Environmental governance is in a state of change throughout the developing world. Power and author – ity are shifting from national offices to global and regional fora and to local user groups. Regulatory approaches to environmental management are gradually being augmented by incentive- and market- based approaches. Private organizations and firms are becoming more involved in the provision of such environmental goods as water, energy and timber, and environmental services like conservation and watershed protection. Forest conservation is no longer seen as the only appropriate means to achieve environmental conservationm, nor is afforestation seen as the only way to reverse environmental dam – age. Integrated approaches to ecosystem and landscape management, which include local residents as important partners, are being given more emphasis. These trends are creating new opportunities and constraints for agroforestry. While there are very few pieces of legislation or rural institutions that focus solely on agroforestry, there are many laws and rural institutions that shape farmers’ incentives to plant and manage trees in their agricultural landscapes. This chapter reviews the five policy issues that have greatest impact on agroforestry: land and tree tenure, forest classification, biodiversity and forest con – servation, environmental service reward mechanisms, and global environmental governance. Targeted applied research and engagement in local policy processes increases the beneficial impacts of agro – forestry development within local policy terrains and contributes to policy reform at the national and global levels.
Tag: buffers
Ancestral domain and national park protection: mutually supportive paradigm? A case study of Mt. Kitanglad Range Nature Park, Bukidnon Philippines
This paper examines the close relationship of Bukidnon tribes with the forested slopes of the Mt. Kitanglad Range Nature Park in Mindanao, Philippines, and how their claims for ancestral domain may interact with the park’s conservation mandate. The study is placed into historical context by reviewing attempts to assimilate the tribes under successive Spanish, American and Philippines governments, and their steady displacement by waves of migrant settlers. Natives were quickly relegated to marginalized minorities in the new society, and invariably responded by retreating further up the mountain slopes. It was through this process that the tribes now find themselves pressed around some of the last intact remnants of their ancestral homeland, the Mt. Kitanglad Range. The park’s rich biodiversity is threatened by rapid deforestation on its lower slopes, fueled by logging, wildfires, vegetable gardening, swiddening and rising population densities from both high in-migration and fertility rates. Native belief that nature is controlled by a hierarchy of spirits whose wrath must be avoided, guides the tribes in a respectful attitude to the environment. Indigenous practices such as safe havens for wildlife, preservation of keystone tree species and restricting swidden size indicate a conservation approach to resource management. The tribes reacted to the degradation of their of their ancestral lands in 1993 by organizing and creating a network of ’tribal guardians’ to maintain vigilance on the forest margins. Some seizures of poached lumber have been made and the initiative appears to be gaining momentum. The community-based park protection (CBPP) that is evolving spontaneously in these forest margin villages is internally-driven and has been enabled by reviving and strengthening existing tribal institutions. This determined and highly organized surveillance of the forest warrants recognition by DENR, and argues for further empowerment of these communities by formally decentralizing forest protection to their control.
The contribution of agroforestry systems to reducing farmers’ dependence on the resources of adjacent national parks: a case study from Sumatra, Indonesia
There is much debate about the way conservation and development are best integrated to reduce the encroachment pressures of poor rural communities on the biodiversity resources of protected areas in the tropics. One frequently recommended instrument is to intensify farming systems in the adjacent areas, so as to decrease the need to harvest resources from national parks. This study examined this issue by analyzing the effects of different household land uses in villages near a national park on their propensity to harvest resources from the park. In the northern part of the Kerinci Seblat National Park (Sumatra Island, Indonesia) the park buffer zone is comprised largely of community or village forests and human settlements. The village forests were formerly managed as production forests and provided significant cash income to the village. They were converted into farmland, particularly to mixed-tree gardens or agroforests. Natural forest coverage has now declined to 10% of the former area within village forest land. We analyzed the characteristics of the mixed gardens and village forests, and their practical contribution to reducing farmers’ dependence on the adjacent national park resources. Households with farms that were more diversified were found to have much less dependency on the national park resources. Households that farmed only wetland rice fields registered the highest value of forest products obtained from inside the park. Households that farmed only mixed gardens had an intermediate level of park resource extraction, while those that had farms composed of both components (i.e. wetland rice fields and mixed gardens) had a dramatically lower level of economic dependency on park resources than households in either of the other two categories.
Buffer zone management and agroforestry
This paper distilled some of the lesson learned from the global experience with integrated conservation development projects, drawing upon the review by wells and Brandon (1992). Historically, park management emphasized a policing role to exclude local people. Gradually it was recognized that communities near protected areas often bear substantial costs as a consequence of their proximity to these areas, yet gain little in return. Yhis led protected area management critically depends on the support of local people.