A review of nurseries as conservation or social forestry outreach tools

Conservation and social forestry outreach nurseries have been implemented extensively with local stakeholders internationally to achieve a variety of conservation and social forestry objectives. In this paper, key issues affecting the development of these projects are reviewed, starting with a brief overview of the development of people-centred approaches to natural resource management, followed by an examination of the concept of 'sustainability', which underpins most of these initiatives. A complex web of inter-related political, socio-economic and environmental factors influence the development of outreach projects, with the transdisciplinary nature of these initiatives posing substantial challenges at both research and implementation levels. A model is presented to facilitate the assessment of projects and the assumptions on which they are based. Management approaches, such as adaptive management, participatory methodologies and asset-based approaches are also discussed, as are group processes, which ...