Partly, this reflects the ubiquity of tree products and services and the complex inter-connecting selleck products pathways by which trees influence livelihoods, which are often hard to delineate (e.g., Turner et al., 2012). It also reflects the different sources

– from inside and outside forests – of tree products and services. Since forest and farmland sources are assessed differently by government forestry and agriculture departments, a proper synthesis of the overall value of tree products and services across these sources is hard to achieve (de Foresta et al., 2013). Complexities in quantification and a lack of proper appreciation of benefits help explain why the roles (and limitations) of trees in supporting local peoples’ livelihoods have frequently been neglected by policy makers, and why rural development interventions concerned with managing trees in forests and farms have sometimes been poorly targeted (Belcher and Schreckenberg, 2007 and World Bank, 2008). From a genetic perspective, the value of intra-specific variation in tree species and the importance of managing this variation to support rural livelihoods have also received relatively little attention from policy makers (Dawson et al., 2009), despite the benefits that rural communities can gain when proper consideration is given (Fisher and Gordon,

2007). Tree genetic resources exist Pregnenolone at different levels of domestication of both populations and species, while the landscapes Selleckchem ABT 199 within which they are located are themselves domesticated to a greater or lesser extent (Michon, 2005). A few forest landscapes can

be considered completely natural, but generally some degree of human management has taken place (Clement, 1999 and Clement and Junqueira, 2010). Indeed, some trees that provide foods valued by humans have been subject to domestication in forest environments for millennia in processes of ‘co-domestication’ (sensu Wiersum, 1997) of the forest and the tree. The level of domestication of the tree itself – from incipiently- to fully-domesticated (i.e., from being only unconsciously managed and selected to being dependent on humans for its continued existence; Harlan, 1975) – and of the landscape in which it is found are both crucial in understanding how rural communities currently benefit from trees, and how to optimise future value through improved management. This review, which is derived from an analysis supporting the publication of FAO’s recent global synthesis on the State of the World’s Forest Genetic Resources (the SOW-FGR, as described by Loo et al., 2014, this special issue; FAO, 2014), provides information on what we know about the value of trees to rural communities in the context of both the level of tree domestication that has taken place and the management setting.