आम्ही पाहिले की स्थानिक जंगल प्रकार, त्याची दाटी, व तेंदू वृक्षाची निकटता या निकषांमुळे पानांच्या उत्पन्नात नियोजन पद्धतीपेक्षा जास्त परिणाम होत नाही. परंतु यातील कोणतीही पद्धत वापरताना व वन-आधारित उपजीविका सांभाळत, तसेच सामुहिक वन नियोजन करताना काही व्यावहारिक अडचणी आहेत. त्यांचावरही आम्ही या अभ्यासात विचार केला आहे.

Nature's contribution to poverty alleviation, human wellbeing and the SDGs.

Millions of households globally rely on uncultivated ecosystems for their livelihoods. However, much of the understanding about the broader contribution of uncultivated ecosystems to human wellbeing is still based on a series of small-scale studies due to limited availability of large-scale datasets. We pooled together 11 comparable datasets comprising 232 settlements and 10,971 households in ten low-and middle-income countries, representing forest, savanna and coastal ecosystems to analyse how uncultivated nature contributes to multi-dimensional wellbeing and how benefits from nature are distributed between households. The resulting dataset integrates secondary data on rural livelihoods, multidimensional human wellbeing, household demographics, resource tenure and social-ecological context, primarily drawing on nine existing household surveys and their associated contextual information together with selected variables, such as travel time to cities, population density, local area GDP and land use and land cover from existing global datasets. This integrated dataset has been archived with ReShare (UK Data Service) and will be useful for further analyses on nature-wellbeing relationships on its own or in combination with similar datasets.

A multi-pronged approach to source attribution and apportionment of heavy metals in urban rivers.

Heavy metal (HM) contamination of water bodies is caused by both first generation (industries) and second generation (distributed sources, domestic sewage, sediments) sources. We applied a multi-pronged approach to quantify the contribution of first and second generation sources to the HM load in a stream located in an industrialised catchment. We found that, despite strict regulation, first generation sources contributed significantly to the HM load (60%-80%), showing the ineffectiveness of current regulation. Domestic sewage contributed significantly to Cu, Ni, and Mn load (15%-20%). The contribution of distributed sources and sediments to HM load is insignificant. In a 24-hour cycle, HM concentrations frequently exceeded FAO's irrigation water quality standards, with the highest concentrations observed at night. Empirically, the study highlights the continued plight of urban streams in rapidly industrialising centers and the failure to regulate first-generation sources. Methodologically, it demonstrates the importance of temporally intensive measurement of contaminant concentration and load. Policy implications include the need for ambient water quality standards, inclusion of HMs in such standards, load-based regulation, and a problem-oriented monitoring and enforcement approach.