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Despite the importance of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) for local livelihoods in tropical countries and the increasing attention for biodiversity-ecosystem services relationships, it remained unclear how the ecosystem service of NTFP provisioning is related to plant diversity. Although it is generally assumed that plant diversity is positively related to ecosystem services, this had not been assessed for NTFP provisioning. We applied bivariate and multiple regression models to explore the relationships between the abundance of 58 commercially relevant NTFP species and woody plant diversity across 287 plots of tropical forests in Northern Suriname. We found that NTFP abundance showed both positive and negative relationships to plant diversity indicators. In contrast to expectations, NTFP abundance was negatively related to woody species richness. In addition, across the plots disproportionately few (2–6) NTFP species determined >50% of NTFP abundance. The occurrence and the identity of these 'NTFP oligarchs' was associated to specific floristic compositions. Overall, more than half, i.e. 55.9%, of the observed variation in NTFP abundance could be explained by a combination of taxonomic and structural plant diversity indicators. Our case study findings are relevant for conservation policies in general. In most countries NTFPs are not on the agenda of governments and current tropical conservation policies often focus on forests with high species richness and/or carbon stocks. Our findings indicate that current policies may not cover valuable forests in terms of high NTFP abundance. To support sustainable NTFP provisioning, additional conservation efforts would need to include those vegetation types with high NTFP abundance.

Over the last two decades, sustainable landscape approaches are increasingly being adopted worldwide. An important challenge for these approaches is to analyse and improve governance systems that promote non-conflicting land uses to provide multiple ecosystem services and safeguard biodiversity for diverse social groups over the long term. Our study provides a diagnostic of the gaps and limitations of the current institutional arrangements of an ecosystem corridor in Central Sumatra covering Riau, Jambi and West Sumatera, known as the RIMBA corridor landscape. We identify actions that stakeholders think should be taken to improve the governance of the RIMBA corridor to achieve sustainable landscape goals. We used a combination of methods, including (1) Focus Group Discussions with key stakeholders of the RIMBA programme; (2) the use of a "context diagnostic approach for conservation" to analyse the results of the Focus Group Discussions; (3) a survey on formal institution design for coordination and management of the RIMBA corridor. We found that although transformational dynamics have already been initiated at the local, provincial and national levels through a pilot project, new regulations and institutional changes, many obstacles to effective governance of the RIMBA landscape still remain. Our study points at the need for a new institution to enable cooperation for green economy policy objectives established through a Presidential Decree to achieve the required institutional innovations at the scales required. Our experimental diagnostic approach can be applied in other settings in Indonesia and elsewhere to analyse and improve the effectiveness of governance for the management of biodiversity and ecosystem services at landscape scales.

European agriculture, and Dutch agriculture in particular, is at a crossroads. Due to rationalisation, including intensive use of fertilizers and pesticides, biodiversity in rural areas is declining at an unprecedented rate. Socioeconomic developments in the agricultural sector also show 'a race to the bottom'. Farmers produce on world markets and are only able to compete on input costs. This results in lower income per unit crop or animal and leads to an ever increasing farm size. In turn this leads to a further decline of habitat of species bound to rural areas and farmland. To turn these negative trends around the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture has proposed an alternative form of farming, labelled 'nature inclusive' farming, that 1) benefits from the services that natural processes provide, 2) delivers agri-environmental practices to maintain agro-biodiversity and 3) strongly reduces its negative impacts on the environment. Currently this Ministry supports the adoption of nature inclusive farming practices by funding innovative experiments led by farmer initiatives. Despite some promising results, such innovations have large difficulties to be scaled up, largely due to counteracting forces of the current agricultural system. Using the Technological Innovation System (TIS) framework developed by Hekkert and Negro (2009), we argue that a systemic transition of current agricultural practices is required to mainstream 'nature inclusive' farming. Such a transition can only be realised when a shared vision on the future agricultural sector is developed, set out by the government and societal parties. Such a shared vision can then lead to new enabling (policy) environments/landscapes in which these innovations can rise. Without such shared vision, innovations will be locked-in into the current agricultural system, to the extent of a very low prospect of nature inclusive innovations. Furthermore, we observe that the many experiments currently running suffer from a lack of interconnected learning platforms, a lack of documentation of failures and successes and little attention for the forces leading to lock-in and preventing a regime shift. Using two examples, we will illustrate what type of interventions are needed to up-scale nature inclusive innovations. Keyword 1: innovation studies Keyword 2: sustainable agriculture Keyword 3: agricultural policy ; peerReviewed

Land degradation is a global concern. In tropical areas it primarily concerns the conversion of forest into non-forest lands and the associated losses of environmental services. Defining such degradation is not straightforward hampering effective reduction in degradation and use of already degraded lands for more productive purposes. To facilitate the processes of avoided degradation and land rehabilitation, we have developed a methodology in which we have used international environmental and social sustainability standards to determine the suitability of lands for sustainable agricultural expansion. The method was developed and tested in one of the frontiers of agricultural expansion, West Kalimantan province in Indonesia. The focus was on oil palm expansion, which is considered as a major driver for deforestation in tropical regions globally. The results suggest that substantial changes in current land-use planning are necessary for most new plantations to comply with international sustainability standards. Through visualizing options for sustainable expansion with our methodology, we demonstrate that the link between oil palm expansion and degradation can be broken. Application of the methodology with criteria and thresholds similar to ours could help the Indonesian government and the industry to achieve its pro-growth, pro-job, pro-poor and pro-environment development goals. For sustainable agricultural production, context specific guidance has to be developed in areas suitable for expansion. Our methodology can serve as a template for designing such commodity and country specific tools and deliver such guidance. © 2013 Smit et al.

In many cases, government institutions insufficiently consider the traditional land use of community areas in spatial planning policy. Although numerous investigations into the participatory mapping of community lands have occurred, their results have not been adequately incorporated into the policy realm. In Indonesia, Spatial Planning Regulation (SPR), or locally known as Rencana Tata Ruang Wilayah (RTRW) is an instrument to guide land use practices in the categories of development and protected areas. Using a case study for the Merauke district in Papua province in Indonesia, we demonstrate how participatory mapping results of important community areas were integrated into district-level spatial planning through Participatory GIS (PGIS). There are three phases to the process of integrating PGIS into Spatial Planning Regulation. The first phase is to develop a shared vision between the customary communities and the district government and gain a commitment from both parties to use the results in further planning processes. The second phase is to facilitate the PGIS process, which is conducted by the community and a facilitator – in this case a team of WWF Indonesia Sahul Papua Region Office –, and the final phase is to integrate the PGIS results of the important community areas into spatial planning regulation. The results of our case study showed that of the total area adopted by the RTRW, about 69% were important community areas designated as cultural preservation areas. The remaining important community areas were allocated to two other land use categories: protected areas (22%) and development areas (9%). In this case, 91% of the community areas (647,850 hectares) were secured from other land use purposes such as large-scale agriculture, mining, forestry, and infrastructure. The PGIS approach can be applied to districts across Indonesia for mapping community land use practices and integrating them into Spatial Planning Regulation.