Indicators and Overcoming Land Degradation to Mitigate Deforestation in the Humid Tropic Ecoregions

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Indicators andOvercoming Land Degradation to
Mitigate Deforestation in the Humid Tropic
Ecoregions
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Project purpose

• To generate technical, institutional and policy
  innovations with farmers and organizations that
  restore degraded lands and improve opportunities
  for system diversification and intensification,
  while reducing agricultural pressures on forests.

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Presentation Outline

• Forest margins research the CGIAR
• Are we ready for tradeoffs?
• Assessment issues

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CGIAR and forest margins

• ASB Alternatives to Slash-and Burn (1994)
• CGIAR systemwide program
• ICRAF, IFPRI, IITA, CIFOR, CIAT
• Brazil, Cameroon, Indonesia, Peru, Thailand,
  Philippines

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Evolution of thought

• Technological optimism (early 1990s)
• Hypothesis poor farmers cut the forest
• Solution better soil fertility management
• Insight Pandoras Box profitability accelerates
  tropical deforestation.
• Win-win (mid 1990s)
• Hypothesis the right mix of technological
  change, institutional innovation and policy
  reform at the national level can achieve
  development with conservation
• Insight strong tradeoffs between local and
  national development objectives and global
  environmental concerns, such as habitat
  conservation and carbon sequestration.
• Negotiation support (2000s)
• Win more - lose less
• Management of conflicting interests across
  stakeholders and across temporal and spatial
  scales.

Tomich, et al. 2006. Integrative Science in
Practice. AEE
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Land degradation is a logical choice.
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The potential of SLM options

• Feasible to land users and only need to be better
  disseminated,
• Marginally inferior to current practices but
  likely to become feasible after further
  adaptation accomplished by farmers and scientists
  working together,
• Marginally inferior but potentially feasible
  through small, targeted public investments such
  as credit, infrastructure, environmental service
  payments or other policy measures,
• Inferior and infeasible without major public
  investment.

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Indicators their limits
Types of possible outcomes
Predictability
Expected
Unexpected
Interpretation
An agreed meaning
Indicators are useful
Unlikely to be developed
A disputed meaning

Might be developed
Indicators cannot be used
Davies, 2006.
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Are we ready for tradeoffs?

• Site selection
• Hotspots (rarity, urgency)
• Potential success

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Other efforts to consider

• Global, high resolution, digital soil data with
  links to applications (poverty reduction, climate
  change and carbon issues, water use, and
  biodiversity)
• Earth Institute of the Columbia University.
• ISRIC- overall coordination
• CIAT- Latin America, ICRAF-Africa, JRC- Europe,
  NRCS- North America CSIRO- Oceania.
• Agricultural certification
• Organic
• Private sector Corporate Social Responsibility

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Suggestions

• Identify other required information beyond
  indicators
• Context and processes (national, regional, local)
• Linking project portfolio indicators
• Impact pathways
• Scenario analyses
• Sustainable Land Management or
• Effective Land Productivity Investments?
• Expectations- what is success?

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Suggestions

• Identify other required information beyond
  indicators
• Context and processes (national, regional, local)
• Linking project portfolio indicators
• Impact pathways
• Scenario analyses
• Sustainable Land Management or Effective Land
  Productivity Investments?
• Expectations- what is success?
• Beware the environmental 1/day indicator

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Forest prevalence
area forested forest per capita