Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Socioeconomic benefits (criterion 6) of the Montreal process may differentiate
agroforestry from plantations. Perspectives on socio-economic benefits depend on
the general context of 'development' and the constraints to 'livelihoods' that
entails. In societies where a major part of the population still makes their living of
the land, the first concern may be income - and it is here that agroforestry efforts
differ from conventional 'tree plantation' efforts (Dixon 1995; Leakey and Sanchez
1997). Agroforestry can, in fact, help overcome one of the major challenges to
plantation forestry in the tropics: conflicts of interest between local communities
and large estates supported by governments. These conflicts can reach a stage of
violent manifestation (Box 20.1). Foresters have experimented for more than a
century with ways to get local farmers to participate in their efforts to plant and
manage trees, in various forms of 'taungya', 'agroforestry' or 'social forestry'.
The legal and institutional framework regarding sustainable management
(number 7 above) appears to be the main obstacle for including agroforestry in
debates on sustainable forest management. By definition ( literally ) agroforestry is
generally excluded.
Logging old-growth forest remains, from a private perspective, the cheapest way
to get high quality timber. Until the forest extraction frontier is effectively closed
(either by effective protection of remaining forests, strict enforcement of rules on
certified timber origin down the market chain, or through sheer exhaustion and deple-
tion), planting trees needs specific subsidies and protection to compete successfully
with other land uses. Once the supply from natural forests dries up however, and the
prices go up, the time lag between planting and harvesting of (even fast-growing)
trees creates a gap in the supply (Fig. 20.1). Regulations aimed at curbing illegal log-
ging (closing the forest extraction frontier) tend to obstruct the trade and transport of
farm grown timber as well, and the transaction costs involved become a deterrent for
what should be the logical outcome of a timber shortage: positive incentives for
smallholder production systems to respond to market demand by planting trees.
Seen at the timescale of the evolution of a landscape (in the order of decades,
usually), we can recognize four important questions: (1) can deforestation be
avoided or halted, (2) can the process of forest degradation be deflected to a tree-
based land use pattern that avoids the more serious stages of environmental degra-
dation, (3) can degraded lands (from a forest function perspective) be
rehabilitated/reforested, and (4) to what level of tree cover and forest functions can
land recover in a new 'steady state', while meeting the expectations of the land
managers as well as society at large.
Whereas the next and final chapter primarily gives a positive reflection on
answers to these questions, in this chapter we will first look into various aspects
that hinder a so-called regreening revolution based on farmer tree planting to sup-
port sustainable forest management:
There are a number of bottlenecks that need to be widened before the full poten-
tial of this new green revolution can be realized ”.
These bottlenecks relate to all seven criteria of the Montreal process. We will dis-
cuss these under the six headings listed below based on the findings of the various case
studies presented in this topic and supported by reports from other literature sources:
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