There are currently vibrant debates in forestry concerning both policy and science. Policy debates explore appropriate approaches to negotiate the concerns of diverse stakeholders, and to reconcile broad objectives such as reducing poverty, generating sustainable livelihoods, securing conservation and promoting sustainable industry. Four key, inter-related forestry problems on which this research will focus are:

* Decentralisation and co-management (including the relative advantages of conventional state control of forest resources vs. various forms of joint and collaborative initiative with local populations).

* Sustainable forest industries (including timber and non-timber projects, and the role of forest reserves and on farm trees in relation to plantations in timber supplies).

* Biodiversity conservation (including relationships and trade-offs between species conservation and livelihood goals; local and global biodiversity objectives, and farming disturbance and biodiversity).

* Climate and watershed protection (including the extent, nature and location of forest/tree cover required for hydrological balance locally and regionally, and the role of forests in emergent global climate debates and obligations).

To make explicit the relationships between positions in forestry knowledge/science, positions in policy debates, and the operation of forestry institutions.

To show what factors influence the uptake, resistance to or selective transformation of emergent scientific perspectives and agendas in local, national and international arenas.

• Written documentation of the country-based and international findings of the research concerning the relationship between forestry science, policy and institutional operation, and its broader implications for understanding science-policy processes and the nature of research dissemination. Written outputs will be aimed both at researcher audiences (via academic journal articles, book chapters and a co-authored book) and at policy-makers and practitioners, via articles for journals and networks read by such groups (e.g.: Unasylva, the Rural Development Forestry Network, IIED gatekeepers).
• Suggested avenues for the effective incorporation of recent scientific perspectives and research findings into policy processes. In large part, these will emerge in interaction with donors and governments through the discussions, reflections and science-policy dialogues conducted during the research. Communication to a wider range of potential users will be achieved through the production of short environment policy process briefing notes, and through an IDS Policy Briefing on new models for environmental policy processes.
• Training materials for incorporation into post-graduate programmes (e.g.: in the anthropology of development, environment and development) and donor/government training courses both at IDS and SOAS, in donors' countries, and in West Africa and the Caribbean.