Success from the ground up: Participatory monitoring and forest restoration
Success from the ground up: Participatory monitoring and forest restoration
18 January, 2017
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Authors: Evans, K.; Guariguata, M.R.
New global forest restoration initiatives present an unparalleled opportunity to reverse the trend of deforestation and forest degradation in the coming years. This effort will require the collaboration of stakeholders at all levels, and most importantly, the participation and support of local people. These ambitious restoration initiatives will also require monitoring systems that allow for scalability and adaptability to a range of local sites. This will be essential in understanding how a given restoration effort is progressing, determining why or why not it is succeeding and learning from both its successes and failures. Participatory monitoring could play a crucial role in meeting international monitoring needs. The potential of participatory monitoring in forest restoration and related forest management activities is explored in this review through multiple case studies, experiences, field tests and conceptual discussions. The review seeks to deepen and broaden our understanding of participatory monitoring by teasing out the lessons learned from existing knowledge and mapping a possible path forward, with the aim of improving the outcomes of forest restoration initiatives.
Source: CIFOR Publications
Series: CIFOR Occasional Paper no. 159
Pages: 43p.
Publisher: Bogor, Indonesia, Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR)
ICRAF hosted the first regional African Ecosystem Services Partnership (ESP) conference on 21-25 November 2016 in Nairobi, Kenya. ESP is an international network of scientists and practitioners working together in robust thematic working groups to generate and share knowledge on scientific discourse related to ecosystem services.
With the theme Ecosystem Services for SDGs in Africa, the conference had an attendance of 170 people from 28 countries, majority from Africa. “This conference aimed to enhance the participation of Africans within ESP and also to enable focus on African ESP issues. With twenty sessions and over 100 presentations in which there was high-level engagement and quality discourse, the conference exceeded expectations,” said Dr Peter Minang, Science Domain 5 Leader at ICRAF who chaired the conference scientific and organizing committees.
While opening the conference, Prof Judi Wakhungu, Cabinet Secretary in Kenya’s Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources lauded the conference for having a large participation of young people and early career practitioners. The conference had sponsored more than ten students pursuing subjects related to ecosystem services and for the first time in the ESP conference history held an open session for the youth.
Moreover, Prof Judi Wakhungu emphasized the need for politicians to be made aware of the need to account for natural capital, noting that Kenya had already taken a step in this direction by producing the first biodiversity atlas of the country’s natural capital.
2016 Africa Ecosystem Services Partnership Conference 21-25 November 2016 field trip to Naivasha. Photo: ICRAF
Also speaking at the opening session was Tony Simons, Director General at ICRAF who challenged the audience by asking if we really know our planetary priorities. “If we undertook a planetary audit, we would be failing with indicators such as poor planetary governance with weak compliance, excessive human conflict, unsustainable use of planetary resources, inadequate metrics for monitoring such as GDP,” said Prof Tony Simons. He called for accelerated talks and deliberate effort to actively include gender in practice as going by the current rate, “It will take us 190 years to achieve gender parity.”
Private sector role and involvement in ecosystems services management and SDGs was a key theme of the conference. Speaking to a charged audience, Vimal Shah , the CEO of Bidco Africa said that the private sector has a major role to ensure that the ecosystem is sustainable. “ We must start to account for environmental footprint in our business balance sheets even if this is not profitable,” he said. He further noted that consumers had a role in evaluating products based on their water and carbon footprint, as this would be a great incentive for the private sector to act.
Vimal called for a move from Africa’s potential to action. “We have been talking of potential for the past 50 years since independence. And it will remain potential for the next 50 years, until we act,” he said. For instance a huge percentage of Africa’s arable land is yet to be put to use for production using modern technology and equipment. If this were to happen, Africa can feed itself and the world.
Another highlight of the conference was the role of policy and an enabling environment where His Excellency Governor Benjamin Cheboi of Baringo County in Kenya who also Chairs the Council of Governors committee on Water, Forestry and Mining talked of the need for economics in ecosystem services to ensure a fair and equitable distribution of natural resources benefits and costs. He emphasized the need to empower local and national leaders as well as decision makers on environmental conservation.
The African ESP conference stimulated the need for collaboration in Africa on the science, policy and practice of the Ecosystem Services concept and registered high interest for an Africa Ecosystem Services Network.
Teak forest plantation, Jepara, Central Java - Indonesia. Photo: Center For International Forestry Research/Murdani Usman
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Teak forest plantation, Jepara, Central Java – Indonesia. Photo: Center For International Forestry Research/Murdani Usman
By Catriona Croft-Cusworth, originally posted at CIFOR’s Forests News
Natural forests support life in complex ways. Forest ecosystems are habitats for animals and humans, they regulate air quality, temperature and carbon cycling, protect soils and water quality, help mitigate climate change, and much more.
New research led by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) aims to provide an improved basis for assessing the contribution of planted forests to ecosystem services. In a recent paper in the journal Ecosystem Services, researchers from CIFOR and the University of Melbourne propose a framework for assessing the well-being benefits of planted forests.
Their findings show that plantations can contribute ecosystem services, and that it is possible to assess these benefits using a simple approach. This will enable a better understanding of the capacity of different types of planted forests to provide services such as timber, water quality, carbon sequestration or habitat benefits, and their contribution to forest landscape restoration goals.
Himlal Baral, the lead author of the paper, says the term ‘planted forests’ is not without its critics. The broad definition by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), as given above, encompasses everything from ecological restoration efforts to industrial plantations.
Critics are quick to point out that “plantations are not forests”, and often label them “green deserts” because they are perceived to provide few benefits to conservation of plant or animal species.
But Baral says the negative impacts of plantations represent failures in policy, planning, management and community engagement, and are not direct consequences of plantations themselves.
“Plantations of the right species in the right places can provide multiple benefits, not just timber. It depends on where they are in the landscape, what they replace, how they are managed, and so on,’” he says.
While timber plantations often have a bad reputation, he adds, their effects are more limited than agriculture or infrastructure development as drivers of natural forest loss in tropical and sub-tropical regions.
They also have the potential to provide greater benefits than food crops and other land uses to human and environmental well-being in the long term, including by restoring degraded forest landscapes, according to the research.
MEASURING ECOSYSTEM SERVICES
The commonly cited TEEB (The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity) definition of ecosystem services is “the direct and indirect contributions of ecosystems to human well-being”. These are further divided into provisioning, regulating, supporting (or habitat) and cultural services.
Forest ecosystems provide food, raw materials and medicines. They regulate clean air and water, support habitats for a diverse range of species, and hold spiritual and recreational values for mental and physical health.
So can these services can be provided by planted forests, and to what extent?
In their new paper, Baral and colleagues aim to find answers by introducing a framework for quantifying and assessing the ecosystem services of natural and planted forests.
Using common classification systems, such as those used in the TEEB study, the framework recommends a step-by-step process for identifying beneficiaries, determining the appropriate assessment tools, and analyzing, synthesizing and communicating the results to relevant stakeholders.
The process is designed for increased transparency, participation and effectiveness in decision-making on policy, management and engagement in relation to planted forests.
In theory, the paper finds that planted forests can be better than agriculture and pasture for almost all ecosystem services measured. In comparison to natural forests, planted forests are generally higher for timber production and carbon sequestration.
The framework also takes into account the public and private aspects of planted forests, and what this means for access to ecosystem services. For example, timber and other ‘excludable’ forest products may not be as readily accessible to local populations from a planted forest as from a natural forest, while ‘non-excludable’ services such as clean air and water are accessible to all.
The ecosystem ‘dis-services’ of some planted forests are not considered in the assessment framework, as the authors consider these to be the results of poor planning and design. In testing the framework, factoring in negative impacts in the assessment balance sheet will be important to improve planning and decision-making for plantation investments.
Baral hopes that the research will support improved understanding and management of planted forests to the benefit of people and the environment.
“By increasing the area of plantations for timber production on degraded lands, we can reduce the pressure to clear natural forests,” Baral says.
“The human population is increasing and people are becoming wealthier. Demand for forest products is increasing – you need somewhere to satisfy those demands,” he says. “And if you don’t have plantations, you need to harvest natural forests more extensively.”
This research was supported by the Centre for International Forestry Research as part of the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry and was partly funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) through the KNOWFOR program, and by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research.
Catalina Santamaria is the Forests Programme Officer for the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). She spoke to CIFOR on the sidelines of the 13th Conference of Parties to the CBD (CBD COP13), held from 4-17 December 2016 in Cancun, Mexico.
Santamaria joined the Center for International Forestry Research at CBD’s first ‘gender day’, where diverse speakers shared the latest science on how to best integrate gender issues into natural resource management, including sustainable management of wildlife.
Find out more about CIFOR’s involvement in CBD COP13 here.
Diverse speakers at the event discussed the impact of gender relations on human-wildlife conflicts, wildlife conservation, trafficking and trade, governance, land rights, food security, nutrition and more.
Landscape approaches attempt to achieve balance amongst multiple goals over long time periods and to adapt to changing conditions. We review project reports and the literature on integrated landscape approaches, and found a lack of documented studies of their long-term effectiveness. The combination of multiple and potentially changing goals presents problems for the conventional measures of impact. We propose more critical use of theories of change and measures of process and progress to complement the conventional impact assessments. Theories of change make the links between project deliverables, outputs, outcomes, and impacts explicit, and allow a full exploration of the landscape context. Landscape approaches are long-term engagements, but short-term process metrics are needed to confirm that progress is being made in negotiation of goals, meaningful stakeholder engagement, existence of connections to policy processes, and effectiveness of governance. Long-term impact metrics are needed to assess progress on achieving landscapes that deliver multiple societal benefits, including conservation, production, and livelihood benefits. Generic criteria for process are proposed, but impact metrics will be highly situation specific and must be derived from an effective process and a credible theory of change.
There’s one more reason to be jolly this season: the frankincense tree—source of one of the precious gifts of the Magi in the Christmas story—is being called “a suitable tree species for use in dryland restoration under a changing climate.”
Based on studies on frankincense trees (Bosweillia neglecta) from southern Ethiopia that form part of the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry, World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) and partner researchers are calling for this tree’s expanded application in the restoration of drylands in the Horn of Africa.
In this region, covering Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia, and parts of northern Kenya, frankincense is tapped from Bosweillia and several other dryland trees found naturally in dry tropical forests and woodlands. When injured, the bark exudes a fragrant watery sap, which is collected and left to harden into the frankincense resin. Bosweillianeglecta tree produces a particular, earthy frankincense known as ‘Borena type’.
An important commodity, frankincense is used in pharmacology, as a flavouring, in cosmetics and in perfumery, and is traded locally and internationally. The incense is used in many religious and cultural ceremonies around the world; indeed, no Ethiopian coffee ceremony is complete without the sweet, heady aroma frankincense releases when heated over hot coals.
Although Bosweillia species are so important for the environment and society in the Horn of Africa, their habitats—dry forests and woodlands—are under threat of decimation from a complex of human activities, unsustainable exploitation, and climate change.
The dendrochronology laboratory at ICRAF
Using dendrochronology—the science of analyzing and dating tree growth rings—Mulugeta Mokria sought to unravel Bosweillia neglecta’s response to wet and dry conditions over several decades past. The study was part of his MSc degree at Wageningen University, with research conducted in his native Ethiopia’s Arero district, at the ICRAF dendrochronology laboratory, and at the dendrochronology lab of Wondo Genet College of Forestry and Natural Resources, Ethiopia.
Under the joint supervision and collaboration of scientists from Wageningen university, ICRAF and Ethiopia, Mulugeta focused on the frankincense tree’s responses to water availability. The research brought together visual and microscopic examination of tree rings and wood vessels; meteorological data (from a weather station close to the studied trees); and leaf phenology data (obtained from NASA satellites). Taken together, the data were used to reconstruct the behaviour of the frankincense tree during the area’s two rainy seasons per year, the dry seasons, as well as the periodic droughts that prevailed over the 30 years between 1982 and 2012.
A leafy Boswellia neglecta tree during the wet season. Photo credit: Mulugeta Mokria/ICRAF
The research revealed how the tree changed its behavior and anatomy to avoid drought-induced damage:
“As the rainy seasons ended, the tree shed its leaves, and formed smaller stem vessels. This was in contrast with the beginning of the two rainy seasons, when the tree had full leaf cover and larger stem vessels in its growth ring,” said Mulugeta.
These strategies— dropping leaves and reducing vessel size—helped the plant minimize water loss and cope with drought.
“What is interesting about this species is that it sheds its leaves twice a year and forms two rings in a year in concurrence with the biannual rainfall pattern. As a result, Bosweillia has been able to survive and even expand across the water-limited dryland conditions of southeastern Ethiopia,” said Aster Gebrekirstos, head of ICRAF’s Dendrochronology Laboratory.
“Based on these findings, as well as on ecological, economic and cultural considerations, we conclude that the tree is highly suited for restoration of woodlands in the Horn of Africa.”
Fire ban
Dendrochonological dating of the trees studied showed they were 22 years old on average (range 16- 28 years).
From this, Mulugeta and co-researchers concluded that the expansion of B. neglecta was greatly helped by a ban on bush burning imposed between 1968 and 1976 in the southern Ethiopian rangelands. The moratorium disallowed pastoralists in the region from using fire to control bush encroachment into their grazing lands.
The ban “created favourable environmental conditions for B. neglecta to successfully colonize the study area,” explains Gebrekirstos.
A Boswellia neglecta tree after shedding its leaves in the dry season. Photo credit: Mulugeta Mokria/ICRAF
“Using dendrochronology, we are able to look back on the impacts of climate change on plant production, ecosystem services and vegetation dynamics, and use this knowledge to recommend suitable species for future climates. In this way we can contribute meaningfully to national and global efforts to restore degraded landscapes.”
Livelihoods
Ethiopia is one of the major suppliers of frankincense to the world market. A CIFOR study reported that in the 2007/2008 Ethiopian fiscal year, the country exported 3834 tons of gums and resins, earning US$ 5.2 million (Leminih and Kassa 2011).
As such, promoting the frankincense tree for restoration would meet not only ecological but also livelihood-improvement targets for people in the water-stressed zones of the Horn of Africa; In certain frankincense-producing rural communities, the resin brings in up to a third of household income.
Policy incentives could be used to promote farmer-managed natural regeneration of the trees and to reduce the degradation of dryland forests and woodlands where Boswellia neglecta, Boswellia papyrifera, and other frankincense-producing trees occur naturally.
Other priorities would include developing more sustainable tapping methods for the resin, improving post-harvest handling and marketing, and conducting research aimed at domesticating the tree, so it can be grown on farms as an agroforestry species.
With attention to sustainability, the frankincense tree will continue to give the gift of its precious resin, but also the important environmental services that dryland trees provide.
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Read journal article:
“The frankincense tree Boswellia neglecta reveals high potential for restoration of woodlands in the Horn of Africa”. By Mulugeta Mokria, Motuma Tolera, Frank J. Sterck, Aster Gebrekirstos, Frans Bongers, Mathieu Decuyper, and Ute Sass-Klaassen. Forest Ecology and Management 385 (2017) 16–24. (http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2016.11.020)
Global economic change and policy interventions are driving transitions from long-fallow swidden (LFS) systems to alternative land uses in Southeast Asia’s uplands. This study presents a systematic review of how these transitions impact upon livelihoods and ecosystem services in the region. Over 17 000 studies published between 1950 and 2015 were narrowed, based on relevance and quality, to 93 studies for further analysis. Our analysis of land-use transitions from swidden to intensified cropping systems showed several outcomes: more households had increased overall income, but these benefits came at significant cost such as reductions of customary practice, socio-economic wellbeing, livelihood options, and staple yields. Examining the effects of transitions on soil properties revealed negative impacts on soil organic carbon, cation-exchange capacity, and aboveground carbon. Taken together, the proximate and underlying drivers of the transitions from LFS to alternative land uses, especially intensified perennial and annual cash cropping, led to significant declines in pre-existing livelihood security and the ecosystem services supporting this security. Our results suggest that policies imposing land-use transitions on upland farmers so as to improve livelihoods and environments have been misguided; in the context of varied land uses, swidden agriculture can support livelihoods and ecosystem services that will help buffer the impacts of climate change in Southeast Asia.
Harnessing multi-purpose productive landscapes for integrated climate and development goals
Harnessing multi-purpose productive landscapes for integrated climate and development goals
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By Peter Holmgren, originally published on CIFOR’s Forests News
The Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) welcomes the ratification and early entry into force of the Paris Agreement. This is a major step towards effective global climate action. We also welcome the recent progress on REDD+ results based payments at the Green Climate Fund.
The land sector will be key in achieving the well below 2 or 1.5 degree goal agreed in Paris and this is clearly reflected in the long term goal of net zero emissions, Article 5 and the Preamble of the Agreement. This role however is not limited to that of forests or agriculture in isolation, but across the landscape. It will be the actions that are taken on the ground by smallholder farmers, local communities, small to medium business and other non-state as well as State actors that will drive the outcomes concerning climate. Climate mitigation and adaptation will inevitably be a co benefit of the actions taken across the landscape.
We urge world leaders to emphasize integrated solutions that harness ecosystem services derived from intact, productive and adaptive landscapes, and to move away from the business-as-usual rhetoric of forest (or ecosystem) conversion for development. Integrating these objectives harmoniously in a complex world requires approaches that are based in science, are socially, culturally and environmentally responsible, and take the needs of all stakeholders into account through open, fair and equitable participation, and that are rooted in recognition of rights.
Our experience studying REDD+ over 6 years shows that there are no lasting climate solutions involving tropical forests if the livelihoods of the people in those forests are not sustained or improved – global environmental sustainability requires local economic sustainability. While action at the international level is important, international climate action meets the requirements of the world’s forest dependent communities when implemented on the ground.
Turning to the negotiations in Marrakesh, we are concerned that the international climate community was unable to come to an agreement on concrete next steps related to the agriculture agenda item. It is essential that moving forward, to implement the Paris Agreement and achieve the much needed transformational change, an approach that addresses agriculture as a major driver of deforestation, whilst putting in place measures at the international level to ensure food security and protect rights will be essential.
We welcome the road map that has been agreed in Marrakesh as an important step forward in terms of developing the rule-book to ensure the Paris Agreement is implemented. We hope to see the completion of this important work by 2018, in particular on topics concerning accounting for nationally determined contributions, adaptation communications, transparency and compliance. We hope this work will encourage parties to put in place the much-needed steps to increase their ambition. In this work, world leaders should place importance on the use of science and evidence as key to assessing and monitoring the performance of NDCs in policy and practice, across multiple sectors and levels of government.
We encourage countries to revise their NDCs to enhance ambition and address the operationalization of the agreed climate objectives, and doing so within multifunctional landscape objectives, clear strategy plans and actionable roadmaps, unambiguous designation of accountability, and effective participation of all sectors and levels of governments. This will require collaboration with non-state actors (from the corporate sectors to civil society) across those sectors, with enhanced transparency arrangements, while striving to avoid negative social and environmental impacts, especially on smallholder farmers and rural and indigenous communities.
Remote sensing and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) can be combined to advance conservation of remote tropical regions, e.g. Amazonia, where intensive in situ surveys are often not possible. Integrating TEK into monitoring and management of these areas allows for community participation, as well as for offering novel insights into sustainable resource use. In this study, we developed a 250-m-resolution land-cover map of the western Guyana Shield (Venezuela) based on remote sensing, and used TEK to validate its relevance for indigenous livelihoods and land uses. We first employed a hyper-temporal remotely sensed vegetation index to derive a land classification system. During a 1,300-km, 8-day fluvial expedition in roadless areas in the Amazonas State (Venezuela), we visited six indigenous communities who provided geo-referenced data on hunting, fishing and farming activities. We overlaid these TEK data onto the land classification map, to link land classes with indigenous use. Several classes were significantly connected with agriculture, fishing, overall hunting, and more specifically the hunting of primates, red brocket deer, black agouti, and white-lipped peccary. We then characterized land classes using greenness and topo-hydrological information, and proposed 12 land-cover types, grouped into five main landscapes: 1) water bodies; 2) open lands/forest edges; 3) evergreen forests; 4) submontane semideciduous forests, and 5) cloud forests. Our results show that TEK-based approaches can serve as a basis for validating the livelihood relevance of landscapes in high-value conservation areas, which can form the basis for furthering the management of natural resources in these regions
Publication Year: 2016
ISSN: 0034-7744
Source: Revista de Biología Tropical 64(4): 1661-1682
The role of agroforestry in climate-change adaptation in Southeast Asia
The role of agroforestry in climate-change adaptation in Southeast Asia
Witoon Chamroen (left) explaining to Prasit Wangpakapattanawong of ICRAF how his 40-year-old rubber trees in his mixed tree garden produce more latex than younger trees grown in monoculture, in Phattalung, Thailand. Photo: World Agroforestry Centre/Robert Finlayson
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Index of climate vulnerability. Source: Economy and Environment Program for Southeast Asia
The ten countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations are highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Experts argue that agroforestry can help make the region’s millions of smallholding farmers more resilient and secure food supply.
Southeast Asia, with a population of more than 600 million mostly reliant on agriculture and forests, is ranked high on measures of vulnerability to the impact of climate change. The high-level Experts Dialogue on Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation in ASEAN, held in Bali, Indonesia, 30 November 2016, heard that agroforestry could help farmers adapt while also mitigating climate change. The Dialogue was supported by Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation.
The list of impacts of climate change is long: shifting seasons that affect planting and growing periods; extreme heat, droughts, increased aridity and water shortages that reduce or wipe out yields; erratic rainfall that makes farm planning difficult if not impossible; storms, floods and landslides that destroy crops, livestock and homes; rising sea levels that salinate farm land; increased human, plant and livestock diseases; and lowered productivity of livestock, including fisheries.
An agroforest in Lao PDR. Photo: World Agroforestry Centre/Robert Finlayson
‘Vulnerability is defined as the deficit in coping and adaptive capacity at household level’, explained Ingrid Öborn, Regional Coordinator for Southeast Asia for The World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF).
‘It is linked to buffering and filtering capacities at landscape and broader societal levels. Agroforestry is increasingly recognized as a sustainable land use in multifunctional landscapes that helps reduce farmers’ vulnerability and increase their ability to adapt, providing multiple benefits. As well as increasing carbon storage on formerly degraded or unused land, immediate benefits include increased and diversified food supply, increased income and maintenance of services provided by ecosystems, such as improved quantity and quality of water’.
Öborn pointed out that 30% of the world’s rural populations are already using trees and that trees are present on 46% of all agricultural land.
‘These “trees outside forests” are often not properly considered when governments make agricultural and forestry policies’, she said. ‘To address climate change thoroughly, we need to bring these trees to the forefront and support farmers to intensify and diversify their agroforests’.
ASEAN is one major body that has understood the need for an integrated perspective. Its Vision and Strategic Plan for ASEAN Cooperation in Food, Agriculture and Forestry 2016–2025, which was endorsed by the ASEAN ministers of agriculture and forestry in September 2015, takes a global and regional perspective and recognizes the main issues as 1) rapid economic growth; 2) regional integration and globalization; and 3) pressures on the natural resource base, including climate change.
The Strategy explicitly identifies agroforestry’s role in its plan of action: ‘Increase resilience to climate change, natural disasters and other shocks: expand resilient agroforestry systems where ecologically and economically appropriate’.
Witoon Chamroen (left) explaining to Prasit Wangpakapattanawong of ICRAF how his 40-year-old rubber trees in his mixed tree garden produce more latex than younger trees grown in monoculture, in Phattalung, Thailand. Photo: World Agroforestry Centre/Robert Finlayson
Öborn told the meeting that in the past, farmers often responded to climate variations by gradually changing their practices, mixing crops with trees to reduce risk if a crop failed because of weather patterns. Understanding this dynamism, replicating the most successful agroforestry systems and matching them to specific socio-cultural-ecological circumstances is crucial for helping farmers adapt to climate change. But governments also need to adapt to changing circumstances and think differently about how farmers, agriculture and forests interact.
She gave several examples of how agroforestry contributes to adaptation. In Viet Nam, researchers from ICRAF and partners found that ‘forest gardens’ sustain livelihoods when variable weather hits intensified crop cultivation. Farmers in Cam My in Central Viet Nam were using forests, as well as their farms, as gardens where they grew vegetables and trees for timber, fruit and other benefits. The gardens were established on land designated as State-owned forest. This created some conflict and highlighted the need to adjust policies to officially recognize farmers’ management that did not reduce the services provided by the forests.
Also in Viet Nam, in the Northwest, whole provinces were under monocultural maize farming on steeply sloping land that led to massive soil erosion, frequent landslides, loss of soil fertility, declining yields and overall severe degradation of the agro-ecosystem. The region was one of the poorest in the country.
Supported by the Australian Centre for Agricultural Research, ICRAF and national partners establishment experimental trials of agroforestry systems that had been computer-modeled to show that they could not only provide environmental benefits but also increase farmers’ incomes quickly. The trials were so successful that not only did neighbours adopt the systems but also the local governments in the three provinces established, together with farmers, three whole landscapes of agroforests of 50 hectares each.
More than 22,000 trees are being planted as well as 50,000 m of forage grasses along contour lines to reduce erosion, and 20,000 seedlings of five fruit-tree species. The landscapes are a co-investment by the ACIAR project (54%), farmers (35%) and the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (11%).
In Indonesia, an area in Central Java was heavily logged in the 1950s, resulting in soil erosion, agricultural decline, drought-induced famines and high levels of poverty. Re-agroforestation was undertaken, using teak trees as the major species. The landscape was rehabilitated successfully, moving from 2 to 28% tree cover, with teak making up over half. Farmers interviewed said they planted teak as a kind of ‘savings bank’ and because it was part of their cultural heritage.
Witoon Chamroen (left) explaining to Prasit Wangpakapattanawong of ICRAF how his 40-year-old rubber trees in his mixed tree garden produce more latex than younger trees grown in monoculture, in Phattalung, Thailand. Photo: World Agroforestry Centre/Robert Finlayson
Only 15% maximized teak management for sale to markets. Most farmers preferred mixed systems with diverse trees and crops that sustained customary life and improved the environment. Nevertheless, they said they also wanted to improve their management, obtain better-quality seeds and seedlings, have greater access to markets and expand the amount of intercropping between their trees.
Globally, smallholders produce 90% of cocoa, 75% of rubber, 67% of coffee, 40% of palm oil, 25% of tea and 20–30% of teak in an annual trade worth USD 60 billion. In Indonesia, smallholders are key producers of rubber, cocoa, coffee, palm oil, tea, tea, rattan, honey, sandalwood, damar, benzoin, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and candlenut, most of which are produced in agroforestry systems that could benefit from improved management, greater technical knowledge and easier access to markets.
‘Economic value and potential yields depend on socioeconomic and biophysical conditions and farmers’ management practices’, said Öborn. ‘We need to understand farmers’ contexts and needs if we are to help improve their agroforests and thus their livelihoods and resilience to climate change’.
To help farmers adopt agroforestry or improve the management of the agroforests they already have, they need a range of support, such as helping increase their technical knowledge, providing them with accurate weather forecasts and advice on how specific agroforests that suit their conditions can buffer farms against climate change. Other barriers to adoption include a lack of secure land tenure and weak links between agroforestry and climate, food security and development policies.
‘It is a big challenge for governments to sort out all of this’, confirmed Öborn. ‘But the benefits are worth it and can be aggregated from individual farms to whole landscapes that can reap the rewards in the form of biodiversity conservation, better watershed management and carbon sequestration. Globally, agroforestry can be a substantial contribution to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions and helping ASEAN nations meet their Nationally Determined Contributions’.
De Royer S, Ratnamhin A, Wangpakapattanawong P. 2016. Swidden-fallow agroforestry for sustainable land use in Southeast Asia Countries. Policy Brief no. 68. Agroforestry options for ASEAN series no. 2. Bogor, Indonesia: World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) Southeast Asia Regional Program; Jakarta, Indonesia: ASEAN-Swiss Partnership on Social Forestry and Climate Change.
Hoan DT, Catacutan DC, Nguyen TH. 2016. Agroforestry for sustainable mountain management in Southeast Asia. Policy Brief no. 69. Agroforestry options for ASEAN series no. 3. Bogor, Indonesia: World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) Southeast Asia Regional Program; Jakarta, Indonesia: ASEAN-Swiss Partnership on Social Forestry and Climate Change.
Authors: Wilkie, D.S.; Wieland, M.; Boulet, H.; Le Bel, S.; Van Vliet, N.; Cornelis, D.; BriacWarnon, V.;Nasi, R.; Fa, J.E.
In Africa, overhunting of tropical wildlife for food remains an intractable issue. Donors and governments remain committed to invest in efforts to both conserve and allow the sustainable use of wildlife. Four principal barriers need to be overcome: (i) communities are not motivated to conserve wildlife long-term because they have no formal rights to benefit from wildlife, or to exclude others from taking it on their land; (ii) multispecies harvests, typical of bushmeat hunting scenarios, place large-bodied species at risk of extinction; (iii) wildlife production cannot expand, in the same way that livestock farming can, to meet the expected growth in consumer demand; and (iv) wildlife habitat is lost through conversion to agriculture, housing, transportation networks and extractive industries. In this review, we examine the actors involved in the use of wildlife as food and discuss the possible solutions required to address urban and rural bushmeat consumption. Interventions must tackle use and conservation of wildlife through the application of context-relevant interventions in a variety of geographies across Africa. That said, for any bushmeat solution to work, there needs to be concurrent and comparable investment in strengthening the effectiveness of protected area management and enforcement of wildlife conservation laws.
Implementation of CITES for bushmeat species and its impacts on local livelihoods in Colombia
Implementation of CITES for bushmeat species and its impacts on local livelihoods in Colombia
06 December, 2016
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Authors: Juanita, G.; Sebastian, R.; Van Vliet, N.
Key messages
In 2016, the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and the Secretariat of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) developed a handbook to guide parties in the rapid evaluation of bushmeat trade across their borders, to rapidly assess the impacts on local livelihoods of CITES regulations for bushmeat species, and to identify relevant mitigation measures.
Between January and June 2016, CIFOR, in coordination with the CITES focal points for Colombia, applied the handbook to Colombia. This involved a systematic review of available literature; consultations with national and regional authorities; semi-structured interviews with experts; field visits; and regional workshops with stakeholders of the bushmeat trade, local authorities and experts.
In Colombia, bushmeat trade operates across boundaries of neighboring countries, in places where geography does not allow for proper institutional control. The transboundary trade occurs in a few specific sites across four main trade routes: three of them in the Amazon and one in the Caribbean.
The bushmeat species most commonly traded across Colombian borders are listed in the CITES Appendices: paca, agouti, peccaries and turtles; therefore, the application of CITES could generate negative impacts on the livelihoods of people who depend on this trade.
Participants of workshops said that despite the development of alternatives, bushmeat trade will continue given the small costs of hunting compared to any other domestic meat production. Also, they pointed out that bushmeat consumption is rooted in local cultures, creating a potential barrier for any alternative activity to replace bushmeat use.
CITES needs to differentiate transboundary trade at local scale between communities of neighboring countries (as in Colombia) from the luxury international trade occurring at larger scales (e.g. from Central Africa to Europe, or from West Africa to the United States) to measure the impacts of CITES regulations on local livelihoods.
Series: CIFOR Infobrief no. 149
Publisher: Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), Bogor, Indonesia
Diversity, commitment, challenges and shared goals: How CIRAD looks at FTA
Diversity, commitment, challenges and shared goals: How CIRAD looks at FTA
It is estimated that only a quarter of tropical forests are pristine. Photo by TmFO
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FTA
Plinio Sist is the Director of the Research Unit Forests and Societies at the French Agricultural Research for Development (CIRAD), one of the core partner institutions of the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA). In this interview, he talks about CIRAD’s involvement in the program, key achievements and expectations for the new phase of the research partnership starting next year. Read more blogs on partnerships here.
Why did CIRAD become involved in FTA?
CIRAD and CGIAR centers, particularly the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) and Bioversity International, had a long collaborative history with the research unit Forests and Societies, which was formerly part of CIRAD-Forêt. This research unit had, for example, seconded between four and six researchers to CIFOR in Bogor, Lima, Yaoundé, Burkina Faso and Ethiopia. The implication of CIRAD in FTA therefore came naturally, in order to strengthen our collaboration framework within a big challenging research program.
How did the partnership develop?
In phase 1 of FTA, the research unit Forests and Societies collaborated in Flagship 2 Management and conservation of forest and tree resources, coordinated by Bioversity. Forests and Societies brought in two projects dealing with Central African forest management and future Dynamique des Forets d’Afrique Centrale (DYNAFOR) and CoForTips for the Congo Basin.
Later, we participated in the Sentinel Landscapes research, launched in mid-2012, developing the Tropical managed Forest Observatory (TmFO), which now includes 17 different institutions.
Many landscapes in the tropics are now covered by forests that have been disturbed by logging. Photo by: Ervan Rutishauser
Forests and Societies also participated–with CIRAD’s research units Green and Selmet–in another pantropical Sentinel Landscapes project on the expansion of oil palm in Latin America, Africa and Asia.
Overall CIRAD researchers of five different units collaborated in all the five Flagships of FTA from 2011-2016. Because of its engagement, CIRAD became a member of the FTA management group and sits in the steering committee, and is involved in strategic decision making.
What was most valuable for you in working within FTA?
FTA showed to be an outstanding opportunity to work in groups of scientists from different disciplines and cultures, dealing with different research topics, but with common main objectives like poverty alleviation through sustainable management of forests and trees for the benefit of local populations and the society in general.
Could you give an example of a particularly good collaboration?
In 2012, we initiated the Tropical managed Forest Observatory. This network of 17 different forest research institutions and universities aims to assess the resilience of logged tropical forests in the context of climate change and high pressure of human activities towards the conversion of tropical forests to agricultural lands.
Although it is obvious that efforts are needed to preserve undisturbed primary forests by creating conservation units, these units alone will not be able to ensure the conservation of all species on a pan-tropical scale, due to economic and political reasons.
Plantation forest. It is estimated today that only a quarter of tropical forests are pristine. Photo by: Ervan Rutishauser
It is estimated today that only a quarter of tropical forests are pristine. Therefore, it has to be accepted that the conservation of biodiversity and of the forest ecosystems of tomorrow will mostly take place within logged, domesticated forests, but only if they are well managed.
Currently, about 400 million hectares of tropical rainforests worldwide are designated as production forests, about a quarter of which is managed by rural communities and indigenous people.
However, there remains an important gap in the current knowledge: Are product harvesting and related ecosystem services in these tropical production forests sustainable in the long term?
Indeed, it is essential to assess forest regeneration capacities on a regional scale following logging, in terms of wood volume, biodiversity and carbon, and to make silvicultural recommendations that are adapted to the different types of forests encountered in a given region.
The TmFO aims to assess the impact of logging on forest dynamics, carbon storage and tree species composition at regional level in the Amazon basin, Congo basin and South East Asia. TmFO is unique as it is the only international network looking at logged tropical forests.
Another good example is the collaboration for a Forests special issue on global research questions such as forest landscape governance.
What do you expect from the next phase ?
The first phase of FTA was an exciting period. We worked with hundreds of colleagues in a new framework of cooperation that brought together different centers and addressed new global challenges.
The second phase must be considered as an opportunity to develop big projects with challenging objectives. One of them may be forest degradation, which is just as dramatic as deforestation in some regions like the Amazon and South East Asia.
Many landscapes in the tropics are now covered by forests that have been disturbed at different gradients by illegal and predatory logging, planned logging, and fire among others. In many of these regions, people are willing to stop deforestation and develop programs to restore forests.
But there are some challenging questions to ask that I hope FTA will help us to answer: How will these degraded forests be considered in such programs? What will be their role in providing both goods and environmental services and their contribution to restoration programs?
To make progress in finding the answers, we need to work together more closely and with more interactions between the clusters of activities within a research theme, but also with more interactions between the five Flagships themselves.
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 
