On the critical role of soil organic carbon in landscapes
On the critical role of soil organic carbon in landscapes
30 June, 2017
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Presentation by World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) scientist Tor-Gunnar Vågen, who is also part of the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA).
On June 19, 30 CGIAR scientists, representing seven CGIAR Centers and six CGIAR Research Programs, exchanged recent research findings and identified priorities for a future research agenda on soil carbon and climate change. The meeting was hosted by the CGIAR Research Programs on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE) and Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA).
CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry leaflet
CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry leaflet
19 June, 2017
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Overview
Forests, trees and agroforestry produce food, fibers, energy, water and ecosystem services, and are required to maintain biodiversity and adapt to and mitigate climate change. An estimated 1.6 billion people depend on forests and trees, including trees on farms, for their livelihoods.
With improved management, transformed governance, and new institutional arrangements involving public and private actors, forests, trees and agroforestry have the potential to address a range of challenges, thereby directly contributing to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. They can play a central role in improving production systems; securing people’s livelihoods, resilience and food security, including for young and marginalized people; and promoting the equitable distribution of benefits.
FTA research aims to better understand these roles, solutions to enhance them — technical options, management, governance, policies — and to enable actors to unlock the potential and maximize the benefits that trees can bring.
FTA Director: “Science shows you what can be done”
FTA Director: “Science shows you what can be done”
01 March, 2016
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Robert Nasi, Director of the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry, explains the role of research related to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): showing the way through the trade-offs in complex situations.
FTA researchers to present achievements at Asia Pacific Forestry Week
FTA researchers to present achievements at Asia Pacific Forestry Week
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L’agriculture est la principale cause de déforestation. Mais elle reste une activité essentielle pour les communautés locales de la Péninsule du Yucatán. Pour lutter contre la déforestation, il est primordial de trouver des alternatives de productions agricoles plus durables.
Photo aérienne prise dans la Péninsule du Yucatán au Mexique
série - « La Forêt du Yucatán vue du ciel »
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The CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA) will present key achievements at the FAO Asia Pacific Forestry Week 22-26 February in the Philippines.
Participants will have the opportunity to give feedback to the proposal for the next phase of FTA research which is more closely aligned with the Sustainable Devleopment Goals and is just being finalized
The discussion is planned to take place in the evening of Thursday, 25 February, 9pm. Stay tuned to find out about the exact timing and location or contact Meine van Noordwijk at M.vanNoordwijk@cgiar.org
Tentative program (90 minutes):
Meine van Noordwijk, Program Leader in FTA: the FTA research program in the global development landscape — the top 20 questions in forestry
Christopher Martius, Program Leader in FTA: the FTA work program 2017-2020 — options for engagement
Breakout into workgroup sessions: What are the research questions in forestry for the next 6 years?
Plenary: report back from workgroups and discussion “How can participants engage with the FTA program?”
Three of the six FTA partners, the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), Bioversity International, are co-convening the event.
FTA is working in Asia, Africa and Latin America, from the ‘tree’ to the ‘global’ scale, combining many disciplines and tackling various issues.
The program benefits from long-term connections with selected landscapes, but also works at the national scale. Researchers are striving to understand the different roles forests and all trees play for ecologies, economies and societies.
Impact-driven and innovative, FTA seeks to enhance the management and use of forests, agroforestry and tree genetic resources across the landscape.
The existing cooperation with academic, government, non-governmental and private sector partners is valued and the six FTA centers are keen to explore new partnerships for the second phase.
FTA responds to the urgent need for a strong and sustained research focus on forest management and governance, because of the crucial role forests play in confronting some of the most important challenges of our time: climate change, poverty, and food insecurity.
The research outcomes from this work are already influencing policy-makers and practitioners, for example in designing Payment for Ecosystem Services schemes and in increasing crop yields.
FTA scientist at The Guardian live chat on migrant workers and palm oil
FTA scientist at The Guardian live chat on migrant workers and palm oil
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Worker at oil palm plantation. Papua, Indonesia, January, 2008.
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Worker at oil palm plantation. Papua, Indonesia, January, 2008.
The palm oil industry could not function without migrant labour, Pablo Pacheco, coordinator of the governance flagship of the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry told the British newspaper The Guardian in an article. Now Pablo explained his position during a live chat, organized by The Guardian, on how to improve the working conditions and lives of migrant workers. Read the full discussion at Guardian sustainable business.
Thai farmer describes his mixed rubber garden's origins and benefits
Thai farmer describes his mixed rubber garden’s origins and benefits
09 February, 2016
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By World Agroforestry Centre
Witoon Chamroen, farmer, of Phattalung Province, Thailand, describes how his old rubber trees act as ‘nursery’ trees for the others and still produce more latex than younger trees. An inspiring and passionate talk from a committed and sensitive farmer.
Maria Fernandez, Honorary Research Fellow, Bioversity International, introduces this new video, in which young scientists talk about the challenges they faced doing participatory research and how they worked creatively to overcome them.
Maria Fernandez. Photo: The American University of Rome Graduate School
Rural communities manage natural resources under diverse and changing landscape and market conditions throughout the developing world. Over the past 20 years scientists, concerned with the sustainability of smallholder farm and forest resilience have become increasingly aware of the need to link research for development with the needs and experiences of these communities. Our scientists are challenging themselves to find, develop and use gender-responsive participatory research methods and tools to listen to the voices of different groups of actors and generate high quality and useful science.
Participatory research is about providing local people with opportunities to share their knowledge and experience with each other while also sharing it with researchers. It is about tackling problems that are relevant to communities in ways that draw on their own successful experiences and knowledge and integrating them with a conventional scientific perspective. Doing successful participatory research entails acquiring a set of skills.
Bioversity International’s Gender Research Fellowship Programme which ran from 2013-14, provided an opportunity for five Research Fellows affiliated with national partner institutes to take these skills on board and use them to enhance the gender responsiveness of their Bioversity International projects.
The video Revealing farmers’ knowledge through research gives a window into the experiences of these Fellows as they took on the challenge. Two messages are evident in the film. First, participatory research can give a voice to those who are often not heard. Second, the Fellows themselves were surprised and transformed by facilitating this kind of co-learning process.
The video identifies a number of challenges the Fellows faced doing their research and how they worked creatively to overcome them:
It is important to listen to the voices of different groups of actors and generate high quality and useful science. Photo: Imam Basuki/CIFOR
Researchers need to gain experience with participatory-research tools. Choosing the most appropriate tools is a challenge as there are many to choose between. A good researcher will choose a few tools designed to give a voice to those who don’t know that they have knowledge to share or are not accustomed to being listened to.
Working with gender-differentiated groups brings out invisible, insider knowledge. Once men and women have worked in separate groups and they come together in plenary to share their results, it most often becomes evident that women and men have been looking at issues differently. This experience enriches and deepens knowledge and often results in concrete actions and changes.
Quantification of information takes creativity and the use of appropriate tools. When qualitative data, such as farmers’ knowledge, is made visible using tools like scoring, it can be put into graphs. In addition to graphs there are a number of tested tools that can help represent qualitative information graphically.
Participatory research processes can increase self-esteem and build confidence when people (especially women) find out they know more than they thought they did, can do things they didn’t think they could do and are being recognized for their knowledge. People who speak only indigenous languages, often women and marginalized groups, tend to be left out of development discussions.
Research processes that give them space to express their knowledge can be empowering, and allow scientists to learn from them.
Increased confidence and empowerment contribute to equality. When men and women from diverse social and ethnic groups are given access to knowledge about each others’ skills, needs and experiences, it increases mutual respect and opens the door for innovation. They learn things about each other that they didn’t know and talk about things they had never talked about. We found this with research in India bringing together diverse social and ethnic groups, and in Malaysia bringing together women and men.
Good gender-responsive participatory research requires a commitment to learning new skills and finding ways to listen to less articulate or more marginalized groups. It is a journey that changes us as professionals and makes our research more relevant to the future we are working towards.
Cotton threads naturally dyed using indigo, turmeric and ‘mengkudu’ (Morinda citrifelia). Photo: World Agroforestry Centre/Aulia Perdana
Understanding how to manage timber and non-timber forest products is particularly important for poorer households in Indonesia. Action research to improve farmers’ understanding is underway.
Combining tree planting with management of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) has been an important part of many Indonesian farmers livelihoods’ strategies for a long time, with each element playing a different role.
Such integration, however, faces significant impediments in the poorer, more arid provinces of Nusa Tenggara Timur (NTT/Eastern Southeastern Indonesia) and Nusa Tenggara Barat (NTB/Western Southeastern Indonesia), where annual farm households’ average cash incomes are as low as IDR 1.26 million (± USD 90 at October 2015 rates), according to the Indonesian Bureau of Statistics in 2005. NTT and NTB have among the lowest socioeconomic levels compared to other provinces in Indonesia. In 2010, the two provinces ranked at 32 and 31 (from a total of 33 provinces) in the Human Development Index.
A project to help farmers overcome the impediments, called Development of Timber and NTFP Production and Market Strategies for Improvement of Smallholders’ Livelihoods in Indonesia, is being led by the World Agroforestry Centre in partnership with the Center for International Forestry Research; Forestry Research and Development Agency of the Ministry of Forestry; University of Western Australia; World Wildlife Fund Indonesia Nusa Tenggara Programme; Universitas Mataram; Threads of Life; and the Pokja Hutan Rakyat Lestari (Farm Forest Consortium); supported by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) and the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry.
The project, which began in 2013 and will end in 2016, is focusing on Central Java as well as NTB and NTT because of the historical forest-sector links that remain active between the three provinces, including value chains, making research results widely applicable across the sites.
William Ingram (centre) from Threads of Life, Ubud, Bali discussing indigo dyeing with an artisan at Bosen Village, Timor Tengah Selatan, NTT. Photo: World Agroforestry Centre/James M. Roshetko
Background studies showed that timber at study sites in Gunungkidul, Central Java contributed up to 12% of total farm household income; timber planting by farmers inside state forests provided substantial annual benefits per household; and a combination of intercropping using highly commercial NTFPs more than doubled the average household income at study sites in NTB. The research partners saw significant opportunities to develop NTFP enterprises and the informal NTFP sector to increase total value and numbers of people employed.
Building on these and other studies supported by ACIAR and partner agencies, it became clear that farmers in the more arid and remote areas of the eastern part of the Indonesian archipelago had insufficient understanding of the trade-offs between timber and NTFPs related to the cost of allocating household labour and financial capital. Second, they used no or ineffective silvicultural practices that did not optimise production of timber and NTFPs. Third, there was insufficient understanding of market characteristics for different types of products (both timber and NTFPs) to add value in value chains and what markets required to improve the products’ qualities. Furthermore, there had been conflict over integrated uses and management of timber and NTFPs in the region. And, lastly, there were unfavourable policies governing farm and landscape management that prevented value chains from effectively providing fair profit margins for community producers. Many of these issues were also relevant to farmers in Central Java, particularly, those growing teak.
‘Rumput ketak’. Photo: World Agroforestry Centre/Gerhard Manurung
The NTFPs in Nusa Tenggara and Central Java that were the most important to farmers included ‘sirih’ (betel leaf; Piper betle), ‘pinang’ (betel nut; Areca catechu), ‘rumput ketak’ (Lygodium circinatum Burm.f. Sw), coconut, honey, bamboo, candlenut, ginger, turmeric, ‘lengkuas’ (galangal; Alpinia galangal), indigo (Indigofera tinctoria), fruit (durian and avocado) and fuel wood.
NTFPs hold significant potential for smallholders because even though current trade volumes are small there is high growth potential for niche markets; the production of NTFPs is more flexible and much less capital intensive than the mainstream crops of coffee, cocoa and citrus; and producers of those mainstream crops in Nusa Tenggara now face stiff competition from other parts of Indonesia and globally.
The project is looking for answers to several questions. First, how can forestry and agroforestry management practices be improved to enhance integrated timber and NTFP management and production? Second, what are suitable strategies for effective integrated marketing of timber and NTFPs for smallholders? Third, what policy factors significantly hinder smallholders’ production and competiveness in timber and NTFPs and how can those factors be addressed? And, lastly, what are the key characteristics of an extension program that can deliver information on best practices for timber and NTFP management, production and value-added marketing?
Many of these questions are being answered in the field at the time of writing. Later stories will provide an insight into their progress.
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 
