Household Dependence on Forest Resources in the Luki Biosphere Reserve, Democratic Republic of CONGO.

This study was aimed at examining the contribution of forest products to rural livelihoods and the socio-economic factors that influence household forest dependence in the Luki Biosphere Reserve. A structured questionnaire poll of 193 households randomly chosen from two enclaves in the Luki Biosphere Reserve, and focus group discussions were used to gather the data. For data analysis, a binary logistic regression model was used. The study revealed a substantial contribution of forest products to household livelihood based on household wealth strata and the gender of the household head. The contribution of forest income has been found to be higher for poor households than to other wealth categories, although their mean income from forest was low. However, the present research further revealed that household forest dependence was significantly determined by socioeconomic factors such as length of residency, age, sex, education, employment and household size. Compared to their elderly counterparts, the youth were probably more dependent on forest products. Therefore, there should be increased capacity-building efforts among the young people to enable them enlighten the local communities about the need for sustainable forest management. Meanwhile, highly educated people were observed to be less dependent on forests. The findings of this research provides empirical evidence from the Mayombe tropical forest, thus contributing to the growth of knowledge on the impact of socioeconomic factors on the household dependence on forest resources, especially in the tropical forest of the Democratic Republic of Congo where the complexity of the relationship between local communities and their environment is still being studied.

Rural households' livelihood adaptation strategies in the face of changing climate: A case study from Pakistan.

Rural and agricultural communities' adaptation to climate change has gained significant attention owing to many countries' vulnerability to climate change risks. A similar trend has been witnessed in South Asia, a highly climate-vulnerable region, where research has grown dramatically considering the agriculture sector's vulnerability to climate-induced disasters. However, little attention has been paid to the adaptation of the livelihoods of rural households. This research, therefore, takes the case of Pakistan to explore livelihood adaptation strategies of rural households to climate change and investigate the factors that expedite or halt the adoption of livelihood diversification strategies. A multistage sampling design is used in this research, where 480 rural households from the Punjab province of Pakistan were selected and interviewed using stratified and random sampling approaches. A multivariate probit (MVP) regression model is employed to analyze the factors affecting households' adoption of livelihood adaptation strategies. The results show that besides adaptation of agronomic operations (agricultural adaptation strategies), rural households in the study area employed a wide range of strategies to adapt their livelihoods to climate change. These strategies include poultry and livestock farming, value addition of farm produce, trading of animals and farm commodities, small businesses (shops, etc.), daily wage labor, horticultural crop farming, and non-farming jobs. The estimates of the MVP model revealed that respondents' education, household size, income, access to a credit facility, access to farm advisory services, and access to climate forecasts have significantly influenced the choice of livelihood adaptation strategies. Based on these findings, this research recommends that the authorities should make efforts to improve farmers' understanding of the adaptation of climate change risks and educate them to adopt multiple livelihood options to improve the resilience of their livelihoods to climate-induced risks. This research has important policy implications for other countries with similar socio-economic features.

Agrobiodiversity and smallholder resilience: A scoping review.

Agrobiodiversity is often touted as a crucial adaptation strategy to mitigate risks linked to climate change by increasing the response capability of a system to external shocks and, consequently, the smallholder's resilience. This scoping review, conducted following the PRISMA protocol, aims to elucidate how agrobiodiversity's effect on resilience has been conceptualized, analyzed, and reported in the literature and to identify knowledge gaps. We systematically examined 193 articles, with 63 selected for full review based on predefined criteria. Notably, only 16 studies featured actual measurements of the effect of agrobiodiversity on resilience. Our findings indicate that articles often operationalize these complex theoretical concepts using limited variables. Agrobiodiversity is typically measured by crop count, while resilience is assessed through economic, ecological, and/or social dimensions. We identified key attributes expected in resilient systems and found that agrobiodiversity's impact on resilience was positive in 10 cases, negative in 9, and contingent on production types and system shocks in others. This review emphasizes the context-dependent agrobiodiversity-resilience relationship and the need for tailored agricultural diversification strategies. We discuss how inconsistencies between theoretical concepts and practical measures may compromise study validity and comparability and how smallholder context can influence resilience conceptualization. Based on our findings, we propose guidelines for future research and emphasize the need for improved metrics, empirical evidence generation, and mixed-method approaches. Our findings prompt further exploration of key questions to advance our understanding of agrobiodiversity's role in fostering agricultural resilience.

Evaluating the Potential of Boswellia rivae to Provide Sustainable Livelihood Benefits in Eastern Ethiopia.

Frankincense is an oleo-gum-resin collected from wild Boswellia spp. trees, and widely used in perfumery, cosmetics, aromatherapy, incense, and other industries. Boswellia rivae, growing in Ethiopia, Somalia, and Kenya, is one source of frankincense, but is little-commercialized compared to species such as B. sacra, B. frereana, and B. papyrifera. In this study, we examine the resin essential oil chemistry and harvesting systems of B. rivae in order to evaluate its potential for increased trade and potential positive livelihood benefits. Boswellia rivae produces an essential oil rich in α-thujene (0.1-12.4%), α-pinene (5.5-56.4%), ß-pinene (0.3-13.0%), δ-3-carene (0.1-31.5%), p-cymene (1.4-31.2%), limonene (1.8-37.3%), ß-phellandrene (tr-5.6%), trans-pinocarveol (0.1-5.0%), trans-verbenol (0.1-11.2%), and trans-ß-elemene (0-5.7%), similar to major commercial species, although it is difficult to detect mixing of B. rivae and Commiphora africana resins from chemistry alone. The B. rivae trees are not actively tapped, so resin collection has a neutral impact on the health of the trees, and resin production is unaffected by drought. Consequently, collecting resins acts as a key income supplementing livestock herding, as well as a safety net protecting pastoral communities from the severe negative effects of climate change-exacerbated drought on livestock. Therefore, Boswellia rivae is well positioned chemically, ecologically, and socially to support expanded trade.

Understanding the mediating role of labor out-migration in household income generation and distribution under a reforestation policy in rural China.

Income inequality is a critical issue of socio-economic development, particularly in rural areas where forest-dependent people are often vulnerable to the intervention of forest policies. This paper aims to elucidate income distribution and inequality of rural households influenced by China's largest reforestation policy implemented in early 2000s. Drawing on socioeconomic and demographic data from household surveys in two rural sites, we applied the Gini coefficient to measure income inequality and used a regression-based approach to examine the underlying factors that are associated with income generation among households. We also performed a mediation analysis to test the role of labor out-migration in shaping household income distribution under the reforestation policy. Results show that remittances sent by rural out-migrants substantially contribute to household income but tend to worsen inequality, particularly for households having retired cropland for reforestation. The inequality in total income depends on capital accumulation for land endowment and labor availability that render diversified livelihoods possible. Such linkage reveals regional disparity, which, along with policy-implementing institutions (e.g., rules for tree species choice for reforestation), can influence income generation from a given source (e.g., agriculture). Rural out-migration of female labor significantly mediates the economic benefits of the policy delivered to the households with an estimated mediating share of 11.7%. These findings add value to the knowledge of poverty-environment interrelationships in a sense that supporting rural livelihoods of the more vulnerable and underrepresented groups is essential for securing and sustaining the stewardship of forests. Policymaking for such forest restoration programs needs to integrate strategies for targeted or precise poverty alleviation to strengthen the conservation effectiveness.

Understanding sanitation dynamics in Bihar, India: Evidence from the field survey.

Background: Although a good number of individual household latrines have been constructed in Bihar during the past few years, still, a huge task remains to be completed. The paper is based on the study of "concurrent monitoring of LSBA/SBM [G] in select districts of Bihar". Objectives: The aim is to understand different dimensions of the sanitation situation in Bihar. The objective is to suggest policy based on the findings. Materials and Methods: This study is based on primary data collected at the household level and public institutions in six districts of Bihar. Results: The analysis reveals that except a few categories, socioeconomic indicators such as religion, economic condition, or educational attainments have no significant impact on having a latrine at the household level. The variations in the construction of latrines among different districts emphasize that the public program needs to be implemented more effectively. It is also found that women are more vulnerable in a situation of open defecation. Conclusion: The challenge is to encourage people for the sustained use of the constructed latrines. This puts emphasis on changing the behavioral pattern of the people. This requires organizing a continuous awareness generation program with the aim to change the behavior.

Complementary ecosystem services from multiple land uses highlight the importance of tropical mosaic landscapes.

Tropical agricultural landscapes often consist of a mosaic of different land uses, yet little is known about the spectrum of ecosystem service bundles and materials they provide to rural households. We interviewed 320 households on the different benefits received from prevalent land-use types in north-eastern Madagascar (old-growth forests, forest fragments, vanilla agroforests, woody fallows, herbaceous fallows, and rice paddies) in terms of ecosystem services and plant uses. Old-growth forests and forest fragments were reported as important for regulating services (e.g. water regulation), whilst fallow lands and vanilla agroforests as important for provisioning services (food, medicine, fodder). Households reported the usage of 285 plant species (56% non-endemics) and collected plants from woody fallows for varying purposes, whilst plants from forest fragments, predominantly endemics, were used for construction and weaving. Multiple land-use types are thus complementary for providing ecosystem services, with fallow lands being particularly important. Hence, balancing societal needs and conservation goals should be based on diversified and comprehensive land management.

Understanding livelihood changes in the charcoal and baobab value chains during Covid-19 in rural Mozambique: The role of power, risk and civic-based stakeholder conventions.

Non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce the transmission of Covid-19 had different repercussions for domestic, regional and global value chains, but empirical data are sparse on specific dynamics, particularly on their implications for value-chain stakeholders' local livelihoods. Through research including weekly phone interviews (n = 273 from May to July 2020) with panellists in six Mozambican communities, our research traced firstly how the baobab and charcoal value chains were affected by Covid NPIs, particularly in terms of producers' livelihoods. Secondly, we ask how our findings advance our understanding of the role of civic-based stakeholder conventions and different types of power in building viable local livelihoods. Our conceptual lens is based on a synthesis of value-chain and production-network analysis, convention theory and livelihood resilience focusing on power and risk. We found that Covid trading and transport restrictions considerably re-shaped value chains, albeit in different ways in each value chain. The global baobab value chain continued to provide earnings particularly to women, when other income sources were eliminated, with socially oriented stakeholders altering their operations to accommodate pandemic restrictions. By contrast, producers involved in the domestic, solely market-oriented charcoal value chain saw their selling opportunities and incomes reduced, with hunger rising in charcoal-dependent communities. Our paper argues that local livelihoods were more resilient under Covid NPIs if civic-based conventions and collective, social power were present.

From goods to goats: examining post-disaster livelihood recovery in the aftermath of the Nepal earthquake 2015.

Disasters can have substantial impacts on people's livelihoods in developing countries. Further, if the need for livelihood interventions is ignored or delayed, the crisis may trigger unexpected harmful consequences in the affected households in the aftermath. Therefore, restoring livelihoods should remain a priority in the post-disaster recovery process. However, such recoveries in rural contexts and developing countries, like Nepal, are complex as the livelihood restoration process is affected by serious spatial, socio-economic, and political factors. We employed qualitative research methods in four highly affected districts in the 2015 Nepal Earthquake (7.8 Mw) to examine post-disaster livelihoods recovery. Our paper critically assesses the humanitarian response based on the narratives and lived experiences of affected households. The findings show that humanitarian assistance was crucial in addressing several unmet needs of disaster-affected rural households in resource-poor settings in Nepal. However, the interventions were generally fragmented, insufficient, neoliberal led (forcing market dependencies), and largely business-as-usual in their orientation. Previous studies in Nepal paid insufficient attention to the goods provided to affected households in the name of recovery. Therefore, our paper scrutinises selected humanitarian objects, such as power tillers, and unpacks their political economy and effectiveness in local contexts. Further, our findings show that some livelihood policies reinforced the gap between the haves and have-nots, thereby reproducing pre-disaster inequalities in the post-disaster field.

Impact of water hyacinth on rural livelihoods: the case of Lake Tana, Amhara region, Ethiopia.

Water hyacinth covers a significant portion of Lake Tana affecting the livelihoods of thousands of rural households. The general objective of the study was to assess the impact of water hyacinth on the livelihoods of rural households living around Lake Tana. Quasi-experimental research design was applied to achieve the specified objectives of the study. Data was collected from 413 survey households, thirteen key informants, six focus group discussions and field observation. Descriptive statistics and propensity score matching (PSM) using STATA 15.0 were used for data analysis. Results of the study revealed that crop, livestock, and fishery production are the most important livelihood strategies of the study area accounting for 99.3, 95.2 and 9% of the sample households, respectively. The average annual crop production of the households was 2629.1 kg of rice equivalent. However, the weed affected the crop production of 34.1% of the sample households through covering the agricultural land and making the land preparation difficult. In addition, the weed affected 36.6% of the households' livestock production. The impact was revealed in covering the grazing land, causing disease and/or death of the livestock and elevating the livestock production cost. Furthermore, water hyacinth was found as a reason for the reduction of fish population, blockage of fishing entry sites and disruption of the transport system. A statistically significant reduction of fish production, 45.7% in wet season and 49.9% in dry season, was generated because of water hyacinth. The PSM result showed that the water hyacinth significantly decreased the crop production (278.7-475.4kg of rice equivalent) and livestock production (0.083-0.114 TLU) of the affected households. The study recommended management of water hyacinth to control the impacts on rural livelihoods and further studies towards medication of water hyacinth cased livestock diseases and the possible ways of the weeds consumption as a feed.

Biodiversity and infrastructure interact to drive tourism to and within Costa Rica.

SignificanceTourism accounts for roughly 10% of global gross domestic product, with nature-based tourism its fastest-growing sector in the past 10 years. Nature-based tourism can theoretically contribute to local and sustainable development by creating attractive livelihoods that support biodiversity conservation, but whether tourists prefer to visit more biodiverse destinations is poorly understood. We examine this question in Costa Rica and find that more biodiverse places tend indeed to attract more tourists, especially where there is infrastructure that makes these places more accessible. Safeguarding terrestrial biodiversity is critical to preserving the substantial economic benefits that countries derive from tourism. Investments in both biodiversity conservation and infrastructure are needed to allow biodiverse countries to rely on tourism for their sustainable development.

'To prevent this disease, we have to stay at home, but if we stay at home, we die of hunger' - Livelihoods, vulnerability and coping with Covid-19 in rural Mozambique.

Non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) such as social distancing and travel restrictions have been introduced to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus (hereinafter Covid). In many countries of the Global South, NPIs are affecting rural livelihoods, but in-depth empirical data on these impacts are limited. We traced the differentiated impacts of Covid NPIs throughout the start of the pandemic May to July 2020. We conducted qualitative weekly phone interviews (n = 441) with 92 panelists from nine contrasting rural communities across Mozambique (3-7 study weeks), exploring how panelists' livelihoods changed and how the NPIs intersected with existing vulnerabilities, and created new exposures. The NPIs significantly re-shaped many livelihoods and placed greatest burdens on those with precarious incomes, women, children and the elderly, exacerbating existing vulnerabilities. Transport and trading restrictions and rising prices for consumables including food meant some respondents were concerned about dying not of Covid, but of hunger because of the disruptions caused by NPIs. No direct health impacts of the pandemic were reported in these communities during our interview period. Most market-orientated income diversification strategies largely failed to provide resilience to the NPI shocks. The exception was one specific case linked to a socially-minded value chain for baobab, where a strong duty of care helped avoid the collapse of incomes seen elsewhere. In contrast, agricultural and charcoal value chains either collapsed or saw producer prices and volumes reduced. The hyper-covariate, unprecedented nature of the shock caused significant restrictions on livelihoods through trading and transport limits and thus a region-wide decline in cash generation opportunities, which was seen as being unlike any prior shock. The scale of human-made interventions and their repercussions thus raises questions about the roles of institutional actors, diversification and socially-minded trading partners in addressing coping and vulnerability both conceptually and in policy-making.

Urbanisation as driver of food system transformation and opportunities for rural livelihoods.

Urbanisation is changing food systems globally, and in particular in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. This transformation can affect rural livelihoods in multiple ways. Evidence on what enabling conditions are needed to materialise the opportunities and limit risks is scattered. Here we review scientific literature to elaborate on how urbanisation affects food systems, and on the enabling conditions that subsequently shape opportunities for rural livelihoods. We find that urbanisation leads to a rising and changing food demand, both direct and indirect land use changes, and often to more complex market linkages. Evidence shows that a wide range of enabling conditions can contribute to the materialisation of opportunities for rural livelihoods in this context. Reviewed evidence suggests that the connectivity to urban centres is pivotal, as it provides access to finance, inputs, information, services, and off-farm employment. As a result, physical and communication infrastructure, the spatial pattern of urbanisation, and social networks connecting farmers to markets are identified as important enabling factors for the improvement of rural livelihood outcomes. Our findings suggest that coordinated and inclusive efforts are needed at different scales to make sure rural livelihoods benefit from urbanisation and food system transformation.

Immediate impacts of COVID-19 on female and male farmers in central Myanmar: Phone-based household survey evidence.

This article provides evidence of the immediate impacts of the first months of the COVID-19 crisis on farming communities in central Myanmar using baseline data from January 2020 and follow-up phone survey data from June 2020 with 1,072 women and men. Heterogeneous effects among households are observed. Fifty-one percent of the sample households experienced income loss from various livelihood activities, and landless households were more severely affected by the crisis, mainly because of lost farm and nonfarm employment and negative impacts on rural enterprises. Women and men in these landless households were equally engaged and affected by lower wages or more difficulties in finding farm work; fewer women were engaged in nonfarm work, but almost all of them lost such nonfarm wage employment. Women in landless households are also particularly vulnerable in terms of worsened workload and increased tension in the household during COVID-19. Landed households were also affected through lower prices, lower demand for crops, and difficulties in input access. Women and men differ in levels of stress, fear, and pessimism regarding the effects of COVID-19. In most households, there were no signs that household task-sharing and work balance improved, and no clear shift in intrahousehold relations was observed.

Institutional panarchy: Adaptations in socio-hydrological governance of the South Dakota Prairie Pothole Region, USA.

This study develops and applies the Institutional Panarchy Framework (IPF) to examine institutional adaptations in the rights, rules, and authority to govern public access and use of 'nonmeandered waters' (NMWs) overlying private lands in the South Dakota Prairie Pothole Region (SD PPR). Data collection from March 2017 through July 2019 involved field observations of legislative and other public meetings and review of legislation, policy, court cases, documents, and existing statistics. Findings demonstrated how hydrological changes resulted in everyday, operational level changes in how access and use rights to NMWs were executed, conflict over rules governing use and access of NMWs at the collective choice level, and eventually constitutional level changes in the authority to determine rights and rules of access and use of NMWs. A key contribution for commons and socio-hydrological governance scholarship is that institutional resistance and pressures for change are not unidirectional; feedbacks from lower institutional levels spur change at higher levels and broader scales. Broader policy implications include institutional mechanisms for potential improvements in water quality, farm sustainability, and climate justice.

Dining Tables Divided by a Border: The Effect of Socio-Political Scenarios on Local Ecological Knowledge of Romanians Living in Ukrainian and Romanian Bukovina.

Local cuisine is an important reservoir of local ecological knowledge shaped by a variety of socio-cultural, economic, and ecological factors. The aim was to document and compare the current use of wild and semi-cultivated plant food taxa by Romanians living in Romania and Ukraine. These two groups share similar ecological conditions and historically belonged to the same province, but were divided in the 1940s by the creation of a state border. We conducted 60 semi-structured interviews with rural residents. The contemporary use of 46 taxa (plus 5 cultivated taxa with uncommon uses), belonging to 20 families, for food consumption were recorded. Romanians in Romanian Bukovina used 27 taxa belonging to 15 families, while in Ukraine they used 40 taxa belonging to 18 families. Jams, sarmale, homemade beer, and the homemade alcoholic drink "socata" are used more by Romanians in Southern Bukovina, while tea, soups, and birch sap are used more in Northern Bukovina. We discuss the strong influence of socio-political scenarios on the use of wild food plants. Cross-ethnic marriages, as well as markets and women's networks, i.e., "neighbors do so", may have had a great impact on changes in wild food use. In addition, rapid changes in lifestyle (open work market and social migration) are other explanations for the abandonment of wild edible plants.

Impacts of COVID-19 on agricultural production and food systems in late transforming Southeast Asia: The case of Myanmar.

The objective of this contribution is to report the initial impacts of measures taken to contain the COVID-19 pandemic on Myanmar's agri-food system. Myanmar is one of several late-transforming low-income countries in Southeast Asia where agriculture still plays a large role in rural livelihoods, and where food prices are a key factor affecting nutrition security for poor urban and rural households. Whereas the economic impacts of COVID-19 disruptions on tourism and manufacturing were obvious to policymakers, the impacts on the agri-food system were less evident and often more indirect. This resulted in the rural sector being allocated only a very small share of the government's initial fiscal response to mitigate the economic impacts of COVID-19. To correct this information gap, a suite of phone surveys covering a wide spectrum of actors in the agri-food system were deployed, including farm input suppliers, mechanization service providers, farmers, commodity traders, millers, food retailers and consumers. The surveys were repeated at regular intervals prior to and during the main crop production season which began shortly after nationwide COVID-19 prevention measures were implemented in April. While the results indicate considerable resilience in the agri-food system in response to the initial disruptions, persistent financial stress for a high proportion of households and agri-food system businesses indicate that the road to a full recovery will take time. The experience provides important lessons for strengthening the resilience of the agri-food system, and the livelihoods of households that depend on it.

Dark and bright spots in the shadow of the pandemic: Rural livelihoods, social vulnerability, and local governance in India and Nepal.

The global COVID-19 pandemic has brought unprecedented disruption to lives and livelihoods around the world. These disruptions have brought into sharp focus experiences of vulnerability but also, at times, evidence of resilience as people and institutions gear up to respond to the crisis. Drawing on intensive qualitative enquiry in 16 villages of Himalayan India and Nepal, this paper documents both dark and bright spots from the early days of the pandemic. We find intense experiences of fear and uncertainty, heightened food insecurity, and drastic reductions in livelihood opportunities. However, we also find a wide range of individual and collective responses as well as a patchwork of policy support mechanisms that have provided at least some measure of basic security. Local elected governments have played a critical role in coordinating responses and delivering social support, however the nature of their actions varies as a result of different institutional arrangements and state support systems in the two countries. Our findings highlight the changing nature of vulnerability in the present era, as demographic shifts, growing off-farm employment and dependence on remittances, and increasing market integration have all brought about new kinds of exposure to risk for rural populations in the context of the present disruption and beyond. Most importantly, our research shows the critical importance of strong systems of state support for protecting basic well-being in times of crises. Based on these findings, we argue that there is a need for greater knowledge of how local institutions work in tandem with a broader set of state support mechanisms to generate responses for urgent challenges; such knowledge holds the potential to develop governance systems that are better able to confront diverse shocks that households face, both now and in the future.

Precarity, poverty and poppy: Encountering development in the uplands of Shan State, Myanmar.

In recent years there have been growing calls for "development-oriented drug policies" to tackle illicit drug cultivation in the global South. Calls to integrate drugs and development have been important in demonstrating the damage caused by the war on drugs to marginalized communities and in drawing attention to how drug cultivation is inextricably linked to wider development challenges. However, this paper argues that the emerging policy agenda to 'developmentalise' drug policy is founded upon a simplified and misleading conceptualization of the relationship between poverty, development and illicit drug cultivation. Most problematically, it overlooks the fact that people who cultivate drugs because they are poor are not just those who have been 'left behind' by development. They are also those who have experienced new forms of immiseration and precarity as a consequence of processes of economic liberalization, market integration and agricultural 'modernization'. Confronting this blindspot, this article analyses the drivers of rising illicit opium cultivation across parts of Shan State, Myanmar, since the late 1990s. The paper argues that if the current agenda to developmentalise drug policy is to make a meaningful contribution to the lives of the rural poor in drug-producing regions in Myanmar and beyond, it must confront the fact that for many households the decision to cultivate opium has been a response to the very processes of market-led rural development that policymakers claim will alleviate poverty.

Disputed Territories in Southeastern Brazil: Effects of the Serra da Bocaina National Park on Nearby Coastal Communities.

The establishment of national parks in Brazil has been made based on a history of conflicts with local populations living within the limits or buffer zones of protected areas. These conflicts begin with disputes over territorial ownership. They affect local livelihoods, access to and use of space and natural resources, and create power asymmetries. In response to these conflicts, the Federal Conservation Agency has put forward norms that guarantee inclusive arenas for local people to take part in negotiations with park managers. In this study, environmental conflicts caused by the implementation of parks overlapping local population territories are analyzed aiming to understand their role as mechanisms promoting institutional changes. We collected data from two communities that overlap the Serra da Bocaina National Park through interviews, workshops, and direct observations. For each community, we characterized conflicts involving the community and Park officers. We identified consequences to the community's livelihoods and analyzed their influence on institutional change. The results suggest that one community responded to conservation conflicts through actions towards negotiation and collaboration with the national park. The other community promoted changes in agricultural production methods and sought new markets as a strategy for staying in the territory. Conflicts are effective as a mechanism for institutional changes, as local actors articulate with autonomous organizations at different levels. We highlight the importance of a continuous documentation on conflicts and their consequences to rural livelihoods in both communities and conflict management actions taken by the Park in the long term.