Tag: land restoration


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  • Soil management and land restoration vital to meeting climate change and sustainable development targets

Soil management and land restoration vital to meeting climate change and sustainable development targets


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Landscape in restoration in Abreha Atsbeha, Tigray, Ethiopia. Photo: World Agroforestry Centre/ Ake Mamo
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Landscape in restoration in Abreha Atsbeha, Tigray, Ethiopia. Photo: World Agroforestry Centre/ Ake Mamo

By Susan Onyango, originally published at ICRAF’s Agroforestry World Blog

Land degradation impacts the health and livelihoods of about 1.5 billion people worldwide. Further, the annual costs associated with land degradation worldwide is estimated to be US$ 231 billion as measured in terms of loss productivity and the costs to due to loss of ecosystems services.

Given that the state of the environment and food security are strongly interlinked in tropical landscapes, the increasing need for land for food production, urbanization and other uses pose several threats to sustainability in the long term. There is increasing recognition that more integrated approaches to ecosystem health assessments are needed to meet the targets of the 2030 Agenda, including SD 15.3 on combating desertification and restoring degraded land and soil. In addition to systematic and reliable biophysical and socio-economic assessments, stakeholder engagement with evidence is crucial.

The Global Symposium on Soil Organic Carbon, hosted by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations,  FAO, in Rome, Italy from 21-23 March 2017, brought together more than 300 participants to act on worldwide ambitions to preserve soil organic carbon and re-carbonizing degraded soils. The objective of the symposium was to review the role of soil and soil organic carbon in the context of climate change and sustainable evidence, and to build scientific evidence that will contribute to the IPCC Assessment Reports and reports to UNFCCC, UNCCD and on the SDGs.

Leigh Ann Winowiecki, soil scientist, and Tor-Gunnar Vågen, senior scientist, at the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) presented advanced analytics on soil carbon accounting and highlighted integrated approaches for stakeholder engagement with evidence using ICRAF’s SHARED approach, a demand driven, tailored and interactive engagement process. Their presentation,  “Spatial assessments for the mapping and monitoring of soil organic carbon: Using stakeholder engagement processes”, co-authored by Constance Neely, Sabrina Chesterman and Mieke Bourne, demonstrated the integration of land and soil health maps with socio-economic datasets. Kenya’s Turkana County Government’s Resilience Diagnostic and Decision Support Tool was developed using a similar approach.

“We have established maps of soil organic carbon for the continent of Africa and are creating a large systematic database of soil organic carbon across the tropics. These maps can be used for prioritizing initiatives and baseline assessments for carbon accounting.” Leigh Ann Winowiecki, World Agroforestry Centre

Tor-Gunnar Vågen, senior scientist at the World Agroforestry at the Global Symposium on Soil Organic Carbon. Photo: World Agroforestry Centre/Leigh Ann Winowiecki
Tor-Gunnar Vågen, senior scientist at the World Agroforestry at the Global Symposium on Soil Organic Carbon. Photo: World Agroforestry Centre/Leigh Ann Winowiecki

Winowiecki and Vågen‘s  presentation highlighted the advanced spatial mapping analytics available at the Centre’s GeoScience Lab. The analysis is supported by the project, Restoration of degraded land for food security and poverty reduction in East Africa and the Sahel: taking successes in land restoration to scale, funded by IFAD and the European Commission.

Symposium participants also engaged in discussions on maintaining and/or increasing soil organic carbon stocks for climate change mitigation and adaptation and the SDG 15.3 on land degradation neutrality, and on managing soil organic carbon in soils with high organic content.

A scientific document highlighting the role of soils and soil organic carbon management in meeting the climate change and sustainable development agendas  will present an overview of state-of-the-art soil organic carbon monitoring, measures to maintain and enhance soil organic carbon, and recommended methods for monitoring and reporting soil organic carbon.

This research forms part of the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry.

Also see:

Presentation – Spatial assessments for the mapping and monitoring of soil organic carbon: Using stakeholder engagement processes

Vågen, T-G., Winowiecki, L.A., Neely, C., Chesterman, S., and Bourne, M. 2017. Spatial assessments for the mapping and monitoring of soil organic carbon- Using stakeholder engagement processes, a paper presented at the Global Symposium on Soil Carbon, Rome, Italy, 21-23 March 2017.

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

Global Symposium on Soil Organic Carbon website

Project website: Restoration of degraded land for food security and property reduction in East Africa and the Sahel: taking success in land restoration to scale

World Agroforestry Centre Landscapes Portal 

Blog: Put soils first, African Soil Seminar concludes

For more information, contact Leigh Winowiecki at the World Agroforestry Centre: l.a.winowiecki@cgiar.org

We thank the European Commission and IFAD for financing the project, Restoration of degraded land for food security and poverty reduction in East Africa and the Sahel: taking successes to scale.

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  • Incorporating Bioenergy Production and Landscape Restoration: Lessons from Central Kalimantan

Incorporating Bioenergy Production and Landscape Restoration: Lessons from Central Kalimantan

27 February, 2017

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  • Nature knows best: Don't overlook benefits of natural regeneration in land restoration

Nature knows best: Don’t overlook benefits of natural regeneration in land restoration


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Experts say, one shouldn't underestimate the role of natural regeneration in forest landscape restoration. Photo: Douglas Sheil/CIFR
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Experts say, one shouldn’t underestimate the role of natural regeneration in forest landscape restoration. Photo: Douglas Sheil/CIFR

By Barbara Frazer, originally published at CIFOR’s Forests News

As countries gear up for the “Bonn Challenge” of restoring 150 million hectares of deforested and degraded land by 2020, one solution is getting short shrift, scientists say.

Although most plans emphasize turning degraded land into forest plantations, leaving the forest to recover naturally may actually be less costly and more effective for restoring ecosystem functions, says Manuel Guariguata, Team Leader of Forest Management and Restoration at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR).

“Natural regeneration has clear benefits for preserving biodiversity and providing ecosystem services,” Guariguata says. “There was a natural ecosystem in place before the land was converted to agriculture or other uses. So in many cases, letting nature take over unused land again might be the best option.”

Guariguata and other researchers examine the science and policy behind natural forest regeneration and landscape restoration in a recent special issue of the journal Biotropica.

Although natural regeneration is a low-cost way to reduce erosion, protect watersheds and sequester carbon, it is “often overlooked when restoration programs and policies are designed,” according to Maria Uriarte of Columbia University and Robin Chazdon of the University of Connecticut. Uriarte and Chazdon were co-authors of the special issue.

Read also: Biotropical Special Issue: Natural regeneration

CAUSES OF RESISTANCE

So why ignore something that requires such little human effort?

For one, it can take a regenerating forest three to four decades to reach maturity, and along the way it looks unkempt, Guariguata says. Farmers may not want an area that looks like “abandoned land” on their property and may be tempted to cut it down.

Under the right conditions, however, natural regeneration can make sense for farmers, especially as part of a mosaic landscape that combines agroforestry, crops and natural forest. The key is to determine the biophysical, social and economic conditions that make natural regeneration the most cost-effective option.

Restoration of degraded land in Debre Berhan, central Ethiopia, Photo: Georgina Smith/CIAT

That means weighing tradeoffs, including “opportunity cost”—the income a landowner forgoes by dedicating land to one use, such as forest, instead of another, such as agriculture.

“You have to select the piece of land that’s going to have the lowest opportunity cost, because you’re going to leave it unused for some decades,” Guariguata says.

Steep slopes and remote areas that are unattractive for agriculture are good candidates. So are areas where remnants of mature forests remain. Remnant forests serve as sources of seeds that birds and animals scatter in the degraded area between them.

If the remnants are relatively close to each other, regeneration will happen naturally, with time. If they are farther apart, some tree planting might be necessary to jump-start the process. That sort of “active regeneration” also might be necessary in places where land is degraded from intensive use, such as after many years of use as cattle pasture.

Policies that include training for farmers and extension agents in natural regeneration can help ensure success, Uriarte and Chazdon suggest.

Read also: Natural regeneration in the context of large-scale forest and landscape restoration in the tropics

Natural regeneration is not a one-size-fits-all solution, however. In some cases, the opportunity cost of leaving land alone for decades may be excessive, and a farmer might opt for agroforestry instead.

Understanding the tradeoffs—which change over time, with changing local circumstances—can help policymakers determine when natural regeneration makes the most economic and ecological sense, according to Guariguata.

But because there has been so little research on natural regeneration, there is a lack of scientific evidence to guide policy decisions. More studies would allow researchers to compare the results of different forest restoration strategies, both for ecosystems and for the people whose livelihoods depends on the forest, Uriarte says.

“There’s not a lot of quantitative, robust data that we can use to model what would happen if we promoted regeneration in one place and not in another,” Chazdon says.

NO ONE-SIZE FITS ALL APPROACH

Restoration can take different forms, including natural regeneration, agroforestry and mixed-species tree plantations, but there is little research on ecological impacts and less about socioeconomic impacts of each.

“Often, restoration is implemented without considering the alternatives. It’s important to ask how people would benefit and how characteristics of the ecosystems would differ if different options were chosen,” says Uriarte.

Decisions about land use also involve tradeoffs—when land is left to allow forest to regenerate naturally, for example, it will no longer be available for agriculture, but it will eventually yield forest products and may provide a buffer against climate change.

“The question is what you get out of a crop versus what you get out of a naturally regenerated forest.”

The answer may vary over time, depending on changing financial conditions, commodity prices or even the weather. “Whatever calculation a person makes about land use is a constantly moving target,” she says, and further study is needed to understand both the tradeoffs and synergies offered by naturally regenerating forests.

Researchers and policymakers also need means for analyzing the costs and benefits of natural regeneration.

“Most of the tools that exist are directed toward initial planning and mapping,” Chazdon says. “There’s a need for more in-depth tools that consider biodiversity data, estimations of carbon benefits of restoration, economic benefits and other factors.”

Regenerating forests often fall into a legal vacuum, ignored by both environmental and agricultural policies. Research could help point to the most effective regulations for encouraging natural regeneration, as well as the best ways to implement those policies and the most effective financial incentives.

“One size does not fit all,” Uriarte says. “Each country has its own history and its own political system, and what works in one place may not work in another.”

“We often hear about proposals to reforest by planting trees,” Guariguata says. “But when you’re talking about millions of trees, that would require a lot of nursery space and a lot of inputs.”

Regeneration—whether completely natural or with some assistance—can help countries meet at least some of their reforestation commitments at a lower cost.

“In many ways,” he says, “Nature knows best.”

For more information on this topic, please contact Manuel Guariguata at m.guariguata@cgiar.org.
This research forms part of the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry.

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  • Towards a global centre of excellence for land restoration after mining

Towards a global centre of excellence for land restoration after mining

07 February, 2017

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Originally posted at ICRAF’s Agroforestry World Blog

The scale of mining activities today is greater than ever but so are its environmental and social impacts. Over the past few decades mining has contributed to millions of hectares of land degradation worldwide. Open-pit mining transforms productive landscapes into ruined wastelands with disastrous consequences for biodiversity, climate, water and soil resources and the livelihoods and health of local people. Yet this is a solvable problem.

We have developed and tested a complete set of planning tools and restoration technologies which can return mining sites to full ecological functioning and productivity. These tools include next-generation technologies for seedling nurseries, genebank resources for climate-smart agroforestry species selection, investment decision analysis and institutional arrangements for restoration and eco-friendly income generation.

We therefore propose the establishment of a global centre of excellence for mining restoration. The centre will implement restoration projects in selected developing countries and work with a range of stakeholders to develop policies and practices on the ground. This could kick-start restoration around the world not only of mining sites but wherever human activities have damaged our planet.

Watch the video below, which forms part of the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry.

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  • The frankincense tree Boswellia neglecta reveals high potential for restoration of woodlands in the Horn of Africa

The frankincense tree Boswellia neglecta reveals high potential for restoration of woodlands in the Horn of Africa

26 January, 2017

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Authors: Mulugeta Mokria, Motuma Tolera, Frank J. Sterck, Aster Gebrekirstos, Frans Bongers, Mathieu Decuyper, Ute Sass-Klaassen

Boswellia neglecta S. Moore is a frankincense-producing tree species dominantly found in the dry woodlands of southeastern Ethiopia. Currently, the population of this socio-economically and ecologically important species is threatened by complex anthropogenic and climate change related factors. Evaluation of tree age and its radial growth dynamics in relation to climate variables helps to understand the response of the species to climate change. It is also crucial for sustainable forest resource management and utilization. Dendrochronological and remote-sensing techniques were used to study periodicity of wood formation and leaf phenology and to assess the growth dynamics of B. neglecta. The results show that B. neglecta forms two growth rings per year in the study area. The growth ring structure is characterized by larger vessels at the beginning of each growing season and smaller vessels formed later in the growing season, suggesting adaptation to decreasing soil moisture deficits at the end of the growing season. Seasonality in cambial activity matches with a bimodal leaf phenological pattern. The mean annual radial growth rate of B. neglecta trees is 2.5 mm. Tree age varied between 16 and 28 years, with an average age of 22 years. The young age of these trees indicates recent colonization of B. neglecta in the study region. The growth rate and seasonal canopy greenness (expressed by Normalized Difference Vegetation Index – NDVI) were positively correlated with rainfall, suggesting that rainfall is the main climatic factor controlling growth of B. neglecta. The observed temporal changes in leaf phenology and vessel size across the growth rings indicate that the species is drought tolerant. Therefore, it can be regarded as a key tree species for restoration of moisture-related limited areas across the Horn of Africa.

Published at  Forest Ecology and Management 385 (2017) 16–24

 

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  • Strengths and limitations of participatory forest management and area enclosure: two major state-led forest landscape rehabilitation initiatives in Ethiopia

Strengths and limitations of participatory forest management and area enclosure: two major state-led forest landscape rehabilitation initiatives in Ethiopia

19 January, 2017

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Presentation by Habte Mariam Kassa, Senior Scientist at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), at the IUFRO Regional Congress for Asia and Oceania, October 2016, in Bejing, China

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  • How do property rights regimes provide incentives for Forest Landscape Restoration? Evidence from Nepal, China and Ethiopia

How do property rights regimes provide incentives for Forest Landscape Restoration? Evidence from Nepal, China and Ethiopia


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Presentation by Peter Cronkleton, Senior Scientist at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), at IUFRO Regional Congress for Asia and Oceania, October 2016, in Bejing, China.

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  • FTA event coverage: ‘Landscape restoration is about gender equality’--Wanjira Mathai

FTA event coverage: ‘Landscape restoration is about gender equality’–Wanjira Mathai

29 November, 2016

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By Leona Liu, originally published at CIFOR’s Forests News

Wanjira Mathai is the Director of Partnerships for Women’s Entrepreneurship in Renewables (wPOWER) at the Wangari Maathai Institute (WMI). She previously directed International Affairs at Green Belt Movement (GBM), which was founded by her mother, the late Nobel Peace Laureate Wangari Maathai.

She spoke to the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) at the Global Landscapes Forum about gender and climate change, and the need to empower women in order to achieve the targets set out by the Paris Agreement.

As co-chair of the Global Restoration Council, Mathai also discussed the importance of landscape restoration and why it is crucial for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Hear more from Mathai in the video below:

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  • FTA event coverage: Forgotten Forests of the Sahel

FTA event coverage: Forgotten Forests of the Sahel


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Revitalizing communities is part of the restoration plans. Photo: Carol J. Pierce Colfer/CIFOR
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The Sahel is a transition zone between the arid north and the tropical green forest that borders the maritime coast, covering a surface area of 5.4 million km2. Vegetation in the Sahel region is composed of mainly stunted and scattered trees, shrubs, bushes and grasses. Sahel, Africa. Photo by Daniel Tiveau/CIFOR
The Sahel is a transition zone between the arid north and the tropical green forest that borders the maritime coast, covering a surface area of 5.4 million km2. Vegetation in the Sahel region is composed of mainly stunted and scattered trees, shrubs, bushes and grasses. Sahel, Africa. Photo by Daniel Tiveau/CIFOR

By Suzanna Dayne, originally published at CIFOR’s Forests News

The Paris Agreement has shone a spotlight on the vital role that forests play in climate change – and for the first time, heavily-forested nations have pledged to support conservation and sustainable management of forests.

But most of the attention has been focused on rainforests.

Dry forests in places like Sahel barely make the news, or tap the interest of policy makers, and yet, more than one billion people make their living from these dry tropical lands.

People rely on these forests, which have an extended dry season, to yield not only food, but also timber, charcoal and other products such as shea butter.

One of the largest areas of dry forest lies in the Sahel region of western and north-central Africa, which stretches from the Atlantic Ocean eastward through parts of Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Chad, and into Sudan.

Under the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry, scientists from the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) are studying contributions that dry forests make to people and landscapes in Africa.

“The most surprising finding is that dry forests remain a neglected ecosystem in terms of development and investment focus,” said Terry Sunderland, a principal scientist at CIFOR.

For Sunderland, the fate of the forest is inextricably interlinked to that of the people who live there. Each depends on the other for survival.

“These ecosystems are extremely important reservoirs for carbon,” said Sunderland. “They help maintain a balanced ecosystem and the ecosystem services provided by these forests also support agricultural production in terms of pest and disease control, pollination and other services.”

A discussion forum at the 2016 Global Landscapes Forum in Marrakesh dealt with issues of regreening the Sahel. Photo: Pilar Valbuena/CIFOR
A session at the 2016 Global Landscapes Forum in Marrakesh dealt with issues of regreening the Sahel. Photo: Pilar Valbuena/CIFOR

ROOT CAUSES

The Sahel region is beset with increased temperatures and drought. Even with rainfall, this dry zone may be counteracted through evaporation, according to the UNFCCC. This makes community reliance on the land and dry forests even more tenuous.

The European Union (EU) estimates that in the Sahel region, 37 million people are severely or moderately food insecure, including 6.3 million people in need of emergency food assistance.

And when harvests fail, or forests no longer provide sustenance, communities are often forced to leave their homes.

“One of the major risks is that people will migrate to urban centers where they still will not have enough food due to food insecurity,” said Paola Agostini, Global Lead for Resilient Landscapes for the World Bank. “Eventually, they might even migrate outside their country and still not find a better source of livelihood.”

Agostini moderated the Discussion Forum on Regreening heritage landscapes and revitalizing communities in the Sahel and Sahara at the Global Landscapes Forum. This event, which took place on 16 November, was the largest side event on the sidelines of the COP22.

Paola Agostini. Global Lead for Landscapes, World Bank at the GLF session. Photo: Pilar Valbuena/CIFOR
Paola Agostini. Global Lead for Landscapes, World Bank moderated the GLF session. Photo: Pilar Valbuena/CIFOR

ON THE GROUND

Unless the diverse causes of food insecurity are addressed, there will be no permanent solution for the Sahel region. Re-greening has been touted as one way to solve the problem, but there are still many aspects linked to re-greening that need to be addressed, including land ownership and community needs.

“Encouraging people to plant trees is not a straightforward prospect,” said Sunderland. “Reforestation depends on secure land and resource tenure and there are few incentives in place to encourage local people to take the initiative here.”

WHAT’S NEXT?

So how can these dry forests be maintained? How can communities move forward?

Agostini advocates taking a regional approach to solve the diverse problems of the countries in the Sahel.

“Ecosystems don’t have borders, so we need to have a program that connects all the countries from Senegal to Ethiopia and also North Africa using real landscape approaches to ensure better ecosystems services and alternate livelihoods,” she said.

Revitalizing communities is part of the restoration plans. Photo: Carol J. Pierce Colfer/CIFOR
Revitalizing communities is part of the restoration plans. Photo: Carol J. Pierce Colfer/CIFOR

According to Agostini, the World Bank’s approach is to make sure that these interventions make sense and are financially, socially and environmentally sustainable.

“The idea is to restore degraded landscapes in order to make them a better place to live,” she said. “If real carbon markets develop, we will prepare communities for carbon. But that’s just the cherry on the cake.”

CIFOR-conducted research has identified an urgent need for evidence-based policy on dry forests and the need for more research and data to meet this need.

A 2015 CIFOR study showed that policies that reinforce the rights of the most vulnerable to access key resources and sustainable development programs will simultaneously increase their ability to adapt in the face of climate change and improve food security.

Scientists also found that reforesting lands should integrate the value of trees for livelihoods and diversity that can provide food in times of scarcity. It suggests that the integration of forests and landscape restoration should be improved as part of land-use plans to ensure food security of smallholders in the Sahel.

“We need to develop strategies that are more inclusive of forests in development strategies and provide formal incentives for their conservation and restoration,” said Sunderland.

“If we don’t, they will continue to be denuded and lost, with the associated impacts on both livelihoods and ecosystem services.”

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  • Four unexplored big wins in agriculture: tackling climate change through landscape restoration

Four unexplored big wins in agriculture: tackling climate change through landscape restoration


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Photo: CIAT

By Georgina Smith, originally published at CIAT’s blog

Four solutions lie in how we farm our food and treat our landscapes: this session aims to throw light on some of the tools that can tackle climate change head-on.

During this session, we call on the audience at the on-going 22nd Conference of the Parties (COP 22) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Morocco to consider these:

The first big win: trees on agricultural land could sink four times more carbon. Recent studies show that carbon sequestered by trees on agricultural land is not well accounted for. If it was, researchers argue in this study: “Global Tree Cover and Biomass Carbon on Agricultural Land: The contribution of agroforestry to global and national carbon budgets,” total carbon estimates from agricultural land could be more than four times higher than they are.

Yet while carbon stored and sequestered by forests is widely recognized and land cover changes well monitored, carbon stored by trees on agricultural land needs to be measured better. Growing more trees on farm land could be a fast and easy route to increasing carbon sequestration, above and below ground, with a myriad of other benefits.

That entails mapping landscapes to guide decision makers about where to invest in certain management practices over others, and policies that enhance carbon sequestration on agricultural land to benefit farmers and society as a whole.

image-2-trees-on-farms

The second big win is that carbon can be absorbed back into the soil. The stock of carbon in the soil is twice as high as that in the atmosphere. Small changes in soil carbon can have big impact on atmospheric carbon.

This session discusses new research from the International Center for Tropical Agriculture and The Nature Conservancy, presenting an initiative that could offset all CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning that are not already absorbed by oceans and land.

Data and maps show the most up-to-date soil properties from World Soil Information and Food and Agriculture Organization and illustrate where carbon could be sequestered if practices to enhance soil organic matter were widely adopted.

Since agricultural soils, already managed actively, have lost significant amounts of carbon, they could also re-absorb carbon based on soil type and climate. What’s needed are site-specific tools for decision makers presenting the bigger picture on where soils are degraded, and where to invest to improve soil carbon stocks.

A third big win looks at protecting wetland and peatland ecosystems

These ecosystems contain around 20% of global soil organic carbon stocks. But tropical peat fires are a major contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions, producing transboundary “hazes” impacting human health, regional economies and ecosystems.

Huge opportunities to mitigate climate change lie in protecting these lands. But they are often under threat from commercial and development interests. Combined with contemporary agricultural practices on peatlands – land clearance, burning, drainage and fertilization – these landscapes and the carbon they store are at risk. How can they be climate-proofed?

The fourth big win shows how improving grasslands can provide a triple-climate-win. Brachiaria grasses sequester significant amounts of soil organic carbon – conservative estimates indicate a 2-3 fold higher annual sequestration rate than in other annual cropping systems.

A growing body of research shows that some varieties of brachiaria reduce N2O emissions from soils, a phenomenon known as biological nitrification inhibition. New research also finds 40% more milk and tens of millions of dollars in revenue are possible for African farmers adopting drought resilient brachiaria varieties.

Wider adoption of brachiaria grasses to improve grasslands has a tremendous potential to mitigate climate – especially in sub-Saharan Africa. But further research is needed to investigate commercial-quality seed in Africa, and tackle climate-related challenges like new pests and diseases.

“Unexplored big wins for climate change through landscape restoration,” is a side event at the Global Landscape Forum, on Wednesday November 16th, Ourika room, Kenzi Club Agdal Medina, Marrakesh, 11.00 – 12.30. The session is co-hosted by CIAT and the CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems. 

For more information and next steps on action read our four briefs:

Big win 1: trees on agricultural land could sink four times more carbon.

Big win 2: Carbon can be absorbed back into the soil

Big win 3: Protecting Wetland and Peatland ecosystems 

Big win 4: improving grasslands

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  • Landscape Restoration in Southern Africa

Landscape Restoration in Southern Africa

24 October, 2016

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  • It takes a village to re-raise a forest

It takes a village to re-raise a forest

10 October, 2016

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To stem the effects of climate change on the country and its people, Ethiopia is looking towards forestry as a key solution.

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Stretching the carbon goals: Agroforestry experts want new partnerships and a boost for research


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Rwanda has vowed to restore two million ha, 80 percent of which is farmland. Photo: Alba Saray Pérez Terán/CIFOR
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By Kerstin Reisdorf

Dennis Garrity, UN's Drylands Ambassador and former Director General of the World Agroforestry Centre. Photo: ICRAF
Dennis Garrity, UN’s Drylands Ambassador and former Director General of the World Agroforestry Centre. Photo: ICRAF

“The contribution of trees in agriculture into the global carbon balance is still widely ignored. And if we don’t … start really blasting this message around the world, we are missing one of the biggest opportunities that this institution has had for many, many years.”

This is how Dennis Garrity, UN’s Drylands Ambassador and former Director General of the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), addressed his colleagues at the annual Science Week held in Nairobi at the beginning of September.

He said that there is a huge carbon storage potential of over four tons of carbon per ha per year on average. “So the main question is: How do we dramatically increase carbon stocks in agriculture?”

Garrity suggested leveraging countries Intended National Determined Contributions (INDC) to reduce Greenhouse Gas emissions for the African Forest and Landscape Restoration Initiative AFR100. It’s neither “too late nor too early” because 22 African countries have made commitments of a total of 59 million hectares they want to restore. According to Garrity, these countries will realize that the dominant way they are going to meet their commitments is through agroforestry. Land restoration will also happen in croplands and pasture lands. “In many countries, agroforestry has already been seen as the major vehicle for land restoration,” he affirmed.

Kenya’s land restoration commitments, for example, amount to 5.1 million ha and “farmers in Kenya are planting trees like mad.”

Rwanda has vowed to restore two million ha, 80 percent of which is farmland. Photo: Alba Saray Pérez Terán/CIFOR
Rwanda has vowed to restore two million ha, 80 percent of which is farmland. Photo: Alba Saray Pérez Terán/CIFOR

Rwanda has committed to restoring two million ha, 80 percent of which is farmland, so agroforestry is going to be the vehicle by which they are actually going to accomplish it.

Garrity challenged his colleagues to “stretch their goals” and aim to double the speed of increasing tree biomass by 2030. “We just simply double the rate at which carbon is being stored in agriculture through agroforestry globally. By 2040, let’s double it again. And by the time we reach the target year 2050 for the world to reach carbon neutrality, why don’t we produce 1600 metric tons of carbon annually through agroforestry. ” And trees also provide the environment in which carbon storage in soils can be increased.

Garrity’s presentation was complemented by data from a recent study on tree cover on agricultural land and carbon sequestration. In the journal Nature, ICRAF’s Robert Zomer and colleagues state that the amount of carbon stored on farms is underestimated. Through remote sensing, Zomer calculated that 43% of all agricultural land globally has at least 10% tree cover and that this figure has been steadily rising over the last decade.

Also read: Earth Overshoot Day: Harnessing trees to counter overuse of resources

ICRAF’s Deputy Director General Research, Ravi Prabhu, suggested to use the vast datasets generated in the Sentinel Landscapes under the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry to validate the new tree cover findings.

Garrity and Zomer proposed to overlay the new farming systems classification for Africa with the most recent map of tree cover and carbon storage to look at the potential of each farming system to store carbon.

The next steps according to Garitty are

  • Determine the carbon storage potential for each farming system through accelerated uptake of agroforestry
  • Set up national targets for carbon sequestration in agriculture and get countries competing with each other
  • Develop decision-support tools.

Garrity encouraged ICRAF to go beyond agroforestry and take leadership in “reviving” REDD+, developing global partnerships and mobilizing scientists to develop estimates for carbon sequestration “stretch goals” by farming system, country and region.

 

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  • The Shinyanga revolution: Tanzanian success story creates momentum for land restoration

The Shinyanga revolution: Tanzanian success story creates momentum for land restoration


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Cattle grazing in the Ngitili in Shinyanga Region. Photo: World Agroforestry Centre
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A restored Ngitili system in the Shinyanga Region, Tanzania. Photo credit: Lalisa A. Duguma/World Agroforestry Centre
A restored Ngitili system in the Shinyanga Region, Tanzania. Photo credit: Lalisa A. Duguma/World Agroforestry Centre

By Kerstin Reisdorf

With massive commitments to land restoration such as the Bonn Challenge and the AFR100, there is a buzz in the restoration community that is difficult to equal with actual success stories. One of these rare beasts is the Shinyanga restoration in northern Tanzania. Scientists from the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) have been engaged in restoration efforts in Shinyanga from the start and show-cased the project during ICRAF’s annual Science Week at the beginning of September in Nairobi. Shinyanga counts among the successful models of mosaic landscape restoration because of the strong local ownership and the commitment of the Tanzanian government. Since 2012, ICRAF scientists have been looking at the project as a model for climate change adaptation and mitigation under the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry, and as a case study site for multifunctional landscapes.

After the spike in land restoration commitments of the past years, the overwhelming feeling among scientists is that it is now time to move to action. This leads to very practical questions of “how do we do it?” says Lalisa Duguma, an ICRAF scientist whose focus is on sustainable landscapes and integrated climate actions i.e. synergies between climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Therefore practitioners are now looking for past models of restoration from a time before today’s commitments were even made. This is why the Shinyanga case became relevant.

For successful land restoration, Duguma is convinced, “we need to understand the history and what the drivers of degradation are. This is a reconstruction of the dynamics that have happened in that landscape. It is also necessary to understand how the identified drivers could be relevant in the intended restoration ambitions. ”

Cattle grazing in the Ngitili in Shinyanga Region. Photo: World Agroforestry Centre
Cattle grazing in the Ngitili system in the Shinyanga Region. Photo: World Agroforestry Centre

The ‘desert of Tanzania’

In the 1980s, Shinyanga was known as the “desert of Tanzania” with about 600-800 mm rainfall annually and severe loss of vegetation. Agro-pastoralists have dominated the semi-arid landscape.

“We traced the history of the region and the drivers of land degradation since the 1920s,” Duguma explained.

They identified four main drivers of land degradation:

  • woodland was cleared because the people were wrongly told that the trees were responsible for the tse-tse fly that infected the cattle with Trypanosomiasis;
  • commercial farms, for example cotton, were expanding;
  • climate change began affecting the landscape;
  • and because of the governments push for “villagization” more and more villages were founded and they in turn cleared forests to make space for their settlements, obtain for timber for construction and fuel for energy.

The consequences were droughts, ecosystem degradation, and scarcity of wood and food.

Presentation: The Restoration Agenda: Some Practical Issues

In 1986, the government came up with a program called the Shinyanga Soil Conservation Initiative (HASHI), which relied on the traditional local practice of Ngitili (dry-season fodder reserves), an enclosure system where farmers conserve or plant trees in the grazing lands which then provide livestock feed and wood for energy and construction. In the beginning of the program, only about 611 hectares such schemes existed. In 2005, there were about 378,000 ha under Ngitili blended with other agroforestry practices such as woodlots.

Duguma stresses that this could only be achieved because the government and the local community were committed to change. This commitment was coupled with long-term donor support and technical support from ICRAF.

For over fifteen years, the Norwegian government funded the implementation of the HASHI program which promoted the restoration scheme.

The benefits of the initiative go beyond land restoration and include economic and livelihood benefits. Photo: World Agroforestry Centre
The Shinyanga land restoration also yielded economic and livelihood benefits. Photo: World Agroforestry Centre

Putting money where the mouth is

Despite cases like Shinyanga, ICRAF scientists are concerned about sustainable financing. Some raised the issue of how trade-offs between land users should be managed when not everyone wins, and how the results will be monitored and evaluated (see quotes).

Duguma himself thinks that ensuring the commitment of the population in areas that are to be restored might be just as big a challenge.

The answers to these questions remain elusive. There seems to be consensus that local and national ownership is a prerequisite, but the Tanzanian example shows that even with the dedication of government and citizens, without external donor money the restoration would not have happened at that scale.

So, especially in Latin America for the 20×20 initiative, private investors are sought out (11 impact investors), but also for the AFR100, where more than $540 million in private sector impact investment are factored in. As both commitments are only a couple of years old, tracing money flows to restoration is not yet easy, says Duguma.

Besides the local and national ownership of land restoration projects, sustainable financing is key. In the case of Shinyanga, the Norwegian government supported the project for over fifteen years. After their funding ran out in 2004 and the restoration efforts had proven effective, the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) program started to come in and now even the smallholders themselves are re-investing in the land, Duguma explains.

The REDD+ project is making a good progress in introducing community forest management practices into the Ngitili land management systems and organizing owners into formal learning groups to ensure sustainability of the system.

Photo: Alan R Walker Wikimedia(Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativec
Shinyanga degraded when woodland was cleared to get rid of the tse-tse fly that infected the cattle with Trypanosomiasis. Photo: Alan R Walker, Commons Wikimedia
A blend of interventions

So, despite all, can the land restoration community take heart from Shinyanga? Duguma says yes and keeps coming back to the importance of giving priority to the role of the local people, local institutions and local practices. “Before even starting restoration efforts, all parties involved need to have a shared vision of what kind of landscape they want,” he says. The right approach would be: “We help you move forward, we’re here to complement your efforts in restoring your area.”

The communities in Shinyanga were empowered because people were aware of the problem. The solution was not brought to them from outside, but it was developed jointly. “Planning together, implementing together and devising the strategy together,” Duguma explains.

The benefits of the initiative go beyond land restoration and include economic and livelihood benefits. “In the place that was once known as the desert of Tanzania: now they are piloting REDD+ in that region,” Duguma says.

But he concedes that there is no universal solution of how to engage the population in land restoration, at which hinges the successful implementation of global commitments. And this directly relates to the sustainability of restoration projects.

Only with initiatives on the ground like Shinyanga will the Bonn Challenge and the AFR100 move from the vision stage to visibly changed landscapes.

Quotes by ICRAF scientists:

Jonathan Cornelius: Restoration is not simply planting trees, and is not necessarily about bringing back pristine or nearly pristine nature. But restoration is about recuperating specific ecosystem services, which respond to specific objectives for land use or land-use trajectories. Agroforestry has a central role to play because of the intimate connection between trees, forests and environmental services.

Ramni Jamnadass: I like to call it productive restoration. It’s not just restoration for the sake of it, hence I feel we should focus a little bit more on the tree functions, besides the environmental services.

Christine Lamanna: It’s easy to talk about restoration when it’s win-win, when we’re restoring ecosystem functionality, but what happens when it might not be a win-win? How do you manage the trade-off between restored landscape functionality that may also have some negative consequences?

Fergus Sinclair: I have a concern that at ICRAF we talk about forest restoration, landscape restoration, but we very rarely talk about land restoration, when a massive element of the agroforestry agenda is perhaps about restoring agricultural productivity on agricultural land.

Lalisa Duguma: The biggest opportunity for ICRAF as an institution is in the mosaic restoration area where we have agroforestry coming up as a strong agenda in many of the countries. The best example is Rwanda where they have 1.5 million hectares of land to be restored through agroforestry.

Background reading:

Duguma, L. A., and Minang, P. A., 2015. Leveraging landscapes: A systems approach to drivers of change. In Minang et al (Eds.). Climate-Smart Landscapes: Multifunctionality in Practice. World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF). Nairobi, Kenya. pp.135-149. DOI: 10.13140/2.1.1880.2242

Duguma, L. A., Minang, P. A., Mpanda, M., Kimaro, A., & Alemagi, D. 2015. Landscape restoration from a social-ecological system perspective? In Minang et al (Eds.). Climate-Smart Landscapes: Multifunctionality in Practice, 63-73. Nairobi, Kenya: World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF).

Duguma, L.A., Minang, P.A. and Van Noordwijk, M., 2014. Climate change mitigation and adaptation in the land use sector: from complementarity to synergy. Environmental management, 54(3), pp.420-432.

Duguma, L.A., Minang, P.A., Kimaro, A., Otsyina, R. and Mpanda, M., 2013. Climate smart landscapes: Integrating mitigation, adaptation and development in Shinyanga region, Tanzania. ASB Policy Brief, (40).

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  • Q&A: Lessons from China for forest landscape restoration

Q&A: Lessons from China for forest landscape restoration


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This interview is Part 1 of a three-part series on forest landscape restoration to coincide with the IUCN World Conservation Congress, held from 1-10 September in Hawai’i, USA.

The Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) will be represented in various panels and sessions at the event as part of the KNOWFOR partnership with the World Bank Program on Forests (PROFOR) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID).

Louis Putzel, CIFOR Senior Scientist, spoke with Forests News ahead of the event:

What is forest landscape restoration?

I would say forest landscape restoration is a large-scale planning process that involves improving the ecological functions of landscapes by replacing or increasing the amount of tree cover. It’s a very flexible concept and includes practices ranging from setting land aside for natural regeneration to plantation forestry.

Video
Restoring rainforests in the Asia-Pacific

The basic principle is that increasing biomass in landscapes – and that can be trees, shrubs or even grasses, like bamboo – generates multiple environmental benefits such as carbon capture, water purification and flood control.

What aspects of FLR are your team interested in researching?

The KNOWFOR project team I work with is mostly looking at government FLR programs in hilly and mountainous landscapes populated by farming communities. There’s a lot of work to do on the human dimensions of FLR, because a lot of the land identified as important to restore for environmental reasons is currently occupied by people. Some of it is very densely populated and has been used for agriculture or grazing for hundreds if not thousands of years. So restoration in such spaces involves trade-offs with food production, at least at the local level and in the short term. In areas that are economically challenged anyway, that’s a major consideration.

Under the Bonn Challenge [a global effort to restore 150 million hectares of degraded land by 2020 and 350 million hectares by 2030] – Ethiopia has committed 15 million hectares, the Democratic Republic of Congo has committed 8 million hectares, Rwanda has committed 2 million hectares.

So in such places there are major issues to work out: who owns the land, who has rights to the land, what is the land being used for, what are the economic benefits of agriculture, what are the food needs of the people? All those things need to be compensated for if that land is to be converted to forest.

REDD+
Who is really bearing the cost?

These questions are now looming, and there’s a need for a huge amount of research. Because as with REDD+, a lot of the restoration is going to be happening where people are already living on the margins.

This is for a number of reasons. A lot of the areas that are degraded are likely to be poorer areas in the first place. Another reason is that it’s cheaper to compensate poorer people. So the lands identified for restoration are likely to be those where opportunity costs are low – so by definition, where people are poor.

We can learn a lot by studying the experience of countries with a long track record in landscape-level restoration. So in addition to reviewing literature, visiting smallholder restoration areas and analyzing data, we at CIFOR are doing a lot of knowledge exchange with our partners, bringing together people from international organizations like IUCN, INBAR, and others to exchange with government forestry people all over, from China and Africa to the US.

Asia-Pacific
Reversing deforestation, restoring landscapes

You are based in China and have been analyzing forest landscape restoration practices there. What lessons can be drawn from China’s experience?

For several years we’ve been working with the Forest Economics and Development Research Center, a think-tank attached to China’s State Forestry Administration.

FLR as a field has a lot to learn from China. Because China is so big and diverse, and has suffered such serious consequences from deforestation in the past, they’ve had to implement a huge range of strategies to get trees back into the landscape, from conservation and protection or ‘exclosure’ of ecologically fragile slopes, to actual conversion of agricultural land to forest. One such program, the Conversion of Cropland to Forest Program, pays farmers to plant trees in their fields, and allocates degraded lands to families to restore.

Just under that one program, they’ve so far converted nearly 30 million hectares of farmland and land classified as barren or degraded.

 

Socioeconomic and environmental effects of China’s Conversion of Cropland to Forest Program after 15 years: a systematic review protocol

 

There are some important lessons about subsidies. The government has been subsidizing restoration on this large scale since 1999, and the idea has always been to reduce the subsidies, and eventually wean the people off them. But it’s important to consider how the landscape serves people’s economic needs in the long run, once the subsidies have ended. How will cycles of dependency affect sustainability?

China’s case is complex because the restoration is happening at the same time as mass migration from rural to urban areas and major changes in employment structures, as well as comprehensive tenure reform, which all have effects on land use, tending to reduce pressure in rural areas and increase it around cities.

From our systematic review of the Conversion of Cropland to Forest Program (CCFP) [in press] it’s pretty clear that CCFP subsidies give a bit of a push to people to do less farming and to plant trees before leaving their land to go take work in towns nearby or in other provinces.

CCFP
Measuring impact a challenge as China reclaims farmlands for forests

Another lesson from China is that FLR doesn’t always work as expected. From an ecological perspective, restoration of degraded areas is a science that requires very specific knowledge of local ecology, good matching of species and practices to sites. There have been areas where the species chosen for planting required more water than was available, reducing survival and requiring replanting.

The CCFP has increased China’s forest area by something like 3 percent in just 15 years, which is very impressive. Some of the new forest cover isn’t very diverse, but of course, forests change over time, so more species could potentially migrate into areas that have more trees.

 

China’s Conversion of Cropland to Forest Program for Household Delivery of Ecosystem Services: How Important is a Local Implementation Regime to Survival Rate Outcomes?

 

But these are things to consider in FLR around the world. As governments look to restoring forest in mosaic agricultural lands, for example, are they going to increase or decrease biodiversity, or economic benefits, or water ecosystem services? How does the restored forest compare to mosaic agricultural lands that are already diverse in structure and function?

In a rush to restore forest area, we sometimes see an expansion of fast-growing tree monocultures – plantations of eucalyptus, pine, poplar or rubber. These may restore economic benefits, and if the land was severely degraded before, may increase environmental services somewhat, and they certainly can store carbon if managed for that.

FLR is not just what the landscape looks like today, it’s about imagining what it will look like in the future, long after the restoration activities have occurred.

Louis Putzel, CIFOR Senior Scientist

Finally, restoration depends on tremendous financial resources. We are talking about billions of dollars, not millions, to restore landscapes on the scale of the Bonn Challenge. Big countries like China, and the United States as well, can give us a sense of the magnitude of funding needed to compensate millions of farmers for increasing landscape ecosystem services through restoration.

What is your message to those meeting at the IUCN World Congress about FLR?

FLR is not just what the landscape looks like today, it’s about imagining what it will look like in the future, long after the restoration activities have occurred. It’s about understanding ecological processes over the long term at the landscape level. This is something that’s challenging for a big and diverse group of government and conservation organizations to do, because ecological and social conditions vary tremendously from place to place.

FLR requires tremendous capacity for planning, for delineating space, for communicating with the populations living in the restoration areas, for creating the systems whereby they will adopt restoration programs. Personally, I think national governments still have to play a key role in balancing between uses, taking responsibility for trade-offs, and deploying funds on the scale required. And also in being there for the long term – international development project cycles are too short, and private investment requires a return before too long.

 

FLR at IUCN World Congress: Highlights from China and the US

 

The Bonn Challenge is definitely doable, but it is a major endeavor that requires a lot of research and smart policy. And the social angle requires a huge amount of attention – to a large degree that has been overlooked or given short shrift so far.

In the end, we need to ask who will inherit or benefit from restored landscapes, and how can we ensure people living in the most remote target areas end up better off than before? If more trees and forests benefit them enough to make FLR work, we all win.


This topic will be featured by
CIFOR at IUCN World Conservation Congress
1-10 September 2016 | Honolulu – Hawai’i, USA
See event details here

See the rest of the story at mysite.com

Related:
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VIDEO: Restorasi hutan hujan di Asia Pasifik
La inversión en plantaciones forestales sostenibles: hay herramientas, pero urgen mejoras

Source: Forests News English

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