On the road back from ‘safari science’ to embedded collaboration

As demand for commodities rises, landscapes are changing quickly as natural forests are felled for agriculture and agro-forestry. Forest governance has also become increasingly decentralized, so the number of stakeholders has grown in many forest landscapes. Meanwhile, conservation priorities and policies are moving in the opposite direction, and becoming overly centralized and simplified.

In a new article in Tropical Conservation Science, Boedhihartono and a group of co-authors argue that many global conservation initiatives are not achieving desired results for conservation in the tropics, and that researchers’ and policymakers’ lack of attunement to local contexts must shoulder a significant part of the blame.