This paper examines how regulatory interventions influence the evidence ecosystems underlying policymaking. Much research on evidence-informed policymaking focuses on how evidence influences policy decisions, with less attention paid to how policy reforms themselves shape what counts as evidence and who is authorized to generate it. This paper addresses these overlooked issues in the evidence-informed policymaking (EIPM) literature by analysing how the nascent European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) – formulated primarily based on evidence of the impacts of the EU’s consumption choices on tropical deforestation – is being interpreted and implemented in the coffee sectors of Ethiopia and Kenya. Drawing in evidence across key informant interviews (19) and four (4) multi-stakeholder workshops across both countries, the paper shows that EUDR compliance requirements are reconfiguring the coffee evidence ecosystems in both countries by elevating standardised, auditable forms of data – such as geolocation, traceability records and deforestation-risk verification – as prerequisites for market access. This shift narrows what counts as policy-relevant evidence, privileges powerful actors with the capacity to generate, curate, and broker such data while marginalising smallholder coffee farmers and locally embedded knowledge systems. The role of evidence with the advent of the EUDR is being transformed from an input to policy deliberation into an instrument of regulatory control, reconfiguring how local actors define and operationalize climate resilient coffee. These findings indicate that supply-chain regulations function not only as legal and market mechanisms but also as epistemic interventions that can reorganise knowledge systems within producer countries. By foregrounding the politics of evidence in global commodity governance, this paper enriches existing discussions on EIPM, equity and climate-resilient agriculture, highlighting the need to address the distributional consequences of emerging data-driven regulatory regimes.

Sustaining yields for smallholder perennial agriculture under a rapidly changing climate regime may require consideration of landscape features and on-farm management decisions in tandem. Optimising landscape and management may not be possible for maximising yields in any one year but maintaining heterogeneous landscapes could be an important climate adaptation strategy. In this study, we observed elevation, forest patch and shade management gradients affecting smallholder coffee ( Coffea arabica ) yields in a ‘normal’ year versus the 2015/16 El Niño. We generally found a benefit to yields from having leguminous shade trees and low canopy openness, while maintaining diverse shade or varying canopy openness had more complex influences during a climate shock. The two years of observed climate shock were dominated by either drought or high temperatures, with yield responses generally negative. Climate projections for East Africa predict more erratic rainfall and higher temperatures, which will disproportionately impact smallholder farmers.

Tropical forests are the most diverse and productive ecosystems on Earth. While better understanding of these forests is critical for our collective future, until quite recently efforts to measure and monitor them have been largely disconnected. Networking is essential to discover the answers to questions that transcend borders and the horizons of funding agencies. Here we show how a global community is responding to the challenges of tropical ecosystem research with diverse teams measuring forests tree-by-tree in thousands of long-term plots. We review the major scientific discoveries of this work and show how this process is changing tropical forest science. Our core approach involves linking long-term grassroots initiatives with standardized protocols and data management to generate robust scaled-up results. By connecting tropical researchers and elevating their status, our Social Research Network model recognises the key role of the data originator in scientific discovery. Conceived in 1999 with RAINFOR (South America), our permanent plot networks have been adapted to Africa (AfriTRON) and Southeast Asia (T-FORCES) and widely emulated worldwide. Now these multiple initiatives are integrated via ForestPlots.net cyber-infrastructure, linking colleagues from 54 countries across 24 plot networks. Collectively these are transforming understanding of tropical forests and their biospheric role. Together we have discovered how, where and why forest carbon and biodiversity are responding to climate change, and how they feedback on it. This long-term pan-tropical collaboration has revealed a large long-term carbon sink and its trends, as well as making clear which drivers are most important, which forest processes are affected, where they are changing, what the lags are, and the likely future responses of tropical forests as the climate continues to change. By leveraging a remarkably old technology, plot networks are sparking a very modern revolution in tropical forest science. In the future, humanity can benefit greatly by nurturing the grassroots communities now collectively capable of generating unique, long-term understanding of Earth's most precious forests.

This article examines the role of forest products in the livelihoods of forest-dependent households in the Yayu Coffee Forest Biosphere Reserve in the South Western part of Ethiopia. Unlike many forest landscapes, households in Yayu district cultivate their primary crop, coffee, in a complex landscape. Sampled households (n = 241) were chosen based on the stratified random sampling method. We employ both descriptive statistics and econometric regression to assess the extent of forest product use and analyse the determinants of forest income, respectively. We find that relatively poor households are more dependent on forest resources as a share of total income than better-off households. We further find that households in the Yayu district use non-timber forest products (NTFPs) mainly for consumption. The current zoning arrangements around the biosphere reserve support the provision of NTFPs, particularly for poorer households and should be considered for replication in other complex landscapes.

Smallholder farmers dependent on rain-fed agriculture are particularly vulnerable to extreme climate events and, therefore, it is necessary to identify adaptive measures that would increase farmer resilience to these shocks. The management options in a low-input system, like forest coffee (Coffea arabica), are limited and there are several factors out of farmers’ control driving their vulnerability to changing climatic conditions. These can relate to social structures and landscape factors, which can interact to reduce farmers’ adaptive capacity, creating a state of contextual vulnerability. We explored the potential synergies of this interaction across elevation, patch area and shade management gradients for smallholder coffee farms around the UNESCO Yayu Coffee Forest Biosphere Reserve in Ethiopia before, during and immediately following the 2015/16 El Niño. We documented a dramatic collapse in coffee yields across all farms, resulting in coffee incomes 29.5% ± 18.0% and 19.5% ± 10.0% of 2014 incomes in 2015 and 2016, respectively. We identified farms at elevations between 1500 and 1600 m with canopy openness between 40% and 45% as being consistently low yielding over our study period. We found these farmers had the highest rates of income diversification and, therefore, were already exhibiting adaptive capacity. Farmers with the largest income losses were spatially concentrated between 1600 and 1700 m, located in larger patch areas with lower canopy openness. Farmers at this elevation have access to poor infrastructure, restrictions on shade management and reported higher dependence on income from coffee, indicating an interaction of biotic and social factors exacerbating their vulnerability. Unfortunately, due to a nationally declared state of emergency, we were unable to survey farmers on the adaptive measures they undertook; therefore, we are limited in assessing their resilience. However, we do show the importance of considering both biotically and socially-mediated influences for assessing smallholder vulnerability, particularly barriers to diversifying incomes.

The household dietary diversity score (HDDS) has been increasingly used as indicator for economic ability of a household to access a variety of foods. For this paper 308 rural households in Yayu biosphere reserve, Ilu Ababora Zone, Oromia National Regional State, Ethiopia were interviewed. The data was collected in April/May 2016 prior to the implementation of NutriHAF Africa Project. The latter aims to integrate appropriate vegetables into multi-storey cropping systems to increase nutrition security, diversify and intensify agriculture and thus to reduce pressure on natural habitats in biodiversity hotspots. Following the FAO (2010) guideline for measuring household dietary diversity, respondents were asked to recall all foods eaten and beverages taken by the whole household on the previous day. The results show a mean HDDS of 5.2 (SD=1.9). In addition, it was analyzed which food groups were predominately consumed at different levels of the scores and whether dietary diversity is correlated to the household economic status and meal frequency. While 60 % of households had a medium HDDS of 4–6 food groups (N=186) about equal shares of households had either a low HDDS of ≤3 (N=58) or a high HDDS of 7–12 (N=64). The food groups mainly consumed by households with low HDDS were cereals, white tubers and roots, and legumes/nuts/seeds while only few consumed vegetables (5.2 %) or fruits (3.4%). In contrast, most households with high HDDS consumed vegetables (95.3%) and fruits (85.9%) while those with medium HDDS only to some extent (vegetables 58.1 %; fruits 17.2%). Dark green leafy vegetables were consumed by only 7.5 % of all households. The respondents were also classified as poor, middle and high income based on their economic status. As expected, economically better off households were identified with higher meal frequency and higher HDDS while poorer households with low HDDS were identified to have fewer meal frequency. In order to assess the change in the HDD situation and vegetable consumption one year after the intervention of the NutriHAF Africa project, including the introduction of new vegetable species, a second round survey in April 2017 took place and data will be included in the final analysis.