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Forest transitions may significantly contribute to climate change mitigation but also change forest use, affecting the local people benefiting from forests. We analyze forest transitions as contested processes that simplify multifunctional landscapes and alter local livelihoods. Drawing on the Theory of Access, we develop a conceptual framework to investigate practices of multifunctional forest use and the mechanisms that exclude local forest use(r)s during forest transitions in nineteenth century Austria and twenty-first century Lao PDR. Based on historical sources, interviews and secondary literature, we discuss legal, structural and social-metabolic mechanisms to exclude multifunctional forest practices, marginalizing peasants and shifting cultivators. These include, for example, the increasing enforcement of private ownership in forests or the shift from fuelwood to coal in Austria and restrictive land use planning or the expansion of private land concessions in Laos. By integrating political ecology and environmental history in forest transitions research we unravel shifting power relations connected to forest change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ecosystem service concept is recognized as a useful tool to support sustainability in decision-making. In this study, we collaborated with actors in the Helge å catchment, southern Sweden, in an iterative participatory ecosystem service assessment. Through workshops and interviews, we jointly decided which ecosystem services to assess and indicators to use in order to achieve a sense of ownership and a higher legitimacy of the assessment. Subsequently, we explored the landscape-level interactions between the 15 assessed services, and found that the area can be described using three distinct ecosystem service bundles. The iterative, participatory process strengthened our analysis and created a shared understanding and overview of the multifunctional landscape around Helge å among participants. Importantly, this allowed for the generated knowledge to impact local strategic sustainability planning. With this study, we illustrate how similar processes can support local decision-making for a more sustainable future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this exploratory study we use existing in situ qualitative and quantitative data on biophysical and social indicators to compare two contrasting Swedish farming systems (low intensity and high intensity) with regard to ecosystem service supply and demand of a broad suite of services. We show that the value (demand) placed on a service is not necessarily connected to the quantity (supply) of the service, most clearly shown for the services recreation, biodiversity, esthetic experience, identity, and cultural heritage. To better capture this complexity we argue for the need to develop portfolios of indicators for different ecosystem services and to further investigate the different aspects of supply and demand. The study indicates that available data are often ill-suited to answer questions about local delivery of services. If ecosystem services are to be included in policy, planning, and management, census data need to be formatted and scaled appropriately. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]