International Forestry Resources and Institutions - Goals

Goals

Some of the goals of the IFRI network are to:

• determine how to change processes leading to deforestation in many countries of the world;
• assess the nature of tradeoffs among forest conservation, livelihoods promotion, and carbon sequestration
• analyze the role of institutions and policies in promoting better forest outcomes

IFRI provides a way for people to collect, store, and analyze data over time about forests and the communities that use forests. It can be used to:

• conduct baseline studies;
• measure change over time in forest conditions and in local governance structures; and
• share information with pertinent and interested colleagues.

The IFRI is unique from other research programs and databases in that:

• it is composed of a network of Collaborating Research Centers (CRCs) that utilize a common research methodology and database that includes a diverse array of variables taken from the environmental and social sciences;
• the design of the IFRI research instruments is based on the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework and previous theoretical and empirical studies. The IAD framework, developed by colleagues at the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University, provides a unique way for researchers to transcend disciplinary boundaries;
• IFRI focuses and collects data on institutional, social, and ecological variables which can be stored in a single IFRI database, and analyzed to understand the inter-relationships among social and ecological processes and outcomes.