Community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) is a major global strategy for enhancing conservation outcomes while also seeking to improve rural livelihoods; however, little evidence of socioeconomic outcomes exists. We present a national-level analysis that empirically estimates socioeconomic impacts of CBNRM across Tanzania, while systematically controlling for potential sources of bias. Specifically, we apply a difference-in-differences model to national-scale, cross-sectional data to estimate the impact of three different CBNRM governance regimes on wealth, food security and child health, considering differential impacts of CBNRM on wealthy and poor populations. We also explore whether or not longer-standing CBNRM efforts provide more benefits than recently-established CBNRM areas. Our results show significant improvements in household food security in CBNRM areas compared with non-CBNRM areas, but household wealth and health outcomes in children are generally not significantly different. No one CBNRM governance regime demonstrates consistently different welfare outcomes than the others. Wealthy households benefit more from CBNRM than poor households and CBNRM benefits appear to increase with longer periods of implementation. Perhaps evidence of CBNRM benefits is limited because CBNRM hasn't been around long enough to yield demonstrable outcomes. Nonetheless, achieving demonstrable benefits to rural populations will be crucial for CBNRM's future success in Tanzania.

"Improved" cooking technologies have been generally understood to be a "win–win" development intervention creating both environmental and development benefits. Yet dissemination of improved cooking technologies has faced many challenges. Carbon finance provides an opportunity to address some of the financial barriers in dissemination initiatives. However, the impacts of carbon finance on cookstove activities are not fully understood. Using India as a case study, this research examines how carbon financing is impacting cookstove dissemination efforts. Specifically this study identifies which actors in the Indian cookstove arena are engaged in carbon financed initiatives and how this is changing their business models and for those not applying for carbon finance, what their rational for this choice is. Results based on 19 semi-structured interviews provide an overview of different organizational approaches employed, perceptions around carbon financing, and identification of the opportunities, challenges and unknowns surrounding the use of carbon finance for cookstove dissemination.

The terms "landscape" and "landscape approach" have been increasingly applied within the international environmental realm, with many international organizations and nongovernmental organizations using landscapes as an area of focus for addressing multiple objectives, usually related to both environmental and social goals. However, despite a wealth of literature on landscapes and landscape approaches, ideas relating to landscape approaches are diverse and often vague, resulting in ambiguous use of the terms. Our aim, therefore, was to examine some of the main characteristics of different landscape approaches, focusing on how these might be applied in the process of taking a landscape approach. Drawing on a review of the literature, we identify and discuss three different kinds of landscape approaches: using the landscape scale, a sectoral landscape approach, and an integrated landscape approach. Focusing on an integrated landscape approach, we examine five concepts to help characterize landscape approaches: multifunctionality, transdisciplinarity, participation, complexity, and sustainability. For each term, a continuum of application exists. To help improve and move the integrated landscape approach more toward operationalization, more focus needs to be placed on the process of taking the approach. Although the process can be implemented in a range of ways, in a more integrated approach it will require explicitly defined objectives as well as a clear understanding of what is meant by multifunctionality and sustainability. It will also require collaborative participation, transdisciplinarity/cross-sectoral approaches, managing for adaptive capacity, and applying an iterative process to address the inherent complexity within the system. Although these concepts are not new, we present continuums on which they can exist, allowing for clarification and distinctions to be made regarding what it means to take a landscape approach.

Due to scarcity of firewood, farmers in rural Ethiopia are forced to use cattle dung as a complementary energy source. By looking at patterns of firewood and cattle dung use for energy generation and their implications for food crop production, forest regeneration and community level emission reduction potentials, this study explores system interactions using a community living next to the Menagesha Suba state forest in Ethiopia as a case study. Mixed methods were used including household surveys, nutrient content analyses of firewood and cattle dung, and calculations of fuel and emission reductions for four cooking energy efficiency scenarios. It was found that the community and surrounding environment is stuck in a negative feedback cycle. Therefore shifts in current practices and systems are needed to break this cycle, for example by enhancing firewood supply, improving soil fertility, improving energy efficiency and enabling access to carbon financing for emissions reduced.

The opportunity to apply for carbon credits for cookstove projects creates a source of funding that can be leveraged to promote the "win-win" environmental and development benefits of improved cookstoves. Yet, as in most environment-development efforts, unacknowledged trade-offs exist under the all-encompassing "win-win" claims. This study therefore compares different scenarios for calculating cookstove carbon credits, including comparing different types of stoves using different fuels, different methodologies and theoretical scenarios to account for a range of climate-relevant emissions. The results of the study highlight the following: 1) impacts of different assumptions made within carbon credit methodologies, 2) discussion around potential trade-offs in such projects, and 3) considerations needed to truly promote sustainable development. The Gold Standard methodology was more comprehensive in its accounting and generally calculated more carbon credits per scenario than the Clean Development Mechanism methodology. Including black carbon in calculations would be more reflective of climate-relevant stove emissions and greatly increase the number of credits calculated. As health and other development benefits are not inherently included in carbon credit calculations, to achieve "win-win" outcomes, deliberate decisions about project design need to be made to ensure objectives are met and not simply assumed.

Cookstove projects have long been considered “win–win” development projects based on the multitude of benefits they can create. Carbon credits provide a new financing mechanism to fund such cookstove projects, but have been criticized as not always successfully meeting sustainable development goals. By drawing on previous literature this article critically looks at trade-offs between the maximization of climate and health benefits of cookstove projects in the context of carbon credits. It finds that carbon credits inherently account for climate benefits, but not for health. Therefore, clear objectives of cookstove interventions need to be defined prior to project implementation to insure the maximization of benefits in projects’ priority areas.