College of Forestry

Welcome to the FoLIAGe Research Group! We study the relationship between forests and livelihoods, and how various governance mechanisms and institutions, including policies, laws, norms, and markets, shape that relationship. Working around the world, we take a multi-level governance approach in our research, from the local scale with community and collaborative forestry, all the way up to the international scale with mechanisms like REDD+ and FLEGT, and how these different scales interact to impact people and forests.  A driving factor behind our research is figuring out how governance and decision-making processes around forests can be made more just, participatory, and, where appropriate, driven from the bottom-up, so that they effectively reflect realities on the ground, and the realities of often marginalized forest-dependent people.

We aim to answer questions such as, can forests be sustainably used as pathways to prosperity? If yes, by which mechanisms? How can community and local forestry contribute to this? What are the livelihood and landscape impacts of tenure and forest policy changes, and how can these changes result in more equitable outcomes? How transferable are governance mechanisms from one context to another?

Check out our research and publications pages!