Sustainable woodland management and livelihood options in a charcoal producing region: An agent-based modelling approach.

Woodland resources provide livelihoods for millions of people in Africa. Concerns about the impact of human utilization of woodlands have led to vigorous debates on woodland degradation. Ecological and socio-economic empirical data and understanding of the socio-ecological system have been synthesized in an agent-based model (ABM) to explore different woodland management options for a dynamic, semi-arid region in Kenya. In our simulations we accounted for the impacts of drought frequency, charcoal price changes, improved management practices and taxation of charcoal for a 20-year period to assess woodland changes in a spatially explicit way and evaluate the numbers of actors that can benefit from charcoal harvesting as a livelihood option.