The FLARE Flyer
Volume 2, Issue 1
March 2025
A Note from the Coordinator’s Desk
International cooperation, research, and cherished rights are increasingly under attack in many parts of the world even as environmental and social challenges persist and even deepen. In this context, FLARE is more committed than ever to our work to nurture a vibrant global community of practice to understand, imagine, and help bring about more just and sustainable futures for people and forests. In this newsletter, you will find updates about the work of FLARE and our members, including new opportunities to get involved. As ever, we welcome your feedback and suggestions for this quarterly newsletter and for strengthening our community and collective work (flare@nd.edu).
Save the Date: FLARE Annual Meeting – Lima, Peru (Oct 23-27, 2025)
We are delighted to announce that the 11th FLARE Annual Meeting will be held October 23-27, 2025 in Lima, Peru in partnership with the University of Engineering and Technology (UTEC). The theme will be “Forests and Transformative Change.” Stay tuned for more details and the call for abstracts.
New FLARE Steering Committee Members
We are pleased to welcome Anders Krogh, Anne Larson, and Estefania (Stef) Liehr as the newest members of our Steering Committee. We thank outgoing members Lars Løvold, Robert Nasi, and Gaia Allison, who have served FLARE in this important capacity from the very start.
Anders Krogh
Anders Krogh is a Senior Significance of Rainforest Special Adviser at Rainforest Foundation Norway (RFN) where he has gained more than a decade of knowledge and advocacy experience in protecting tropical rainforests and Indigenous Peoples’ rights.
—
Anne Larson
Anne Larson leads the Governance, Equity and Wellbeing team at CIFOR-ICRAF, and she has over 30 years of experience in research to action topics relating to land and forest tenure rights, environmental justice, and gender equity.
—
Estefania (Stef) Liehr
Estefania (Stef) Liehr leads the UK government’s Amazon strategy, advising on forest policy and issues affecting Indigenous peoples and local communities (IP&LC). She oversees a £94m programme strengthening IPLC land rights and governance across the Amazon Basin and chairs a cross-government group to align UK policy on IPLC.
Network News
Recognition of River Rights
River Rights Victory: Andrea Vasquez Fernandez (left) moderates the Q&A for the documentary “Karuara: People of the River” with Stephanie Boyd (middle) and Mariluz Canaquiri Murayari (right).
The year 2024 ended with historic gains for rivers in the Peruvian Amazon. A Peruvian Court of Appeals issued a landmark decision recognizing the Marañón River as having a series of intrinsic rights, including the right to exist, flow freely, and be pollution-free. Mariluz Canaquiri Murayari, who leads a federation of Kukama women in the lawsuit, participated in the 2024 FLARE Annual Meeting. The story of her people and work to safeguard the Marañón River was featured in the film “Karuara: People of the River,” co-produced by Stephanie Boyd. The FLARE meeting featured a film-showing and Q&A with Mariluz and Stephanie, moderated by 2023 Best Student Oral Presentation winner Andrea Vasquez Fernandez.
Read more about Mariluz and this landmark case in Stephanie’s blog post
—
Remembering Randy Borman
FLARE mourns the passing of Randy Borman, a leader of the Cofán people of the Ecuadorian Amazon who dedicated his life to Cofán land and rights. He helped establish the Cofán Ranger Program, which trained and supported Indigenous guardians to patrol and monitor their forests and became a model for Indigenous-led efforts well beyond the Amazon. Read more about Randy’s work and inspiring example
Special Issues & Working Groups
Forests Sustaining Agriculture, Landscape Ecology
Call for papers on “Forests sustaining agriculture: the contribution of tree-based ecosystem services to food production in multi-functional landscapes” for the journal Landscape Ecology. Studies welcome on different types of forest-food systems, including agroforestry, forest plantations, forest-adjacent food production systems, and the contributions of trees and forests within the landscape to spatially distinct food production systems. Students and Early Career Researchers encouraged to submit their research to this collection. This Special Issue is being supported by the FLARE Working Group on Forests Sustaining Agriculture led by Dr. Terry Sunderland. Submit your paper for consideration by April 3, 2025
—
Forest Sector Work, Forest Policy and Economics
Call for papers on “Taking stock of work and employment research in the forest sector” for the journal Forest Policy and Economics. The recent COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and other crises have further exacerbated existing challenges to forest-related work, particularly among those in the most disadvantaged situations, such as individuals in insecure forms of work, migrant workers, women, youth, indigenous and tribal peoples. This Special Issue relates to the FLARE Working Group on The Future of Forest Work and Communities led by Dr. Sarah Wilson. Submit your paper for consideration by May 31, 2025
—
Forest Livelihoods in a Changing Climate Working Group
Join the new FLARE Working Group on Forest Livelihoods in a Changing Climate! Forests and forest-reliant communities are uniquely threatened by a changing climate. This working group aims to strengthen understanding of what is needed for forest-reliant communities to adapt to a changing climate while sustaining forests and the ecosystem services they provide. The group is led by Dr. Karen Bailey, who may be reached at: Karen.Bailey@colorado.edu. If you are interested in this working group, please complete this survey.
Featured Research
Forests, poverty, and food security in Liberia. Work led by former FLARE postdoc and now assistant professor, Festus Amadu, provides new, national-scale evidence on the contribution of the forestry sector to poverty alleviation and food security in Liberia.
—
Forests and trees bring benefits to people in India. Two new papers by long-time FLARE colleagues, Forrest Fleischman, Pooja Choksi, Pushpendra Rana, Harry Fischer, and others, shed new light on how forest restoration and trees outside forests contribute to human wellbeing in India. Both find better results when there is more autonomy for locally based decision-makers.
New Global Dataset to Inform Action against Commodity-Driven Deforestation
The Deforestation Driver & Carbon Emission (DeDuCE) model, developed by Chandrakant Singh and Martin Persson of the University of Chalmers, aims to identify deforestation driven by expanding croplands, pastures, and forest plantations across the world. It estimates the associated carbon dioxide emissions and attributes the deforestation area and emissions to the commodities produced on the cleared forest land, providing deforestation and carbon footprints for about 9,000 points per year from 2001 onwards. The data is also linked to global trade models, allowing for assessment of deforestation embodied in international trade and consumption, and as such serves as a useful resource for assessing both proximate and underlying drivers of forest loss globally.
This and other datasets are available at https://www.forestlivelihoods.org/data/.
Opportunities
Jobs
The University of Manchester’s Global Development Initiative is seeking to appoint a 3-year post-doctoral researcher (flexible start date in 2025) to develop a qualitative research programme to deepen understanding of the relationship between land rights, decarbonisation processes (e.g., critical mineral extraction) and environmental and socio-economic benefits at specific sites in Mexico. This is work we will be conducting in partnership with collaborators at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). Deadline is 17 April 2025. Apply today!
—
Join Wyss Academy for Nature at the Office in Nanyuki, Kenya as a Research Scientist. The selected candidate will contribute to the interdisciplinary research project on payment for ecosystem services (ID PES), which tests a new methodology of landscape MRV including the monitoring of social and human wellbeing. Deadline is 10 March 2025. Apply Today!
—
Work with CIFOR-ICRAF in any of the following open positions: Project Communications Coordinator, Senior Manager, Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (ME&L), AI Consultant, Strategic Event Advisor, Project Designer – Resilient Landscapes, Translation & Transcription Quality Consultant, UX/UI Designer. Earliest deadline is 23 Mar 2025. Apply Today!
Upcoming Conferences of Interest
2nd Annual National Sustainability Society National Conference
Achieving sustainability, viewed as balancing social, economic, and environmental goals over time, requires transformative change. Current trajectories of change across these goals are rushing the planet and its people headlong towards biodiversity loss, climate change, socio-political polarization, and pollution. But these outcomes are not inevitable. Actions and choices for a different future, from the individual to organizational and societal levels and from nearer to the longer-term futures, have the power to ameliorate or reverse these outcomes. The second Annual National Sustainability Society conference will invite participation and contributions focusing on transformative change for a just and sustainable future.
Notre Dame, Indiana, USA
20-23 October 2025
Click here for more information
—
11th World Conference on Ecological Restoration (SER2025)
The Society for Ecological Restoration’s (SER) World Conference is an exciting and inspiring biennial gathering of global experts in restoration, making SER2025 the premier venue for those interested in being active members of the global restoration community.
Denver, Colorado, USA
30 September – 4 October 2025
Submit your abstract for consideration today!