Over the past decade, floods have increased in frequency and intensity, a trend that is expected to intensify over the next twenty-five years. This article addresses an underexamined tension in floodplain governance: how a policy instrument designed to mitigate flood hazards in urban neighborhoods also has the potential to drive changes that may lead to environmental gentrification. Through survey and interview data concentrated in an economically depressed neighborhood in Lansing, Michigan, we explore how floodplain residents perceive their own vulnerability to flooding and interpret neighborhood land-use changes precipitated by shifts in floodplain governance. We found that while residents may recognize their neighborhood is at risk of flooding, they downplay their own vulnerability due in part to overconfidence on structural flood control measures. Relatedly, residents value the state’s new flood risk mitigation program for contributing to neighborhood revitalization, generally without recognizing its flood risk adaptation objectives. Ironically, some elements of floodplain governance may drive the deterioration that necessitates urban revitalization, while others may disenfranchise low-income long-time residents. This case illustrates that shifting floodplain governance towards green infrastructure is not fully comprehensible to some residents, pointing to the need for participatory approaches that create a shared vision for urban floodplain neighborhoods.

Sustainably managed forests and forest products have a well-documented potential to deliver significant climate change mitigation benefits via sequestration, storage, and substitution (the 3Ss) when they are sourced sustainably and substituted for traditional resource-intensive materials. Moving beyond product-specific considerations, a climate-smart forest economy (CSFE) aims to bolster the 3Ss and catalyze broader systemic change to address the climate crisis. In their most successful cases, forest value chain interventions that lead to CSFEs will link secondary and tertiary sectors for greater waste reduction, substitution, innovation, and overall cascading climate benefits. However, interventions that contribute to CSFEs, from small to large scale, will inevitably impact environments and communities, both directly and indirectly. While positive impacts can be thought of as co-benefits and should be encouraged, negative impacts are considered negative externalities, and these should be avoided or minimized wherever possible by safeguarding against harm. The failure to minimize negative externalities will have implications for equity, project longevity, and climate benefits. This paper provides preliminary results of mixed methods research with an aim of identifying and building consensus on the definitions, challenges, and solutions relevant to the assessment, planning, and implementation of CSFE safeguards. While broad and novel CSFE safeguards application faces diverse challenges, this paper explores practical solutions to advance and set a foundation for future dialogue, analysis, and application.

In the midst of climate change, population growth, and global food crisis scenarios, efforts to succeed in Sustainable Land Management (SLM) implementation are under enormous pressure. To contextualize Indigenous experiences on nature valuation in light of sustainable development efforts, we explored how the traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) of two Indigenous communities interacted with major land policies with sustainability implications through an ethnographic and community-based participatory research approach. Data collection tools included talking circles, storytelling, unstructured interviews, and participant observation with Indigenous community members of Shimaa and Diamante to understand how two major land management policies intersect in SLM, Indigenous values, TEK, and rights in the Peruvian Amazon. In complementation with secondary literature assessing the focal policies, the empirical data analysis, through a lens of TEK, provides a deeper examination of Indigenous peoples’ ways of knowing. Research findings show that TEK of Indigenous peoples can support values of nature and shape the design and implementation of SLM policies by incorporating Indigenous peoples’ holistic values of nature (e.g., relational and intrinsic values) and methods for sustainable and equitable land management, with improved outcomes for communities. However, the TEK of Indigenous peoples, values of nature, and rights can be at odds with the Eurocentric-oriented SLM in terms of values placed on nature, and results in a disconnection between international and national policy goals with realities at the local levels. This study concludes that to fully realize the objectives of SLM, it is imperative for decision makers to recognize the TEK of Indigenous peoples rooted in a holistic understanding of the multiple values attributed to nature, which resonates with the notion of a plural approach to valuing nature. Further, methods should include land management practices that are beneficial for such communities and not strictly for the production of goods for societal consumption, however long it may be sustained into the future. Such a management scheme would value ecologic stability, community resilience, and a wide range of human-nature values while still recognizing development needs.

Climate change is presenting a global challenge to society and ecosystems. This is changing long-standing methods to determine the values of forests to include their role in climate mitigation and adaptation, alongside traditional forest products and services. Forests have become increasingly important in climate change dialogues, beyond international climate negotiations, because of their framing as a Natural Climate Solution (NCS) or Nature-Based Solution (NBS). In turn, the term “Climate-Smart Forestry” (CSF) has recently entered the vernacular in myriad disciplines and decision-making circles espousing the linkage between forests and climate. This new emphasis on climate change in forestry has a wide range of interpretations and applications. This review finds that CSF remains loosely defined and inconsistently applied. Adding further confusion, it remains unclear how existing guidance on sustainable forest management (SFM) is relevant or might be enhanced to include CSF principles, including those that strive for demonstrable carbon benefits in terms of sequestration and storage. To contribute to a useful and shared understanding of CSF, this paper (1) assesses current definitions and framing of CSF, (2) explores CSF gaps and potential risks, (3) presents a new definition of CSF to expand and clarify CSF, and (4) explores sources of CSF evidence.

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