Understanding diversity of smallholder agro-forestry and forestry systems in hilly and mountainous

landscapes: Regional comparisons in Asia

Kiran Asher, Peter Cronkleton, and Louis Putzel. CIFOR, Bogor, Indonesia

Country profiles: China, India, Indonesia, Thailand,Nepal & Philippines, Vietnam

CIFOR/ICRAF SLANT (Sloping lands in transition) scoping study

Six trends affecting the practice of swidden agriculture in Southeast Asia (China (Xishuangbanna), Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. • classifying swiddeners as ethnic minorities within nation-

states• dividing the landscape into forest and permanent agriculture• expansion of forest departments and the rise of

conservation• resettlement• privatization and commoditization of land and land-based

production• expansion of markets, roads, and other infrastructure and

the promotion of industrial agriculture

Sociopolitical trends and upland farm-forest landscapes in Asia (Fox et al. 2009)

Agroforestry systems and forests play an important role in providing or supplementing the livelihoods of small holders living on sloping lands.

Smallholders manage these systems in ways that sustain their livelihoods and the biophysical and ecological integrity of these lands.

“smallholders” are not an unitary group.  Rather, they are as diverse in terms of their needs, characteristics, motivations, and management practices as the agroforestry systems they depend upon.

Smallholder agroforestry: some observations

Small holder farm,Dzongu, N. Sikkim

Governments and non-government agencies promote policies for reforestation, afforestation, forest management, and agroforestry on sloping lands to:• Mitigate soil erosion, water loss, land

degradation, • Enhance specific ecosystem goods and

services (often for people downstream), • Conserve biodiversity • Promote sustainable development

Interventions on sloping lands in Asia: Selected observations

• China: Conversion of Cropland to Forest Program (CCFP)

• India: dam building, cash crop production in the North and northeast, biodiversity conservation in the south and southwest

• Thailand: Water provision for lowland rice cultivation

• Indonesia: Reforestation for PES, timber production

Examples of interventions…

Conversion of Cropland to Forest Program (CCFP) in China

Response to flooding in 1998 blamed on deforestation, over-logging, & forest-agriculture conversion on sloping lands

Teesta River, Sikkim and West Bengal

Dieng, Wonosobo, Indonesia

Smallholder forest management in Leksono, Wonosobo

Water for Rice Production, Thailand

While often sophisticated in terms of attention to the ecological and biophysical characteristics of agroforestry research is not sufficiently attentive to the  sociocultural and political economic context of smallholder agroforestry and interventions on slopes.

Social science approaches can focus attention to the often blurry line between the nature and the social, and the implications of such blurring

Our claims

Ecosystem services specific to sloping lands

Provision of waterPurification of waterErosion control: conservation of soilsFlood preventionConservation of soil nutrientsMaintenance of habitatsCarbon sequestrationMaintanence of regional precipitation patternsHuman-centered values and servicesOthers?

Enable an understanding of the diversity  of smallholders and their resource management practices,  

Analyze success or failure of projects targeting sloping lands, e.g. incentives vs. restrictions,

Provide inputs for better agroforestry interventions (to improve soil and water management, biodiversity conservation, better production of cash crops, income generation, and payment for services.

Why social science tools and methods? The functional reasons

Rice paddies on terraces, Sikkim, India

Analyze the arbitrary and dynamic definitions of agroforestry, slopes, smallholders that govern such interventions,

Implications of generalizing across what are diverse interests, practices, and intents,

Contradictory, contingent and co-constitutive nature of linkages and relations (agro and forestry, people and products, etc)

Why social science? The analytical and political reasons

Thank you