Poovamma faces another day without paid work. Normally, at this time of year she would be working in the lower valley weeding coffee plantations, but that employment has dried up since the crash in global coffee prices. Years ago, she might have gathered medicinal herbs and green manure in the surrounding forests, but available forest areas are becoming scarce, and park rangers restrict those a...

(DFID) supports policies, programmes and projects to promote international development. DFID are providing funds for this study as part of this objective but the views and opinions expressed here are not necessary those of DFID. Summary The concept of livelihoods has gained wide acceptance as a valuable means of understanding the factors that influence people's lives and well-being, particularl...

M. Radeny, D. Nkedianye, P. Kristjanson, M. Herrero Summary This article addresses livelihood choices and income diversification strategies among agro-pastoralists and pastoralists in southern Kenya, and the factors influencing the returns to the diverse livelihood strategies being pursued. We explore how variability in income and wealth levels across households can be explained by household-le...

Forests provide multiple benefits at local to global scales. These include the global public good of carbon sequestration and local and national level contributions to livelihoods for more than half a billion users. Forest commons are a particularly important class of forests generating these multiple benefits. Institutional arrangements to govern forest commons are believed to substantially in...