Nepal: the second country with a national agroforestry policy
Nepal: the second country with a national agroforestry policy
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Nepal is the 2nd country in the world to have a national agroforestry policy. This was possible through FTA support.
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FTA brings evidence-based research and technical support to the table
In landlocked, mountainous Nepal – a country with 45% forest cover – agroforestry is not a new practice. Many farmers have kept trees in and around croplands to diversify their incomes and build resilience to the shocks of a changing climate.
But legal restrictions on the trade of timber and forest products and the harvest and transport of trees grown on agricultural land, combined with 32 (often contradictory) national polices that referred to agroforestry, have largely discouraged farmers from growing trees on their farms.
Change is now in course!
In 2019, following India, Nepal became the second country in the world to have a national agroforestry policy. As the world’s largest research for development program to enhance the role of forests, trees and agroforestry in sustainable development, the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA) – through its partner World Agroforestry (ICRAF) – played a pivotal role in the development of the policy, building on its previous experience in India in 2014. In 2016 and 2017, the development of the policy was supported by a program by the Climate Technology Centre and Network (CTCN).
“The dividends of implementing the agroforestry policy in India are impressive: around 2% increase in forest and tree cover during 2015–2019 – of that around 1.8 % is outside of forests – and trees grown outside forests are producing more than 70% of the country’s timber requirement reducing pressure on forests. We expect a similar transformative impact of policy implementation in Nepal,” said ICRAF Principal Scientist and Regional Director of the South Asia Regional Program, Dr Javed Rizvi.
Nepal is among the world’s most vulnerable countries to the effects of climate change, such as droughts, storms, landslides, soil erosion and avalanches. Melting snow and glaciers in the Himalayas result in devastating glacier lake outburst floods.
Agroforestry is recognized by more than 60 countries as a tool either for adaptation or mitigation of climate change, according CGIAR research, as well as being a proven way to improve food, nutritional and environmental security. Thus, development of the policy is in line with Nepal’s Nationally Determined Contributions (2016) and Climate Change Policy (2011).
Extensive engagement
“Any process leading to wide-scale change in the land-use sector has to be inclusive and multifaceted. We adopted a holistic approach, the most reasonable and efficient pathway for inducing transformational changes in complex and socially-differentiated agricultural areas,” said Dr Rizvi, who was confirmed as the only non-governmental member of the inter-ministerial committee (IMC) that oversaw the policy development. To date, he remains associated with the committee that oversees policy implementation.
Recognition of the need to formulate and implement a National Agroforestry Policy in Nepal originated during the three-day national consultation workshop on agroforestry held in Kathmandu on 26–28 March 2015. Involving more than 150 stakeholders representing various sectors related with agriculture, forestry and rural development, the workshop was jointly organized by the Ministry of Agriculture Development (MOAD), Ministry of Forest and Soil Conservation (MFSC), the Asia Network for Sustainable Agriculture and Bioresources (ANSAB), and ICRAF. This consultation led to the 2015 Kathmandu Declaration on Agroforestry. Signed by the Secretaries of the Ministry of Agricultural Development and the Ministry of Forest and Soil Conservation, the Declaration called for the development of an agroforestry policy for Nepal to help improve the livelihoods of smallholders and enhance their socioeconomic resilience.
In seven consultations held between 2016 and 2018, perspectives were gathered from more than 550 stakeholders and incorporated into the draft policy, which was submitted to the Ministry of Agricultural Development in September 2018. After approval by the Cabinet in a session chaired by the Prime Minister, the final policy was launched on 3 July 2019 by the Minister of Agriculture in Kathmandu.
ICRAF provided technical support to the inter-ministerial committee constituted to oversee the policy formulation, with financing from the Climate Technology Centre and Network. This support included an analysis of 32 policies, laws and strategies affecting agroforestry in Nepal, pointing to a clear need to develop a new agroforestry policy.
“It took a lot of engagement with a lot of people at all levels of society, from ministers and secretaries of departments through to state leaderships to communities and farmers’ associations. Throughout the process, we continuously worked with the government and stakeholders as a trusted technical partner and supported the process based on our experience with Indian agroforestry policy,” said Dr Rizvi.
Launching the policy, Agriculture Minister Mr Chakrapani Khanal said, “With the approval and launch of the National Agroforestry Policy, Nepal achieved the distinction of being second country globally, after India, to launch an agroforestry policy”.
Launch of the policy by the Minister and Secretary of Agriculture; member, Planning Commission of Nepal; with Dr Javed Rizvi (left to right). Photo: World Agroforestry (Mohammad Abiar/ICRAF)
During the consultation period, engagement also spread beyond national borders. Through its South Asia Regional Program (SARP), ICRAF initiated brainstorming with government policymakers, thinktanks, researchers and others on the requirements of a national agroforestry policy. Currently, the program is working with stakeholders in Bangladesh and Maldives on their agroforestry policies.
In 2019, SARP and its partners, especially the Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR) and Tamil Nadu Agriculture University trained 26 mid-level policymakers from Asia and Africa[1] in agroforestry policy, research, innovation and development, catalyzing agroforestry research and development in the respective countries. Between 10 and 24 October, 2019, the group participated in three phases of training, first at ICRAF’s Delhi office, then at the Central Agroforestry Research Institute (CAFRI) in Jhansi, Uttar Pradesh, and finally at the Forest College and Research Institute (FCRI) in Mettupalayam, Tamil Nadu. The curriculum comprised 26 classroom lectures, 8 case studies and several field visits.
Addressing the trainees, Mustapha El Hamzaoui, Director of the Food Security Office at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in India, which funded the training, said: “Agroforestry is the ideal approach to secure a sustainable future for humankind. You are all becoming ambassadors of agroforestry for your countries”.
The program ignited interest from the South and Southeast Asian regions. ICRAF is also working with member states of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). ASEAN ministers of agriculture and forestry adopted the ASEAN Guidelines for Agroforestry Development in 2018, and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) established a technical cooperation program with ASEAN to implement the guidelines, focusing on three pilot countries: Cambodia, Lao PDR and Myanmar. FTA, through ICRAF, is the program’s main technical partner.
“Under this cooperation, national agroforestry roadmaps will be developed to guide activities moving forward,” said Delia Catacutan, Regional Coordinator of ICRAF in Southeast Asia.
Trainees, trainers and donor representatives at the inaugural day of the training
Trainees, trainers and donor representatives at the inaugural day of the training
Roadmap to impact
The National Agroforestry Policy is expected to clear the path for a more comprehensive use of agroforestry by smallholders, and to strengthen the capacity of policymakers, researchers and extension workers to promote more resilient farming systems, support tree-planting initiatives, and ensure ecological stability by reducing pressure on natural forests from over-collection of fuelwood and fodder. It also aims to facilitate investment in agroforestry and promote connections between agroforestry farmers and markets, industries, banks and insurance providers.
Intensifying the agricultural value of cultivated areas, agroforestry – which can be less labor-intensive than annual crop farming – could be a game-changer in rural communities affected by migration. As young men (mainly) leave their villages for paid work in other parts of the country or overseas, it is the elders, women and children who must bear the burden of cultivating the fields. This results in underused existing agricultural land and household incomes suffering. Agroforestry could help communities develop new income streams and get more out of their land – without having to cover so much ground.
Mapping it out
Land productivity varies widely across Nepal, making it difficult for government planners, development agencies and scientists to target suitable areas for agroforestry in order to implement the policy. In many situations data is not available. For this reason ICRAF continues to provide scientific evidence-based advice to support the development of agroforestry in the country. Researchers from the Vindhyan Ecology and Natural History Foundation, Ranchi University, Ministry of Forest and Environment of Nepal, and ICRAF’s South Asia Regional Program used different geospatial datasets of land, soil, climate and topography to identify potential areas where trees can be sustainably established on farms. In 2020 they published their findings in the journal Modeling Earth Systems and Environment.
“Agroforestry is very important for Nepal to improve livelihoods and the resilience of smallholders to the challenges of climate change and extreme events. In close collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development, ICRAF and the provincial governments, we are mainstreaming agroforestry in our programs,” said Bishwa Nath Oli, Secretary, Ministry of Forests and Environment, Government of Nepal.
This is a result that FTA is proud to have facilitated.
[1] Trainees were from Bangladesh, Botswana, Cambodia, Malawi, Myanmar, Nepal, Kenya, Sri Lanka, Tanzania and Uganda.
This article was written by Erin O’Connell.
Produced by the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA) together with one of its managing partners, the International Bamboo and Rattan Organisation (INBAR). FTA is the world’s largest research for development program to enhance the role of forests, trees and agroforestry in sustainable development and food security and to address climate change. CIFOR leads FTA in partnership with Bioversity International, CATIE, CIRAD, INBAR, ICRAF and TBI. FTA’s work is supported by the CGIAR Trust Fund.
Contribute! Roadmaps for primary forests conservation and innovative forest technologies in the Asia-Pacific region – the main results of the inception workshop
Contribute! Roadmaps for primary forests conservation and innovative forest technologies in the Asia-Pacific region – the main results of the inception workshop
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Following the recommendations of the ‘Third Asia-Pacific Forest Sector Outlook Study’ (FAO, 2019)[1], FAO and CIFOR, lead center of the CGIAR research programme on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA), are developing two inter-related roadmaps for primary forest conservation, and for innovative forest technologies in the Asia-Pacific region. These roadmaps will include key recommendations (policy and concrete actions) informed by science. They will be developed through an inclusive and participative process, involving key regional stakeholders and technical experts and paying a specific attention to the contributions of students and people engaged in activities related to the forest sector in the Asia-Pacific region.
On July 30th, 2020, FAO and FTA co-organized an online inception workshop to launch this collective process with three objectives in mind: (i) agree on the global direction of the two roadmaps; (ii) identify potential contributors; (iii) start building a strong community around these roadmaps to ensure a large participation to the process. The workshop combined plenary sessions with parallel sessions in smaller breaking groups (seven groups of 8-10 persons each) with the view to ensure both inclusiveness and active participation.
The workshop attracted a wide and diversified audience, representative of the key stakeholder groups in the region (international organizations, governments, private sector, civil society, research and academia).
The first session, devoted to primary forest conservation, was the occasion to discuss the main threats facing primary forest conservation, among which: climate change and natural disasters; population and economic growth; overexploitation and illegal exploitation of forests; conflicting land uses; inconsistent policies across sectors and scales; corruption, weak governance, migration and conflicts. Participants in the workshop identified many ‘hotspots’ for primary forest conservation and suggested for the roadmap to develop a list of criteria that could help describing and mapping these hotspots across the region and contribute to prioritize conservation efforts. Among such criteria were mentioned: size, level of threats, as well as richness and uniqueness of the ecosystem (considering its environmental, economic, social and cultural values).
Participants recommended to adopt an integrated, cross-sectoral, multi-stakeholder forest governance, articulated at all scales. Remnant primary forests should be considered within the broader landscape, taking into account the dynamics at stake in surrounding areas (e.g. planted forests, agricultural land, infrastructures and human settlements) that directly or indirectly impact primary forest status and trends. Among the institutional challenges for primary forest conservation, participants highlighted: the accurate monitoring of primary forest values; the sustainable funding of forest conservation; the importance of education and capacity building; the effective enforcement of existing laws and rules.
During the second session, the following categories of innovative technologies appeared as the most promising for sustainable forestry and sustainable forest management: ICTs/digital technologies; low-carbon technologies; biotechnologies; and emerging finance technologies. Most participants shared the feeling that innovation benefits will outweigh the risks. Innovative technologies can provide new products and services; generate further income and employment opportunities in the forest sector; and, by reducing waste, enhance the sustainable management of natural forest resources. However, the negative impacts of new technologies on local communities – including in terms of access to natural resources, food security, employment and livelihoods -, on natural ecosystems and on biodiversity should not be overlooked. In particular, the adoption and dissemination of innovative technologies will likely produce a shift in the labour market: generating new skilled job but destroying unskilled jobs and marginalizing traditional practices.
Among the main barriers to uptake and upscale of technologies, participants identified: (i) the lack of capacity (infrastructures and equipment, human capital and financial resources); and, (ii) restrictive policies and regulations lagging behind the rapid evolution of technologies and the rapid shifts in wood demand. One of the major challenges will be to “scale-down” innovative technologies and adapt them to each local context, so that they can also benefits to traditional users, smallholders and local communities. Participants agreed that regional cooperation, investment, infrastructure development, education and capacity building will be key to overcome these barriers, support technology transfer and dissemination, and accompany the populations at risk of being marginalized by these technological advances. They highlighted the importance for the public and private sectors to work hand-in-hand to address these issues.
Consumers have a lot of power for orienting the forest sector towards sustainability. Consequently, these roadmaps should contribute to raise consumer awareness on the two topics discussed during this workshop.
During the workshop, participants demonstrated their high level of interest and enthusiasm for the two topics discussed. This raises high expectations regarding the outcomes of this collective process. Thomas HOFER, Senior Forestry Officer in FAO Regional office for Asia and the Pacific (FAO-RAP, Bangkok), thus invited all participants to maintain their level of engagement in the coming months and to contribute actively to the work ahead with innovative ideas, out-of-the-box thinking and a forward-looking perspective, in the spirit of the ‘Third Asia-Pacific Forest Sector Outlook Study’.
At the end of the workshop, Vincent GITZ, FTA director, presented the next steps of the collective process of development of the two roadmaps.
After the workshop, the scopes of the two roadmaps were refined, based on the comments received.
In the coming months, FAO and FTA will invite further contributions to the roadmaps through different channels: (i) direct interviews of selected key regional stakeholders; (ii) an open online consultation; and, (iii) an essay competition for students and young people engaged in activities related to the forest sector in the region. Following this inception workshop, additional technical workshops will be organized as appropriate, at critical stages of the process.
The open consultation was framed based on the suggestions received during the workshop. It aims at collecting scientific and local/traditional knowledge, experience and best practices, views and perspectives, suggestions and recommendations on primary forest conservation and on the application of innovative technologies in forestry and forest management in the Asia-Pacific region.
The consultation is open till November 15th, 2020NOW EXTENDED UNTIL 15 DECEMBER!
Young people will be the managers and decision-makers of tomorrow. They have shown their capacity to generate and spearhead trans-national mobilization to address environmental challenges, such as climate change, and advance sustainable development. They can be instrumental in shaping a sustainable future by taking leadership roles and generating momentum through collaboration and social media, and by transforming rigid institutions from within and participating to the uptake and upscale of innovative technologies in the forest sector.
This is why FAO and FTA decided to organize a competition to encourage contributions from students and young people engaged in activities related to the forest sector in the Asia-Pacific region. Youth are invited to share their experience, expectations and recommendations regarding the use of innovative technologies to advance sustainable forest management in Asia and the Pacific. This competition will take place in two steps: (1) call for abstracts, (2) development of the selected contributions.
The call for abstracts is open till November 15th, 2020NOW EXTENDED UNTIL 15 DECEMBER!
The main findings and recommendations of the two roadmaps, as well as the best youth papers, will be presented and discussed during a regional multi-stakeholder workshop possibly organized back-to-back to the XV World Forestry Congress to be held in Seoul, Republic of Korea (24-28 May 2021).
The final objective is to publish the technical paper and the corresponding policy brief by end November 2021.
[1]FAO. 2019. Forest futures – Sustainable pathways for forests, landscapes and people in the Asia Pacific region. Asia-Pacific Forest Sector Outlook Study III. Bangkok. 352 pp. http://www.fao.org/3/ca4627en/ca4627en.pdf
This article was produced by the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA). FTA is the world’s largest research for development program to enhance the role of forests, trees and agroforestry in sustainable development and food security and to address climate change. CIFOR leads FTA in partnership with Bioversity International, CATIE, CIRAD, INBAR, ICRAF and TBI. FTA’s work is supported by the CGIAR Trust Fund.
Sustainable Food Systems for All: Inclusivity Matters!
Sustainable Food Systems for All: Inclusivity Matters!
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On World Food Day, we wish to acknowledge the critical role of forests, trees and agroforestry to global FSN
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World Food Day 2020: underlining the role of forests, trees and agroforestry for food security and nutrition.
Despite the global fight against food and nutrition insecurity, the world still suffers from an increasing number of hungry people, persistently high rates of stunted children, and a growing population of overweight and obese adults. Not enough progress has been made towards reaching the second Sustainable Development Goal related to zero hunger. The Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated these issues even further, exposing the flaws of our current food system. The current ‘business as usual’ model of feeding the world by focusing on producing more foods does not work; It destroys the environment and leaves marginalized people behind. How can we redesign our food systems to be more inclusive and ecologically sustainable, while providing sufficient and nutritious food for everyone? Today is the perfect time to reflect on this question as we celebrate ‘World Food’ in the middle of a pandemic that has been projected to cause more than a quarter billion of additional hungry people by the end of this year.
The Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) food and nutrition researcher Mulia Nurhasan, highlighted the role of forests, trees and agroforestry for food security and nutrition. Scientific evidence has shown that forests and trees are linked to dietary diversity and better nutritional status of children and women.
Amazon wild fruits. Brazil. Photo by Neil Palmer/CIAT
Forests, trees and agroforestry also provide a multitude of ecosystem services that could simultaneously support food production, nutrition, environment and human health. CIFOR leads the largest research and development program on forests, trees and agroforestry (FTA), to address among other, food security and climate change issues. With findings from FTA research and more, Mulia urged for food security and nutrition programs that maintain forests intact, feed local people, diversify their diets and enhance the ecosystem services of their surroundings.
Above-ground and below-ground biomass in mangrove ecosystems. Kubu Raya, West Kalimantan, Indonesia. Photo by Sigit Deni Sasmito/CIFOR
Santosh Singh, head of Energy, Climate Change and Agriculture at Intellecap, an impact enterprise that aims to support equitable and inclusive markets, advocated for the practice of circularity and sustainability to be mainstreamed in food production systems. Circularity encompasses several elements including sustainable production practices, investment in consumer behavioural change and localisation of food systems through circular agriculture approaches. This way, farmers can diversify income sources and reduce their costs of cultivation, helping address both poverty and food waste.
Building resilient food systems requires inclusive action
Inclusive food systems involve and integrate people from diverse backgrounds and across generations. This takes into account that people are their own agents of change. The 2020 Global Food Policy Report highlights that policies on food security must acknowledge the imperative role of youth, women, indigenous people and other marginalised groups in shaping their food systems.
Happy Grocers, a youth-led, female-led start-up based in Bangkok, is a shining example of the vital role that youth activism can play for food security. Their co-founder Moh Suthasiny, shared how this social enterprise is redesigning city-regional food systems from the bottom-up. The vision of the young Happy Grocers team is to educate and empower conscious urban Bangkokian consumers who can actively support small-scale rural farmers through their sustainable consumer behaviour.
Indigenous communities are sometimes perceived as the target of development support. But interestingly, in these times of the pandemic, many of them seem to be more resilient towards the global food supply shock, due to their self-reliance and nature dependent lifestyle, which is sometimes erroneously interpreted as a sign of underdevelopment. Indigenous communities who live near the forest have also been the custodians of biodiversity through sustainable consumption of wild foods across centuries. We need to acknowledge and protect indigenous food systems for their fundamental contribution to the sustainability of global food systems.
Women in Kapuas Hulu helping prepare for local food. Photo by Icaro Cooke Vieira/CIFOR
The session concluded with a discussion on the necessity to redesign food systems in a way that they are truly sustainable for all. Panellists agreed that in order to achieve a long-lasting sustainability, food systems need to be fully inclusive and ecological. While it is crucial to ensure that we are able to feed a growing population, narrowly focusing on producing more food has hampered efforts to achieve many other development goals. All stakeholders in food systems need to be recognized as agents of change, development programs need to extend their scope beyond feeding the world and need to strive to empower food system actors to be part of the solution, and recognize that we all need to work with nature, not against it. Only then, we can grow, nourish and sustain, together.
Happy world food day to everyone!
By Kuntum Melati, Michaela Lo, Sofia Cavalleri, Mulia Nurhasan. Kuntum Melati is a Policy Specialist – SDGs at SEI Asia. Sofia Cavalleri is a joint PhD Candidate at SEI Asia and Chulalongkorn University. Mulia Nurhasan is a Research Associate at CIFOR. Michaela Lo is a Research Consultant at CIFOR and undertaking her PhD at the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE), University of Kent.
This article was produced by the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA). FTA is the world’s largest research for development program to enhance the role of forests, trees and agroforestry in sustainable development and food security and to address climate change. CIFOR leads FTA in partnership with Bioversity International, CATIE, CIRAD, INBAR, ICRAF and TBI. FTA’s work is supported by the CGIAR Trust Fund.
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Rubber resin being collected in the forest near Lubuk Beringin village, Bungo district, Jambi province, Indonesia. Lubuk Beringin villagers main source of income comes from rubber trees which grow well in the extensive forests in the area. Photo by Tri Saputro/CIFOR
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By Salvatore Pinizzotto (IRSG), Lekshmi Nair (IRSG), Vincent Gitz (CIFOR/FTA), Alexandre Meybeck (CIFOR/FTA), Datuk Dr Abdul Aziz b S A Kadir (IRRDB), James Jacob (IRRDB), Jerôme Sainte Beuve (CIRAD) and Eric Gohet (CIRAD). Originally posted on the IRSG website.
How can natural rubber be part of the Climate Change actions?
The scientific consensus is clear: climate change is associated with increasingly frequent and intense natural disasters. The impacts of climate change are faster than ever predicted. The longer we wait to act on climate change, the greater the damage to countries and the global economy.
What can we do to move from talk to action?
Natural rubber has a key role to play for both adaptation and mitigation of climate change as an important land user (≈14 Million ha), a producer of renewable materials (i.e. latex and rubberwood), and as a major economic activity.
IRSG Photo Competition 2019, Early Morning, Ranga Alahakoon
It is a strategic industrial raw material grown predominantly by smallholders, in areas where the annual mean temperature is 26 to 28°C and used in more than 5000 end-user applications with tyre industry dominating the market share. Natural rubber sustains around 40 million people with their families around the globe, with a supply chain generating more than 300 billion dollars. A sustainable production and consumption of this commodity provides opportunities for sustainable development.
Global production can be safeguarded and sustainably increased on a lasting basis by strengthening climate resilience and can successfully contribute to climate mitigation goals. Average global temperatures have already risen 1.1°C above preindustrial levels and at current rates of warming, it is projected to reach 1.5°C within two decades (IPCC, 2018). What does climate change mean for rubber? How can it adapt? What changes in genetic resources, management practices and location of plantations are needed? We need data and information on this issue. The best way to start working on these questions is by science, to put science at the basis of the dialogue.
The International Rubber Study Group ( IRSG ) in collaboration with CIFOR/FTA, CIRAD and the International Rubber Research and Development Board (IRRDB) has organised a workshop on “Climate Change and Natural Rubber Systems” to review scientific knowledge about impacts of climate change on natural rubber, potential means for its adaptation and what can be its contribution to mitigation of climate change. The overall purpose was to take stock of what is known, identify gaps and areas for research and action. The workshop highlighted a range of actions, from rubber genetics to management and policies, to improve adaptation and significantly increase the contribution of rubber systems to climate change mitigation, and discussed the role of rubber for sustainable development and adaptation to climate change of landscapes and communities. Such dialogue is key as countries are implementing their nationally determined contributions (NDCs) and preparing their national adaptation plans (NAPs).
Visible Changes identified
A steady rise in temperature and occurrence of extreme weather might compromise natural rubber production and supply chains in the different rubber growing countries. Among the responses to these risks, identified during the workshop, figure research on climate resilient clones, warning systems for pests and diseases, satellite mapping and ecophysiological modelling for identifying agro-climatically suitability of cultivation according to the various IPCC scenarios. Multifaceted challenges of climate changes call for greater cooperation among researchers across national borders. Exchange of information and a common research agenda can support all countries to make easy comparison on effect of weather events.
Facing climate risks, small farmers are particularly vulnerable. They need to be supported. At national and regional level, it is important to share appropriate climate information and projections that can help to predict distribution of rubber in traditional and marginal areas.
How can natural rubber contribute?
There are different opportunities and knowledge gaps regarding the possible impacts of rubber (from plantations to end-products) on climate change adaptation and mitigation. Ecosystem-based adaptation has highlighted improvements in soil moisture, erosion, and soil chemistry. Rubber tree is a suitable component of agroforestry models for the purpose of enhancing cropping diversity as well as tree cover for carbon sequestration. Carbon sequestration in plants and soils has additional benefit and bio-sequestration carbon offsets can have the potential to bring economic benefits to smallholders. Carbon sequestration process-based models can have the ability to describe C sequestration by rubber plantations (biomass and soil). Effects on soil erosion, soil degradation and runoff, can also be modelled at watershed level, depending on land management options and climate scenarios. There are opportunities for using genetically selected rubber germplasm for climate adaptation and rubber farming in degraded land for improving livelihood of farmers.
Dealing with climate change, be it mitigation or adaptation, requires public and private investments. This means providing incentives for green investment and safety-net to pricing risk. Digital technology solutions can play an important role. The global GDP grew by 2.9% in 2019 according to the IMF, and if the global economy decarbonised at the same rate as in the last 10 years, that would still lead to an increase in global emissions. There is urgent need to address ecosystem- based adaptation plans for renewal of plantations, well aligned with the NDCs. Financial institutions are also able to play a key role in unlocking investments for a climate resilient rubber economy. There is an untapped potential to apply climate finance to the rubber sector to significantly reduce emissions and to encourage climate adaptation ensuring livelihood improvement for small farmers.
Major business, economic, and societal shifts towards sustainable production and consumption, embracing the circular economy could underlie transition to 1.5°C pathway. Global production can be safeguarded and sustainably increased on a lasting basis by strengthening climate resilience and can successfully contribute to climate mitigation goals.
What International Fora can do?
Public and the private actors have a key role to play in recognising the importance of natural rubber in mitigating the effects of climate change and implementing measures keeping adaptation as a high priority for natural rubber systems. There is a need for increased consideration of the rubber sector in international climate change for a such as the UNFCCC, as well as the SDGs, especially SDG12 on sustainable production and consumption.
A scientific-based holistic approach, can help to address thoroughly all social, economic and environmental aspects related to livelihoods, conservation of biodiversity and sustainable growth of natural rubber production and consumption. This will also require innovative forms of cooperation across national borders and among a variety of actors – governments, business, academia, and civil society.
We can, and need to act together, now.
The authors would like to thank all the researchers that gave their own important contribution for this article.
FTA is the world’s largest research for development program to enhance the role of forests, trees and agroforestry in sustainable development and food security and to address climate change. CIFOR leads FTA in partnership with Bioversity International, CATIE, CIRAD, INBAR, ICRAF and TBI. FTA’s work is supported by the CGIAR Trust Fund.
A joint stocktaking of CGIAR work on forest and landscape restoration by FTA, PIM and WLE
A joint stocktaking of CGIAR work on forest and landscape restoration by FTA, PIM and WLE
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Despite the high level of political engagement and the wide range of organizations involved in restoration projects from local to global levels, beyond some success stories, restoration is not happening at scale. Research is urgently needed to design, develop and upscale successful restoration approaches. As part of this effort, FTA, PIM and WLE publish a synthesis of a survey of CGIAR’s projects on restoration.
This UN Decade could offer unprecedented opportunities to address food security, job creation and climate change simultaneously. The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) considers that restoring 350 million hectares (ha) of degraded land by 2030, as committed in the New York Declaration on Forests, could generate USD 9 trillion in various ecosystem services and remove about 13–26 gigatons of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
However, despite the high level of political engagement and the wide range of institutions (public, private or civil society; local to global) involved in restoration projects, and beyond some success stories, restoration is not happening at scale.
“There are huge opportunities in bringing the three CRPs together to work on land restoration. Each of these CRPs works on different aspects of land restoration. Pooling this evidence in a user-friendly and accessible manner holds great potential for scaling, and for delivering enhanced impact from our CGIAR research” said Vincent Gitz, Izabella Koziell and Frank Place, the three CRP directors.
The three CRPs agreed on a broad scope of restoration, focused on the restoration of “ecological functions”, with the following definitions:
Degradation: Loss of functionality of e.g. land or forests, usually from a specific human perspective, based on change in land cover with consequences for ecosystem services
Restoration: Efforts to halt ongoing and reverse past degradation, by aiming for increased functionality (not necessarily recovering past system states).
They also discussed theories of [induced] changes underlying landscape dynamics of degradation and restoration. The following questions helped structure the discussions:
Why? What are the final goals of restoration efforts, which sustainable development goals can they contribute to?
What? What are the drivers of degradation that need to be addressed? What are the ecological functions to be restored?
Who?Who cares? Who are the stakeholders responsible for or impacted by land degradation? How stakeholders are encouraged, empowered and organized to act for forest and landscape restoration?
How? How to design effective restoration interventions? What are the land use and land management options for change in different contexts, across countries and biomes?
Where and when? How to operationalize action recognizing the connectivity across different spatial and temporal scales in the restoration process, considering the landscape’s spatial configuration and temporal dynamics?
As a first step of their collaboration, the 3 CRPs (FTA, PIM, WLE) conducted a broad survey of the CGIAR’s work on restoration, inviting contributions from other CRPs. The document published today is a synthesis of the survey results. The full database with full details on each initiative is available as an annex.
The survey reflects the implication of different CGIAR Centers (ICRAF, Bioversity, CIFOR, CIAT, IWMI, ILRI, ICRISAT, CIMMYT and IFPRI) in restoration projects across the tropics and sub-tropics, in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Some countries, such as Ethiopia, Kenya, Peru, or Indonesia concentrate many projects and provide strong opportunities for further collaboration among the three CRPs.
The survey shows the wide range of restoration activities undertaken by CGIAR CRPs and Centers, with their partners, from knowledge generation, methods, planning, modelling, assessment and evaluation, monitoring and mapping, to action on the ground. CGIAR restoration work can be divided into three broad categories: (1) case studies and projects; (2) tools for development; (3) approaches and conceptual frameworks.
The first category gathers case studies and projects comprising an element of field research. It comprises experimental plots, trials, local capacity building and implementation, on-the-ground assessments and surveys at different scales. It distinguishes: (i) “restoration-focused projects” where forest and land degradation is the main entry point and restoration is the main objective; from, (ii) “restoration-related projects” that can contribute to forest and landscape restoration while following other objectives (such as sustainable intensification or climate-smart agriculture). Half of the “restoration-focused” projects aim at assessing restoration practices with the view to upscale successful restoration experiences, such as the Ngitili fodder management system which contributed to the restoration of up to 270,000 ha over about 25 years in Shinyanga region, Tanzania. The others focus on climate change and climate-smart restoration, or on desertification and sand fixation. Six projects in this category focus on genetic diversity and on the performance and organization of the seed supply system, identified in this survey as a critical factor of success for restoration interventions. “Restoration-related projects” focus on various topics closely linked to restoration, including: sustainable land and water management; climate-smart agriculture; land tenure security and land governance reform; participatory governance and planning and collective farming.
The second category regroups: (i) tools, methods and guidelines, directed at decision makers or restoration practitioners at different levels, to support decision making; as well as, (ii) maps and models, measuring at different scales the intensity of degradation (i.e. efforts needed for restoration) or modeling the impacts of different land-use changes or land management practices. Models and maps often serve as the first layer for decision-making supporting tools. This category includes for instance two entries on the Land Degradation Surveillance Framework (LDSF), developed by ICRAF and applied, since 2005, in over 250 landscapes (100 km2 sites) across more than 30 countries. Using indicators such as vegetation cover, structure and floristic compositions, tree and shrub biodiversity, historic land use, visible signs of land degradation, and physical and chemical characteristics of soil (including soil organic carbon content and infiltration capacity), the LDSF, applicable to any landscape, provides a field protocol for assessing soil and ecosystem health to help decision makers to prioritize, monitor and track restoration interventions.
The third category, covering more theoretical work, includes: (i) evaluations, conceptual or theoretical frameworks around restoration and related issues; and (ii) systematic literature and/or project reviews, as well as meta-analyses on different topics linked to restoration. For instance a global survey on seed sourcing practices for restoration, was realized between 2015 and 2017 by Bioversity International, reviewing 136 restoration projects across 57 countries, and suggesting a typology of tree seed sourcing practices and their impact on restoration outcomes (Jalonen et al., 2018).
The survey describes projects operating at the landscape level or across multiple scales. This shows the importance of the landscape level to effectively combine integrated perspectives that allow synergies among different ecosystem components and functions with a deep knowledge of, and a fine adaptation to, local conditions. While many projects focus on the technical performance of restoration projects, relatively few investigate the economics, cost and benefits, of restoration and few examine their underlying power structures and power dynamics/games. This relative paucity of costs and benefit data has been noted by other organizations, an aspect that led to the launch of the FAO-led TEER initiative, to which FTA and several CGIAR centers contribute.
All the answers taken together provide useful insights for future restoration activities. In particular, they identify five critical factors of success for restoration interventions:
secure tenure and use rights;
access to markets (for inputs and outputs) and services;
access to information, knowledge and know-how associated with sustainable and locally adapted land use and land management practices;
awareness of the status of local ecosystem services, often used as a baseline to assess the level of degradation; and
(v) high potential for restoration to contribute to global ecosystem services and attract international donors.
This synthesis will inform future work of FTA, PIM and WLE. It can also be used to support the design of restoration activities, programs and projects. Finally, it also illustrates with concrete examples the powerful contribution of forest and landscape restoration to the achievement of many, if not all of the 17 sustainable development goals. In particular, forest and landscape restoration, through the recovery of a range of ecological functions, can contribute to:
enhance food security through the improvement of the ecosystem services sustaining agriculture at landscape scale
improve natural resource use efficiency, thus reducing the pressure on the remaining natural habitats and addressing water scarcity;
favour social justice by securing a more equitable access to natural resources (e.g. land, water and genetic resources), and a wider participation in decision-making processes, in particular for women and marginalized people; and,
strengthen ecosystem, landscape and livelihoods resilience to economic shocks and natural disasters in a context of climate change.
The COVID 19 crisis has shown the importance of healthy ecosystems for healthy and resilient economies and societies. We hope that this document will contribute to integrate restoration as part of the efforts to “build back better” after the crisis.
This article was produced by the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA). FTA is the world’s largest research for development program to enhance the role of forests, trees and agroforestry in sustainable development and food security and to address climate change. CIFOR leads FTA in partnership with Bioversity International, CATIE, CIRAD, INBAR, ICRAF and TBI. FTA’s work is supported by the CGIAR Trust Fund.
Forests, trees and agroforestry provide nutrient-dense foods such as fruits and nuts, that contribute to livelihoods and to the diversification of diets. They also provide ecosystem services — water regulation, soil fertility and conservation, pollination services, temperature regulation — all of which support sustainable and resilient food systems. The 2017 publication of the High Level Panel of Experts report “Sustainable Forestry for Food Security and Nutrition” detailed these contributions, but more needs to be done to increase the visibility of the roles of trees in food security and nutrition. The COVID-19 global pandemic highlights the need for sustainable and resilient food systems more than ever.
The CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA) with its partners organized a session titled “Contribution of forests, trees and agroforestry to sustainable food security and nutrition in a time of crisis,” during the Global Landscape Forum (GLF) Bonn 2020 Digital Conference held from 3 to 5 June. The conference was attended by 5,000 people from 185 countries, and kick-started a global conversation on how to ‘build back better’ and transform food systems to protect human well-being and planetary health in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Vincent Gitz, FTA Director, opened the session explaining that FTA hosted the session to share what forests, trees and agroforestry can bring to food security, nutrition, and the resilience of food systems.
Contribution of Forests, Trees and Agroforestry for Sustainable Food Security and Nutrition
Inge Brouwer, Assistant Professor in Human Nutrition and Health at Wageningen University & Research, who leads A4NH’s Food Systems for Healthier Diets research flagship, set the scene for the session by providing an overview of the state of nutrition and diets in today’s world. COVID-19 threatens the ability of people to prioritize healthy diets as it disrupts food systems in low- and middle-income countries due to changes to the food environment, economic impacts on consumers, and access issues related to supply chain disruptions. This will even be harder when they do not know what a healthy diet means. She pointed out that food based dietary guidelines help to define healthy diets in local contexts, and the global nutrition communities should support the translation of global recommendations into local contexts. This should include the promotion of a broader range of local foods which could contribute to healthier diets.
The presentations that followed provided examples of approaches to strengthen the use of local foods to improve the ability of the population to consume nutritious foods throughout the year, as well as in times of shocks such as COVID-19, where trade is restricted and access to market is limited. Stepha McMullin with World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) presented an approach used to make location-suitable recommendations for promoting greater diversity of food trees,[1] and crop species on farms. These portfolios (adapted from the Fruit Tree Portfolio Approach) are combinations of indigenous and exotic food tree, and crop species – that could provide for year-round harvest and address key micronutrient gaps in local food systems. Celine Termote of the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT presented a participatory community approach for devising more diverse farming systems to address food and nutrition insecurity. An example from Vihiga County in Kenya revealed initial impact evaluations showing increased dietary diversity amongst women and children engaged in the approach.
Prasad Hendre of the African Orphan Crop Consortium (AOCC) explained the use of genomics for trait enhancement of ‘underutilized’ or ‘orphan’ species. The AOCC uses advanced breeding methods including genomic selection and marker–trait associations on 101 crops to expedite the breeding cycles for nutritious crops. A short video intervention was shown by Daniel Ofori, the Director of the Forestry Research Institute of Ghana (FORIG), who described the work FORIG is doing on Tetrapleura tetraptera, a tree providing fruits which are used as food supplements. FORIG set up a plant for processing of the fruit and established an agroforestry domestication program.
Terry Sunderland of the University of British Columbia outlined some ‘hidden contributions’ of forests with respect to the many ecosystem services they provide that support food production. He gave an example from research in Ethiopia which showed that planting wheat close to forests can improve nitrogen availability, water use efficiency, and therefore increase yields. Another example showed raising livestock close to forests had beneficial effects on food security for local communities as livestock grazed on leaves from forests, which then enriched the soil with their manure, resulting in higher yields.
Researchers also shared examples of how indigenous foods could support the food and nutrition security of people who are often marginalised and often most vulnerable to the response to shocks like COVID-19. Leandro Castello of Virginia Tech University presented evidence from the Amazon, where people in floodplain areas with more forest cover capture more fish from rivers, with positive dietary implications. Caleb Tata Yengo of Forest Resources for People, an NGO in Cameroon, shared results from a project in that country showing very high consumption of several forests foods including green leafy vegetables, mushrooms, oily seeds and bushmeat. He showed that the consumption of a forest liana, Gnetum africanum, known locally as eru, explained the higher hemoglobin levels and lower anemia rates in women who lived closer to the forest compared to those further away. Bronwen Powell of Pennsylvania State University pointed out that Indigenous communities around the world are vulnerable to policies that are not attentive to the unique aspects of their food systems; she presented an example from the Gumuz, a marginalized ethnic group in Ethiopia, whose preferred traditional lablab bean variety is dependent on shifting cultivation, which the government is now discouraging.
Mulia Nurhasan of the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) shared an example from West Papua Province of Indonesia, where the local government quickly responded to the situation with a campaign to improve local food production and consumption, many of which are forest foods. CIFOR is working with the local government of West Papua to study how online platforms can help establish a supply chain of forest foods to reach urban consumers.
The current pandemic as a ‘wake up’ call drawing attention to the roles of forest, trees and agroforestry for enhancing resilience
The coronavirus crisis has unveiled vulnerabilities of food systems that rely heavily on imported foods. Although forests, trees and agroforestry make diverse and important contributions to food security and nutrition, these roles have not been very visible to the wider public or even to policy makers. Amy Ickowitz of CIFOR wrapped up the session with a call to spread the message of the diverse roles that forests, trees and agroforestry play in food security and nutrition. The greater the appreciation of these roles, the more support there will be for conserving forests, planting trees, and preserving local foods contributing to the resilience of food systems and recovery from shocks such as COVID-19.
By Mulia Nurhasan, Stepha McMullin, and Amy Ickowitz
Mulia Nurhasan is an associate at CIFOR. Stepha McMullin is a scientist at ICRAF. Amy Ickowitz is Team Leader for Sustainable Landscapes and Food at CIFOR. The views expressed in this piece are solely those of the authors.
[1] Food Trees – those that provide a variety of nutrient dense foods including fruits, leafy vegetables, nuts, seeds, & edible oils are important in local food systems.
What can be the role of Forests, trees, agroforestry during the COVID-19 food security crisis?
What can be the role of Forests, trees, agroforestry during the COVID-19 food security crisis?
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Invaluable, but often overlooked, ecosystems produce micronutrient-rich foods
The Covid 19 pandemic is threatening food systems and global food security. According to the World Food Programme (WFP), which says the number of people facing crisis hunger is expected to almost double this year to 265 million.
Already, more than 820 million people do not get enough food to eat, and another 135 million people face acute hunger or starvation. Add to that, the economic destabilization caused by COVID-19, and another 130 million people are at risk of starvation by the end of 2020, says WFP.
The rapidity with which a health crisis transforms in a hunger crisis shows how fragile are our food systems to shocks of any nature. With this dire warning in mind, on June 3, the CGIAR Forests, Trees and Agroforestry Research Program (FTA) and partners will host a session in 2 parts at the Global Landscapes Forum (GLF), a three-day online conference where delegates will discuss the potential for sustainable food security in both the short and the long term through related research.
Forests, trees and agroforestry provide critical contributions to Food Security and Nutrition (FSN). All of these contributions are even more important in times of crisis.
Forests, trees and agroforestry provide nutrition dense foods such as fruits and nuts. They contribute to livelihoods and to the diversification of production and sources of income thus also increasing the resilience of households. They provide ecosystem services -water regulation, soil fertility and conservation, pollination, temperature regulation- that support farming systems and contribute to their adaptation to climate change. They are an essential component of sustainable and resilient food systems, contributing to the four dimensions of food security and nutrition both for the forest-dependent communities and globally.
The first part of the session will present some of the multiple ways that forests, trees and agroforestry contribute to Food Security and Nutrition, based on the most recent research results of FTA and its partners. The second part of the session will delve into the potential of forests, trees and agroforestry in increasing the resilience of food systems and stability of Food Security and Nutrition.
Participants will reflect on some of the specific strengths of farming systems, value chains and livelihoods that integrate trees in their systems amid crisis, including the current COVID-19 pandemic.
The whole session will feature a mix of short presentations, videos, interventions from actors on the ground, panel discussions and questions and answers with the audience. We look forward in having you join our session!
Please note that FTA has been offering free tickets for the GLF Bonn 2020 event to anyone wanting to share their story on how trees have been fundamental in times of crises (draughts, famines, covid-19, etc.) for their livelihoods. If you wish to participate – contact us at CGIARFORESTSANDTREES [at] CGIAR [dot] ORG
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But what exactly is biological diversity? Biological diversity, or in short biodiversity, is often understood in terms of an abundance of diverse plants and animals present in a specific region. However, biodiversity also includes genetic differences within species — e.g., varieties of crops — and the variety of interlinked ecosystems (lakes, forests, rivers, agricultural landscapes, etc.) giving shelter and allowing interaction between those who inhabit them (humans, plants, animals, insects, microorganisms, etc.). Biodiversity is a prerequisite for life, any loss of it, is a loss for everyone and a threat for the future.
This year’s theme is Our solutions are in nature, underlining how any activity we perform is always interconnected with mother earth. Today humanity faces an unprecedented number of ecological challenges (as the current coronavirus pandemic has made evident), but any solution we can imagine and formulate is inevitably found within the same domain: nature. And nature’s barometer is biodiversity. For example, a pathway to reduce climate shocks and increase resilience to climate change is landscape restoration, which in turn is highly correlated with biodiversity levels. Moreover, maintaining high levels of biological diversity offers protection from spillovers of diseases from animals to humans (i.e. zoonoses) such as the current one we are living through, as it has been proven that biodiversity loss is a sufficient (but not necessary) condition for the increase of zoonoes.
The UN has devoted the full week 18-22 May 2020 to celebrate biodiversity through 3 themes: importance of knowledge and science, importance of biodiversity itself and a call to action for the future.
2020, dubbed the biodiversity super year, is a pivotal moment to re-think our relationship with nature. This lock-down time should push us to reformulate a new normal that should focus on resilience and a common approach towards the restoration and conservation of biodiversity, inverting the disastrous trend of biodiversity loss that we have been accumulating over many deacades.
Trees, forests and agroforestry have an enormous role to play in preserving and enhancing biodiversity and improving human and animal life. To underline this, FTA has set the safeguarding and conservation of biodiversity as one of its main priorities. In the occasion of this day we are happy to illustrate some of the activities that our partners are carrying out in this domain.
Biodiversity in tropical forests
Our lead partner CIFOR has a specific landing page for biodiversity which gathers all the most recent publications dealing with this important topic, highlighting the extreme potential for the unknown and the strong link between forests and food security and nutrition.
Systematic review on impact of oil palm on biodiversity – a study focusing on the impacts on species richness, abundance (total number of individuals or occurrences), community composition, and ecosystem functions related to species richness and community composition.
Our partner ICRAF develops a number of interesting studies that are strongly linked with the analysis of biodiverse elements, as they supporting biodiversity-based livelihood strategies, requiring them to characterize patterns of biodiversity in agricultural landscapes and how these are changing as farming systems and climate alter. For example: they conduct tree species diversity inventories in farmland, considering whether the trees found are of local origin or are exotic (are introduced from elsewhere), and how common individual species are in farm landscapes.
African Orphan Crops Consortium
ICRAF has just launched the new website of the African Orphan Crop Consortium which includes a fully searchable database of 101 different crops identified as important for nutrition and livelihoods in a participatory manner by Africa’s scientists, development practitioners, consumers, and producers. Together they provide a wide range of nutritious foods, including edible roots, leaves, seeds and fruit, and encompass plants that are part of Africa’s historically neglected bounty of biodiversity. The idea is to use advanced genomic methods to support genetic improvement. These plants form a unique biological resource for crop development, but the window of opportunity to realise their value is limited as they are threatened by the relentless simplification of farming landscapes and forest loss.
In order to promote tree species’ biodiversity effectively, information on what trees to plant where and for what purpose is required. ICRAF develops maps, databases and smartphone apps to better allow this. The high-resolution vegetationmap4africa (www.vegetationmap4africa.org/), for example, supports the selection of suitable indigenous tree species to plant in particular ecological zones in eastern Africa through the Useful Tree Species for Eastern Africa selection tool, which uses Google Earth to explore geographic locations and present species’ options.
Bamboo and rattan for biodiversity
Lack of bamboo planting material of particular species in required quantity and quality has always been a challenge due to the flowering nature of bamboo and lack of standardized vegetative propagation methods and selection protocols. INBAR’s previous and current development projects in Africa have set up several nurseries to scale up bamboo planting material production in Africa and Latin America. Moreover, INBAR is also undertaking ex-situ genetic conservation activities including setting up of bamboo setums and research plots. These activities are aimed at enabling large-scale bamboo based landscape restoration activities.
Currently our partner INBAR is developing a study to obtain a deeper understanding of conservation of bamboo genetic resources in theory and practice. The study will examine the growth and performance of indigenous and introduced bamboo species, the modification of local biodiversity. The aim is to select the most appropriate species for expansion as well as developing seed sourcing and selection.
A comprehensive report on bamboo seed sourcing/selection and mechanisms for identification of superior bamboo clumps for expanding vegetative propagation will be the outcome of this research.
The report shows how agroforestry is a sustainable alternative for rural development, and it is a conspicuous beneficial element in the agricultural landscape. Trees on farms can contribute to subsistence farmers’ strategies to face climatic or socioeconomic eventualities and can supply important goods to meet farmers’ demands.
Sentinel Landscape stocktaking pilot study: Report Nicaragua-Honduras [pdf]Study sites were similar in terms of tree diversity and density, but differences were found in the economic benefits provided by trees. A total of 261 tree species were recorded in both sites (160 species were shared), 202 species in La Dalia and 220 species in Waslala. In terms of land uses, coffee was the land use with the highest tree diversity (197 spp), followed by pasture (189 spp), cacao (169 spp), home gardens (152 spp) and staple crops (138 spp). The most important species in terms of their abundance, frequency and relative dominance were: Cordia alliodora, Mangifera indica, Persea americana, Citrus sinensis, Platymiscium dimorphadrum, Inga oestediana, Psidium guajava, Cedrela odorata, Guazuma ulmifolia, and Tabebuia rosea.
We hope that you will find this information is useful and interesting!
Finally, we are happy to share with you A Hymn to Biodiversity an a cappella musical composition inspired and dedicated to biodiversity by composer David Rain, who contacted us through our facebook page. Well done David, it’s beautiful!
May it inspire everyone to love and protect our biodiverse nature.
This article was produced by the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA). FTA is the world’s largest research for development program to enhance the role of forests, trees and agroforestry in sustainable development and food security and to address climate change. CIFOR leads FTA in partnership with Bioversity International, CATIE, CIRAD, INBAR, ICRAF and TBI. FTA’s work is supported by the CGIAR Trust Fund.
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The NHSL team of researchers in El Tuma
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This article is a longform, part of a new series of FTA blogs aiming at providing in-depth analysis of mature FTA projects. By consulting/interviewing all the scientists involved in the study, these longforms give a detailed overview of specific projects, augmented by the comments from the scientists who developed them. This longform is issued in conjunction with International Mother Earth Day 2020.
A peculiar perspective on the first reports from the pioneering Sentinel Landscapes program
We are living in the Anthropocene.
Sometime in the 1950s, it is proposed, we finally broke from 11,650 years of history and entered a entirely new epoch. Rather than glacial advance and retreat, this epoch is defined by the industrial activity of humankind.
Deforestation, soil erosion, construction, river dams and nuclear weapons will leave permanent relics in the stratigraphy of the earth: as deposits in the sedimentary record, as ghostly technofossils, or as lethal fallout signatures.
There are two possible responses – if we rule out burying our heads in the degraded soil – either we wait for nature to overthrow industry or we apply our human ingenuity, so often the curse of ecological wellbeing, to its restoration.
But how can we hope to turn things around if we do not know what is driving deforestation and degradation? Or if we do not know how many trees we have or how quickly they are disappearing? Or if we do not fully understand the consequences we face if forests disappear from the landscape?
To develop interventions that will work, the first step is knowing what is going on there, and for this we need data, credible data, large data, multi-year data.
Medical research has epidemiological studies that monitor large cohorts of the population over long periods of time to track global health and help predict and eliminate disease. What does forest conservation have? Sentinel Landscapes.
Sentinel Landscapes: A health check for tropical land use
Driven by the Forests, Trees and Agroforestry’s (FTA) program led by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), the Sentinel Landscapes initiative is an audacious commitment to collect data on biophysical, social, economic and political dimensions across and monitor respective indicators across a network of eight carefully chosen tropical forest landscapes over extended periods of time.
Using the same standardized methodologies, this data promises to provide common ground for comparison – and, crucially, extrapolation. The Sentinel Landscapes program is the global health check that we desperately need so that we can face climate change, land degradation, poverty and food security with clear vision.
The idea for Sentinel Landscapes was hatched during conversations between colleagues at World Agroforestry (ICRAF) and CIFOR in 2011 and 2012. Since those first conversations, more and more academic organizations have joined the FTA program and participated to the Sentinel landscapes initiative, including Agricultural Research for Development (CIRAD), Bioversity International, Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza (CATIE) and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture. In the words of one scientist, it has always been “super collaborative”.
Sentinel Landscapes have now been established across borders in Borneo-Sumatra, the Nile-Congo, Cameroon, the Mekong, West Africa, Western Ghats in India and the Western Amazon. But the first to report, in February 2020, was the Sentinel Landscape of Nicaragua-Honduras.
Sentinel Landscapes combine GIS data with on-the-ground samples and surveys
The Nicaragua-Honduras Sentinel Landscape
Sentinel Landscape stocktaking pilot study: Report Nicaragua-Honduras [pdf]The lead author of the report is Norvin Sepúlveda at CATIE, who is coordinating the Nicaragua-Honduras Sentinel Landscape (NHSL).
The NHSL is a “mosaic of forests, agricultural land, cattle ranches and agroforestry systems” covering an area the size of the Republic of Ireland or twice the size of the Netherlands.
Straddling the border of two countries, the NHSL encompasses the largest remaining forest area in Central America and hosts at least twelve different ecosystems, including cloud forest, premontane humid tropical forest and pine savannahs.
According to the new report, as well as astonishing botanical and fauna diversity, the landscapes of the NHSL also sustain 822,175 farm families and 21,000 indigenous peoples.
Different kind of “forest transitions” do take place in the area, representing different situations along the “forest transition curve” concept coined by FTA.
Nicaragua is currently plummeting down the “forest transition” curve, with forest cover being lost at an increasingly rapid rate. Meanwhile, Honduras is a late-transition country, with deforestation slowing in whatever small fraction of forests remain.
It would be impossible to survey such a vast territory in its entirety, so as part of the Sentinel Landscapes (SL) monitoring sampling methodology, the NHSL team selected four study blocks, two in Nicaragua and two in Honduras, which each represent different points on the forest transition curve. Each block is 100 sq km.
The concept of the SL was to integrate three different standardized methodologies to collect:
biophysical data
political and institutional data and
socio-economic data.
These harmonized data collection modules were coordinated by the Research Methods Group (RMG) at ICRAF. The work on biophysical methods began in West Africa in 2005, with the research of Tor-Gunnar Vågen of ICRAF
“We chose the four sites using GIS data and a special set of criteria,” Sepúlveda explains, “so that we got a range of different sites and a combination of diverse farm typologies and conservation issues.”
In Nicaragua, the El Tuma La Dalia study block is mountainous terrain, largely cultivated with coffee, but with some pine and cloud forests. Also in Nicaragua, Columbus Mine is less cultivated with staple cereal crops, but has more forest and is known for its tropical humid climate.
Across the border in Honduras, Rio Platáno is primarily forest with little cultivation, whereas the Rio Blanco study block, nestled in a valley, is mostly pasture for livestock with only small pockets of surviving forest.
Beyond case studies: the Land Degradation Surveillance Framework
Tor-Gunnar Vågen is now head of the GeoScience lab at ICRAF, based in Nairobi, Kenya. For the past fifteen years, Vågen and soil systems scientist Leigh Ann Winowiecki, have worked to implement the Land Degradation Surveillance Framework (LDSF).
A systematic method for collecting data and measuring land degradation, the LDSF builds up a biophysical baseline that covers key indicators including land use, land cover, land degradation, soil health, topography and impact on habitat..
But the real strength of the LDSF is in its consistency: it can be applied to any landscape and will give standardized and thus comparable data.
Before the LDSF, most forest conservation data was based on case studies that answered a specific question in a specific location. Although very useful, case study data makes it impossible to compare contexts or to generalize, and impossible to answer questions like ‘What role do trees have on farms in different locations and contexts?’ or ‘What is the potential for soil to sequester carbon in different locations and contexts?’
As a standardized, randomized data collection method, the LDSF solves this problem and helps scientists compare and scale up their localized findings into potentially globally-applicable conclusions.
“Applying the same framework and then replicating this across most major ecosystems means we can start answering the bigger questions,” Vågen says. “We can look at the larger patterns.”
At the start of the Sentinel Landscapes program in 2012, Vågen and Winowiecki trained the local field teams in Nicaragua and in Honduras so that data collection would be consistent.
Tracking degradation and climate change
From the biophysical baseline indicators, Sepúlveda, Vågen, Winowiecki and their fellow authors expect the NHSL to suffer badly from the impacts of climate change, particularly when it comes to the flow and contamination of the water supply.
The geographical location of Nicaragua and Honduras make both countries vulnerable to extreme weather events and a pattern of freak rainstorms alternating with withering drought is becoming more common.
In late 2007, Hurricane Felix destroyed almost 510,764 ha of forest in northeastern Nicaragua – that’s an area four times the size of New York City.
Of course, it is not only Nicaragua-Honduras that faces the challenges of climate change. The eight Sentinel Landscapes scattered across the tropics are critical for monitoring the progress of climate change with a consistent methodology, over long time periods.
But seeing climate change impacts is irrelevant if not looked through the lenses of land-use and land-use change impacts. Although the forest is now in recovery, the NHSL report found that slash and burn agriculture and livestock are encroaching on former forest landscapes.
“One thing that isn’t looked at enough is the interaction between climate change and land degradation,” Vågen says. “When we started out, the focus was more on land degradation per se: soil erosion, loss of soil function and the reduction in soil quality due to land-use change. But of course this data has many other applications and understanding the impacts of climate change is one of them.”
The data, published in the FTA Sentinel Landscapes portal, warn that vulnerable ecosystems may collapse in mere decades once they hit a tipping point of human-induced degradation, combined with the impacts of climate change.
“The ability of a landscape to adapt to changes in climate is affected by land degradation and, of course, degraded land can contribute to emissions.”
The Sentinel Landscapes program tracks this degradation, but the data also points to solutions.
Sentinel solutions: Soil organic carbon
The Sentinel Landscapes data offers remarkable insights into where governments, municipalities and farmers can optimize their landscapes from multiple perspectives, including carbon capture and protection from erosion, and the potential for virtuous circles.
“For example, we see higher tree densities in non-eroded soil,” Winowiecki says, “and higher soil organic carbon in non-eroded landscapes.”
Most people know that forests can act as carbon sinks, but of the total carbon found in terrestrial ecosystems nearly 80 percent is actually stored in the soil. Soil carbon reservoirs are also at risk, and the team has published widely on the link between land degradation and soil organic carbon.
Furthermore, Rattan Lal, director of Ohio State University’s Carbon Management and Sequestration Center, estimates that, with cultivation, the world’s soil has lost up to 70 percent of its original carbon stock. If researchers could find a way to maximize soil organic carbon sequestration, then that would be a significant blow in our Herculean labor to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
According to the new report, soil organic carbon levels are low across all four of the NHSL study blocks. Even small increases in soil organic carbon, when multiplied over large areas, would make a measurable difference – as well as increasing overall soil quality.
“One of the things we’re able to do now is map soil organic carbon over very large areas and look at the potential for storage of carbon in the soil,” Vågen explains.
Combining field data collected with the LDSF and remote sensing imagery from satellite, Vågen and his team are able to produce maps of key soil and land health indicators at a scale relevant to farmers and decision makers, for example at 30 meter resolution, with high accuracy (using the Landsat satellite imagery, the resolution is 30 meter squared).
“We can say what the trends are and what the potential is to store carbon in the soil,” Vågen says. “And we can do that down to the level of individual farmers.”
Of course, this information, however precise, would mean nothing at all unless the farmers could do something about it.
Winowiecki, a specialist in soil organic carbon, has good news: “With good land and landscape management we can increase soil organic carbon,” she says. “But the data shows wide variation, even within one site, so it’s important that we tailor the management to each specific farm.”
It sounds like a lot of work, but it should come as no surprise that there is no “one size fits all” solution.
“We talk a lot about ‘Options by context’,” Winowiecki says. “That means developing local options for the local context.”
Different areas can vary enormously, not only by physical environment, but also by local governance and even household structure. These factors go beyond the LDSF method and the second strand of the Sentinel Landscape approach is a socio-economic survey that attempts to capture the wider context in which the landscape is embedded.
“For any intervention to work,” Winowiecki says, “you have to understand the context and that’s exactly what the Sentinel Landscapes have done.”
Context is everything
The socio-economic surveys was every bit as impressive an undertaking as the biophysical baseline study of the LDSF. The development of the socio-economic methodology and design of the household module was coordinated by Anja Gassner, while the subsequent analysis of data generated for all the landscapes was led by Brian Chiputwa (both with the Research Methods Groups at ICRAF) in consultation with CATIE.
The socio-economic surveys were designed to capture baseline information on households’ production systems, livelihood portfolios, asset endowment and use of natural resources such as forests. This data was then used to construct various indicators that can be used as proxies for household’s dependency on natural resources (land, water and forests), food security and nutrition and poverty status. These indicators can provide important insights into household economic activities.
Based in Costa Rica, CATIE agroforestry scientist Arlene López-Sampson helped analyze the reams of NHSL data. “You can’t just look at the condition of the trees and ignore the people,” López-Sampson says, “because they are constantly choosing among options and it’s them we need to address. Sentinel Landscapes are relevant because they recognize the importance of people as agents of change and bring them back into the equation.”
An example of Household Module Instrument used for the NHSL household surveys [pdf]Teams of researchers spoke to 849 households in dozens of communities across the four study blocks of the NHSL, spending 3-5 days in each village, conducting interviews and workshops that explored in detail the relationship between people and landscape.
“There are a lot of people involved and we need the trust of the local municipalities and grassroots organizations,” López-Sampson says. “It’s very context dependent. What’s happening in Nicaragua is different to what’s happening in Honduras and to what’s happening in other parts of the world.”
Norvin Sepúlveda coordinated the field teams in Nicaragua and Honduras: “A combination of GIS and household data is very important to give us a better idea of what is happening,” he says. “While the GIS did the overview, we were face to face with the people, taking information directly from them.”
Sepúlveda gives a good example of how the dual approach works. “In one area, the GIS showed patches of forest left,” he says. “So we went to the household to find out why: it was to protect the water supply.”
Trees act like giant sponges, collecting and filtering rainwater before releasing it gradually into streams and rivers. Take away the trees and you get flash floods, soil erosion and a sharp reduction in water quality.
“It’s very important for us to find out why forest is left standing,” Sepúlveda says. “It often depends on a farmer’s education, on the state of his land, and on whether he has legal rights to the land.”
And so we come to the thorniest issue faced by the NHSL team: conflict and governance.
Within the socio-economic surveys, the institutional mapping and natural resource governance activities were implemented using the International Forestry Resources and Institutions (IFRI) methodology, developed by Scientists at the University of Michigan, USA.
“The one big challenge”
“The major challenge of the whole project was operating in the border,” Sepúlveda says. “Lack of governance there is the one big challenge.”
“In Nicaragua, El Tuma La Dalia is doing well with restoration, earning some extra money for coffee farmers,” Sepúlveda explains. “But at Columbus Mine, the deforestation has been very bad.”
Columbus Mine is the home of the Tasba-Pry indigenous group and, according to the report, their practice of communal land ownership, although recognized by the government, is coming into conflict with the growing population of settlers who pursue private ownership.
It is a similarly mixed story in Honduras: “At Rio Platáno they are approaching forest management, which is good,” Sepúlveda says. “But in Rio Blanco livestock is taking down all the forest that is left.”
Rio Platáno is home to several different indigenous groups, whose land rights have not been recognized by the government. As a result, the NHSL study reports, they have fallen victim to land grabs.
“We also have problems there with drug trafficking,” López-Sampson says. “It’s really hard to work in that kind of geography because it’s not only about land management; it’s also about organized criminal activities.”
But of course these kinds of challenges are not unique to the NHSL and researchers must understand the whole picture in order to change behaviors.
“We chose a combination of both different contexts and people,” Sepúlveda explains. “It makes for a contrast to the other agricultural sites, which are more stable.”
Sentinel solutions: Making change happen
The Sentinel Landscapes program is a breathtaking display of the research possible when scientists from different disciplines collaborate at every scale, from collecting soil samples on the ground to capturing remote sensing data from space to conducting focus group discussions with farmers or interviewing individual farmers on their farms.
Discussion groups with farmers and local communities in Rio Blanco
“We need a lot of people to do our work,” López-Sampson says. “The coordination of knowledge is really important: between academics, but also among the local organizations who are doing all the interventions we try to promote so that we all have healthy ecosystems.”
The team hopes that the work they have done in the NHSL can help Honduras move further up that forest transition curve and encourage Nicaragua to bottom out their deforestation sooner rather than later.
“Trees are now part of the agenda,” López-Sampson says. “Trees are now seen as important to have on the farms, not only to provide timber, but as part of local community strategies to provide incomes and help maintain a healthy ecosystem by providing a link between the landscape and the agroforestry system.”
Meanwhile, Vågen is ambitious about the future: “Using LDSF we can accurately track changes over time and create bespoke interventions for specific plots and specific farmers to maximize land conservation, biodiversity and soil organic carbon capture.”
It is clear that the long term monitoring of the Sentinel Landscapes approach is absolutely necessary to bring clarity to the slow processes of landscape management and climate change.
“Five, ten years isn’t long enough,” Sepúlveda concludes. “I really hope these projects carry on, in order to see restoration, in order to see people change their minds and in order to see the new generations make change happen.”
The ultimate goal of the Sentinel Landscapes approach is to build up on these diverse data over longer periods and be able to integrate the socio-economic, biophysical and political indicators. For example, with long-term data, it will be interesting to map out causal links between household poverty levels (see diagram below) and land degradation over time in the four sites; and how these vary through different governance structures across communities.
The Economist recently published an interesting report in 2017 titled “The world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data”. With adequate investment and if collected in a dynamic, responsive and consistent way, big data approaches that monitor and integrate indicators from diverse disciplines such as the natural and social sciences, can lead to more complete and actionable set of insights for better adaption and mitigation strategies against climate change. Initiatives such as the SL could well be the next oil in future.
“A warning shot”: Sentinel Landscapes research and Coronavirus
At the time this article was written, all the NHSL scientists were already all working from home (be it in Costa Rica, Nicaragua or Kenya), in a global attempt to slow the transmission of coronavirus. “Our heavy reliance on industrial agriculture, with large, uniform herds, makes us vulnerable to outbreaks,” Vågen says. “The information we can provide, such as landscape diversity, could be a valuable contribution down the road.”
Vågen warns that ecological degradation makes diseases such as Covid-19 much more likely and, in our hyper-connected world, we need to start paying closer attention.
“It’s one of those up and coming things that we need to be looking at,” Vågen says. “And not just coronavirus, but other diseases,” he adds. “For me, it’s a warning shot. It’s something that we need to understand better, how it relates to the state of our planet in general.”
In times past, sentinels were flesh and blood watchers responsible at all hours to warn their kinsfolk of any approaching existential threat – whether wild beast, enemy army, fire or plague.
Today, our most valuable sentinels are scientific: the ice core samples that warn us of global heating; the remote sensing data that warn us of deforestation.
The Covid-19 outbreak shows what can happen when we have no sentinels – or, worse, when we ignore them. Without sufficient, credible warning, our society becomes extremely vulnerable to unseen existential threats.
By David Charles. This article was produced by the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA). FTA is the world’s largest research for development program to enhance the role of forests, trees and agroforestry in sustainable development and food security and to address climate change. CIFOR leads FTA in partnership with Bioversity International, CATIE, CIRAD, INBAR, ICRAF and TBI. FTA’s work is supported by the CGIAR Trust Fund.
Selected references
Chiputwa, B., Ihli, H.J., Wainaina, P., Gassner, A., 2020. Accounting for the invisible value of trees on farms through valuation of ecosystem services, in: Rusinamhodzi, L. (Ed.), The Role of Ecosystem Services in Sustainable Food Systems. Elsevier Inc., pp. 229–261. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-816436-5.00012-3
Chiputwa, B. 2016. An exploratory guide on constructing socioeconomic indicators for the Sentinel Landscape Project: The case of the Nicaragua-Honduras Sentinel Landscape. Nairobi, Kenya: World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), 56 p. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8GL6bTxo5ekMXRzN003ck1hV1E/view
FTA, 2011. CGIAR Research Program 6 – Forests, Trees and Agroforestry: Livelihoods, Landscapes and Governance Proposal. Document available here
Pramova, E.; Lavorel, S.; Locatelli, B.; Colloff, M.J.; Bruley, E. 2020. Adaptation in the Anthropocene: How we can support ecosystems to enable our response to change, CIFOR. https://doi.org/10.17528/cifor/007588
Sepúlveda N, Vågen T-G, Winowiecki LA, Ordoñez J, Chiputwa B, Makui P, Somarriba E and López-Sampson, A. 2020. Sentinel Landscape stocktaking pilot study: Report Nicaragua-Honduras. Working Paper 2. Bogor, Indonesia: The CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA). https://doi.org/10.17528/cifor/007537
Vågen, T.-G.; Winowiecki, L.A. Predicting the Spatial Distribution and Severity of Soil Erosion in the Global Tropics using Satellite Remote Sensing. Remote Sens.2019, 11, 1800. https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/11/15/1800
Vågen, Tor-G., Winowiecki, L., Tondoh, J.E., Desta, L.T. and Gumbricht, T. 2016. Mapping of soil properties and land degradation risk in Africa using MODIS reflectance. Geoderma. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoderma.2015.06.023
Vågen, T-G and Winowiecki, L. 2013. Mapping of soil organic carbon stocks for spatially explicit assessments of climate change mitigation potential. Environmental Research Letters. 8. http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/8/1/015011
FTA's new Gender Equality and Social Inclusion Agenda and Action Plan 2020-2021
FTA’s new Gender Equality and Social Inclusion Agenda and Action Plan 2020-2021
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At a food fair in Luwingu, Zambia, in April 2017, women display items they regularly forage and cultivate.
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A Revised Research Agenda and Action Plan 2020-2021 for FTA on Gender Equality and Social Inclusion has just been released
Since its very beginning in 2011, gender and social inclusion have been a core area of research and action for the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA).
Gender equality is a human right and a necessary condition for reaching sustainable development worldwide. Significant inequalities based on gender and other types of discrimination affect who has voice and can influence, and who benefits or suffers losses in rapidly transforming forest, tree and agroforestry landscapes. While being fundamentally unjust, these inequalities also have the undesirable side effect to hamper the achievement of fundamental development and environmental outcomes, such as the Sustainable Development Goals.
The first phase of FTA (2011-2015) had a robust institutional architecture in place for gender mainstreaming. The FTA Gender Strategy produced in 2013 was one of the first to be approved by the Independent Science and Partnership Council and the Consortium office. As FTA’s research agenda has evolved over time, so too has the program’s portfolio of gender and social inclusion research, to address emerging global challenges and reflect the latest thinking and innovations in the field.
The new FTA Gender Research and Action Plan 2020-2021 [pdf]The revised version of this strategy, called Gender Equality and Social Inclusion – A Revised Agenda and Action Plan for the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry 2020-2021 draws on the program’s tradition of quality gender research and its experience strengthening gender integration across program activities and processes. Building on and complementing its original efforts and strategy, FTA continues to view gender integration in research as a fundamental part of doing good science (European Commission 2011), and approaches gender as a theme that cuts across every aspect of the FTA research portfolio.
FTA’s revised agenda and action plan lays out a transformative approach that actively addresses structural barriers and schemes that (re)produce gender inequalities. The aim is a deep, lasting and pervasive transition that moves beyond individual women’s self-improvement toward more equal power dynamics and structures that affect men’s and women’s capacities to:
control assets and resources;
value and distribute unremunerated labor; and
meaningfully participate in decision making at the household and community levels and beyond.
From a normative perspective, FTA recognizes gender equality as an inherent human right. This means that FTA advances gender equality throughout its portfolio for its intrinsic rather than merely instrumental value: equality is not seen primarily as a mechanism to deliver greater impact, but as an essential and indivisible condition for all human beings.
In the new research agenda and action plan, there is also an explicit commitment to adopting an intersectionality lens to analyze how gender intersects with other factors of social differentiation, such as age or generation, socioeconomic status or ethnicity. This allows FTA to shine a light on and work more comprehensively on other forms of marginalization that all together shape livelihood and resource management decisions, governance and dramatically determine the inequitable distribution of benefits from tree-based systems. In this regard, the research program gives renewed attention to the aspirations and livelihoods of youth in forest, tree and agroforestry systems.
The Revised Research Agenda and Action Plan is characterized by two main, mutually supportive strands of work. The first strand focuses on knowledge generation and delivering quality gender, social inclusion and youth research, and the second on strengthening gender integration along FTA’s impact pathways, including how the program engages with a wide range of stakeholders.
Theory of change of gender integration in FTA
Broken down in main points, this Revised Research Agenda and Action Plan will enable FTA to:
Lay out the pathways through which FTA contributes to the CGIAR’s efforts to achieve the Intermediate Development Outcome (IDO) ‘Equity and inclusion achieved (gender and youth)’;
Generate an empirical evidence base on the structural barriers that (re)produce gender inequalities in forest and agroforestry landscapes and develop innovations to transform discriminatory structures and norms;
Strengthen capacities for delivering a high volume of quality, impactful research that will foster gender equality as well as other sought FTA outcomes;
Build partnerships to mainstream gender in processes (e.g. around restoration, climate change or inclusive business models) and multilateral environmental agreements and agendas (e.g. Rio Conventions) of concern to FTA.
This refocused Revised Research Agenda and Action Plan offers new opportunities for framing transformative and impactful research to enable change toward more equitable and sustainable forest, tree and agroforestry systems.
FTA hopes that it will inspire other research programs in constructing their social and gender inclusiveness strategy.
References
European Commission. 2011. Toolkit: Gender in EU-funded research. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities.
Written by Marène Elias and Ana Maria Paez Valencia from the FTA Gender cross-cutting theme. The CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA) is the world’s largest research for development program to enhance the role of forests, trees and agroforestry in sustainable development and food security and to address climate change. CIFOR leads FTA in partnership with Bioversity International, CATIE, CIRAD, ICRAF, INBAR and TBI.
An exploratory study of cost-benefit analysis of landscape restoration
An exploratory study of cost-benefit analysis of landscape restoration
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Landscape in restoration in Abreha Atsbeha, Tigray, Ethiopia. Photo: World Agroforestry/Ake Mamo
Landscape in restoration in Abreha Atsbeha, Tigray, Ethiopia. Photo: World Agroforestry/Ake Mamo
Owing to increasing demand for landscape restoration and the limited resources available, economic analysis helps prioritize investments.
Cost-benefit analysis is a commonly applied approach used in the economic analysis of landscape restoration as well as for strategizing allocation of resources. However, despite the growing amount of restoration, studies of the economic analysis of restoration itself are relatively few.
To address this gap, scientists from World Agroforestry (ICRAF) conducted a systematic review of cost-benefit analyses for landscape restoration to understand the extent of existing studies. The studies were from different parts of the world although the majority were from Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.
The studies were conducted for different types of restoration, such as reforestation and afforestation, agroforestry, biofuel agroforestry, participatory forest management, establishment of woodlots, sustainable land-management practices, natural regeneration, assisted natural regeneration, mangrove restoration, clearing of invasive alien species, and restoration of urban and buffer areas.
During their analysis, the team from ICRAF found gaps within the studies that future cost-benefit analyses ought to consider.
Ideally, a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis of landscape restoration ought to capture the total economic value of the benefits of restoration, that is, direct and indirect use values as well as non-use values.
Direct use values relate to the benefits obtained from the direct use of an ecosystem, such as timber, poles, charcoal, gum arabica, medicine, as well as other non-timber forest products, recreation value and others, while indirect use values are usually associated with regulating services, such as carbon sequestration, pollination, pest and disease control and others. Non-use values refer to existence or inheritance values.
An analysis should also capture all the costs incurred during restoration, including implementation, maintenance and opportunity costs.
However, in terms of accounting for benefits accruing from restoration, the majority of the studies accounted for use values only (either direct or indirect use or both) and very few accounted for non-use values.
This is because non-use values and some of the indirect use values are not easy to quantify because they do not have a market price. Yet accounting for the total economic value of a project is particularly useful for large-scale restoration initiatives where the benefits accrue to the broader public beyond the targeted stakeholders.
Typical vegetation type in a community managed forest in Cassou, Burkina Faso. Photo: World Agroforestry/ Cheikh Mbow
Similarly, for the cost components, relatively few studies accounted for the opportunity cost, that is, the cost of foregoing a potentially more lucrative activity. This is because it is often difficult to estimate this cost because it is not a direct cost and for some land uses the opportunity cost may be negligible, especially, if the area is highly degraded. Almost always quantifying the opportunity cost of a project requires that a baseline study be conducted. However, most restoration projects do not allocate the resources for such a study, making it challenging to account for the opportunity cost.
‘Some restoration projects fail to account for maintenance and monitoring costs since they view restoration as a one-time cost activity as opposed to a continuous activity where maintenance and monitoring costs are high, for example, tree planting as opposed to tree growing,’ added Peter Minang, co-author of the review and Principal Advisor and Theme Leader for Landscapes Governance at World Agroforestry (ICRAF), Global Coordinator of the ASB Partnership for the Tropical Forest Margins, and Leader of the Landscapes Flagship of the CGIAR Research Programme on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry.
Future cost-benefit analysis studies ought to account for all the benefit and cost components attributable to restoration, otherwise, the profitability of restoration projects could either be over- or under-stated.
A lack of reliable data owing to poor data-keeping during a restoration period also affects cost-benefit analysis results. A comprehensive cost-benefit analysis requires data over several years; for some projects, the restoration age can be up to 100 years, implying that benefits and costs accrue for that long. Most projects do not keep such records. Hence, even for ex-post cost-benefit analyses a lot of predictions and assumptions are involved in data generation.
Enrichment planting for restoration in Harapan Rainforest in Sumatra, Indonesia. Photo: World Agroforestry/Rhett Harrison
Thus, analysts need to adopt standardized methods of data prediction if the results are to be comparable across different restoration projects to guide decisions in the allocation of funds. There are efforts towards standardizing these methods and approaches.
For example, one ongoing project, The Economics of Ecosystem Restoration, aims to ‘offer a reference point for the estimation of costs and benefits of future ecosystem restoration projects in all major biomes, based on information from comparable initiatives on which data are collected through a standardized framework’.
‘There is a need for standardized methods of valuing indirect and non-use benefits if cost-benefit analysis results are to be comparable across projects,’ emphasized Eunice Gituku, co-author of the review and Research Assistant working with the Landscapes Governance theme at ICRAF.
Most of the methods and approaches used in valuing these benefits are highly resource-intensive in terms of data, time and expertise. Thus, there is a need to budget and allocate funds for cost-benefit analysis within landscape restoration projects.
Outcome Evaluation Approach – 5 Case Studies from FTA
Outcome Evaluation Approach – 5 Case Studies from FTA
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Yordana Yawate, carries a sack of sago pith to be filtered on the banks of the Tuba river in Honitetu village, Maluku province, Indonesia. Photo by Ulet Ifansasti/CIFOR
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Two recent publications discuss how to effectively assess the impact of transdisciplinary (TDR) research and apply these methods to 5 case studies.
The creation of the CGIAR Research Programs (CRP) was aimed to increase the social, economic, and environmental impacts of research. These programs have intentionally developed broader and deeper partnerships with a wide range of policy and development actors (i.e., international conservation and development organizations, NGOs, policy actors, other stakeholders), as well as with other researchers and research organizations. These efforts mirrored a shift in the broader research environment toward more engaged, problem-centred research. Such research, known variously as Transdisciplinary Research (TDR), Mode 2 Research, and Sustainability Science, among other terms, actively involves stakeholders to help ensure the relevance of the research, incorporate a broader range of expertise in the research process, and promote the co-generation of knowledge with research users.
In theory, engaged TDR approaches should help address complex sustainability problems and contribute to more and better outcomes. However, the increased complexity of these approaches makes impact assessment even more challenging than for traditional research approaches. Research impact assessment is chronically challenged by the fact that the uptake and use of research-based knowledge is incremental, with multiple steps and other intervening factors, often with long time-lags. Measuring and attributing impact are difficult. CGIAR research impact assessment has typically attempted to measure the benefits of improved technologies generated by CGIAR research; this assumes that the main contributions of the research are bundled within an improved plant variety or other technology package. TDR deliberately aims to contribute to several impact pathways simultaneously, by supporting capacity-building and empowerment among partners, facilitating dialogue and political processes, co-generating knowledge that will be implemented directly by partners, as well as through more conventional research products. However, empirical evidence of whether and how transdisciplinary approaches contribute to (more) effective scientific and social outcomes remains limited.
CIFOR Senior Associate Scientist Brian Belcher and his team in the Sustainability Research Effectiveness Program (SRE) at Royal Roads University have developed methods to assess TDR. The SRE Program has also conducted a series of case studies of completed FTA research projects to investigate the link between transdisciplinary research and societal effects. They recently published two papers to share lessons from their work.
A refined method for theory-based evaluation of the societal impacts of research [pdf]“A refined method for theory-based evaluation of the societal impacts of research” (Belcher et al., 2020) provides a detailed description of concepts and a method for assessing the relationship between research processes, outputs, and outcomes. The Outcome Evaluation Approach uses an actor-centred Theory of Change as the analytical framework, and accounts for complexity by recognizing the role of other actors, context, and external processes in change. The article provides stepwise guidance on how to:
document a theory of change;
determine data needs and sources;
collect data;
manage and analyze data; and
present findings.
The paper responds to the need for appropriate methods to demonstrate (for accountability) and analyze (for learning) whether and how research projects contribute to change processes, in an effort to make research more effective in addressing complex sustainability challenges.
Sustainable Wetlands Adaptation and Mitigation Program (SWAMP)
Fire and Haze Indonesia (F&H)
Global Comparative Study on Forest Tenure Reform-Peru (GCS-FTR), and
Support to the Development of Agroforestry Concessions in Peru (SUCCESS)
represent a wide range of research approaches, social and policy contexts, and outcomes. Each case study used the Outcome Evaluation Approach described in Belcher et al. (2020) to document the project’s Theory of Change and assess whether and how outcomes were realized. The analysis also used Belcher et al.’s (2016) Transdisciplinary Research Quality Assessment Framework (QAF) to characterize each project by the degree to which its design and implementation conformed with transdisciplinary criteria.
Each project had a deliberate focus on moving beyond knowledge production to influence policy and practice. To do that, the projects employed a variety of strategies that crossed disciplinary bounds and engaged a range of partners and stakeholders at different levels. The results demonstrate that projects employing more transdisciplinary characteristics make more diverse contributions as they tend to leverage more diverse mechanisms of change. The participation of various system actors contributed to projects’ relevance and strongly contributed to the uptake and use of the research. Projects that invested most in developing and facilitating participation (e.g., the Global Comparative Study on Forest Tenure Reform-Peru and the Support to the Development of Agroforestry Concessions in Peru projects) were the most successful in generating social learning and building coalitions. Projects that employed the most traditional scientific models (e.g., the Brazil Nut Project and the Sustainable Wetlands Adaptation and Mitigation Program) but still invested in outreach and engagement, were able to realize significant outcomes. Research project efforts to support social processes helped translate and broker knowledge outputs and made substantial additional contributions through capacity-building, initiating and supporting discourse, and relationship-building.
Given the results, it is clear that research aiming to influence policy and practice change should consider integrating and reflecting on TDR characteristics more intentionally from the early planning stages and throughout the whole research process. This new Outcome Evaluation Approach will help linking outcomes, outputs and TDR more effectively, justifying the need for more transdisciplinary science, with an increase in overall results and global benefits.
[1] Two individual project outcome evaluation reports have been published (Brazilian Nut, SWAMP), while the others are forthcoming (F&H, GCS-FTR, SUCCESS).
FTA is the world’s largest research for development program to enhance the role of forests, trees and agroforestry in sustainable development and food security and to address climate change. CIFOR leads FTA in partnership with Bioversity International, CATIE, CIRAD, INBAR, ICRAF and TBI. FTA’s work is supported by the CGIAR Trust Fund.
Lack of access to wild meat could result in hunger and malnutrition for local and Indigenous communities
Conservationists have greeted China’s recent clampdown on wild animal hunting and consumption with enthusiasm.
The government made the move based on scientific theories that COVID-19 was transmitted from a pangolin or a bat to humans in a market in the city of Wuhan.
A similar response to the capture and consumption of wild meat occurred during the Ebola outbreak, which originated in an animal-human interaction and raged in West Africa from 2014 to 2016. At that time, conservationists suggested the disease was good for wildlife because people would not be eating wild animals as a result.
The transmission of disease between animals and people is nothing new. Animals have been the vector of more than 60 percent of infectious diseases, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which also states that three of every four new or emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic.
In the Middle Ages, plague, which is caused by the bacteria Yersinia pestis, found in small mammals and their fleas, led to pandemics. Known as the “Black Death,” in the 14th century it caused more than 50 million deaths in Europe. The Spanish flu virus, which is thought to have originated in pigs, led to the 1918-1919 pandemic, killing an estimated 40 million people worldwide.
Diseases often jump from animals to humans, but become much more serious and have the potential to create pandemics when human-to-human transmission occurs.
How does this happen? The current focus is on wild fauna, but remember, as in the case of the Spanish flu, some of the deadliest diseases have been transmitted to humans not by wildlife, but by domestic livestock. For example, poultry sparked avian influenza and rodents led to the plague and cause hantaviruses.
First, transmission occurs when humans create contacts with wild fauna in places where none previously existed. In other words, humans “go” to the site of virus reservoirs.
Research into Ebola by a multidisciplinary team coordinated by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), Spain’s University of Malaga and Britain’s Manchester Metropolitan University, into how wild animals, humans and natural landscapes interact, demonstrates that in large measure the problem is linked to deforestation and habitat degradation, which leads to environmental oscillations that enable the jump of diseases from animals to humans.
In a more recent study, the team showed that when bats in African rainforests are unsettled by humans, contact increases with people, likely influencing the spread of Ebola or other diseases carried by bats.
Second, transmission occurs when humans bring the reservoirs to their favored environments. For example, live animal markets or even pet trade sites — think psittacosis, also known as parrot fever.
The global wildlife trade – whether legal or illegal – valued at billions of dollars, is also to blame for the spread of pathogens and infectious diseases resulting from the legal or illegal transport of animals or from selling them alive in markets in appalling conditions.
These two mechanisms of disease transmission from animals to humans are quite universal, even in the case of the current Coronavirus pandemic.
However, the solution to the problem must be more nuanced than an outright global ban.
If China’s example of outlawing hunting of wild animals is taken up by other countries, this could mean that millions of people – often the poorest rural and Indigenous communities – will not be allowed to access – through hunting or gathering wild animals – the only source of animal protein available to them.
Where no other protein is available, eating wild meat is a necessity, but it should be banned where there are alternatives and where profiteering from wildlife is the motive. Many urban consumers consider wild meat a luxury item, while others might buy it because they have migrated from rural areas to cities and they want to continue eating the food they traditionally consumed.
In very simple terms: nations should forbid the sale of live animals, close markets selling live animals, stop wildlife trafficking and stem the trade of wild animals from forests to cities.
By doing this, we help conserve wildlife in their habitats and enable communities to use this resource. Research shows that city dwellers do not rely on wild meat as the only source of animal protein, since other affordable sources of meat are available.
The interrelationship between wild meat consumption, food security and poverty alleviation must be explored simultaneously when making decisions without relying on an outdated colonial discourse of conservation that favors wildlife over people.
Rural and Indigenous communities who harvest wild meat sustainably as a source of dietary protein already face growing competition from deforestation, biodiversity loss, legal and illegal trade. We should not add to these increased risks of malnutrition or hunger.
Many tropical forests face “empty forest” syndrome – they are forests in good standing, but they are depleted of large animals because of overhunting, disease, the impact of climate change, deforestation and forest degradation.
To address unsustainable exploitation amid growing concerns about animal-human disease transmission, sound and locally-tailored policies must be developed and implemented.
CIFOR and the partners of the Sustainable Wildlife Management Programme — which includes the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, the French Agricultural Centre for International Development (CIRAD) and the Wildlife Conservation Society — with support from the European Commission, are contributing to this effort through research-action, open consultations, working with communities to learn how to best protect the livelihoods and traditions of subsistence forest and rural dwellers and the landscapes they depend upon.
FTA is the world’s largest research for development program to enhance the role of forests, trees and agroforestry in sustainable development and food security and to address climate change. CIFOR leads FTA in partnership with Bioversity International, CATIE, CIRAD, INBAR, ICRAF and TBI. FTA’s work is supported by the CGIAR Trust Fund.
Funded by Norway, the approaches are set to help farmers protect their crops against the devastating pest while improving livelihoods and the environment.
Smart Mwape, a 65-year-old farmer in Chongwe, Zambia was surprised to find strange caterpillars as he strolled past several maize plants in his field one morning. They were either on the leaf or inside the leaf whorl. Unlike others, these looked peculiar and, over time, he noticed that his fellow farmers were also complaining of caterpillars invading their crops. He bought pesticides and sprayed but it yielded little results, leaving most of his crops damaged.
‘I was worried that the caterpillars eating my crops would affect my harvest. I decided to buy pesticides and sprayed but the insects were resistant. I felt frustrated,’ said Mwape. ‘With time, most of my crops were damaged resulting in low yields at harvest yet I had spent a lot of money on pesticides.’
The caterpillar Mwape found on his maize crop is the fall armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda), a pest native to the Americas. The pest was first detected in West Africa in 2016 before subsequently spreading across the continent leaving a trail of damaged crops. In its place of origin, the pest feeds on at least 350 plant species. In Africa, fall armyworm consumes a wide variety of cereal crops, particularly maize, a major staple grown by most farmers. Hence, if not controlled it could negatively affect food security, incomes and progress made by millions of smallholder farmers.
For Mwape, who has been farming from a young age, the outbreak is like nothing he has ever seen in terms of crop damage and resistance to pesticides. He now fears that his plans to develop his farm are under threat if alternatives to manage the pest are not found soon.
‘This fall armyworm is a bad pest,’ he said. ‘I hope a solution can be found quickly otherwise my plans of increasing activities on the farm risk getting shattered. I have always dreamed of one day moving away from rain-fed agriculture to having a borehole to grow vegetables, winter maize and rearing chickens so that am able to make enough income to live a better life.’
Rhett Harrison, a landscape ecologist and conservation biologist with ICRAF based in Zambia, is leading a 5-year research project in Zambia and Malawi funded by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation to develop smallholders’ strategies for fall armyworm management in Southern Africa. The project will examine the effectiveness of ecological options, a measure which is intended to a deliver low-cost control methods to 180 small-scale farmers.
‘Our target is to make pesticides redundant and use nature to do the work for us,’ said Harrison. ‘Many available pesticides are either banned in many countries or of lower quality. Agro-ecological approaches offer an alternative, which is both safer and better for the environment.’
Through the project, researchers are trying to alleviate the impact of fall armyworm on smallholders in Sub-Saharan Africa through low-cost pest control strategies based on ecological approaches to reduce crop losses, improve soils and create a general improvement in the livelihoods of the farmers. The approaches will be tested through experiments at three levels of soil management: conventional tillage, minimum tillage and mulching. There will be four intercropping treatments: 1) with no intercrop; and 2) intercropping with velvet bean; 3) ‘lablab’ (Lablab purpureus); and 4) locally selected legumes.
Since the dawn of agriculture, farmers have exploited the pest-control services of organisms living in and around their fields. However, the use of agroecological approaches gained recognition in the management of fall armyworm around the late 1980s owing to its ability to trigger three essential elements of integrated soil fertility to support healthy plants: 1) increased biodiversity at field; and 2) landscape scales; and 3) specific interventions to encourage natural enemies that feed on the pest.
Gilson Chipabika, an agricultural entomologist at Zambia Agriculture and Research Institute (ZARI), said the research will examine the management of the invasive pest in low- and high-density tree landscapes.
‘Zambia has three ecological zones that fall in the range of low, medium and high rainfall,’ said Chipabika. ‘Within these zones, our study will look at what farmers grow and create a unique and diverse approach in tackling fall armyworm in each region. Most chemicals being sold on the market are not sustainable and hence there is need to look at breaking away from practices that pose danger to the environment and human health.’
Agriculture is the major occupation in Zambia. In rural areas where the majority reside, subsistence farming is practised. Most farmers, like Mwape, own a small piece of land on which they grow maize, groundnuts, cassava, millet, sweet potatoes, and other crops to sustain their livelihoods. For many farmers, it is traditional for them to secure their food and income once a year during the rainy season to see them through to the next farming season. Reducing production costs will greatly assist many farmers to remain food secure, save on spending their ‘annual income’ on pesticides and enable them to invest in other productive farming activities.
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The fall armyworm project is funded by Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation and being implemented by ICRAF, Zambia Agricultural Research Institute in Zambia and Department of Agricultural Research Services in Malawi.
We’ve heard a lot about ambitious tree planting initiatives in recent months. Laudable as these may be – and we offer congratulations and celebrate the community-minded impetus behind them – we need a lot more than tree planting to restore degraded landscapes and to save the world’s forests.
On International Day of Forests, we join with the United Nations to draw attention to the urgent need for general recognition of the key role these treed landscapes play in combating climate change and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), targets aimed at alleviating poverty.
We celebrate all forested biomes, whether they are enmeshed in effective agricultural systems, natural peatlands, dry forests and mangroves. “Forgotten” forests that deserve more attention include tropical montane cloud, karst and keranga forests.
We urge the international community to implement robust, systemic changes required to address the dramatic consequences of deforestation and forest degradation, to conserve intact forests, sustainably manage secondary, disturbed or overlogged forests, increase trees on farms, while restoring degraded lands for both global goods and local livelihoods.
The high-level frameworks and targets exist. Through the SDGs, the New York Declaration on Forests (NYDF), the U.N. Paris Agreement and the Convention on Biological Diversity we have all we need to deploy transformations and succeed. Hopes are now weighted heavily on the U.N. Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030). Will it provide the structure within which governments, businesses and people will act in a united effort to offset global warming before it is too late?
But we must not forget those people who are closest to forests. We must deepen our dialogue with the communities who live, work and rely on forests.
Not only are forests the most biologically-diverse land-based ecosystems, but they are home to more than 80 percent of terrestrial species of animals, plants and insects and store vast quantities of carbon.
Consider this: these critical ecosystems containing half the planet’s species of plants and animals provide livelihoods for 1.6 billion people – including more than 2,000 Indigenous cultures – who rely on forests for medicine, fuel, food and shelter.
Although the financial values attributed to land degradation, forest restoration and other data are projections and estimates, we know that the orders of magnitude are valid.
Deforestation, land degradation and depletion of natural capital are common across the world, and estimated to cost $6.3 trillion in lost ecosystem services annually. That is a value roughly 10 percent of the global economy.
When packaged together as the “land-use sector,” agroforestry systems provide more than 95 percent of all human food, generate employment for over half of all adults and account for 30 percent of all greenhouse-gas emissions.
And trees in forests or on farms are at the very heart of nature-based solutions for the climate emergency.
Research by CIFOR-ICRAF and others has shown that not only do trees in forests and fields sequester large amounts of carbon but they also provide food and material for farmers and foresters, renew the fertility of soils and their stability, protect watersheds for downstream consumers, and that they are the critical player in our planet’s water cycle.
And now, as we confront a climate emergency, the global community urgently needs to make better efforts to reconnect human prosperity and ecosystem resilience to forests and agriculture.
So how do we get there?
The world needs transformative scientific, development, business and financial partnerships to undertake the large-scale transformations needed and achieve the global targets so onerously worked out over the years.
There are five areas where investment can be made to rejuvenate the functions of degraded ecosystems. These will help protect, expand and value forests and their biodiversity, transform agriculture into perennial systems, and build sustainable value chains, with the combined support of governments and the private sector to make the transition to sustainable economies.
The investment needed to reverse land degradation around the world to meet the target of the NYDF is $830 billion, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. Restoring 350 million hectares as part of the Bonn Challenge — a commitment made during U.N. Climate talks in 2014 as part of the NYDF – is estimated at $360 billion.
As highlighted by participants in November at the Global Landscapes Forum in Luxembourg, triggering investment requires broadening the definition of “wealth” to include natural and social assets, significant collaboration between the public and private sectors and a systematic change in global supply chains and financial systems.
Second, agriculture must be more strongly connected to climate solutions. The agriculture, forestry and other land use sectors are responsible for just under a quarter of human-generated greenhouse gas emissions, mainly caused by deforestation and such agricultural sources as livestock, soil and nutrient management.
Yet, agroforestry, if defined by tree cover of greater than 10 percent on agricultural land, is widespread: found on more than 43 percent of all agricultural land globally, where 30 percent of rural populations live, representing over 1 billion hectares of land and up to 1.5 billion people.
It must be expanded in both area and diversity of species to help countries meet nationally determined contributions – targets under the U.N. Paris Agreement on climate change aimed at reducing global warming – improve livelihoods, enhance food security and perennialize agriculture, taking the pressure off natural forests.
Third, mangroves and peatlands are vital carbon sinks.
Mangrove ecosystems are recognized for their ability to store large amounts of carbon and protect shorelines from erosion caused by ocean activity. They also provide a buffer by capturing sediment high in organic carbon, which can accumulate in tandem with sea level rise, according to research findings by CIFOR scientists.
Like mangroves, peatlands have a massive role to play in mitigating the impact of climate change, but they are under major threat in many countries in both the Global North and the South.
For example, in the Congo Basin concessions are up for sale and the threat of drainage is real. Peatlands make up more than half of all wetlands worldwide and they are equivalent to 3 percent of total land and freshwater surfaces.
Built up over thousands of years from decayed, waterlogged vegetation debris, Wetlands International reports that 15 percent of peatlands have been drained for agriculture, commercial forestry and to extract fuel.
When they are drained, they oxidize and carbon is released into the atmosphere, causing global warming.
Any program to fix forests and landscapes must ensure peatlands are protected, rewetted and restored.
Fourth, restoring landscapes can bring impressive benefits, by some measures up to $30 for every dollar invested, but restoration investments have so far been slim.
Important steps toward this transformative investment include collaboration between private and public funders, reducing risk and uncertainty for investors, developing better measures of landscape health and building an inventory of technologies, methods and knowledge that can be expanded in scale.
Fifth, biological diversity is fundamental to the existence of life on Earth. To choose the most obvious example, food crops are plants that rely on pollinators to flower and fruit. The value of these crops is almost $600 billion annually.
The vast majority of pollinators are wild, including 20,000 species of bees, and reliant on intact, diverse and healthy ecosystems. Insects are likely to make up the majority of future biodiversity loss: up to 40 percent of all invertebrate species face extinction.
Integrating a greater amount and number of trees, shrubs and other species into farms will provide habitat, pollinators, natural predators and sources of food and incomes.
And so?
We know the solutions needed to save Earth’s forests implement land restoration and we increasingly understand the implications of failure. Tree planting has inspired many to take action to protect and rehabilitate our forests. What is needed now is the financial commitment to make it happen, and happen fast.
We recall the teachings of Elinor Ostrom (1933-2012), who won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2009, which she shared with Oliver Williamson, “for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons.”
Through her research into how commonly held lands are managed, she overturned traditional colonial-dominant perspectives. She taught us that people can work together to sustainably and effectively shape natural resource use, as long as ground rules and parameters are clear, and those who work on the land are involved. She recognized that rules should not be imposed without consultation from above by governments or other formal entities to achieve the highest level of successful land management.
She delivered the formula for success. We must ensure we live up to it by melding high-level policies with tactics deployed by sustainable land managers — the people who live and work in forests. We must continually work across sectors to achieve comprehensive results.
Listen to Ostrom: “Until a theoretical explanation — based on human choice — for self-organized and self-governed enterprises is fully developed and accepted, major policy decisions will continue to be undertaken with a presumption that individuals cannot organize themselves and always need to be organized by external authorities.”
Restoration 
Plantations and tree crop commodities 
Enhanced nutrition and food security 
Biodiversity, safeguarding and conservation 
Nationally determined contributions 
Bioenergy and biomaterials 
Blue carbon and peatlands 
Climate change adaptation 
Landscape governance 
Gender 
Silvopastoral systems 
Market-based agroforestry-forestry 
Farm-forest policy interface 
Agroecology 
Livelihood trajectory modelling and assessment 
Inclusive finance and business models 
Innovating finance for sustainable landscapes 
Public and private commitments to zero deforestation 
Orphan tree crops 
Effectiveness of approaches to sustainable supply 
Quality of FTA research for development 
Sentinel landscapes 
Foresight 
Seeds and seedlings delivery systems 
Smallholder tree-crop commodities 
