Policy-makers consider participatory reforestation and forest resource management to be the key to reducing the problems of deforestation and forest degradation. In this regard, the government of Ghana introduced a modified taungya system as a mechanism to restore degraded forest reserves under the National Forest Plantation Development Programme to allow landless farmers access to land for temporary crop production and secured tree tenure rights.

Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) is a conservation finance instrument based on the payments for ecosystem services model, wherein governments, private landowners, concession holders, and/or communities are compensated for undertaking activities which mitigate greenhouse gas emissions from forest use and land use change. This article reviews the numerous sources for REDD+ finance within the context of total global conservation finance.

The fate of ecosystem services (ESS) in the United States depends on the actions of private landowners and operators (‘farmers’). This work uses a mixed qualitative and quantitative method to understand farmer knowledge of ESS and willingness to manage lands from an ESS perspective. Fourteen interviews were conducted to analyze farmer understanding of ESS within the context of conservation management.