Smallholder Tree Growing in South and Southeast Asia - Smallholder Tree Growing for Rural Development and Environmental Services - page 11

1.6 Development of Concepts on Smallholder Tree Growing

in South and Southeast Asia

There exists a variety of land use types with associated terminologies that can be clas-
sified under the nomenclature “smallholder tree growing” including small-scale for-
estry, community forestry, common-property forestry, social forestry, farm forestry
and agroforestry. The meanings of these terms differ among countries and regions and
can be, in some cases, even conflicting (Harrison et al. 2002), leading to different types
of programs and systems of implementation. The first four terms generally refer to
forests that are owned - or controlled - and managed by individuals or whole commu-
nities whose members share multiple benefits. The latter two terms refer to land use
types composed of trees and other woody perennials grown in association with either
seasonal crops or livestock, or both, in such a way that the overall system benefits from
mutual economic and ecological interactions among the different components.
Similarities and differences in concepts of smallholder tree growing, as maintained in
various countries in South and Southeast Asia, are discussed in the Appendix. However
in this tolpic, the term smallholder tree growers refers to families who (1) have owner-
ship, or at least control over, parcels of farm and forest land and in some cases share
in the use of common property land totaling less than 1.0 ha up to a maximum of a few
hundred hectares, and (2) grow trees on these lands including species that have been
planted and/or those that have been protected after having established themselves
spontaneously from (semi-)wild seedlings. Details on the development of concepts on
smallholder tree growing for various Asian countries are given in the appendix.

1.7 The Philippines' Case Study

Within Southeast Asia, the Philippines stand out as a country that has lost most of
its original tropical forests. Today, it is classified among those countries with lowest
forest coverage in the region (Table 1.2). Whereas deforestation is still on-going,
mostly illegally, the rates of forest loss before 1990 were highest throughout

Table 1.2 Classification of South and Southeast Asian
countries into forest cover classes, based on data recorded
in 2005 (FAO 2006a)
Classes of forest cover*
75-50 50-25 25-0

Bhutan Indonesia Bangladesh

Brunei Myanmar India

Cambodia Nepal Maldives

East Timor Sri Lanka Pakistan

Lao PDR Thailand Philippines

Maleisia Vietnam Singapore

*: in percentage of country's land surface