Women doctoral students researching forest landscape governance in Southeast Asia have the opportunity to apply for partial scholarships of up USD 40,000 through EXPLORE, a dynamic forest landscape governance research network.

Funded by the Swedish International Development Agency and jointly hosted by RECOFTC and the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF), EXPLORE scholarships are designed to advance gender equity, support individuals, and foster the development of more inclusive and diverse societies.

The network aims to support governments in using high-quality research to improve policies and institutional frameworks for inclusive and sustainable development of forest landscapes in Southeast Asia that contributes to climate and development goals. It also works to improve researchers’ capacity through grants to fund research.

Scholarship inclusions

• Up to USD 40,000 research funding over three years
• Scientific co-supervision by a RECOFTC or CIFOR-ICRAF senior expert
• Internship opportunities at partner institutions
• Participation in capacity-development programmes
• Requirement to publish in high-ranking international journals and present findings at EXPLORE-related events.

Eligibility
Applicants from any scientific discipline relevant to forest landscape governance are encouraged to apply.

They must demonstrate a dedication to transboundary, interdisciplinary, and participatory action research while also integrating gender inclusion and human rights into their methodologies.

Eligible applicants must fulfil the following criteria.

• Be women PhD students under 32 years old (at the time of enrollment in the PhD program)
• Be a citizen of Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar or Timor-Leste
• Be enrolled at a Southeast Asian university
• Comply with EXPLORE’s agreement and reporting requirements

Selection process
EXPLORE employs a double-blind scientific process for scholarship selection, ensuring fairness and impartiality. The Secretariat screens applications for eligibility, followed by interviews and evaluations by a grant panel. The Explore Program Advisory Committee makes the final decisions.

Selection criteria

• Applicant profile: Comprehensive details of education, research experience, motivation, and recommendations.
• Research plan quality: Assessment based on innovativeness, technical feasibility, gender equality integration, potential impact, and capacity-development strategies.
• Applicants are required to have proficient English skills for communication purposes.

Application deadline
Applicants can apply using the online form between 1 March and 30 April 2024.

For more information, please email explore.secretariat@recoftc.org. Check out the call for applications on RECOFTC’s website here.

About EXPLORE

EXPLORE is dedicated to advancing knowledge on forest landscape governance in Southeast Asia. EXPLORE collaborates with various stakeholders in the region. As the sole global research network focusing on forest landscape governance, EXPLORE utilises multidisciplinary and participatory approaches to support the Sustainable Development Goals and other commitments.

Prioritising gender equality and social inclusion, EXPLORE aims to ensure equal representation of women researchers and promotes cooperation across borders. And by providing research-based knowledge, EXPLORE helps Southeast Asian governments and communities manage diverse interests within forest landscapes, contributing to sustainable outcomes.

CIFOR-ICRAF is honoured to partner with RECOFTC in the implementation of EXPLORE.

Partnership set to enhance research on degraded forest landscapes

By Robert Finlayson

Forest rehabilitation and peatland restoration are cornerstones of the Indonesian government’s strategy to achieve its climate mitigation goals, which include making the country’s forests and other land uses a net sink of carbon by 2030, as part of its Nationally Determined Contribution to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

To support this strategy, the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF) is leading a collaborative research project, ‘Sustainable Community-based Reforestation and Enterprises 2021–2030 (SCORE)‘, which seeks to help facilitate the achievement of both climate and livelihood goals by building better understanding of how to enact effective and appropriate forest landscape restoration.

“SCORE aims to enable long-term mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions, specifically through better understanding of locally-appropriate, climate-smart agroforestry,” said Himlal Baral, a senior restoration scientist with CIFOR-ICRAF’s Climate, Energy and Low Carbon team.

Since initiating the project in 2021, CIFOR-ICRAF and its founding partners realised that “a number of institutions were also working on related research – often in specialized topics relevant to, but not covered by, SCORE,” said Baral. “We saw this as an opportunity to share knowledge, support each other’s efforts, and increase impact by forming a national partnership.”

To that end, SCORE held a hybrid workshop on 14 December 2023 at the CIFOR-ICRAF campus in Bogor, Indonesia to inaugurate a partnership of research bodies dedicated to forest landscape restoration. Together, they are researching approaches for restoring degraded peat and mineral land while producing food, material, and bioenergy to enhance communities’ livelihoods.

At the workshop, partners presented research on a wide range of topics, from the multiple benefits of traditional medicinal plants, to cultivating oil-producing trees for biofuel, and the potential of climate-smart agrosilvofishery, which is the integration of trees, seasonal crops and fishery on the same plot of land.

The workshop participants also had the opportunity to collaborate on discussing potential proposals to the Developing Research Capacity of Universities in Southeast Asia on Forest Landscape Governance (Explore) program run by The Center for People and Forests (RECOFTC) with funding from the Government of Sweden.

“’Explore’ aims to support governments in using high-quality research to improve policies and institutional frameworks for inclusive and sustainable development of forest landscapes in Southeast Asia that contributes to climate and development goals,” said Yustina Artati, a senior research officer with CIFOR-ICRAF’s Climate, Energy and Low Emissions team and the CIFOR-ICRAF representative for Explore. “The other ambition of Explore is to improve researchers’ capacity through grants to fund research.”

Participants also explored opportunities and modalities for strengthening collaboration on current projects in South Sumatra, Central Kalimantan, Java, East Kalimantan, Bali and beyond. They discussed best practices (what worked well, what didn’t work, and areas of improvement); research partnerships; dissemination of findings to government and/or practitioners; challenges and opportunities in increasing the scale of successful demonstration models; and collaborative and coordinated actions, including the joint development of funding proposals.

“We expect that the partnership will contribute important findings toward achieving national goals for restoration of degraded land and the mitigation of, and adaptation to, climate change,” said Baral. “We are actively seeking other partners, donors and investors to contribute to the research and to increase the scale of successful demonstration sites. This will also support improvement of communities’ livelihoods through diversifying production while at the same time enhancing biodiversity.”

For more information, please contact Himlal Baral: h.baral@cifor-icraf.org.

Acknowledgements

Partners that presented at the workshop include the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF), South Korea’s National Institute of Forest Science (NIFoS), Indonesia’s National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN), Sriwijaya University, Udayana University, the University of Palangka Raya, and the University of Mulawarman.

• The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration named seven initiatives from across the globe as UN World Restoration Flagships. 
• The Regreening Africa initiative, which put 350,000 hectares under restoration in eight sub-Saharan African countries between 2017 and 2023, was named as one such flagship.
• The initiative plans to restore five million hectares by 2030 with additional investment, using a community-centred and research-based agroforestry and sustainable land management approach. Following its recognition as a flagship, it will now be eligible for technical and financial UN support as well as seeking other investments in this ambitious quest.

NAIROBI, 14 February 2024 – Ecosystems at the tipping point of outright degradation have been given a boost with the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration)’s designation yesterday of seven initiatives from across the globe as UN World Restoration Flagships, which they dub the “world’s most successful examples of healing the planet.”

Regreening Africa, a partnership led by the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF) and including CARE Nederland, Catholic Relief Services, Oxfam, Sahel Eco, and World Vision Australia, with investment from the European Union in its first phase was one of the initiatives named as a flagship.

The initiative operated between 2017 and 2023 to engage with more than 600,000 households and brung over 350,000 hectares under restoration in Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, and Somalia. Its approach was based on proven agroforestry techniques that were adapted to suit the needs of farmers under varying socio-ecological contexts.

Multiple restoration practices, such as tree-growing through planting and grafting and farmer-managed natural regeneration (FMNR), were combined with soil and water conservation, and policy and value chain interventions. This range of options ensured that the restoration suited local conditions and needs, rather than taking a ‘one size fits all’ approach. Looking forward, Regreening Africa aims to bring five million hectares under restoration by 2030, in collaboration with local communities across Sub-Saharan Africa.

“It is an honour for Regreening Africa to be recognized as a flagship alongside such highly-regarded and impactful ecosystem restoration programmes from around the globe,” said Éliane Ubalijoro, chief executive officer of CIFOR-ICRAF.

“Restoration is absolutely foundational to addressing the interlinked crises we currently confront as a global community. Celebrating achievements to date, and supporting initiatives to further scale what works, is key to enabling the kind of action that’s needed to make meaningful impact.”

The accolade forms part of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration and allows the selected initiatives to access technical and financial UN support. “For too long, economic development came at the expense of the environment. Yet today we see global efforts to usher in a comeback for nature,” Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP, said in a press release on 13th February.

“These initiatives show how we can make peace with nature, put local communities at the heart of restoration efforts and still create new jobs. As we continue to face a triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature and biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste, now is the time we must double down and accelerate restoration initiatives.”

Learn about the other flagships here.

For more information, please contact:

Mieke Bourne, CIFOR-ICRAF scientist and former Regreening Africa Programme Manager: m.bourne@cifor-icraf.org

Study highlights need to clarify planting material provenance in funding proposals

By Cathy Watson

To ensure high-quality tree planting, institutions applying for funding to grow trees should explain how they intend to source their tree seed and seedlings, while donors should require planters to have a plan for obtaining such genetic resources.

This recommendation arose from a survey led by the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF) and analyzed in an article published in the international journal Environmental Conservation in December 2023.

The survey was completed by 14 funders of restoration, agroforestry, and wider tree-planting projects; 69 researchers that work on trees and tree planting; and 90 planters that organize tree planting and include non-governmental organizations (NGOs), individuals, and businesses.

“We found that the majority of funders are willing to include the requirement that applicants for financial support to carry out tree planting need to explain how they will source tree seed and seedlings,” says CIFOR-ICRAF scientist Sammy Carsan, one of the study’s lead authors.

The team of 10 authors, who have a particular interest in tools that “allow growers to do tree planting better”, focused on project design because “the planning stage offers a great moment for reflection about the tree seeds and seedlings needed, something that the applicant may not be thinking enough about,” Carsan says.

Asking applicants to dwell on how they will undertake tree seed and seedling sourcing can nudge individuals, businesses, projects, and NGOs to be more intentional about what trees they plant, says the Kenyan agroforestry and seed and seedling expert.

The study also found that funders themselves would like training so they can develop their own in-house capacity to evaluate fund applicants’ descriptions of seed and seedling sourcing.

“It’s not just those applying for funds who need help,” says Ramni Jamnadass, CIFOR-ICRAF’s longstanding thought leader on the genetic quality of tree seeds and seedlings, who was one of the study’s authors. “It is also the donors. Everyone needs support to understand the value of carefully collecting and using tree seeds – and certainly not sourcing all seeds, and the seedlings derived from them, from one or two mother trees.”

“Lack of attention to the quality of tree seed has many negative livelihood and environmental consequences,” says Ian Dawson, one of the paper’s authors and a tree genetics expert.

Immediate shortcomings include low germination, uneven or complete loss of nursery stock, loss of genetic diversity, and low survival in the field, according to Dawson. In the longer term, productivity is lower, and ecosystem services are diminished, including lower-than-expected carbon sequestration. These findings have been well documented by CGIAR-wide studies and other reviews, he says.

Researchers have long known that the quality of tree seed matters. From the 1970s through the 1990s, Western donors worked with forest authorities in more than 30 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America to set up national tree seed centres.

“Sadly, many fell into disrepair when investors at the time did not continue to recognize the importance of high-quality seed and seedlings, and because some of the supply models used by the centres were reaching only some tree planters,” says forester Lars Graudal, a leading authority on the use and conservation of tree genetic resources and also a study author.

However, the need to recognize the importance of high-quality tree seed became more urgent when countries embarked on the Bonn Challenge in 2011, the current target of which is to bring 350 million hectares of land into restoration by 2030 globally.

“Much of this restoration effort requires tree planting, yet accessing high-quality tree seed and seedlings has been neglected as an issue,” Graudal says. “Now this is changing, and we also understand better how to go about providing tree seed and seedlings to growers. Our survey reinforces the importance of this and shows how we might introduce tree seed and seedling sourcing as an important issue within the funding cycle, so the situation becomes more explicit and improves.”

The study aimed to explore whether adoption of measures that require ‘fund applicants’ to explain how they will source tree seed and seedlings would be acceptable to the broad tree-planting community. Fund applicants were defined as potential planters seeking financial support from public and private investors – such as governments, businesses, international initiatives, and foundations – to carry out tree planting.

Other findings from the survey:

• Funders ranked ‘training in tree seed sourcing quality standards’ highest among options to help them evaluate applications for planting funding.
• Funders and researchers together ranked ‘expected performance’ after planting as the most important information that fund applicants should provide to assess their seed and seedling sourcing, followed by information on the ‘origin’ (e.g., provenance or variety) of the seed and seedlings.
• All respondent categories said ‘practical guidelines’ on collecting, producing, and procuring tree seed were the best way to help tree planters develop a seed sourcing strategy.
• More messaging is needed so that the relationship between tree seed and seedling quality and tree performance – in terms of survival rates, livelihood benefits, and returns on investment – is better understood.

“Overwhelmingly, all respondent groups supported asking tree planters to explain how they will source tree seed and seedlings to promote better sourcing practice,” Carsan says. “We believe there are opportunities in proposal templates. Our next step is to consult funders and coordinators of major tree-planting initiatives to see how proposal templates could be changed to place more emphasis on sourcing.”

Acknowledgements

CIFOR-ICRAF is grateful to CGIAR funding partners, Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative, the European Commission, and the Green Climate Fund (GCF) for their support of this research and to GCF in Rwanda and Burkina Faso; International Climate Initiative Germany in Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, and Burkina Faso; Bezos Earth Fund in Rwanda and Kenya; and Global Affairs Canada in Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast for their country support.