Farmer Tree Planting Barriers to Sustainable Forest Management - Smallholder Tree Growing for Rural Development and Environmental Services - page 409

Keywords Agroforestry, environmental services, forest policy, forest terminology,
tree germplasm, tree product marketing
20.1 Introduction
Over the past 50 years the earth's population doubled to reach its current level of
six billion. Today the world's population is increasing by 80 million annually, with
the total projected to reach 10 billion within 40 more years. If the Millennium
Development Goals are to be realized, a considerable per capita increase in the
provision of productive and environmental service functions is needed on the same
total land base. Global population growth and increasing wealth (Millennium
Development Goals) exert pressure to convert forests to agricultural, industrial, or
residential uses. It also results in an increase in the demand for wood fiber and other
forest products (for more details, see Roshetko et al. Chapter 21, this volume),
exerting pressure to increase tree production per unit 'forest' land. Forests are also
expected to meet an expanding array of social objectives, like clean water,
recreation, and biodiversity. Forestry as a sector is striving to meet these needs with
a decreasing land base for forestry in its current form. A major opportunity to meet
the challenges exist, if only we are able to break the traditional sectoral divide
between 'agriculture' and 'forestry', and recognize 'agroforestry' as farmer-led
efforts to meet livelihood needs on a limited land base without categorical distinc-
tions between 'perennial' and 'annual' components of their enterprise.
Ultimately the sustainability challenge is to find ways to sustain the provi-
sion of goods and services that society derives from forests in ways that …
“ meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future gen-
erations to meet their own needs ” (Brundtland Commission 1987). Sustainability
in this sense does not imply 'keeping everything as it has always been'. In fact
sustainability requires a constant search for new ways to meet the overall goals,
while addressing current challenges. There have been several large efforts
throughout the world to identify criteria and indicators by which to gauge the
progress of sustainable forest management. The Montreal Process on Criteria
and Indicators for Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) identified seven cri-
teria, of which the first six are essentially a statement of the goods and services
that society derives from its forests: (1) Biological diversity, (2) Wood and
non-timber products, (3) Healthy ecosystems, (4) Soil and water resources,
(5) Maintaining carbon cycles, (6) Multiple socioeconomic benefits, and (7) Legal
and institutional framework.
Agroforestry practices and agroforests are an important category of planted for-
ests that have the potential to provide a wide array of forest-related benefits to
society, generally meeting criteria 1-5 of this list (see the next chapter for details).
There may be quantitative differences in the degree these criteria are met in 'agro-
forestry' compared to 'plantations', depending on tree density, species diversity of
planted trees and spatial arrangement in the landscape.