News

Prof Michael Köhl and a team of researchers will be visiting Indonesia (East Kalimantan and South Sumatra) on 12–25 June and Suriname/Guyana on 19–28 July to kick off the project’s field work in the regions. The visits take the team to project sites, as well as to workshops, meetings and discussions with relevant stakeholders. There will also be visits to REDD+ pilot and logging concessions sites.

In addition, the researchers will work on their research tools, e.g. questionnaires and Focus Group Discussion check-lists, with the stakeholders until the end of July. After that, the feed-back from the field visits and discussions will be used to prepare the final set of tools for data collection.

The studies collect both quantitative and qualitative information/data. The study in Indonesia gathers forest management information including bio-physical attributes and socio-economic information related to forests and forest management; and institutional and policy information related to REDD+ and FLEGT. In Suriname, information on country reporting requirements (and practice standards) for REDD+, forestry concessions and national forest inventory will be collected. Moreover, data on temporal and spatial forest cover changes; forest stands dynamics (e.g., spatial distribution of forests; forest conditions, forest structure and growth); and information on forest monitoring systems under different forest management regimes will be gathered in Suriname.

The SAFARI project aims to identify how a holistic Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) concept interlinks and supports the FLEGT and/or REDD+ initiatives, to analyse their current and possible future impacts, foster their operability on all levels and to demonstrate the multiple benefits of SFM.

More information: Dr. Prem Raj Neupane; Prem.raj.neupane(at)uni-hamburg.de