Smallholder Tree Growing in South and Southeast Asia - Smallholder Tree Growing for Rural Development and Environmental Services - page 7

tree growers, if at all included in the country records on which this figure is
based.
Remaining forest resources are unevenly distributed over different continents and
countries world wide. In South and Southeast Asia, large-sized countries like
Indonesia and India with, respectively, 88 and 68 million hectares of forest account
for over half of the total forest area in the region (2005 records; Table 1.1). Yet, when
looking at the distribution of percentage land surface covered by forest, Indonesia is
grouped among countries with intermediate coverage (48.8 percent) whereas India
has to be categorized under countries with relatively low coverage (22.8 percent).
Lao Peoples' Democratic Republic and Malaysia have well over 50 percent of their
land area under forest. Pakistan and Bangladesh hold only small patches of forests
covering respectively 2.5 and 6.7 percent of the country's total land area. Vietnam,
Thailand, Nepal, and the Philippines take an intermediate to low position with,
respectively, 39.7, 28.4, 25.4 and 24.0 percent of forest coverage.
In addition to declining forest areas, suitable areas for the production of food
for present and future generations are dwindling as well. Mainly marginal lands
remain, the fertile lands traditionally being utilized for various forms of crop cul-
tivation. Consequently, agricultural intensification is currently being practiced in
many parts of the world in order to increase crop production and provide food
security. However, agricultural intensification has not automatically led to sus-
tainable forms of land use; on the contrary, it has been accompanied by serious
forms of land degradation, particularly in the developing world where roughly
one quarter of all farmland has been degraded (Garrity 2004). Farmland is
affected by soil nutrient depletion and soil physical degradation due to repeated
cultivation and harvesting practices without periodic application of fertilizers or
manure. The much needed farm inputs, or fallowing time, for restoring the soil
are lacking whereas the knowledge on alternative, cost-effective methods of sus-
tainable land use is limited.
The urgency to stop, or at least control, the destruction of remaining forests and the
degradation of agricultural land and look into a wide spectrum of solution-oriented
measures of sustainable land use has nowadays been recognized as crucial to our sur-
vival. This recognition has triggered projects and programs on forest conservation,
reforestation, and agroforestry worldwide aimed at the integration of trees in denuded
and predominantly agricultural landscapes and funded by institutions like the World
Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the European Commission (EU), and FAO.

1.4 Why Focus on Smallholders?

Since the 1980s, there have been clear signs of a paradigm shift in the forestry sec-
tor throughout Asia and elsewhere in the world: whereas large-scale timber-oriented
industrial estates and reforestation projects dominated past forestry approaches,
there is a trend towards small-scale and multiple use systems of tree growing and
community forestry (see also Harrison et al. 2002). Environmental concerns and