Abstract: The lived realities of many rural communities, and even the urban poor in Kenya, are characterised by poverty, inequality, high dependence on natural resources, rainfed agriculture, and sociocultural norms that influence their action or inaction. Recurrent droughts, floods, and changing rainfall patterns, largely caused by climate change and climate variability, further reinforce these communities' challenges.

This paper examine how religious mandates of the holy month of Ramadan affect the gendered distribution of time use within Muslim households in India. Using rich data on time use from a nationally representative time use survey and employing a difference-in-differences methodology, the researchers test if Ramadan accentuates gender differences in time use. It is found that, contrary to popular belief, Ramadan moderates the gender disparities in intra-household time use for Muslim households.

We examine the environment as a mechanism for building substantial integration in Colombia. In environmental peacebuilding, substantial integration is a positive peace dimension characterized by trans-societal links that foster social cohesion. Employing data from the Amazonian Department of Caquetá, we argue that the Government of Colombia is pursuing a peacebuilding approach that impedes opportunities to forge an inclusive social order. Instead, it has forcibly integrated frontier communities to advance an extractive peace that perpetuates longstanding patterns of resource violence.

In this study, we estimate the marginal effects of increasing forest cover on dengue prevalence in Costa Rica using econometric models to relate hospital admission records to forest cover maps from 2001 and 2011. We find that increasing the percentage of forest cover significantly decreases both the number of hospital admissions for dengue and the probability of an outbreak.

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This final paper in the Special Issue on Latin America summarizes the contributions of the 15 previous and more specialized papers under the themes of 1) defining characteristics of Latin American forestry and its comparison with forestry in other parts of the world, 2) policies that make a difference specifically for  Latin America and 3) Latin America's developing forest industry.

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