International Forestry Resources and Institutions
The International Forestry Resources and Institutions (IFRI) Network is a collective of research partners at 12 universities or non-governmental organizations in 11 countries around the world that focus on how institutions and governance arrangements shape forest use and management outcomes. Scholars and policy makers affiliated with IFRI are interested in understanding the role of formal and informal institutions in enhancing livelihoods and adaptive capacity of peoples, conserving biodiversity, and promoting greater sustainability in carbon sequestration. IFRI's goal is to carry out rigorous research that can help policy makers and forest users design and  implement improved evidence-based forest policies. IFRI comprises partner collaborating research institutes in North America, Latin America, Asia and Africa. IFRI utilizes the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework, created at the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University by Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues. The IFRI research program was initiated in 1992 at Indiana University. It moved in 2006 to University of Michigan where it is currently housed at the School of Natural Resources and Environment and coordinated by Arun Agrawal. Collaborating Resource Centers. In addition to Indiana University and the University of Michigan, the following  institutions are partners in the program: Goals. Some of the goals of the IFRI network are to: 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: The IFRI is unique from other research programs and databases in that: