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  • Sustainable intensification of dairy production can reduce forest disturbance in Kenyan montane forests

Sustainable intensification of dairy production can reduce forest disturbance in Kenyan montane forests

28 September, 2018

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Increasing demand for food and the shortage of arable land call for sustainable intensification of farming, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa where food insecurity is still a major concern. Kenya needs to intensify its dairy production to meet the increasing demand for milk. At the same time, the country has set national climate mitigation targets and has to implement land use practices that reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from both agriculture and forests. This study analysed for the first time the drivers of forest disturbance and their relationship with dairy intensification across the largest montane forest of Kenya. To achieve this, a forest disturbance detection approach was applied by using Landsat time series and empirical data from forest disturbance surveys. Farm indicators and farm types derived from a household survey were used to test the effects of dairy intensification on forest disturbance for different farm neighbourhood sizes (r = 2-5 km). About 18% of the forest area was disturbed over the period 2010-2016. Livestock grazing and firewood extraction were the dominant drivers of forest disturbance at 75% of the forest disturbance spots sampled. Higher on-farm cattle stocking rates and firewood collection were associated with 1-10% increased risk of forest disturbance across farm neighbourhood sizes. In contrast, higher milk yields, increased supplementation with concentrated feeds and more farm area allocated to fodder production were associated with 1-7 % reduced risk of forest disturbance across farm neighbourhood sizes. More intensified farms had a significantly lower impact on forest disturbance than small and resource-poor farms, and large and inefficient farms. Our results show that intensification of smallholder dairy farming leads to both farm efficiency gains and reduced forest disturbance. These results can inform agriculture and forest mitigation policies which target options to reduce GHG emission intensities and the risk of carbon leakage.

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  • ICRAF’s Tony Simons talks transformational change in land management

ICRAF’s Tony Simons talks transformational change in land management

29 August, 2018

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ICRAF’s Tony Simons speaks at the GLF Investment Case Symposium 2018 in Washington, D.C. Photo by L. Vogel/GLF

The second of three Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) in 2018 is being held at the UN headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya, on Aug. 29 to 30, with a focus on forest and landscape restoration.

The World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), one of the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry’s (FTA) partner institutions, is based in Nairobi, and its Director General Tony Simons is set to have some of the last words at this current GLF.

Simons is speaking in the Policy Plenary just before the conference finale, which will explore how to create enabling environments for transformational change in landscape management in the region.

Originally from New Zealand, Simons has an impressive track record working on issues at the interface of tropical agriculture and forestry in more than 40 developing countries. GLF’s Landscape News spoke with him about the potential he sees for policy change to help make forest landscape restoration work for ecosystems, people and profit across the African continent.

What are some of the issues for enabling sustainable landscapes in Africa at the moment?

Africa has tremendous opportunities, but it’s also got a lot of issues and difficulties. It’s the second largest continent in the world; the second most highly populated; the most rural; the poorest; and the most reliant on agriculture. It has the least forest cover; the highest use of wood energy; and it’s got one of the youngest populations in the world. There are very low levels of mechanization in agriculture: 95 percent of crops are rain-fed, and only 5 percent are irrigated.

Staggeringly, Africa imports 35 billion dollars a year of food. That’s going to be 110 billion by the year 2030. Of that 35 billion, 95 percent of that is brought in from other continents. So while there is plenty of land available – and people to work it – food production is not yet happening at the scale that it should be.

Food trees grow on a farm in Kenya. Photo by A. Mamo/ICRAF

What policies need to change to help make landscapes more sustainable?

Back in 2009, the African Union [AU] heads of state passed a resolution on land use and management across the continent. It was at a time where there was a huge amount of attention on land grabbing. So the policy instruments put into place were about keeping the resource under sovereign control.

So that’s one of the issues in Africa now: about 75 percent of the land – even if it’s under customary control – is formally owned by the government. And the governments don’t really know what to do with it.

I think we’ve got to put land stewardship back in the hands of people. You’ve got the land; you’ve got a young population; you’ve got growing prosperity; better education; literacy and numeracy is growing; but there needs to be a kind of revolution in land management. It’s not going to be by individuals; it’s going to be by groups, collectives, communities and watersheds. We’ve got to leverage the agenda of that wise stewardship down to the level of the people.

Sustainable management costs money. How can we make it worth people’s while?

If you travelled to the world’s second largest rainforest, which is the Congo, and I sold you an acre of rainforest, it would cost about $10,000. But the government gets less than $100 of revenue from that per year: a 1 percent return. That’s the biggest problem with forests and wetlands: they’re not remunerative.

And that’s because we don’t count the value of all of the fantastic biodiversity, carbon provisioning, precipitation enhancement and other ecosystem services that these places provide. In a continent where 95 percent of crops are rainfed, forests are very important for agriculture. But protecting and restoring them is not remunerative because of the partial accounting. So that needs to change.

However, we’re not going to get anywhere if we spend all this money restoring the land to how it was in the past, because it will still be under pressure for exploitation. So we’ve got to make a viable business case for restoring that land. And that’s going to be about connecting and linking financial capital, natural capital, human capital and social capital.

This is also at a time when we’re seeing pressures on financing. So how do we get all of these new approaches and opportunities out to people? NGOs (non-governmental organizations) have stepped up in quite a large way, but the private sector needs to step up much more. And for that to happen, there are a number of things that we need to look at. The first one is the opportunities: where are the business cases, the viable enterprises to piggyback on?

The second thing to look at is investment return. What returns will the governments, the small-scale farmer, the community and the foreign investor get from investing in landscape restoration? And what are the risks associated with this, and how can we de-risk? Many people perceive agriculture as complicated, as confused, as risky, as having a low rate of return, as not really investment material. Investors need to see that yes, this is a viable enterprise, and when we start thinking about bringing that financial return to social dividends, to environmental dividends, that’s when it all starts to come together.

Rubus Pinnatus grows on Nyambene Mountain, Kenya. Photo by A. Mamo/ICRAF

Beyond opportunity, risk and return, next comes leverage. We have been relying in Africa on external Overseas Development Assistance (ODA); but ODA is currently drying up and being reallocated. Now for every single dollar of ODA, there’s $3 of remittances, there’s $6 of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), there’s $24 of domestic private sector spend, there’s $55 of national government spend, and there’s $1,000 of private capital.

So let’s use that $1 of ODA to leverage all those other sources. That’s going to be the real opportunity to bring change in landscapes.

What’s significant about having the GLF in Nairobi this year? 

Africa is innovative and unique. Practitioners can take things that worked in Latin America and Asia and adapt them, but Africa also has some fantastic indigenous ways of understanding and transforming landscapes. For example, we’re already seeing in Ethiopia how social capital is driving land use change.

The GLF provides an important opportunity to showcase that it’s not just doom and gloom, and that things are progressing. Let’s make a business case for restoration. Let’s connect with people; let’s think about gender, land ownership and tenure, and about motivating the youth. We candrive confidence to investors to bring financing to restoration. It’s not just about ecosystem services; it’s all of humanity that stands to benefit from this.

To hear more from Tony Simons and other policy experts, tune into the Policy Plenary live stream on Thursday, Aug. 30, at 5.45pm Nairobi time (GMT+3).

By Monica Evans, first published at GLF’s Landscape News. 

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  • Sustainable intensification of dairy production can reduce forest disturbance in Kenyan montane forests

Sustainable intensification of dairy production can reduce forest disturbance in Kenyan montane forests

03 August, 2018

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Increasing demand for food and the shortage of arable land call for sustainable intensification of farming, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa where food insecurity is still a major concern. Kenya needs to intensify its dairy production to meet the increasing demand for milk. At the same time, the country has set national climate mitigation targets and has to implement land use practices that reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from both agriculture and forests. This study analysed for the first time the drivers of forest disturbance and their relationship with dairy intensification across the largest montane forest of Kenya. To achieve this, a forest disturbance detection approach was applied by using Landsat time series and empirical data from forest disturbance surveys. Farm indicators and farm types derived from a household survey were used to test the effects of dairy intensification on forest disturbance for different farm neighbourhood sizes (r = 2-5 km). About 18% of the forest area was disturbed over the period 2010-2016. Livestock grazing and firewood extraction were the dominant drivers of forest disturbance at 75% of the forest disturbance spots sampled. Higher on-farm cattle stocking rates and firewood collection were associated with 1-10% increased risk of forest disturbance across farm neighbourhood sizes. In contrast, higher milk yields, increased supplementation with concentrated feeds and more farm area allocated to fodder production were associated with 1-7 % reduced risk of forest disturbance across farm neighbourhood sizes. More intensified farms had a significantly lower impact on forest disturbance than small and resource-poor farms, and large and inefficient farms. Our results show that intensification of smallholder dairy farming leads to both farm efficiency gains and reduced forest disturbance. These results can inform agriculture and forest mitigation policies which target options to reduce GHG emission intensities and the risk of carbon leakage.

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  • Trends, drivers of change and possible solutions to address deforestation and loss of forest habitat in the Kenya-Somalia cross-border area

Trends, drivers of change and possible solutions to address deforestation and loss of forest habitat in the Kenya-Somalia cross-border area

25 May, 2018

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The coastal forests of northeast coast of Kenya and southern Somalia form the northern tip of the East African Coastal Forest Biodiversity Hotspot. While this hotspot is considered threatened by deforestation and forest degradation, there is little up-to-date information on the status of these forests, their rates of deforestation and degradation, the underlying drivers of change and the opportunities presented by restoration of the degraded forest lands. The EU/IGAD-funded Biodiversity Management Programme, which supports one project that aims at the biodiversity conservation commissioned a study to describe the loss of tree cover, the associated drivers of change and reviewing possible solutions. This report first presents historic vegetation maps that localize the lowland tropical rainforests and the drylands forests that are the habitats of the biodiversity of the East African Coastal Forest Biodiversity Hotspot. Next, using information from Global Forest Watch (GFW), this study reports significant deforestation in the lowland tropical rainforests in southern and central Lamu County and adjacent Tana River County. We further report isolated deforestation in the dryland forests in the Awer Conservancy in the northern part of Lamu County. The GFW data reveals only limited deforestation in the south of Somalia. The Fire Information Resource Management System (FIRMS) active fire data reveals frequent fires in the lowland savannas surrounding the remaining tropical rainforest fragments. More isolated areas affected by fires are reported from the dryland forests in South Somalia, presumably reflecting the active charcoal industry in this area. Our analysis thus reveals that few fragments of indigenous lowland tropical rainforest remain in Lamu and Tana River Counties, while charcoal production is affecting the dryland forests in southern Somalia and the drier areas across the border in Kenya.

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  • Opinions and testimonials: The role of citizen science in monitoring water towers in Kenya

Opinions and testimonials: The role of citizen science in monitoring water towers in Kenya

28 April, 2018

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Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) scientists are involving local citizens in promoting low-cost methods for monitoring water quality, to inform upscaling of sustainable water management in Southwest Mau Forest, Kenya. This video provides opinions and testimonials from those who participated.

Originally published by CIFOR.

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  • A technical overview: The role of citizen science in monitoring water towers in Kenya

A technical overview: The role of citizen science in monitoring water towers in Kenya

27 April, 2018

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Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) scientists are involving local citizens in promoting low-cost methods for monitoring water quality, to inform upscaling of sustainable water management in Southwest Mau Forest, Kenya. This video provides a technical overview of the efforts.

Originally published by CIFOR.

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  • Farm-scale greenhouse gas balances, hotspots and uncertainties in smallholder crop-livestock systems in Central Kenya

Farm-scale greenhouse gas balances, hotspots and uncertainties in smallholder crop-livestock systems in Central Kenya

31 August, 2017

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  • Whole-farm GHG balances are needed to identify climate-smart options.
  • Coffee-dairy farms are mostly net sources of GHG at farm-scale.
  • Poor manure management can be a determining factor in the farm GHG balance.
  • Emissions are smoothed by zero grazing and larger soil and biomass C sequestration.
  • Improving GHG estimations requires developing EFs and site calibrations.

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  • Accurate crop yield predictions from modelling tree-crop interactions in gliricidia-maize agroforestry

Accurate crop yield predictions from modelling tree-crop interactions in gliricidia-maize agroforestry

22 August, 2017

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Agroforestry systems, containing mixtures of trees and crops, are often promoted because the net effect of interactions between woody and herbaceous components is thought to be positive if evaluated over the long term. From a modelling perspective, agroforestry has received much less attention than monocultures. However, for the potential of agroforestry to impact food security in Africa to be fully evaluated, models are required that accurately predict crop yields in the presence of trees.

The positive effects of the fertiliser tree gliricidia (Gliricidia sepium) on maize (Zea mays) are well documented and use of this tree-crop combination to increase crop production is expanding in several African countries. Simulation of gliricidia-maize interactions can complement field trials by predicting crop response across a broader range of contexts than can be achieved by experimentation alone. We tested a model developed within the APSIM framework. APSIM models are widely used for one dimensional (1D), process-based simulation of crops such as maize and wheat in monoculture. The Next Generation version of APSIM was used here to test a 2D agroforestry model where maize growth and yield varied spatially in response to interactions with gliricidia.

The simulations were done using data for gliricidia-maize interactions over two years (short-term) in Kenya and 11 years (long-term) in Malawi, with differing proportions of trees and crops and contrasting management. Predictions were compared with observations for maize grain yield, and soil water content. Simulations in Kenya were in agreement with observed yields reflecting lower observed maize germination in rows close to gliricidia. Soil water content was also adequately simulated, except for a tendency for slower simulated drying of the soil profile each season. Simulated maize yields in Malawi were also in agreement with observations.

Trends in soil carbon over a decade were similar to those measured, but could not be statistically evaluated. These results show that the agroforestry model in APSIM Next Generation adequately represented tree-crop interactions in these two contrasting agro-ecological conditions and agroforestry practices. Further testing of the model is warranted to explore tree-crop interactions under a wider range of environmental conditions.

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