178 | IAASTD Global Report

Small-scale farmers in the tropics often protect trees producing traditionally important products (food, medicines, etc.) on their farms when land is cleared for agriculture.

Goals
N, H, L, S
Certainty
A
Range of 0 to +1 to +3 Scale
G
Specificity
Mainly small-scale agriculture

Throughout the tropics, reduced cycles of shifting cultivation with shorter periods of fallow deplete soil fertility resulting in unsustainable use of the land, loss of forest and other adverse environmental impacts. However, trees of traditionally important species have often been saved within new field systems. These trees are sometimes sacred trees, but many are protected or planted as a source of products that were originally gathered from the wild to meet the needs of local people. Now, despite the often total loss of forest in agricultural areas, these same species are commonly found in field systems, often in about a 50:50 mix with introduced species from other parts of the world (Schreckenberg et al., 2002, 2006; Kindt et al., 2004; Akinnifesi et al., 2006). A recent study in three continents has identified a number of more sedentary and sustainable alternative farming systems (Palm et al., 2005b; Tomich et al., 2005; Vosti et al., 2005). These take two forms: one practiced at the forest margin is an enrichment of the natural fallow with commercial valuable species that create an "agroforest" (Michon and de Foresta, 1999), while the second is the integration of trees into mixed cropping on formerly cleared land (Holmgren et al., 1994). It has long been recognized that deforestation of primary forest is a typical response to human population growth, but now it is additionally recognized (Shepherd and Brown, 1998) that after the removal of natural forest, there is an increase in tree populations as farmers integrate trees into their farming systems (Shepherd and Brown, 1998; Michon and de Foresta, 1999; Place and Otsuka, 2000; Schreckenberg et al., 2002; Kindt et al, 2004;) to create new agroforests. This counter intuitive relationship, found in east and west Africa (Holmgren et al., 1994; Kindt et al., 2004), the Sahel (Polgreen, 2007), and southeast Asia (Michon and de Foresta, 1999), seems to be partly a response to labor availability, partly domestic demand for traditional forest products or for marketable cash crops and partly risk aversion (Shepherd and Brown, 1998). Typically these trees are more common in small farms, e.g., in Cameroon, tree density was inversely related to area in farms ranging from 0.7-6.0 ha (Degrande et al., 2006). Accumulation curves of species diversity have revealed that a given area of land had a greater abundance and diversity of trees when it was composed of a greater number of small farms (Kindt et al., 2004). Interestingly, tree density can also be greater in urban areas than in the surrounding countryside (Last et al., 1976).

The increase in tree planting is partly due to the uptake of cash crops by small-scale farmers as large-scale commercial plantations decline.

Goals
N, L, E, S
Certainty
B
Range of Impacts
+2 to +4
Scale
R
Specificity
Mainly small-scale agriculture

The dynamics of cash-cropping is changing, with smallscale farmers increasingly becoming more commercialized and growing cash crops formerly grown exclusively by estates in mixed systems. This gives them opportunities to re-

 

duce their risks by commercializing their cropping systems and income, and expand their income generation, making their farms more lucrative (Vosti et al., 2005). In Indonesia, many small-scale farmers now grow "jungle rubber", producing 25% of world rubber. These farmers can be classified as falling between the two extremes of being completely dependent on wage labor, and completely self-sufficient (Vosti et al., 2005).

The search for alternatives to slash-and-burn led to the identification of sites where farmers have independently developed complex agroforests.

Goals
N, H, L, E, S
Certainty
A
Range of Impacts
0 to +5
Scale
R
Specificity
Small-scale agriculture

In Indonesia, when the food crops are abandoned after 2-3 years, a commercial agroforest develops which provides a continuous stream of marketable tree products (e.g., dammar resin, rubber, cinnamon, fruit, medicines, etc). There are about 3 million ha of these agroforests in Indonesia (Palm et al., 2005ab), which have been developed by farmers since the beginning of the last century (Michon and de Foresta, 1996) to replace unproductive forest fallows. These highly productive agroforests are biologically diverse, provide a good source of income, sequester carbon and methane, protect soils, maintain soil fertility and generate social benefits from the land (Palm et al., 2005ab), as well as providing other environmental services. Similar processes are occurring in many places around the world (e.g., the cocoa agroforests of Cameroon, the Highlands of Kenya, the uplands of the Philippines, and Amazonia). In the case of Cameroon, indigenous fruit and nut trees are commonly grown to provide marketable products in addition to the environmental service of shade for the cocoa (Leakey and Tchoundjeu, 2001). Interestingly, in parallel with these developments, farmers have also initiated their own processes of domesticating the indigenous fruits and nuts of traditional importance (Leakey et al., 2004). From the above examples, it is clear that traditional land use has often been effective in combining forest and cropping benefits. In many places, farmers have independently applied their own knowledge to their changing circumstances-situations which arose from such factors as deforestation, the intensification of agriculture, declining availability of land, and changes in land ownership.

There are many wild species in natural ecosystems that have traditionally been collected and gathered from natural ecosystems to meet the day-to-day needs of people.

Goals
N, H, L, E, S
Certainty
A
Range of Impacts
+1 to +4
Scale
G
Specificity
All but the harshest
environments

For millennia, people throughout the tropics, as huntergatherers, relied on the forest as a source of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) for all their needs, such as food, medicines, building materials, artifacts (Abbiw, 1990; Falconer, 1990; de Beer and McDermott, 1996; Villachica, 1996; Cunningham, 2001). NTFPs are still of great importance to communities worldwide (Kusters and Belcher, 2004; Sunderland and Ndoye, 2004; Alexiades and Shanley, 2005).