This session aimed to: 1) contribute to better understanding the implementation of programs that promote forestry for the provision of ecosystem services in smallholder-occupied hilly and mountainous lands in Southeast Asia, China and India; 2) critically assess their environmental performance, and political-economic and socio-cultural effects; 3) identify questions regarding upland communities’ ability to adapt to anthropogenic and climate induced land-use change; and 4) share this knowledge regionally with the aim of launching an ongoing forum on this topic.
Participants are associated with the FTA’s nascent SLANT project, which takes a landscape approach to understanding how processes of ecosystem service provision to downstream and global beneficiaries affects smallholders and the landscapes they manage. Presentations and discussion built on CIFOR, ICRAF and partner studies underway in seven Asian countries, including China, India, Indonesia, Nepal, The Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.
Key questions addressed in the session:
- What socio-economic and environmental changes are associated with conversion of hilly and mountainous lands in Asia?
- What are the implications for sustainability and how might these changes relate to climate change mitigation and the adaptive capacity of local communities?
- How have government interventions and programs in sloping lands, including PES-type schemes, affected the well-being, land rights and equitable access to resources of people living in these regions?
Background reading:
- Fox J, Fujita Y, Ngidang D, Peluso N, Potter L, Sakuntaladewi N, Sturgeon J and Thomas D. 2009. Policies, political-economy, and swidden in Southeast Asia. Human Ecology 37(3):305-322.
- Rerkasem K, Lawrence D, Padoch C, Schmidt-Vogt D, Ziegler AD and Bruun TB. 2009. Consequences of swidden transitions for crop and fallow biodiversity in Southeast Asia. Human Ecology 37(3):347-360.
- Bennett MT. 2008. China’s sloping land conversion program: Institutional innovation or business as usual? Ecological Economics 65(4):699-711.
- Rudel TK. 2009. Tree farms: Driving forces and regional patterns in the global expansion of forest plantations. Land Use Policy 26(3):545-550.
- Clement F and Amezaga JM. 2008. Linking reforestation policies with land use change in northern Vietnam: Why local factors matter. Geoforum 39:265–277.
- Kohli K and Menon M. 2011. Banking on Forests: Assets for a Climate Cure? New Delhi: Kalpavriksh and Heinrich Böll Foundation.